Interest in and factors related to participation in adult education and informal learning: AETS 1991, 1993 and 1997 and the 1998 NALL Survey
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This report offers an analysis of factors related to adult learning in Canada based on the results of the 1991, 1993 and 1997 Adult Education and Training Survey (AETS), covering program and course participation, as well as the first national survey of informal learning, conducted in 1998 by the research network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL). The paper distinguished three basic dimensions of adult learning: the initial cycle of formal schooling, further participation in organised courses and programs, and informal learning that people do on their own outside educational institutions. The data show that, while Canada achieved increasingly high levels of post-secondary schooling, the country’s moderate levels of adult course participation declined during the 1990s. The incidence of self-reported informal learning is estimated to have reached an average of about 15 hours a week in 1998. Informal learning is more extensive than formal schooling and is not closely related to either level of formal schooling or participation in adult education courses. On the basis of an extensive literature review, major factors related to course participation are identified, including general social background, behavioural and attitudinal factors. A preliminary list of factors related to informal learning is also included. An analysis of AETS surveys confirms the significance of age and economic status effects on course participation and suggests that perceived material barriers to course participation increased during the 1990s. Among those who were interested in taking courses, lower income groups found lack of money to be the greatest barrier, while higher income groups found lack of time to be the greatest barrier. Further multivariate analyses of background factors and perceived barriers find that income level had a stronger effect on participation rates among interested adults than either age or schooling, and that perceived barriers appear to have much weaker effects than either income or schooling levels. The NALL survey results support these conclusions. Based on these analyses, recommendations are made for steps to overcome some of the detected barriers to adult education participation. The report ends with suggestions for informal learning measures and more inclusive measures of situational and attitudinal factors in future administrations of the AETS.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".