Promoting global adult education

The first cycle of the University of Malta’s first UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education draws to an end in December 2025. A renewal of the chair will be sought, involving new blood as co-chair to ensure continuity.

Ever since its inception in September 2021, the UNESCO chair, which I hold, has been actively engaged in promoting adult education globally, in keeping with its remit.

Among others, it revived Convergence. An International Adult Education Journal, following its lengthy hiatus. The university department housing this chair is mainly and financially responsible for it, together with the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE). All editions of the journal issued since the chair revived it are available online at this link.

Last autumn saw the publication, in paperback, of the book of papers from the May 2023 International Conference on Critical Education in General (ICCE XV), which included International Critical Adult Education and Learning. The conference was organised and hosted by the Department of Arts, Open Communities and Adult Education and the UNESCO Chair in Global Adult Education, with funds and organisational efforts shared by these two entities within the University of Malta’s Faculty of Education.

These two entities were also responsible for editing and producing the book that emerged from the conference, Stretching Boundaries of Critical Education. Past, Present and Future Possibilities (Faculty of Education, University of Malta).

The outgoing year also saw the launching, under the aegis of the UNESCO chair, of an international online MA degree in adult education. The participants have thus far completed their two foundational courses, one in the ‘Theoretical Foundations of Adult Education’ and the other in ‘Research Methods in Adult Education’. Last autumn they worked on their dissertation proposal. There are 10 participants in this cohort, from Malta, Australia and the UK. A second cohort is expected to join in 2026.

The outgoing year saw the launching of an international online MA degree in adult education

Ever since its inception, the UNESCO chair has been responsible for holding annual ‘webfests’ celebrating momentous events in adult education.

In 2021, there were webfests celebrating the birth centenaries of Paulo Freire, which lasted three days, and of Raymond Williams. 2022 saw the celebration of the birth centenary of Julius Nyerere, while similar birth centenary webfests were held in 2023 for Don Lorenzo Milani, and in 2024 for Alberto Manzi.

A similar web event was held to commemorate the third anniversary of the passing away of American author, theorist and educator Bell Hooks. The 50th anniversary of the 150-hour Italian experiment in ‘Working Class and Women’s Adult Education’ was also marked by a webfest in Italian and English.

These various webfests involved Zoom connections with different corners of the Earth; some of the most prominent global scholars on the topics took part. All recordings of the various webfests are available on the website of the UNESCO chair at the University of Malta.

This month’s webfest is celebratring Chilean educator and poet Gabriela Mistral (Lucila Godoy Alcayaga), marking the 80th anniversary of her being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

On May 24, 2023, a webfest was held on ‘Equality, Democracy and People’s Enlightenment: Ideas of Dr B.R. Ambedkar and Dr Paulo Freire for the Uplift of the Underprivileged Community’ held at the University of Kalyani, the University of Malta’s UNITWIN partner. It was organised in collaboration with the chair. A recording is available via this website link using the passcode: $4kQtG#j.

Also in 2023, a two-day on-site UNESCO Chair Global Adult Education Seminar started being organised around November. The 2023 seminar participants, who discussed challenges and trends in adult education, were from Spain, Kenya, Canada, and Palestine (online due to the post-October 7 blockade).

November 2024 saw the organisation of the second seminar, the theme being the ‘International Council for Adult Education on its half-century of existence’. The seminar involved people connected with the council from Serbia, Brazil, Lebanon, UK and Germany.

On November 4 and 5, 2025, the third UNESCO Chair Malta Global Adult Education Seminar, this time on ‘Adult Education and Communities’, will be held just before the International Conference (on November 6 and 7), at the University of Malta’s Valletta Campus.

An International Critical Adult Learning and Education (CALE) Conference, a follow-up to the 2023 one, is also being planned to be held on November 6 and 7.

Meanwhile, there is also a book series for De Gruyter-Brill with around 36 books to date, the last two of which now carrying the UNESCO chair-UNITWIN logo. There are other books in the offing, with the present UNESCO chair being involved in two research projects. Publishing houses have been contacting the chair holder to publish selections of papers presented at the conference.

The chair is also involved in research collaborative projects with the Department of Social Research and Communication at University of Rome Sapienza and the Consiglio Nazionale di Ricerca’s Naples branch in popular education and community education on museums and heritage between Naples in Italy, and Malta respectively. The chair holder was also visiting professor at La Sapienza, Centro Nazionale di Ricerca Napoli, and Università di Napoli Federico II.

Peter Mayo is professor, UNESCO Chair, Global Adult Education at the University of Malta.