Adult education policy in the European Union during the Lisbon decade : the shift to vocational adult learning and work skills matching

This doctoral dissertation investigates the adult education policy of the European Union (EU) in the framework of the Lisbon agenda 2000–2010, with a particular focus on the changes of policy orientation that occurred during this reference decade. The year 2006 can be considered, in fact, a turning point for the EU policy-making in the adult learning sector: a radical shift from a wide--ranging and comprehensive conception of educating adults towards a vocationally oriented understanding of this field and policy area has been observed, in particular in the second half of the so--called ‘Lisbon decade’. In this light, one of the principal objectives of the mainstream policy set by the Lisbon Strategy, that of fostering all forms of participation of adults in lifelong learning paths, appears to have muted its political background and vision in a very short period of time, reflecting an underlying polarisation and progressive transformation of European policy orientations. Hence, by means of content analysis and process tracing, it is shown that the new target of the EU adult education policy, in this framework, has shifted from citizens to workers, and the competence development model, borrowed from the corporate sector, has been established as the reference for the new policy road maps. This study draws on the theory of governance architectures and applies a post-ontological perspective to discuss whether the above trends are intrinsically due to the nature of the Lisbon Strategy, which encompasses education policies, and to what extent supranational actors and phenomena such as globalisation influence the European governance and decision--making. Moreover, it is shown that the way in which the EU is shaping the upgrading of skills and competences of adult learners is modeled around the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’, thus according a great deal of importance to the ‘new skills for new jobs’ and perhaps not enough to life skills in its broader sense which include, for example, social and civic competences: these are actually often promoted but rarely implemented in depth in the EU policy documents. In this framework, it is conveyed how different EU policy areas are intertwined and interrelated with global phenomena, and it is emphasised how far the building of the EU education systems should play a crucial role in the formation of critical thinking, civic competences and skills for a sustainable democratic citizenship, from which a truly cohesive and inclusive society fundamentally depend, and a model of environmental and cosmopolitan adult education is proposed in order to address the challenges of the new millennium. In conclusion, an appraisal of the EU’s public policy, along with some personal thoughts on how progress might be pursued and actualised, is outlined.

Early Life Intestinal Microbiota in Health and in Atopic Eczema

Decrease in microbial contacts in affluent societies is considered to lie behind the rise in allergic and other chronic inflammatory diseases during the last decades. Indeed, deviations in the intestinal microbiota composition and diversity have been associated with several diseases, such as atopic eczema. However, there is no consensus yet on what would constitute a beneficial or harmful microbiota. The aim of this thesis was to study the microbiota development in healthy infants and to characterize intestinal microbiota signatures associated with disease status and severity in infants with atopic eczema. The methodological aim was to compare and optimize methods for DNA extraction from fecal samples to be used in high-throughput microbiota analyses. It was confirmed that the most critical step in successful microbial DNA extraction from fecal samples is the mechanical cell lysis procedure. Based on this finding, an efficient semi-automated extraction process was developed that can be scaled for use in high-throughput platforms such as phylogenetic microarray used in this series of studies. By analyzing a longitudinal motherchild cohort for 3 years it was observed that the microbiota development is a gradual process, where some bacterial groups reach the degree of adult-type pattern earlier than others. During the breast-feeding period, the microbiota appeared to be relatively simple, while major diversification was found to start during the weaning process. By the age of 3 years, the child’s microbiota composition started to resemble that of an adult, but the bacterial diversity has still not reached the full diversity, indicating that the microbiota maturation extends beyond this age. In addition, at three years of age, the child’s microbiota was more similar to mother’s microbiota than to microbiota of nonrelated women.In infants with atopic eczema, a high total microbiota diversity and abundance of butyrate-producing bacteria was found to correlate with mild symptoms at 6 months. At 18 months, infants with mild eczema had significantly higher microbiota diversity and aberrant microbiota composition when compared to healthy controls at the same age. In conclusion, the comprehensive phylogenetic microarray analysis of early life microbiota shows the synergetic effect of vertical transmission and shared environment on the intestinal microbiota development. By the age of three years, the compositional development of intestinal microbiota is close to adult level, but the microbiota diversification continues beyond this age. In addition, specific microbiota signatures are associated with the existence and severity of atopic eczema and intestinal microbiota seems to have a role in alleviating the symptoms of this disease.