Training of Adult Workers in Europe and Brazil. Between Emancipatory Education and Recycling for the Market

Página 297 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado. Training of Adult Workers in Europe and Brazil. Between Emancipatory Education and Recycling for the Market Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera Universidad Internacional de La Rioja rafael.hernande[email protected] Maria Margarida Machado Universidad Federal de Goiás (Brasil). [email protected] José González-Monteagudo Universidad de Sevilla. m[email protected] RESUMEN. Este artículo investiga las concepciones sobre educación y formación de adultos trabajadores, forjadas en dos contextos educativos muy diferenciados, como son Europa y Brasil. Teniendo en cuenta las diferencias entre los factores históricos, económicos, políticos y sociales relevantes en los países europeos y en Brasil, ha sido posible identificar algunas influencias relevantes de la concepción europea de educación de adultos sobre la evolución histórica de la educación brasileña. En todo caso, existen rasgos peculiares de la realidad brasileña, derivadas de la baja tasa de escolaridad y de la situación de exclusión educativa, vivida por los trabajadores brasileños hasta el momento actual. Esto implica una fuerte diferencia entre la realidad europea y la de Brasil, debido principalmente al desarrollo de la formación profesional en Europa como estrategia de educación permanente. Tras la fase histórica de la educación permanente, que se desarrolló a mediados del siglo XX, los enfoques actuales sobre la educación a lo largo de la vida precisan ser debidamente contextualizados, para evitar el riesgo de las generalizaciones conceptuales, que tienden, históricamente, a ocultar y legitimar las políticas educativas excluyentes. Este artículo discute también las tensiones y contradicciones entre dos enfoques educativos presentes en la actualidad en la educación de adultos: uno orientado a la emancipación y otro guiado por la concepción de la formación como adaptación instrumental de los adultos a la sociedad y al mercado. PALABRAS CLAVES. Educación de Adultos, formación de trabajadores, educación permanente, educación a lo largo de la vida. ABSTRACT. This article investigates conceptions about education and training of adult workers, forged in two very different educational contexts, such as Europe and Brazil. It has been possible to identify some relevant influences of the European conception of adult education on the Página 298 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 historical evolution of Brazilian education, taking into account the differences among historical, economic, political and social factors that have influenced European countries and Brazil. There are peculiar features of the Brazilian reality, derived from the low rate of schooling, and the situation of educational exclusion experienced by the Brazilian workers up to the present. This implies a strong difference between the European and Brazilian reality mainly due to the development of vocational training in Europe as a strategy of permanent education. After the historical phase of permanent education, which developed in the mid-twentieth century, current approaches to lifelong learning need to be properly contextualized, to avoid the risk of conceptual generalizations, which historically tend to conceal and legitimize exclusionary educational policies. This paper also discusses tensions and conflicts between educational approaches conditioned by emancipation, and by instrumental adaptation to the labour market and society. KEY WORDS. Adult Education, training of workers, permanent education, lifelong learning. Introduction. Lifelong Learning and continuous training are of major importance to individuals and groups. Schuller (2011) notes that lifelong learning plays a crucial role, allowing the individual to manage the key moments of transition in the course of life, even in the transition to death. In this sense, it is of great importance to distinguish between chronological age and biological age, since they do not always correspond to each other (Cruz and Jiménez-Gómez, 2017). Thus it may be that a person may find himself in a vital perspective that does not necessarily correspond to his chronological age, which will require specific educational needs.By this, we mean to record the importance of the type of learning in a person's life, since it covers all the vital perspectives, not only those related to learning of an instrumental or work type. The concept of Permanent Education is closely linked to Lifelong Learning. Today there is a global political consensus around the term, although this has taken some decades of work. The first initiatives on the subject emerged in the 1970s, following the report “Learning to Be”, carried out by UNESCO's Education Commission and led by Edgar Faure, who was Prime Minister of France, and later Minister of Education. Initially, this approach was the product of modest initiatives by different national governments. In the field of adult education and training, this conception of lifelong learning is taken up in documents from the 1990s, produced by international organizations in conferences, and is more relevant from the V International Conference on Adult Education, promoted by Unesco in 1997 in the German city of Hamburg. However, the understanding that educational processes precede and succeed only at school time is not recent. Mészáros (2005) identifies historical precedents of this theme as early as the sixteenth century, in thinkers such as Paracelso, who affirmed that "learning is our own life, from youth to old age, in fact almost to death" (Mészáros, 2005: 23). We must therefore consider, as Mészáros (2005) warns us, this perspective of