Given the double risk of exclusion caused for women with a low educational level, adult education can be a fundamental element that allows them to actively participate in their social, political, and cultural environments. Moreover, because educational level has been reported by the scientific literature to be a factor that directly favors personal benefits, such as having better health or greater employability, adult education may be an opportunity to obtain the aforementioned benefits for women with a low educational level. In this study, using the data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies survey, a model was developed to perform a structural equation analysis on a sample of 5,838 European women with an educational level of ISCED 0-2 and to investigate the benefits of participating in nonformal education activities. The results show that this participation provides these women with greater social and political confidence, more intense cultural participation and even better health and employability.

Education is the main vehicle for empowering adults, and can contribute to community wellbeing. However, regarding mature adults (MAs) (over 45 years old), age has been identified in various studies as a significant barrier to accessing educational activities. This paper focuses on MAs’ motivations to learn through an exploratory survey undertaken in six European countries. A K-means cluster analysis based on 16 variables has been run on n = 846 valid cases. Four clusters describing distinctive behaviours and attitudes of MAs towards learning activities were identified. The study confirms that MAs’ motivations to learn are very diverse, overcoming some of the so-called myths of global aging, such as the homogeneity of MAs or the correlation between age and a decline in motivation to learn. Furthermore, analysing the main motivations of MA learners can be useful for adapting education to cater to their specific needs, boosting a more inclusive education, and promoting MAs’ empowerment.

Models lineals multinivell en SPSS i la seva aplicació en investigació educativa

Les objectifs de cet article sont de deux ordres : d’une part identifier un modèle de gouvernance participative capable de répondre à l’objectif de l’inclusion des groupes marginalisés et exclus ; d’autre part expliquer comment et dans quelle mesure la participation de certaines individus, appartenant à des groupes sociaux exclus, peut effectivement améliorer la conception des politiques concernant les questions cruciales pour eux-mêmes et pour la société dans son ensemble. Après un examen critique des concepts tels que « gouvernance » et « gouvernance participative », l’article présente les points forts et les limites d’un modèle de gouvernance participative, appliquée en Italie entre 2009 et 2010, qui a vu la participation des Roms – l’un des groupes les plus exclus dans l’Europe – dans le cade des initiatives et programmes qui s’adressent à eux. L’avantage de ce modèle est la participation effective des bénéficiaires dans la planification des programmes qui les touchent.

The process of transitioning to an ageing population has occurred later, but nevertheless more intensely, in Southern Europe than in other regions. Consequently, these countries have been forced to politically, socially and economically adapt to this significant challenge. Sociologists play an important role in identifying and understanding social trends and issues, as well as in contributing to the design of public policies across Europe. However, research has tended to explore issues of ageing populations in Northern Europe, in spite of the notable demographic shifts and contextual specificities of Southern Europe. In response, this study has a dual objective: first, to collect the theoretical and methodological contributions of authors from or focusing on Southern Europe, and second to explore the originality of studies that belong to Southern European sociological traditions. In order to systematise the study, the theoretical paradigm of Marshall’s classification of social science theories in the field of ageing is used. Specifically, the present study incorporates the topics of active ageing, adult education and ageing at work as the main foci of analysis. The results of this theoretical study show that the sociology of Southern Europe can contribute significantly both to the issue of ageing and to public policies for its management, in the process providing a more holistic and human-centred approach.

Age can lead to stigmatisation, which is aggravated in groups that are already at risk of exclusion, such as women. This intersectional bias between age and gender (gendered ageism) affects so-called mature workers (aged 50 and over) in different ways, including the prejudices of employers and workers regarding their skills and competencies, as well as regarding their motivation to participate in training. In this article we analyse mature female workers’ level of training, motivation, and use of job-related skills, with the aim of providing evidence that breaks with ageist gender prejudices on this issue. For this, we conducted a descriptive analysis using ANOVA, and we applied structural equation modelling in an analysis of the PIAAC data of the OECD ( 2016 OECD. 2016. PIAAC Data. http://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/. [Google Scholar] ), dividing the entire sample (n. = 31,739) into four subsamples (women −50; women 50+; men −50; men 50+). In our descriptive analysis, female older workers achieve the highest scores in almost all the variables. Our proposed model, resulting from multigroup comparisons among the four subsamples, has a more optimal fit and structural coefficients of greater weight in mature female workers than in younger ones, especially regarding the influence of informal learning at work on the level of use of job-related skills.