Nonparticipation in Adult Education

Abstract

In this article, the authors propose that dispositional factors do not sufficiently explain nonparticipation in adult education programs. Many nations report low participation rates, but empirical studies have usually been conducted with enrolled adults. This study, however, included 279 poorly educated mestizas and Native women in two regions of Mexico who were not participating in institutional programs; a mixed quantitative–qualitative methodology was used. The study focused on self-perceptions and beliefs, assuming that values for these variables would be low acting as dispositional barriers to participation; however, this hypothesis was not confirmed. On the contrary, high levels of self-concept, self-efficacy, and a belief that women are intelligent demonstrated that these women have a very positive self-image. Discussion points to sociocultural categories as an alternative explanation to why rural women harbor positive self-perceptions and why remedial basic adult education is not relevant to their social sphere.

Keywords

adult education participation rural women self-perceptions sociocultural theories remedial formal education

Research on adult learner participation in education has seen a strong resurgence because of the fact that the expansion of education and training is a crucial topic of policy debate and government priorities (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 1997). Adult education is expected to satisfy social needs, such as equality, citizenship, employment, and social cohesion. In northern nations, this is reflected in the importance of the lifelong learning focus with a strong priority on job training for the knowledge-based economy (Desjardins, Rubenson, & Milana, 2006; Doray, Bélanger, Motte, & Labonté, 1997). In southern countries, adult education focuses on reducing illiteracy and providing compulsory education to numerous poor adults (UNESCO, 2005). There are great differences between countries, such as the characteristics of adults, the type of education offered, and the meaning of the term adult education. However, one common problem is the low rate of adult participation.

Context, Problem Statement, and Purpose

Participation rates in OECD nations ranges from less than 20% to more than 50% (Desjardins et al., 2006). In Latin American countries, participation in remedial formal education is between 2% and 10% (Torres, 2009). In Mexico, participation is 3.97% (1,326,249 adults enrolled in official adult education); the population older than 15 years that had not concluded 9 years of basic education was 33,403,374 (43.2%) in 2009 (Instituto Nacional para la Educación de los Adultos [INEA], 2010).

In spite of these figures, research in Latin America has not addressed participation in the same way as in northern countries; the phenomenon has been explained by the lack of social demand, poverty, and program irrelevance. Evidence about the lack of social demand as a generalized issue has been collected since the 1990s, and low adult participation and schooling rates are seen as a consequence of poverty; since it is structural, participation cannot be treated as an individual phenomenon (Schmelkes & Kalman, 1996). Poverty takes on multiple forms, but the objective constraints to participation are ultimately the same, growing and serious. Concerns have led to recognition of the heterogeneity of poor populations. In this sense, the Latin American research agenda has been dominated by issues, such as the evolution of adult education policies, equity, specific pedagogies for indigenous, women, peasants, and youth as also quality of education, cultural relevance, local knowledge, and learning (Infante, 1999).

In Mexico, the INEA, concerned by the low participation rates, facilitates the availability of adult basic education services to the poor; they are free of charge, educational materials are based on adult pedagogical approaches, schedules are flexible, home tutoring is available, and study groups may be organized in the learner’s homes. The rules have changed to facilitate enrollment procedures. The information is widely disseminated through local channels, mass media, and house-to-house visits, though campaigns highlight certification, which is of little interest to rural adults. The dominant vision is thus centered on remedial formal education aimed at certification. Rural women have the lowest levels of schooling and very few enroll in INEA programs. Considering that nonparticipation is associated with structural poverty and that the institutional conditions of adult education did not seem to be a problem, at the beginning of our research we thought the study of psychological and subjective issues was important.

The purpose of this research was to study rural women’s self-perceptions and beliefs as elements that might partially explain lack of participation. Thus, based on empirical and theoretical antecedents, the study started with the premise that self-preceptions and beliefs could be associated with the decision to participate.

We assumed that a poor self-image and a sense of incapability to learn might have an important weight because of a long tradition of subordination for rural women. Since they are on the lowest level of Mexican social stratification, one can expect dispositional barriers to be present, as demonstrated in northern countries for poorly educated adults, low-skilled, and blue-collar workers (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009). Evidence from studies in Mexico exists concluding that self-esteem is central to fostering participation of rural women in nonformal education programs (Aguirre, 1997; Zapata, & Mercado, 1996). Besides, our observations in previous fieldwork with the INEA over a 3-year period showed that rural women who do attend educational programs seem to have high self-confidence and self-esteem.