learning as equivalent to our own life: Página 299 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 Yes, "Learning is our own life," as Paracelsus said, five centuries ago, and many others, who made their way, but we've probably never heard of their names. But to turn this truth into something obvious, as it should be, we must claim a full education for life, to make it possible to put into perspective the formal part, to develop also in the formal dimension, radical reform. This can not be done without questioning the currently dominant forms of internalization, strongly consolidated in favor of capital by the formal educational system itself (p. 55). Mészáros raises, therefore, a very important issue for education and training of adults, in the current context: to conceptually think of education throughout life, it is necessary to confront the dominant forms of internalization, they challenge us to understand what has been the education and training of adult workers in different contexts, particularly with respect to confusion over training and instruction. This will allow us to better evaluate a proposal of full education for life. Moved by this challenge of knowing what constitutes a dominant conception of adult education and training, in the different European and Latin American experiences, and more specifically in Brazil, we propose in this article a synthesis of the reflection carried out on this issue, from the review of the literature on the subject in our recent historical contexts. This leads us to identify the main issues of theoretical and conceptual debate, with reference to lifelong education, a concept currently advocated to better understand the education of working adults. In our contribution, we begin by highlighting the relationship between experience and learning, trying to identify how experience converts or transforms into genuine learning. Subsequently, we formulate the distinction between educating, training and instructing, following the systematization proposed by different researchers. We end the article by addressing the implications of the concepts addressed for the specific experiences of workers' training, in face of the challenges of our current society, characterized by cognitive capitalism and neoliberal globalization (Castells, 2002, Sádaba, 2016). 1. Education and training of adult workers and discussions on experience. In the first, place we would like to emphasize that adult learning is an experience-based learning. In fact, the adult does not reach a process of teaching - learning as a tabula rasa, because he or she comes with a series of experiences and educational and social experiences. It is important to take into account all this baggage, since it will condition from the beginning the whole process. But not any kind of experience is educational. There is a fourth knowledge, as well as knowledge, know how and to know how to be. This fourth knowledge is experience, the ability to learn from everyday life, experience as a practice and as everyday learning, the so-called "everyday learning". It is not the result of the sum of the other three, because it has particular characteristics, such as depth of thought and generative relationships with the world (Reggio, 2010). In general, everyday learning is related to the perception of social and cultural reality, which is the framework of everyday life and, unfortunately, is often overlooked. Therefore, as Cabello states: Página 300 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 It is necessary to problematize the obvious, to question what has been said and not said, which is part of daily life, as a means of reflection, to feel reality from different perspectives and to be able to re-signify the meanings bestowed on our surroundings. It is even necessary to ask how powerful current "forms" of relating to reality act as mediations capable of conditioning our perception of the real and the possible (Cabello, 2003, cit. In Etcheverría, 2009: 20). Experience-based learning is not academic or scholastic learning. It comes from everyday life, from relationships and from the social. Through the passage of time educational experience grows slowly in the individual knowledge and consciences that make us to be knowledgeable experts of a subject. In this sense it is fundamental to problematize and question the daily realities that come to us, and from that reflexive problematization generate our own interpretation of everyday experiences from a critical perspective, generating an awareness of the issue. This conception of learning by experience can be identified, in territorial terms, in the practices of popular education, a term already used in the context of Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. Such experiences attached great importance to learning by experience, especially for impoverished populations to perceive themselves as carriers of knowledge and with the capacity to continuously learn. In Latin American countries, this conception of what was learned through popular knowledge suffered in the attempt to survive the impositions of the military regimes implanted in the region in the 1970s and 1980s. The present emancipatory and liberating perspectives in Paulo Freire (1965) and Pierre Furter (1966a, 1966b), suffered a sharp setback due to the dictatorships that were implanted in those years. What survived for more than twenty years in these countries was not precisely this aspect forged in the experiences of the popular movements, which thought not only of formal school knowledge, but also and above all the knowledge that transcended the curricula and that materialized in the daily knowledge and in the learning derived from the experience. We must ask ourselves why the educational experiences that took place