A Comparative Analysis of Norwegian and Irish Adult Education White Papers; Respectively Entitled The Education Act, 2014 and the Learning for Life Document of 2000.

Abstract

Adult education is growing in importance across the EU and OECD counties. The labor market is continually changing, thus the skilling and reskilling polices of nations who want to maintain economic and social progress, morph to reflect and facilitate such change. This Masters thesis will carry out a comparative analysis of the adult education white papers of Norway, who have a long tradition of adult education policies, and Ireland, who are relatively new to the adult education policy scene. This task has not yet been initiated by the research community. Qualitative discourse analysis will be used as a research method. Meyer (1997) world society theory will be employed to explore the role and influence of the multinational organizations, the EU and OECD, on the national white papers. This study will also examine the guiding principles behind the documents, using social capital theory and human capital theory as lens through which the white papers can be viewed. The thesis concludes by identifying the successes and failings of both systems, and making recommendations on ways in which to improve the infrastructure of both the Norwegian and Irish adult education systems.