The theoretical support to study self-perceptions and participation can be found in the cognitive approaches of motivation to learning, which have been related to students’ decision to engage and continue on a course of action. The analysis of these factors became a relevant research problem, given that we did not find any empirical studies in Latin America regarding rural women’s self-perceptions to explain nonparticipation.

Bearing in mind the aforementioned premise, our initial question was, how low are the self-perceptions of rural women who decide not to participate in institutionalized adult education?

There are theoretical and design differences in our study with regard to the adult participation mainstream research focused on barriers. The population under study was that of adults who, in spite of having favorable institutional conditions, do not participate, whereas several studies on barriers select those who want to participate, but cannot. By studying self-perceptions and beliefs, we assumed that they account for the decision to participate; thus, instead of asking adults if these were barriers that they perceived, we directly used scales to measure and register them. Another major difference is that we did not study all the barriers to determine the weight of each type in the same population. Yet another difference is that instead of conducting a randomized large-scale survey, our study concentrated on a specific population: women living in two contrasting rural communities. This was due to the acknowledgment of adult context heterogeneity as a main concern of Latin American research.

This research aims to provide more empirical evidence of the nonparticipating adults since most empirical research has studied persons, either already enrolled in programs or who have dropped out. Inferences are performed on participants to explain their lack of participation (Gallacher, Crossan, Field, & Merrill, 2002; Kalman, Pieck, Salinas, & Ruiz, 2003). There are few studies on nonparticipating adults, who are not easily accessible in educational institutions (Gvaramadze, 2007). Participation in this article is understood as the decision to enroll in institutionalized adult education, regardless of the level of performance or time spent in the program.

This article presents the results of our research concluding that self-perceptions and beliefs alone do not account for the lack of participation. Therefore, in the discussion section, the premises and underpinnings of this study are questioned, thus suggesting a conceptual shift is needed to interpret the unexpected results. Hence, a sociocultural perspective is explored, using categories such as habitus and emic, which place the social contexts of adults in the spotlight and minimize the weight of individual factors.

Literature Review

Linking the Classical Barriers Approach to This Study

Our intention was not to study the well-known barriers to adult participation that the Anglo-Saxon literature in the field already covers. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to establish the possible relationship of such deterrents with the focus of our study. Classical literature on the topic of participation identifies adults’ perceived barriers to participate in educational programs, divided into situational, institutional, and dispositional factors (Cross, 1981).

Situational barriers are external to the individual and have to do with practical facts, such as cost, time, or transportation. Other external factors are informational, which refers to having access to information about educational opportunities and institutional deterrents (Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress, 1993), employment, family limitations, or unemployment (Gvaramadze, 2007). Nationwide studies identify demographic variables, such as educational attainment in youth, economic status, age, gender, and consumer aspirations (Blair & McPake, 1995; Desjardins et al., 2006). Studies in poor, developing countries identify other objective factors, lack of adequate resources, poverty, the HIV/AIDS pandemic, gender disparities, traditionalism, and the absence of a literacy environment (Muiru & Mukuria, 2005).

Institutional barriers relate to the mismatch between the characteristics of institutional offerings—including procedures and organizational practices—and the characteristics of socially disadvantaged groups. Cross (1981) provides examples of these barriers, such as inconvenient schedules and time dedicated to studying.

Finally, dispositional barriers also referred to as psychosocial or internal barriers are those related to the individual’s attitudes toward education, perceptions, and expectations.

. . . these include perceptions of inappropriateness and lack of relevance; no awareness of learning needs; hostility towards school; the belief that one is too old to learn; and lack of confidence in one’s ability to learn. (McGivney, 1993, p. 21)

These barriers seem to be the least consistent in terms of the results obtained by different studies and they vary across age groups and socioeconomic statuses in the latest surveys (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009). Therefore, it would be interesting to continue studies in this line.

If we were to relate the variables included in our study to previous participation models, the closest would be a focus on psychological barriers and self-perceptions in particular. In fact, some dispositional barriers relate to theories such as Atkinson’s expectancy-value theory of motivation as well as Lewin’s force-field theory and Cross’s chain of response model, which include self-evaluations as important factors in the decision-making process. Nevertheless, there are some differences with previous studies, which include sample specificity (i.e., nonparticipating adults where adult education services are available), direct measurement of self-perceptions and beliefs instead of asking people if these were barriers for not participating, and focus on self-perceptions and beliefs as opposed to a complex set of barriers. Our focus on self-perceptions does include other cognitive approaches to motivation, different from expectancy-value theory, which provided the theoretical support for our research.