in these countries were so dangerous, to have suffered the direct intervention of the military governments. Part of the answer to this question can be found in one's own understanding of the principles governing learning. In the words of Reggio (2010: 39-43), the experience that educates is governed by a series of principles: • Reality: They must be experiences with a real dimension, through direct contacts with the sources of knowledge. It is important to touch reality with our hands, which makes learning more effective. • Continuity: A simple event, although very important, can not be considered an experience. Experience is a complex process of learning, which requires contexts and situations interrelated to each other, which enable the interconnection of distant moments in time and space. • Problematicity: That is, the presence of problematic aspects. But not only as moments in which we have to overcome a difficulty, but as a situation that leads us to assume a critical approach, capable of asking questions about the situation and about ourselves. In other words, perceiving reality as a problem that confronts man Página 301 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 and leads him to ask questions. • Complexity: Experience is not an event that is limited to a single question, but leads to consider the issues from a multiplicity of perspectives, from cognitive, emotional, relational, etc. The production of learning is often initiated intuitively, taking into account different and fragmented elements. We come to understand things by establishing connections between different events and experiences that occur at different times. Also of great interest is the contribution of Paulo Freire on the role of experience and how it influences adult education processes: The reflection on experience is also connected with the development of consciousness, with "awareness" as a process of recognition of the position of man in relation to the world, capable of interacting with him, of seeking scientific and critical explanations of phenomena (Freire, 1971, cit., In Reggio, 2010). Andrés (2001) summarizes various authors on the characteristics of adult learning. For adults, the accumulated experience is very helpful because they carry in their personal history a large load of knowledge, information and skills. This leads them to develop a certain behavior, based on those experiences, that work well in their day to day endeavors. It is for this reason that we consider it fundamental that the methodology used for adult learning brings together what has already been learned in the past with the new. The motivational aspect is also important in adult learning within the work environment as they are not only driven by curiosity to learn new things, but also have many thoughts such as "being up to" professional demands, not being outdated but also capable of adapting to change. In them there is not only a professional motivation to receive a promotion, but also a great spur to their own cultural concerns. In this sense, whenever training is oriented to these motivations, it will be much better internalized and assimilated. On the other hand, age leads us to develop more defensive and resistant behavior (Andrés, 2001). It is much more difficult to change habits and mental structures during adulthood than during childhood. It is very complicated to change a behavior with which an individual has lived successfully for years. From a psychological perspective, for changes in behavior, attitudes, etc., it is essential that the adult feels involved and motivated by the training in which he participates. That is, when a formative activity, however interesting and exclusive it may seem, is not freely chosen by the adult, but is imposed, it will have little or no effectiveness. Other considerations on adult learning are the reduction of abilities and the fact that adults require that they be treated more respectfully from the beginning of the teaching-learning process without detracting from their abilities, age or difficulties . In other words, training with a group of adults can not replicate academic or scholarly models. Thus, we consider that in the case of adult education, in general, and the training of workers in particular, scholasticism has no place as a learning methodology, since it would only reproduce instructional models of other times not valid to develop adults. Página 302 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 2. The continuing challenges of understanding adult education and training. Adult education (AE) takes place in many facets and vital settings, such as the family, the community to which we belong, the company in which we work or the association in which we participate. Now, it is important to distinguish between adult education and merely adulthood. In our opinion the former empowers the individual to make his own decisions, to think for himself and to grow as a human being. Collado, Pérez and Lucio-Villegas (1994: 123) comment that "AE is a process in which adults learn, with an appropriate methodology, to give personal answers to situations that one can find." However, there are many occasions in which a formative process is necessary as a consequence of the emergence of a new technology in the work environment or the implementation of a new productive system in a company. In this case we would not be talking about adult education but about adult training. Not for this do we mean that this type of training is not necessary, otherwise we would be stuck in the productive realities of a given moment. As a result of their own future, of scientific research and innovation and development, companies are changing and their needs are changing with them, which requires a continuous adaptation of all the