ABSTRACT
With the emergence of lifelong learning within the Swedish policy agenda, an Adult Education Initiative (AEI) was launched in the years 1997-2002 as the largest investment in formal adult education ever made, and this despite the fact that Sweden, as other Nordic countries, has a strong and established tradition of liberal adult education. The policy purpose of the AEI was to reduce unemployment, do groundwork for future adult education services, decrease the differences in educational attainment between groups and lay foundations for individual personal growth. Policies of lifelong learning in Sweden, as elsewhere, are emphasizing the importance of post-compulsory education, extending its limits, reconfiguring institutional boundaries and emphasizing formal and informal learning (Edwards 1997; Edwards and Usher 2001; Edwards and Nicoll 2004). Through ideas of lifelong learning, Swedish citizens are now being positioned as ‘needing’ to learn all the time and everywhere, during their entire life.
