We are delighted to announce that researchers with the School of Education at the University of Glasgow are partners within a new project funded by the European Commission within the call of H2020-YOUNG-3-2015 Lifelong learning for young adults: better policies for growth and inclusion in Europe.

This project, entitled Policies Supporting Young Adults in their Life Course. A Comparative Perspective of Lifelong Learning and Inclusion in Education and Work in Europe (YOUNG_ADULLLT) is being led Glasgow by Oscar Valiente from the Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change together with other colleagues in the centre, Michele Schweisfurth, Kevin Lowden, Kristinn Hermannsson and Chris Chapman, and  Lesley Doyle from the Centre for Research and Development in Adult and Lifelong Learning (CR&DALL).

The consortium is led by the University of Muenster, and also involves the University of Education, Freiburg, the University of Frankfurt, the University of Plovdiv, South-West University Blagoevgrad, the University of Zagreb, the University of Lisbon, the University of Porto, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the University of Genoa, the University of Vienna, the University of Granada, the University of Turku and European Research Services GmbH.

The project is designed as a mixed-method comparative study on Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In terms of research output, the project will contribute new knowledge about the impact of LLL policies on young adults’ life courses, and potential conflicts they may cause or exacerbate, yielding insights on the individual conditions, strategies, contingencies, and necessities for policies to become effective. In addition, the analyses identify policies and initiatives that benefit in particular vulnerable groups, including informal and non-formal learning and vocational training. Second, the project contributes to a better understanding of the structural relationships and functional match between education/training and the labour market sectors. Third, the project delivers a thorough regional review of policies and programmes in the countries studied, putting particular attention on regional/local networks of actors, dynamics and trends, and mismatches and redundancies. Finally, at the practice and policy level, the project identifies successful sustainable institutional solutions that integrate labour market, social inclusion and individual life courses, and discuss their transferability to other contexts. Importantly, by means of Policy Roundtables involving a range of relevant stakeholders and decision-makers, the project further fosters networking and coordinated policy-making at the local level.

We will announce details of other projects within this strand of funding shortly.