Self-Perceptions and Learning

The sum of the perceptions individuals have of themselves (self-esteem, self-concept, perceived self-efficacy, self-confidence) constitutes what is known as self. This has been defined as a system that regulates thoughts, feelings, and actions (Pajares, 1996). This system is constructed when individuals interact with themselves and their environment, performing evaluations and judgments on themselves involving affective and cognitive processes in the internal construction of the person, which can be influenced by relations with others, particularly significant others (Bong & Clark, 1999).

Self-concept may be defined, in broad terms, as a perception of self-continually reinforced by evaluative inferences formed through the influence of the environment and meaningful others. These evaluations result in what one thinks and values about oneself. When constructing these inferences, individuals use social reference frameworks based on comparison parameters, past experiences, and perceived reasons for their results, along with inferences based on others’ judgments (Bong & Skaalvik, 2003).

Given its broad general nature, different views of self-concept in specific competency environments have recently been suggested, including academic self-concept, thus adding precision and clarity to the construct (Strein, 1995; Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007). Based on these multifaceted models of self-concept, particularly academic self-concept, it has been empirically proved that they bear a relation to performance and achievement in school environments (Marsh & O’Mara, 2008) in such a way that the greater the academic self-concept, the greater the performance. Similarly, high levels of self-concept are related to greater persistence and motivation to confront difficult situations, with an obligation to make use of one’s potential (Bong & Clark, 1999).

Another important construct for the educational environment is perceived self-efficacy, a term coined by Bandura (Pajares, 1996), defined as a person’s belief in his or her capacity to organize and execute the courses of action required to handle future situations. Bandura (1982) sustains that self-efficacy is a central mechanism for human action and that it may occur at the individual as well as collective level. This construct is important because it does not necessarily refer to currently faced situations, but rather because it projects to situations not yet faced; therefore, it is future oriented.

In the educational field, the mediating role of perceived self-efficacy in motivation and learning has been demonstrated empirically. Perceived self-efficacy has been linked to other variables, such as the beliefs that intelligence is a stable attribute or one that can be developed (Dweck, 1991), perceived reasons for success and failure (Dupuy, Cascino, & Le Blanc, 1997; Weiner, 1991), goal orientation, cognitive engagement, and perception of belonging (Walker & Greene, 2009). Thus, it has been determined that high perceived self-efficacy, combined with the belief that intelligence is a capacity that can be developed, perceived reasons for success with an internal locus, mastery goal orientation, and perception of belonging, may increase cognitive engagement and educational attainment. Although these studies have been performed in school environments with students from different age groups, they generate explanatory models of the decisions and actions human beings carry out in relation to academic activities. Recent studies in the field of adult participation identify similar variables that influence the decision to enroll in education, such as awareness, motivation or motives, level of studies, previous educational experiences, and low self-confidence in one’s learning capacities (Blair & McPake, 1995; Council of the European Union, 2006, in Gvaramadze, 2007; Desjardins et al., 2006).

Method

Considering that in Mexico around 33 million people older than 15 years have not completed their compulsory education, and since most of them are rural women with previous schooling experience during childhood, we wondered, Do they have a low self-concept? Do they perceive themselves as not being very capable of learning academic skills and solving day-to-day problems? Do they believe that women are less intelligent than men? Do they consider that they left school because of personal failures in their childhood? Did they have a negative attitude toward school during childhood?

The goal of our empirical study was to analyze the self-perceptions and beliefs of rural Native (indigenous) and mestiza (indigenous and European blood) Mexican women. The hypothesis, as already mentioned, was that since the women were poor, and had dropped out of school, they would have low levels of self-concept and perceived self-efficacy for academic learning. We also expected that given the prevailing well-documented macho culture in rural areas, another result would be that many of these women would perceive men as more intelligent than women. These low levels in dispositional factors coupled with structural poverty would explain their nonparticipation in free institutionalized adult education. We also thought self-perceptions could be modified through educational workshops, which would motivate women to participate. To our surprise, the analyses provided interesting results that contradicted our original hypotheses.

A premise of the design was that women did not want to participate. Reliable informants working at the adult education centers located in the communities studied confirmed that they do not accept invitations to enroll despite continuous, personalized, recruiting campaigns. In addition, research has confirmed the lack of social demand for adult education in Latin America. Therefore, it did not seem appropriate to ask the women why they did not participate, a negative reaction to the researchers might have appeared, or they might have given stereotyped answers.

