Exploring the adult education participation patterns of male industrial workers.

Abstract

In spite of the growing importance of adult learning, the antecedents of participation in adult education are not well understood. This study is a secondary analysis of data from a sample survey of 932 hourly employees of a major industrial firm. The purpose was to explore whether participation in adult education programs and classes could be predicted from measures of attitudes towards education, social participation, personal efficacy and future orientation, when these are added to known correlates of adult education participation like age and previous education attainment. Analysis was limited to the 590 men in the respondent sample, and included bivariate and multivariate analysis to explore the relationship between measures of education participation, age, education attainment, and variables which measured current attitudes towards continuing education participation, recall of attitudes towards education while in high school, social participation, personal efficacy, and future orientation. Bivariate analysis showed that education participation is significantly associated with age, previous schooling, and measures of attitude towards continuing education participation. A dichotomous regression logit model was used for multivariate analysis. This analysis showed that previous schooling is the strongest predictor of participation, followed, in magnitude, by age and attitudes towards continuing education participation. The study concludes that further study of adult education participation would be enhanced by more precise measures of attitudes towards education, a more elaborate model of achievement behavior, and measures of social participation which reflect the array of available leisure choices.