elements that integrate it: workers, managers and employers. In the end, adaptation to change is nothing but learning a new reality. By this we do not mean that all changes are good, or that they have to be accepted and adapted, without forgetting any critical conception about them. What is evident, in our view, is that the reality of the world of work and of companies changes continuously, and the worker would be responsible to himself and his personal reality if he did not adapt to the eventual changes in his company, without for that reason stopping to try to change those issues that he considers inappropriate or unfair. In Collado et al. (1994), it is not adult education that is compulsory, such as military training, or business training that is not freely chosen by the worker. Likewise, that training that aims to replicate answers designed by others can not be considered adult education, but adult training, regardless of whether or not it has been received in prestigious business schools. These reflections refer again to Mészáros (2005), when he problematizes the fact that adult education and training are subject to the effect of internalizations that could jeopardize the realization of integral human formation. Therefore, this author argues that educational spaces, whether formal or not, must question the factors that may impede access and autonomous production of knowledge, especially taking into account the limits imposed by the interests inherent in a Capitalist society (Mészáros, 2005: 55). Another fundamental aspect of adult education, and therefore the training of workers, is the methodological question. Usually one tends to think that the training must take place in person, in a classroom. Other types of methodologies are usually perceived as substitutes, or of a lesser quality, and are further removed from reality. Collado et al. (1994) make the following consideration on the education of adults: We define AE as a process within a human rights framework in which adults interact with their experience, their culture, their individuality and their belonging to a community, by their own decision, in any place whether school or not, guided by an educator, whether professional or not, or by adults themselves, either in presence, at a distance or by special materials organized within a methodological Página 303 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 paradigm that must be decided and assumed by the adults to achieve an improvement (Collado et al., 1994, p. 123). In this context, it is important to note that, in the case of an individual, training of workers, as well as lifelong learning and adult education, the question should be approached from this perspective. There are many possible methodologies for achieving the ultimate purpose: to educate or train the individual. In this sense, it must also be remembered that people who are engaged in a job, have little time available after finishing their working day, so it becomes more necessary, even if it is far from easy, to innovate methodologically and to use solutions that allow them to reconcile family life, work and training as the individual is in continuous process of learning, throughout life, in Permanent Education. Sarrate (1997) comments that there has traditionally been a major confusion between the idea of education and schooling, mistakenly thinking that only schools (face-to-face training) can respond to learning needs. Another common mistake has been thinking that as the best age to learn is during childhood, educational processes are more appropriate for children than for adults. This is not true as a means, since much of the learning during childhood must be reworked and restructured from the perspective of adulthood, that is, based on experience.Freire (2001) corroborates this perspective starting from the idea that there is no confusion between education and schooling, but draws attention to the fact that even the school, in its classroom training, must assume that the school is a continuous process of learning: We should not call the people to school to receive instructions, postulates, recipes, threats, rebukes and punishments, but to participate collectively in the construction of a knowledge, which goes beyond knowledge derived from mere experience, which takes into account its needs and make it an instrument of struggle, enabling it to be the subject of its own history (Freire, 2001: 35). The new social order in which we are immersed, where "a few are those who produce and amass more and more wealth, and many who become impoverished every day, has given rise to new social and educational needs" (Alheit, 1997, cit. In De Prado and Hernández, 1997: 6). Today, the big problem is not only the high unemployment rate and the lack of resources that leads to the absence of work, in our view the big problem lies in the lack of expectations and the future that propitiates not to have a Plan to face and deal with this situation. Here is a contribution of Cabello (2009) that supports this perspective: The problem at present is not even in the lack of clarity that produces an adverse situation in the labor field. The difficulty is that the mechanisms by which this situation can be addressed and overcome are also unclear. Among the repercussions that this entails, perhaps the most worrying thing is that the young people live without being able to realize a plan of life in the medium or long term, with the consequent uncertainty that generates this situation (Cabello, 2009: 247). Página 304 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 Consequently, education, and especially that which takes place during adulthood, must respond to these new needs, not only focusing on the instructive aspect. It should promote strategies that help