The design consisted of a study of two extreme cases out of a universe of 16 rural communities (in 8 Mexican states) where the researchers had been working with INEA support. The initial unit of selection was the community; next, women who were mothers and had had no compulsory education were selected. The selected communities differ in two criteria: geographical region and ethnicity. Thus, one northern, Native Yaqui community (Cócorit, Sonora) and one central-southern, mestizo community (Tepetitla, Tlaxcala) were chosen. Both share common features: a rural, agricultural tradition, a high level of poverty and low level of schooling, and the availability of free adult education. We expected regional, ethnic, and cultural variations to influence self-perceptions.

To select the women, we set a quota of 150 per community, since there were no statistical bases from which to determine the universe of women with the following characteristics: age 20 to 40 years, mothers, incomplete compulsory education, and nonparticipants in free, institutional adult education programs. Accessing nonparticipants is difficult; therefore, the women were first contacted in public spaces where they frequent for their day-to-day activities: the health center, the market, government aid offices, and the town square. Once the data for the 150 women per community had been collected, some interviews were eliminated because of their low reliability. In the end, 279 women were studied (144 in the mestizo town in the south and 135 in the northern Native community). A mixed methodology was used, combining quantitative and qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. For the first phase of the study (quantitative), questionnaires and scales were used and for the second phase (qualitative), we carried out in-depth interviews.

Instruments and Variables

A questionnaire based mainly on yes/no answers and four-level Likert-type scales were used for the quantitative phase. Because, women had low writing skills level, instruments were applied orally by a team of female researchers trained in oral techniques. The variables studied were self-concept, perceived self-efficacy for academic learning, perceived self-efficacy for solving everyday problems, beliefs regarding intelligence and gender intelligence, perceived reasons for school success and failure.

The instruments were tested and validated. For self-concept, we used a scale developed for a female population that focused on four factors: social, emotional, family, and intellectual self-concepts (Santamaría-Villagrasa, Enguídanos-Alcón, Sala-Galindo, and Agost-Felip, 2003). This scale had already been validated in Spain, reporting a Cronbach’s alpha of .743; validation with Mexican rural women resulted in 0.711. The scale of self-efficacy to solve daily problems was validated in Latin America, resulting in Cronbach’s alphas of .82 and .79 for Costa Rica and Peru, respectively. Our validation indicated α = .848 for Mexican rural women. The factors obtained in the analysis of both instruments were consistent with the ones identified in previous validations. The perceived self-efficacy for academic skills instrument was built and tested expressly for this study. However, it was not possible to use it as a scale given the difficulty to establish levels in hypothetical situations. Thus, a questionnaire with yes or no answers was applied. It registered women’s perceived capacities to develop reading comprehension, attention, retention, arithmetic, group work, and time management skills. Something similar occurred with the perceived reasons for academic success and failure.

The second phase (qualitative) consisted of open-ended interviews. During the quantitative phase, personal information was collected and women were told they could be contacted again. After analyzing the quantitative data, a smaller group of interviewed women was selected. We were interested in obtaining in-depth information from women with different self-concept levels, assuming that this variable might explain their resistance or disposition to eventual participation in adult education. For each community, a quota of 6 women (12 in total) with high, medium, and low scores in the self-concept scale was chosen to conduct interviews of 1 to 2-hours long, which attempted to capture women’s life stories and academic history. These interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the constant comparative method to define emerging categories (Maykut & Morehouse, 1994), supported by Ethnograph software. This article focuses on quantitative results and only some interview excerpts are presented to confirm the scale’s measures with women’s own expressions.

Results

Characteristics of the Community Context and the Women

Many Mexican farming communities are rural–urban, and in them women perform multiple activities. The rural–urban aspect is due to the extension of cities into the countryside, the severe agricultural crisis, and the growing use of rural spaces for industry (construction, tourism, recreation, and garment factories). This leads to the disintegration of family-based agriculture; therefore, very few families depend on farming income. This has in turn forced peasant women to develop a multiple-activity strategy in order to survive, working as day laborers, tilling backyard plots, working as maids in the cities, in informal trade, in garment manufacturing, and in the sale of handmade goods (Marroni, 2001).

The communities studied are similar in terms of ease of access by road and population size: Tepetitla has 14,313 inhabitants and Cócorit nearly 15,000. Both have minimal public services (health, education, housing, drinking water, electricity, and sewage), but these are deficient. Several of the women interviewed lacked sewage and drinking water, and their homes were built with flimsy, unsafe materials. Overcrowding is rampant, because one third of the women live with other family members. In both communities, there are public schools: elementary schools for children and adult education centers operated by the Mexican government through INEA.

