Adult education and women in Portugal: A review of the literature 2012-2016

Abstract

After 12 years of adults’ education and training coherent programs in Portugal (1999-2011), a drop-off of these programs suddenly emerged as a result of the governmental austerity public policies implemented between 2011 and 2015, disregarding the Renewed European Agenda for Adult Learning of 2011, established on the basis of the European Council strategy for education and training 2020 (2009). In 2016 a new program for adults’ qualification was created, with the goals of promoting the productivity, innovation and growing of the country through the development of learning and professional competencies in people who couldn’t conclude the mandatory formal education or need to develop new skills. The experience of the education and training courses (EFA) realized in the context of the late “New Opportunities” Program was the subject of more than a thousand publications. With the main goal of providing useful information for the development of the new “Qualifica” programs, the present paper intends to analyze those publications, aiming to identify the research questions and the key subjects addressed by the studies and the results that were achieved in terms of the assessment and impact of the courses in the students’ lives; other goals deal with the identification of the academic institutions where these works were developed, the type of publications and the research fields that led to the specific researches, the most influential authors and the network of citations and collaboration between authors and institutions. The methods applied coincide with the ones of a literature review, including bibliographic search and retrieval and content and bibliometric analysis. A particular emphasis is given to the studies regarding women and literacy. Results show a universe of publications that includes mostly master and doctoral thesis, but also book chapters, journal articles and conference papers. 24 works are listed on the Portuguese Open Access Scientific Repository (RCAAP), although only 12 reached a prestige bibliographic database such as Web of Science. Most of the studies tried to describe and assess the results of the EFA courses, mainly in terms of the achievements in literacy, self-esteem, special qualifications and employment of the participants (social and intellectual capital) and were developed in the context of Education, Sociology, Psychology and Information Science research fields. Google Scholar notices around 100 publications that worked with the subjects of literacy and women, but only four authors devoted their study specifically to women’s achievements through the adult’s courses. Most Portuguese academic institutions with Education courses supported studies on the subject, though the results show that the universities of Algarve, Minho, Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro and Nova de Lisboa carried the most of the researches. Finally, the results of the studies analized lead to the conclusion that EFA courses play an important role in the life of the citizens, promoting new opportunities of employment, changes in values and attitudes and, in general, a gain not only in intellectual capital, but mainly in the social capital of the people who attended the education and training programs, especially in women.