Between precarity and professionalism: the effect of uncertainty on adult educators’ participation in continuing education

Abstract

Abstract Continuous participation in further education activities is considered to be a driving factor for the professionalism of adult educators. However, especially in this field, the decision to participate is often embedded in a context of disadvantageous socio-economic living conditions and atypical employment, which is described as precarious in research on continuing education. For this reason, we are studying the influence of precarious employment on the participation of adult educators. In doing so, we focus on the uncertainty in planning one’s professional career, which is typical of precarious life situations. Based on a modification of the classical theory of subjective expected utility, we formulate the assumption that uncertainty in the evaluation of one’s own career development opportunities reduces participation in continuing education. To test our hypothesis, we use data from the wb-personalmonitor and estimate linear and logistic regressions using an inverse-probability-weighted regression-adjustment. The results show that uncertainty reduces the number of continuing education courses attended.

Keywords

• Professionalisation
• Adult Educators
• Precarity
• Participation in Further Education
• Decision Theory