In Cócorit, the strong roots and cultural identity can be seen in the Native traditions of the Yaqui people who have preserved their language. The Yaqui people have long fought to maintain their identity, and they preserve their own governmental structure along with a strong sense of faith. In Tepetitla, the townspeople are mestizos and only fragments of the Native culture remain; Náhuatl language is no longer spoken. Literature on Yaqui culture, as well as our own observations, indicates that women hold an important place in the community because of their religious duties and their cultural function as transmitters of Native oral tradition and child education. The Yaqui demeanor displays the high-browed pride of an unvanquished race (Fabila, 1962). Studies on tlaxcalteca women describe the birth of a new breed of rural women who face rural poverty, have strong Catholic traditions, and engage in multiple economic activities (Marroni, 2001).

The average age of the selected women was 31 years; most of them left school between the ages of 11 and 13 and had their first child around age 17. The women interviewed had an average of 3 children in Tepetitla and 2 in Cócorit, but there were extreme cases of up to 8 children. Nearly all of them live with their husbands, and they reported that the men are the family’s breadwinners. Nevertheless, some women participate in poorly paid jobs, such as garment manufacturing in their homes (mestizas) or unpaid activities. An example of the latter is that one third of the women till the family plot or help their husbands, who work as day laborers.

The women’s level of education varied from incomplete primary school to completed primary and incomplete secondary school. One fourth had attended at least some primary school (25.8%) and 43.4% managed to complete it while one third attended at least some secondary school. The data show more years of schooling in Tepetitla than in Cócorit, the Yaqui Indian community (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Participants’ level of schooling

Self-perceptions and Beliefs

Contrary to our hypothesis, and despite the conditions of poverty, exclusion, and lack of participation in which the women interviewed live, our results showed that their self-perceptions are generally relatively high, as shown in Table 1. Given that the maximum score on the self-concept scale is 66 and perceived self-efficacy 40, the concept the women have of themselves and their capacity to solve everyday problems is very high.

Table 1.

Central Tendency Measurements for Scores on the Self-Concept and Perceived Problem-Solving Skills Scales

	$\bar{X}$	Median	Mode	SD
General self-concept	49.99	50	51	6.85
Perceived self-efficacy to solve everyday problems	35.29	37	40	4.64

As mentioned before, general self-concept, according to the instrument used, can be divided in four dimensions; Table 2 shows descriptive results for each one. Given the maximum possible scores and the central tendency measurements, proportions are fairly similar in all dimensions, being highest family self-concept and social self- concept, whereas emotional and intellectual self-concepts are a little lower. No low-score tendencies were identified for any dimension.

Table 2.

Central Tendency Measurements for Self-Concept Dimensions

Self-Concept Dimensions	$\bar{X}$	Median	Mode	SD
Social self-concept (max. 24)	14.31	15	15	2.49
Emotional self-concept (max. 28)	15.06	15	15	3.38
Family self-concept (max. 20)	12.00	12	13	1.74
Intellectual self-concept (max. 16)	8.62	9	8	2.02

A 38-year-old woman with 3 years of schooling and a high level of self-concept said,

You’ve got to love yourself and not try to impress other people [ . . . ] I think what’s inside is what is most precious. I like the way I look and the way I am. (Tepe/M38MA4P, 141–155)

Perceived self-efficacy for skills required in academic learning is also rather high. As shown in Table 3, the percentage of women who believed they were capable of applying and developing these skills was above 80% in the Native community and 76% in the mestizo town. The ability in which the largest number of women saw themselves as being very efficient in both communities was attention (98% and 94% in the Native and mestizo communities, respectively); also high are the skills to work in groups and to manage time; the lowest were reading comprehension and arithmetic (80% Native and 76% mestizo, 81% Native and 83% mestizo, respectively).

Table 3.

Perceived Self-Efficacy in Skills Required for Academic Learning

	Cócorit		Tepetitla
	Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage
Reading comprehension
Yes	108	80.0	114	76.5
No	27	20.0	29	19.5
Attention
Yes	133	98.5	140	94.0
No	2	1.5	3	2.0
Retention
Yes	113	83.7	128	85.9
No	22	16.3	15	10.1
Arithmetic
Yes	110	81.5	124	83.2
No	25	18.5	19	12.8
Oral communication
Yes	117	86.7	115	77.2
No	17	12.6	28	18.8
Group work
Yes	127	94.07	126	84.6
No	8	6.0	17	11.4
Time management
Yes	132	97.8	130	87.3
No	3	2.2	13	8.7

Note. One person did not answer in Tepetitla, which explains why the sum is not 100%.

