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After more than a year of living with the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic, much experience has been accumulated by countries around the world. There have been many failures, and there have been some things that have gone well. Adult learning and education in some form has played a significant role in public health since, without the ongoing continuing educational interventions mainly via the mass media, the number of doctors and hospital beds would likely have been insufficient. In this paper we focus on the role of group behaviours in relation to the risk of contagion and we argue that any attempts to define a strategy to combat the pandemic must include a strong commitment to information dissemination and to the training of the populations in order to encourage behaviour change necessary to mitigate the spread of the virus.

Against the backdrop of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, this article argues for commitment by governments to use adult learning and education as a tool for health prevention and health awareness and to prepare populations for whatever pandemics and national disasters that might emerge in the twenty-first century, the 'century of pandemics'. We therefore argue that populations must have at least a basic level of literacy and numeracy as foundational skills essential for enabling citizens to receive and act on vital information during a pandemic or disaster in order to engender greater resilience.

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The purpose of this study was to investigate the objectives of roadside mechanic apprenticeship programs in mid-western Nigeria. Seven statements of objectives were derived for the study and respondents were required to score each of the seven statements between '1' and '7' in their order of importance and representative of the objectives. The instrument was administered to 150 master craft trainers and 750 apprentices. Four out of the seven statements were rated the most important and most representative of the objectives of the roadside mechanic apprenticeship program in mid-western Nigeria: (a) to acquire technical skills; (b) to provide pre-employment opportunity for youths; (c) to instil discipline among youths; and (d) to provide opportunity for interpersonal relationships.

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This article reflects on adult offenders' perceptions of rehabilitation programs in Africa. It also evaluates whether offenders are consulted when planning rehabilitation programs. Adult education principles were used as a lens to understand offenders' perceptions of rehabilitation programs. Using an interpretive paradigm and qualitative approach, individual interviews, observations and focus group meetings were held with offenders and other participants who were chosen through purposive and snowball sampling. Qualitative data analysis was used to generate the themes from the data. The findings revealed that rehabilitation programs are ineffective and imposed on offenders. Furthermore the data revealed that offenders see themselves as hard-labour while participating in rehabilitation programs. This has an implication for offenders' rehabilitation and reintegration into their societies as transformed citizens.

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Ecoliteracy is essential for adult educators/activists en route to creating ecoliterate populations. Working cooperatively with other networks in the spirit of a 'solidarity economy', a group within the [Friends of Pascal International Association] PIMA network has run a climate justice education programme through a series of webinars. We describe and analyse a case story of an emergent climate justice curriculum in action. We use an ecofeminist analysis to understand the relational entanglement of ecological breakdown, capitalism, colonialism, racism and patriarchy which in part undergird the breaching of planetary boundaries. We identify five inquiry-based themes which are suggestive as coordinates for orientating curricula for adult educators/activists learning climate justice. One of these is the importance of building ecoliterate alliances through collaborative action as we face the 'socio-ecological hurricane' which is bearing down.

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This paper examines the status of women in the pre- and post-independent era in Nigeria and in contemporary society. It explores the introduction of western general forms of dichotomies, discriminations and apathy that general education has caused in their life, and brought about patriarchal knowledge and man’s domination and control of all spheres of knowledge, work, religion, laws, processes and which have engendered societal disempowerment of women. The paper thus advances adult and non-formal education and counselling programs as tools for empowering women. It also reviews the problems faced by women in society and proffers adult and non-formal education and counselling education strategies as solutions capable of propelling them to contribute their quota to the socio-economic and political development of the nation.

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One of the major challenges facing Africa today is ensuring that extension practitioners are well trained to enable them [to] function effectively as facilitators of change at the farmers' level. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a mid-career [Bachelor of Science] B.Sc. agricultural extension curriculum in meeting the education needs of mid-career extension agents. The study was descriptive and used a validated questionnaire to collect data from 30 purposively selected graduates of the program. The study revealed that 66.7 per cent were aged between 40-49 years, and 93.3 per cent had at least 10 years of working experience before entering the program. The graduates considered their competencies at the start of the program to be below average in all but six of the 25 courses offered under the program. After going through the program, all the graduates had competencies that were rated from high to very high. Improvement in academic status, knowledge and skills in the human relations as well as technical areas in agriculture, and attitude to work, were perceived as the major benefits of the program. The effectiveness of the program in meeting the needs of the graduates was attributed to the availability of appropriate facilities and the conducive environment for the teaching-learning process, availability of adequate and competent lecturers, committed and supportive administrative staff, balanced curriculum and a well-planned and supervised field component of the program know as the supervised enterprise projects (SEPs).

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The Leventis Foundation (Nigeria) Agricultural Schools (LFNAS) are schools established to train youths to develop their state and their nation in the area of food production. This study sought to assess the trainability of enrollees in the three operating LFNAS. Five research questions were posed. The CIPP [context, input, process, product] evaluation model was adopted. The population and sample for the study consisted of a total of 247 enrollees. Questionnaires, structured interviews and observational techniques were used to gather information, while using simple descriptive statistics to analyse the data. Many of the enrollees were found to be within the required age range. A substantive number had minimum basic educational qualifications; however, a sizeable number in two of the schools had no basic education, and could not even be engaged in communication. Most of the enrollees had been engaged in different occupations before enrolment and many did not really have the sincere interest in farming as expected, though a majority of them aspired to become modern farmers on completion.

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Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 calls on countries to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Sub-goal 4.6 aims to ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults of both genders achieve literacy and numeracy, with literacy being regarded indispensable not only for the achievement of SDG 4 but also for the other 16 SDGs, specifically those relating to health and wellbeing, gender equality, active citizenship, income generation and responsible consumption and production. However, the potential of achieving literacy can only be reached if it is approached from a lifelong learning perspective; therefore literacy learning activities should be offered as part of a lifelong learning framework.

This article describes how the Kha Ri Gude Literacy Campaign in South Africa, conceptualised within a lifelong learning framework, extended its literacy curriculum to engender agency and empowerment among the national target of adult learners who, as a result of the legacy of apartheid in South Africa, had little or no education. It examines how, through conceptualising literacy curricula content around the (local, national and international) development goals, it is possible to use literacy instruction as a catalyst to effect transformation and social change. The article draws on the mixed methods approach followed by the research to show learners' perceptions of the social, economic and developmental opportunities afforded by literacy acquisition.

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This article outlines the results of a qualitative study, which investigated the adult non-formal education and training (NFET) centre linkages with external role-players in providing post-training support for the employment of graduates. The concern that informed this article is that adults who face long-term unemployment remain unemployed after completing the NFET programs in South Africa. The article reports on an empirical study conducted to investigate what constitutes NFET enabling environments for employment.

The findings reveal that managers did not create adequate linkages that could enable graduates to access needed post-training support, community resources, public goods and services. The author concludes that without linking NFET programs to external stakeholders, graduates will continue to find it difficult to be employed or to start small businesses, which perpetuates unemployment and chronic poverty in South Africa.

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Improvement in professional standard and vocational output depends on continued experiment, investigation, research and development alongside a vigorous program aimed at applying, evaluating and communicating the skills thus gained. Continuing education is one of the means to attain these goals. This paper attempts to look at the need for continuing education in 'manpower' development, to review its nature and practice, [and] the purposes, problems and evaluation of continuing education in relation to 'manpower' development.

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