individuals to cope with the situation of instability and lack so that the future that arises as a consequence of the absence of work and perspectives will be able to cope with it. This also affects people of high qualification who sometimes realize that the education received at the university does not exactly match what is demanded in the labor market. In 2004, the Fundación de Conocimiento y Desarrollo (Knowledge and Development Foundation) conducted a survey of Spanish companies to evaluate the relationship between the company and the university in Spain. The study concluded that there was almost no relationship and little recognition of the company towards the role of economic development engine that should be exercised by the university (Cámara, 2016: 113). As we have said before, this type of education must be based on a methodology that is substantially different from that used in the education of children. It should be a methodology that seeks to rediscover the potentialities of learning in the daily life of adults and, based on these, systematizing the experiences. Nor should we forget that it must be an educational process, not merely a trainer. That is, people should be trained to give answers for themselves, not to repeat the responses issued by others. This does not mean that there can not be, also, an instructional component; what we mean is that this should not be the protagonist but the educational process. Thus, we can not present Adult Education as a merely instructive process. In it, adults should be the protagonists, based on their interests and needs, and select the most appropriate methodologies to respond to them. Otherwise, there is the risk of leaving aside those learning times dedicated to reflection and the search for common solutions, not being able to systematize the experiences or share the learning. The use of a methodology with a scholastic and academic approach, which expropriates the person from his adulthood, understood as the ability to make decisions in a responsible, autonomous and mature way. Alheit (1997) cit in De Prado and Hernández (1997) develops a simple typology on Adult Education in Europe, which shows the different peculiarities that this has in terms of the different geographical areas in which it takes place. The Scandinavian Type (typical of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland) represents a type of modern adult education and community, based on a conception that comes from the long local Scandinavian tradition and labor movements.It is currently institutionalized and highly professionalized. The Central European type (typical of Germany, Austria, Holland, etc.) also corresponds to the characterization of a modern but much more individualized type of adult learning. In addition to being supported by the state, it is financed and organized through a kind of highly professionalized collaboration between churches, unions, local authorities and, increasingly, private companies. The UK Type (which includes the British, Scottish, Welsh and Irish) is characteristic of a "semi-traditional community, supported mainly by community-based and private semiprofessionalized adult education foundations also engaged in university activities Long Página 305 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 duration (university extension, developed by external departments, etc.). The Mediterranean Type (typical of Spain, Italy, Greece ...) could be characterized as more traditional, community oriented, strongly connected with social movements and, above all, not professionalized. The Type of Eastern Europe (typical of the former socialist countries) represents, in part, the most modernized version of adult education, characterized by a centralized organization and a strong emphasis on professional training. This typology of European experiences differs substantially from the reality of Latin America in an aspect that is fundamental for adult education. Most of these countries do not suffer from serious problems stemming from high levels of illiteracy and low levels of education for workers, a problem still very evident in Latin America. The Brazilian case is perhaps the most emblematic to illustrate this reality, since it is a continental country that has reached the twenty-first century with enormous social inequalities, as a result of a long history of expropriation and exploitation of workers, including the denial of the right to access and entry in formal education. This translates into the fact that Brazil, according to census data (Brazil, 2010), has around 13 million illiterate people over 15 years of age and 65 million young people and adults who have not completed twelve years of schooling, corresponding to basic education in this country. This condition of low educational level represents a challenge to continue thinking about the education of working adults in the country, in accordance with the approach of permanent education that we discuss in this article. In order to understand how Brazil achieves this condition, it is necessary to go through the history of the educational offer for adults, which materialized in the last decades of the twentieth century, especially from the military regime. In this context, we turn to Touraine (1965), who according to Paiva (1985) will defend the opinion that in post-industrial societies, what was at issue was the question of social class, as well as access to goods produced by culture. This is manifested in Touraine's (1965) comments on the new context of industrial society: In so far as it is fully formed, it is impossible to speak of classes; We can speak of a class situation on the condition that an individual can be found in a plurality of class situations (...) it would be more correct to speak here of interest