The women’s experience in learning and solving problems in their home and work environment have helped them achieve success, no matter how difficult it seemed for them to learn initially:

I felt like it was really hard for me, really hard, I mean, when I got married I didn’t even know how to wash my husband’s clothes, I didn’t know anything, nothing, nothing at all, I didn’t even know how to make tortillas . . . my mother-in-law would make tortillas every day and she’d tell me “Learn, it’s not that hard, if you want to, you’11 learn,” and my mother-in-law was really patient with me . . . (Tepe/J31MB6PC, 839–849)

Can you believe it? I’ve been (on the town) commission and I’ve been treasurer! (Laughs) I don’t even know how I did it. I just do my darn best and put the money together, you know? (Tepe/M38MA4P, 2242–2248)

The percentage of women who believe that intelligence can be developed is greater than the percentage of those who believe that it is innate or unchangeable (Table 4).

Table 4.

Beliefs Regarding Intelligence

	Cócorit		Tepetitla
	Frequency	Percentage	Frequency	Percentage
People are born intelligent	45	33.33	58	40.28
People become intelligent	88	65.19	82	56.94
No answer	2	1.48	4	2.78
Total	135	100	144	100

Very few women in the study believed men are more intelligent than women. On the contrary, 52% believe that women are more intelligent, because they are able to perform multiple activities: “We know how to organize ourselves and do more things,” because they can reason and analyze situations more and have more problem-solving initiative: “We think more”; “We’re the head of the family,” “We’re independent and we can do anything.” Another large portion believes there is no difference in level of intelligence between men and women (34% indigenous, 40% mestizas). The reasons they express to support their perception that one gender has superior intelligence to another are shown in Table 5.

Table 5.

Reasons That Support Beliefs Regarding Intelligence and Gender

Reasons	Frequency
Men
Think things over more	6
Are the head of family	3
Organize themselves to do more things	3
Women
Organize ourselves to do more things	50
Think things over more	39
Are the head of family	29
Are independent, can do anything	13
Guide children	7
Have a sixth sense	2
Are open and understanding	1

Note. Total frequencies do not correspond to the number of participants because all reasons provided by each woman were registered, and some women did not answer.

In total, 74% of the women attributed their academic success to their own efforts during their school days as children; the interviewees with the highest self-concept showed pride in their academic performance:

Well, I used to know a lot . . . in second and third grade . . . I’d get called up to the board to do arithmetic and all that, and I used to do it.

Really?

Yeah, I’d get the problems right and I’d do lots of them. But some of my classmates wouldn’t, lots of them didn’t get them, I remember that I did, I’d go up to the board and get them right. (Coco/B28MA4P, 861–877)

A total of 75% of the women said they would like to have kept going to school, and that they had to drop out during childhood for different reasons: economic issues, 46%, their own decision, 21%, and family issues 19%. Their positive attitude toward school and their love of learning are mentioned in the in-depth interviews, regardless of their level of self-concept:

Well . . . I have nothing but fond memories of elementary school. I was happy when the teacher would ask me to help grade papers . . . I was really happy. (Coco/T35MA4PC, 768–774)

Well, I remember liking going to school. My sister used to cry a lot. I’d tell her not to cry, that I wanted to go to school. She’d tell me she missed our mom a lot, that she didn’t feel right at school, she’d say “Let’s go home.” I’d tell her, “No, we’ve got to stay because we’re going to learn to paint and draw” . . . I’d tell her “How would you like to read and write? I know I want to learn!” (Tepe/A24M2P, 1147–1160)

This interest in learning is reflected in their daily activities:

I don’t like to be closed-minded. I try to learn from the people I socialize with. (Tepe/M38MA4P, 69–71)

Some women admitted they only learn what they like and avoid what seems unattractive or difficult to them.

So you dropped out of school because you thought you couldn’t, you weren’t capable of . . .

