Study On Professionalization Of Adult Learning Professionals

With the spread of the idea of lifelong education, it is becoming more and more important to motivate adult learning and development. However, different from the increasing demand for adult learning, the quality of the adult learning professionals is not at the high level. Professionalization of the adult learning professionals as the important factor to promote adult learning is still lack of attention. Chinese adult learning professionals are facing the several challenges, such as lacking f of professional identity, lacking of professional education and training, lacking of professional standards and qualification system. Those problems stop adult learning professionals from going towards to professionalization. This study chooses six European countries and European Commission as seven cases and analyses the theoretical results and practices in terms of professionalization of adult learning professionals in order to give some examples for the professionalization of Chinese adult learning professionals. Since the diversity of the adult learning professionals, and they have different meanings in different countries, therefore, different countries have different way to define adult learning professionals and different ways to promote the professionalization of the adult learning professionals. This study tries to analyze these six countries in the framework of professionalization system and explore the actions such as building competence profile, making professional standards, developing training and education opportunities, implementing validation of competence and using quality management. Furthermore, this study intend to explore how the government, society, university and professional organization as four important actors to promote the professionalization of adult learning professionals,Generally, this study has two research lines across the whole paper and builds the research framework of this study. Firstly, it presents at the concrete implement level. This paper choose six European countries and European Commission as seven cases to explore the ways and contents which they use to promote the professionalization of adult learning professionals and try to summarize some important experiences. Secondly, it shows at the macro design level. This study believes that government, professional organization, university and society are the important actors in terms of the professionalization of adult learning professionals. In the professionalization system, there four actors play different roles and show the different effects. In fact, there two research lines interact with each other. The concrete implement ways need the corresponding actors to take the actions.This paper has11chapters:Chapter1defines the related concepts, such as adult learning, adult learning professionals, professionalization, standard and competence. And conducts literature reviews, chooses the research cases, defines the two research levels and builds the research framework based on the sociology of the professions.Chapter2presents the results of the survey of the state of professionalization of adult learning professionals (take Shanghai as an example), using semi-structure interviews to explore the state of professionalization of professionals who work in the field of open education, society education, company training and elderly&community education. The aim of this chapter is to define the problems and challenges of the professionalization of Chinese adult learning professionals.From chapter3to chapter9, the paper analyzes the theoretical results and practical experiences of seven cases and tries to define the effects of the four actors.Chapter10summarizes the five key ways to promote the professionalization of adult learning professionals and explores the relations among the five ways. The five key ways include:making professional profile and professional standards, completing the education and training system, building qualification system, implementing validation of competence, using quality management. Furthermore, the most important way is to building qualification system. Moreover, this chapter uses the four-actor framework to analyze the effects of government, professional organization, university and society in the system of professionalization.Chapter11combines the international experience and local contexts, trying to illustrate three key ways and two key suggestions to the professionalization of Chinese adult learning professionals. The three key ways includes making competence-based professional standards, building training and education model and developing qualification system. Two key suggestions are focusing on the design of adult learning professionalization system and making professional organization play a key role in promoting the professionalization of adult learning professionals.