[EPALE newsletter] Learning Together, Not Alone
Dear EPALE members,
These days, we all seem to desperately long for community. I know I do. We search for spaces of belonging, mutual support and shared purpose – that proverbial village in increasingly individualised times.
It is easy to agree that no one should be expected to figure everything out alone. Yet community is not only something we receive. It also asks something of us: time, vulnerability, patience and a willingness to show up for others, even when we would rather rot in the privacy of our own couch.
Learning, too, can become deeply individualised. We are encouraged to ask what learning can do for our careers, confidence or personal growth. But community education and service-learning invite a different question: what can our learning offer to others?
Across this month’s articles, we explore learning not as a solitary pursuit, but as something built together: through mentorship, guidance, reflection and shared responsibility.
Perhaps learning, vulnerable as it is, becomes more meaningful when we allow ourselves to lean on others, and to be someone others can lean on too.
Heini Huhtinen – EPALE Adult Learning Expert
Guidance as a compass for quality jobs and meaningful lives
In a world of accelerating transitions (technological, economic, social) no one should be expected to navigate alone. Lifelong guidance has shifted from a complementary service to something far more fundamental: a connective tissue between learning, work and the kind of life people actually want to live. Yet its potential is still unevenly realised across Europe. In this blog post, Zoltán Várkonyi (EBSN) traces the contours of a new European framework for lifelong guidance developed by Cedefop, and asks what it means in practice for adult learners and the professionals who work alongside them. From career management skills to social inclusion, from basic skills support to learner motivation, guidance turns out to be woven into everything EPALE’s 2026 thematic focus stands for.
► Read more on lifelong guidance
Inspired by Nordic Learning: Encouraging motivation and learning
What makes an adult decide to learn or keep learning when doubt, exhaustion, or the weight of a new life make it feel impossible? Across the Nordic countries, practitioners and researchers have been sitting with that question for years, and their answers share something in common: motivation is not a personal trait. It is something that grows, or fails to grow, in the conditions we create together. This edition of Inspired by Nordic Learning brings together perspectives from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, from newly graduated nurses finding their footing in working life, to Arab women rebuilding confidence in Iceland, to elderly people and their families navigating the challenges of ageing at home. Different contexts, different learners, one recurring insight: when people feel welcomed, supported and seen, learning becomes possible again.
► Explore motivation in adult learning
Learning in Motion – An outlook on the future
What if learning wasn’t something that happens in a place, but something that happens in motion across spaces, times, contexts, and generations? A new publication by the International Training Centre of the ILO challenges us to think beyond devices, beyond classrooms, and even beyond digital technology, reimagining mobile learning as a fundamentally human and adaptive practice. Developed in cooperation with the European Training Foundation, Learning in Motion identifies eight driving forces already reshaping how we learn, from the rise of phygital environments to the paradox of digital freedom, from the overload of choice to the growing importance of intergenerational exchange. For adult learning professionals, the message is clear: upskilling, validation of informal learning, and human connection are not trends on the horizon… they are already here.
► Discover the future of learning
Over 10 million workers trained under the Pact for Skills
What does it look like when thousands of organisations (businesses, training providers, regional authorities, social partners) decide to act together on skills? Five years after its launch, the Pact for Skills is offering a compelling answer: a Europe-wide network that is quietly reshaping how workers access learning, and what that learning can lead to. The latest annual survey reveals a picture of growing momentum, with upskilling reaching millions of workers across the EU and an overwhelming majority of participants reporting real benefits, from better skills intelligence to stronger cross-sector collaboration. And the ambition is only expanding: the European Commission is now calling on members to double down.
► See how skills partnerships are growing
Temporalities in Service-Learning and Community Education
In a world that promises hyper-flexible, individualised, always-on learning, something quieter is being lost: the experience of learning together, in shared time, for a purpose that extends beyond oneself. What happens when education becomes just another thing we curate for our own lives… efficient, seamless, and fundamentally solitary? This thought-provoking article pushes back against that logic. Drawing on concepts from philosophy, African Ubuntu thinking, and critical pedagogy, it makes the case for service-learning as a form of temporal resistance, a deliberate slowing down that allows trust to grow, communities to co-create meaning, and learning to become something more than a transaction. From a Repair Café in a student’s neighbourhood to solidarity movements in Kerala, the examples are small, grounded, and quietly radical.