Of finishing classes, I mean, passing them. I had a lot of trouble passing, so I decided to drop out. (My parents asked me) “Are you really going to drop out?” (I said) “Yeah.” I’d go just because (my parents) would send me, but I wouldn’t go into the classroom. (Tepe/J331MB6PC, 1395–1408)

Conclusions and Discussion

The results obtained from the definition of the three types of self-perceptions measured—general self-concept, perceived self-efficacy in everyday problem solving, and perceived self-efficacy for academic activities demonstrate that in general, these women have a very positive image of themselves in Native and mestizo communities. Therefore, the hypothesis that nonparticipation can be explained through individual psychological factors cannot be confirmed. Based on theory, the high levels of self-concept, the belief that intelligence may be developed and that women are as intelligent or more intelligent than men, the positive attitude toward compulsory education, and the objective perceived reasons for academic success seem to point to the fact that these women satisfy the psychological conditions to participate in free, accessible basic education, but for some reason, they do not.

The discussion, in terms of theoretical reformulation, leads to several questions: First, is it enough to study adults limited to their individual condition of potential students? Given our results, the study of nonparticipant adults limited to their individual condition was not enough to explain why they do not enroll in institutional programs. Even more, situational barriers did not emerge as an argument or reason to explain nonparticipation during qualitative data-collection. It seems that nonparticipation in adult education does not just depend on individual factors.

Despite the great contribution of models using barriers to explain adult participation, Blair and McPake (1995) argue that such models minimize adults’ life context, in which collective concerns and identity are important; therefore, sociocultural factors deserve greater attention. In line with our findings, the focus on the individual has been questioned by recent works to explain participation, underlining the influence of wider context defined differently, such as habitus, state regime, or the vision of indigenous people (cosmovision). Boeren (2009) states that participation models analyze the decision-making process of each single citizen, hence suggesting that learning cannot be separated from habitus. Looking at participation as an individual decision process leads to the rational choice theory in which economic capital is most important, denying the value of cultural capital (Boeren, 2009). The authors of the Bounded Agency Model (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009), built to explain inequalities in participation among countries, claim to consider structural conditions and analyze their interaction with individual dispositions; the welfare state type of regime will affect barriers to participation. While investigating the importance and meaning of literacy for indigenous adult populations in Canada and Mexico, Cházaro (2008) concluded that it is anchored in their ethnic collective world vision (cosmovision).

In accordance with these contributions, and since our hypothesis was not accepted, we pose a second question: is it possible to make another understanding of high self-perceptions and nonparticipation considering adults from an inner sociocultural perspective? A view of subjects in context, as opposed to subjects and contexts, becomes a need. This implies understanding adults as collective subjects embedded in social practices within a structured and structuring cultural context, in which women play important roles in community life, and possibly because of this, have positive self-perceptions.

The distinction between emic and etic can be useful in answering the question. The concept of emic represents the cultural patterns that shape the behavior, attitudes, knowledge, and values of a relatively homogeneous group, seen from inside the group (Cutz & Chandler, 2000). Rural Mexican women, from an external point of view (etic), have been characterized as poor, excluded, unqualified, uneducated, and discriminated against. However, their image of themselves is different, because it is referenced to their community social system (emic). We know from field observations and from sociological and anthropological studies that rural women play a major role in symbolic rituals, social survival networks, religious responsibilities, multiple economic activities, preserving community traditions, and transmitting oral culture (Marion, 1999). As the results indicate, very few believe women are less intelligent than men. Those who stated women are even more intelligent offered reasons such as the fact that they organize themselves to do more things and think things over more (Table 5). These beliefs seem consistent with measures of self-efficacy, in which the skills with the highest scores were attention, organizing time, and working in groups (Table 3). This may indicate leadership role for these women within the complexity of their family spaces, related to their ability to survive in poverty conditions.

The community life dynamics of peasant women can be seen as part of a habitus and of an emic reality. The importance of the social milieu and the way in which individuals actively negotiate their identities is outlined by Gallacher et al. (2002) in his definition of adults’ learning carrier. The concept of habitus might be associated with the “cultural dispositions” to participate since they shape personality, representations of the world, and they lead people to positively or negatively judge the pertinence of adult education to their life and work (Doray et al., 1997, p. 7).

The concept of habitus appears in Bordieu’s theory, defined as follows:

Bourdieu used this term to denote systems of durable, transposable dispositions, internalized subjectively by actors as a consequence of their objective positions within the social space, which in turn constituted the underlying principle of generation and structuring of practices and representations. In Bourdieu’s own words: ‘To speak of habitus is to assert that the individual, and even the personal, the subjective, is social, collective. Habitus is socialized subjectivity.’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992, p. 126, in Gallacher et al., 2002, p. 493)

Habitus shaping individual and collective practices would allow us to understand why remedial adult education might not be relevant in the social space of the rural women under study. That is because the crucial roles they play within their community dynamics do not require formal education. Moreover, according to the definition of habitus, the subjective is collective, and then it is possible that the high self-perceptions do not only reflect an individual appraisal but that of women as a collective subject valued in the rural community.