groups (Touraine, 1965: 151). This condition of interest groups, not class condition, will be the germ of the debate of Brazilian theorists, including Trigueiro (1969) and Corrêa (1973), who will have a decisive influence on the political decisions of the Brazilian governments on Adult education. The first author mentioned is heir of national and developmental thinking, while the second is the representative of the Brazilian Movement of Literacy (MOBRAL), of which he was president between 1974 and 1985. Trigueiro, in an article published in the Brazilian Journal of Pedagogical Studies in 1969, entitled "A New World, a New Education", reveals in his reflections an idealism that conceives education as the engine of social change without contextualizing this education in the whole of the actions of the State, influenced by the current capitalist system. He says: "We are going to suffer an irreparable delay in relation to our own time and our own society if we do not move quickly towards lifelong education" (Trigueiro 1969, 10), while defending Página 312 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 European Union also promotes the development of active policies concerning the training of workers. All this experience of agreements among the different parties involved, which takes place in European countries, is very different from the working conditions of the Latin American countries, characterized by a still unskilled labor force, sometimes conditions of semislavery, a real presence of child labor in some sectors and the existence of low wages and long working hours. All these questions refer us to the processes of expropriation of the workers at the beginning of the process of industrialization of the European continent. Final Considerations. This article has been proposed to critically examine adult education, and in particular the training of workers, from a Lifelong Learning perspective and starting from a conception of training and learning based on experience and daily life. The demand for an experiential and liberating educational model has led us to indicate some components of this model, present in the pedagogies arising from the contributions of Paulo Freire, Jack Mezirow and other pioneers of adult education. Our focus of geographical interest has been constituted by Europe and Brazil. Taking a comparative perspective, we have contrasted European developments in adult and worker education with the Brazilian context. The historical, economic and political differences explain that important attention has been paid in Europe to the normative development of a legal framework that favors the training of adults and workers within the so-called social dimension of the European Union. On the contrary, in Brazil, despite the revolutionary ideas and the contributions of liberation in education promoted by Paulo Freire and by popular social movements, the weight of the Brazilian dictatorship and the subsequent disinterest of successive governments have produced an oversight and disinterest towards adult education. In this context, there are current transformations in Brazil, both in society and in education, which are helping to change the subordinate position of adult and worker training. In this sense, they begin to develop incipient networks of educators and academics working to shape the field of adult education as a specific field of research and intervention. We believe that transnational networking, both of adult educators, researchers and academics, can help document the strengths and weaknesses of different national or geographic contexts in relation to adult and worker training, helping to identify, propose and to apply sound practices, guided by the principles of adult learning rooted in the subjectivity and identity of the adult in formation and oriented to their personal, social and professional development. As we have tried to show above, we think that professional and personal training must necessarily complement each other, so we reject the models that oppose these two perspectives. The case of Brazil and its historical backwardness in terms of literacy and adult education reveal the need to create and develop a specific field for research and intervention in adult education, based on existing realities, and at the same time, seeking the emergence of favorable contexts to deepen research and intervention in Youth and Adult Education (YAE), so that it is possible to share the results of this process in congresses, seminars and publications. Página 313 Rafael M. Hernández-Carrera, Maria Margarida Machado & José González-Monteagudo. Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil… Fecha de recepción: 06-09-2017 Fecha de aceptación: 30-10-2017 Hernández-Carrera, R. M., Margarida, M. & González-Monteagudo, J. G. (2018). La Formación de adultos trabajadores en Europa y en Brasil. Entre la educación emancipadora y el reciclaje para el mercado International Journal of Educational Research and Innovation (IJERI), 9, 297-315 ISSN: 2386-4303 We need more reflections in a comparative perspective, to better understand our field of work, creating the conditions for a horizontal and dialogical transnational collaboration, which dilutes mutual prejudices, to nullify the temptations - whether explicit or implicit - of Eurocentrism and neo-colonialism; to learn in a reciprocal way and to open up horizons to develop high-quality research and intervention in all areas of adult education. From this perspective, it is clear that in the coming years we need to deepen the relationships between different geographical, linguistic, and disciplinary contexts to ensure on a global scale innovation and emancipation as core values of youth and adult education. 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