Towards a Quality Framework for Adult Learners in Recovery - Ensuring Quality with Equity

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky

The RECOVEU project develops a quality-learning programme with equity for adult learners in recovery, grounded in European recommendations that support recovering users’ access to education to strengthen social integration. It centers the voices of people with lived experience of addiction and recovery, and uses the recovery capital framework to conceptualize quality access. The work reframes learning as personal, social, cultural, and political transformation, addressing inclusion and sustained participation challenges.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages10

Reading Time25 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Context

The ‘Quality’ of the Market Model

Quality Education—Looking at the Bigger Picture

Towards a Quality Framework for Adult Learners in Recovery: Ensuring Quality with Equity patricia doyle Abstract The RECOVEU project is an effort to conceive of a quality-learning programme with equity for adult learners in recovery. It emerged in the context of European recommendations that member states support recovering users to access education in order to improve their chances of achieving social integration. However, by privileging the voices of those directly impacted by addiction/recovery and by applying the framework of recovery capital it has created a forum for adult learning that has at its core personal, social and cultural transformation. Keywords: Global capitalism/addiction, quality, equity, recovery capital, personal, social, cultural transformation Introduction This paper is based on the ﬁndings of RECOVEU: a participative approach to curriculum development for adults in addiction recovery across the European Union. This is an initiative that brings together partners from the United Kingdom (UK), Cyprus (CYP), Romania (RO), Italy (ITA) and Ireland (IRL) . The research project ran from January 2014 to December 2016 and was designed to support the aims ofthe EU Lifelong Learning Programme by improving the learning opportunities of a group, which is particularly at risk of social exclusion and marginalisation. Context UNESCO’s 3rd Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE 111) promotes the concepts of participation, inclusion and equity and clearly states that ‘no individual should be excluded from quality learning opportunities on the basis of their social, cultural, linguistic, economic, educational and other backgrounds’ (2016, p. 151). Despite the commitment made by many countries at the sixth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA VI) to implement the recommendations of the GRALE 11 Report (2009) it remains the case that in most countries, participation rates in adult education are very low. Moreover, in terms of inclusion and equity, the low skills trap highlighted in UNESCO’s (2009) report is still very much in evidence, and consistently shows that those adults that are most in need of education and training are the least likely to participate in learning. RECOVEU was conceived in the context of European recommendations that member states support recovering drug users to access education in order to improve their chances of social integration. While initially one of the key aims of the project was to assess the impact of participation on self-efﬁcacy and sustained participation in learning, their continuous prioritisation of recovery as pre-requisite, resulted in research participants changing the research focus. This shifted to include the contributions that these learning activities might make to sustained participation in both recovery and learning. Crucially, by reconceptualising the concept of human capital and by incorporating other forms of interlinking capital, collectively referred to as Recovery Capital (Burns and Marks, 2013) in the learning programme, RECOVEU acknowledges that a quality access to learning programme with equity for people in recovery, cannot simply focus on the individual learner but will of necessity, have as its goal personal, social, cultural and political transformation. Anything less would be, to use the colloquial phrasing that is part and parcel of the folk wisdom of recovery groups, the deﬁnition of insanity that is, repeating the same failures over and over expecting a different result (McAleenan, 2016) . The ‘Quality’of the Market Model RECOVEU emerged in the immediate aftermath of the most severe economic crisis the world has seen since the Great Depression. In the name of recovery, banks, ﬁnancial institutions and bondholders were saved from the repercussions of their addictive forms of excess, an enabling process that has left a great deal of the world suffering post traumatic stress. In human terms, this has had

FAQs

What is the RECOVEU project aiming to do for adult learners in recovery?

RECOVEU aims to conceive a quality-learning programme with equity for adult learners in recovery, focusing on how learning supports personal, social, and cultural transformation.

How does RECOVEU relate participation in education to social inclusion?

The project is positioned within European recommendations that recovery users access education to improve chances of social integration and address persistent low participation rates among those most in need.

Why does the paper argue that quality access cannot only focus on the individual learner?

By incorporating recovery capital and interlinking forms of capital into the learning programme, RECOVEU sets personal, social, cultural, and political transformation as the goal, implying broader change beyond individual outcomes.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rizky