Exploring attitudes towards adult learning and education: group patterns among participants and non-participants

Abstract

Based on contemporary theories of participation, attitudes toward Adult Learning and Education (ALE) are considered crucial determinants predicting adults' involvement in further education. However, their investigation is usually not empirically systematic and theoretically grounded. For this reason, the article analyses attitudes to ALE based on a novel approach - the triadic model of culture by Lizardo. We present a conceptualisation of attitudes to ALE, inspired by this model, distinguishing between (1) public, (2) personal declarative, and (3) personal non-declarative dimensions of attitudes. Based on that, we show the empirical results of a representative survey among adult population (25-69 years) in the Czech Republic (n = 1200). In this regard, we map differences in attitudes between participants and nonparticipants and results of a cluster analysis to identify main groups with similar attitudes toward ALE. Our findings confirm the employed theoretical concept and identify significant differences between participants and nonparticipants. Beyond that, we identify four clusters of adults with distinctive attitudes of which all contain a different mixture of participants and nonparticipants: (1) adults with positive attitudes; (2) adults with personal obligations toward ALE; (3) adults who see the public value of ALE; (4) adults with negative attitudes.