The current attempt to open up an alternative explanation to participation in adult education leads us to represent structural/contextual factors, associated with different levels of societal unit (local community, ethnic culture, macro state). For each one, there are key concepts proposed by recent works and by our article, see Figure 2.

Figure 2.

Structural participation factors by societal unit and associated concepts

By keeping the local community as the main structural context, individuals (self-perceptions included) are not seen separated but inside their community habitus. Global context and state regime are outside the community influencing it. Institutional factors derive from state policies; poverty as critical, situational condition results from global and domestic economies. An effort to represent this, as drawn from our particular study, is presented in Figure 3.

Figure 3.

Local communities focus to study adult participation: individual, structural, institutional, and situational elements situated in three spheres

From the inner (emic) approach, one can assume that educational needs and priorities emerge from the local communities’ perspective; thus, it is worth wondering if these priorities are shared by institutional lifelong learning. This relates to a third question: Is the problem of low participation rates deplored by policy makers also a problem for adults? While studying these women, it seems that what these programs offer is not relevant in their community life spaces. Too often, institutions do not acknowledge the diversity of local cultural contexts and needs; thus adults become a problem from the perspective of educational policy and from the very construction of the research object (Gallacher et al., 2002). In fact, there is a threat of coercion to nonparticipants. Messina (2009) questions the ethnocentric institutional view of low-educated adults, which considers them as an anonymous, statistical, and homogenous mass, classified as noncompliant, subordinated, and outliers, as compared with standards defined by the hegemonic society. This clearly depicts an outsider’s view of adults. Therefore, an insider’s view may help to understand nonparticipation. A good example is the study by Cutz and Chandler (2000); while studying illiterate adult Mayas in Guatemala, they explained why the adults’ needs, tied to cultural context, were not connected at all with literacy programs. Their study showed that the emic concepts of Native adults keep them from participating in literacy programs. Outsiders’ perspectives ignore adults’ cultural reality:

The emic–etic distinction explains how a lack of understanding of emic reality separates practitioners from researchers, enlarges the gap between theory and practice, and most important, renders the efforts of practitioners irrelevant and sometimes even counterproductive in the eyes of those illiterates who are supposedly most in need of adult education. (Cutz & Chandler, 2000, p. 67)

Situated on the adult’s perspective, evidence exists that poor rural women enroll more in community development or popular education programs when they perceive a clear benefit for their community, when pedagogy is situated in their daily lives and offer meeting and conversation spaces (Pieck, 1996). Here spaces are motivators since they articulate the individual and the collective, inspiring pedagogy in which knowledge and identity production are anchored in women’s lives and sensitivities (Galvan, 2001). In fact, these are alternative pedagogies centered on the community, not on the institution.

The conceptual shift suggested finds empirical support in recent studies conducted in northern countries, which have highlighted the adults’ cultural dimensions and shown that adults prefer to enroll in noninstitutionalized programs that respond to specific needs. French Canadian authors (Doray, Bélanger, & Labonté, 2004) suggest more attention be paid to adults’ cultural dispositions and that mechanisms through which needs may be expressed be favored. Thus, participation is defined as the socially constructed encounter between individual demand and the training program (Doray et al., 2004). According to UNESCO’s worldwide study, enrollment is greater in nonhomogeneous, noninstitutionalized programs of nonformal, popular education than in formal or vocational programs (Desjardins et al., 2006). Similarly, a national study in the United States demonstrated that low-education adults actively participate in informal learning (Smith & Smith, 2008).

A practical implication of the main empirical conclusion is that adult education providers should not assume that all poor adults feel incapable and worthless. This would lead to reviewing enrollment campaigns and possibly designing differentiated strategies for diverse populations.

This article suggests that analysis of nonparticipation should include greater study of the nonparticipant population and be approached via its habitus.

We recommend selecting purposeful samples of particular populations that share cultural and economic practices instead of random samples. This would allow for the identification of their priorities and needs to design relevant, contextualized, lifelong learning programs, which may, in turn, decrease the dropout rate. This change from the bottom-up implies setting aside governments’ urgency to achieve quantitative certification goals and designing educational offerings linked to community, cultural, economic, and health development actions. Nevertheless, it should be noted that educational public policies depend on the state regime (Rubenson & Desjardins, 2009). In Mexico, the market-efficiency oriented view and the lack of equity to cover basic needs are important issues that should also be acknowledged and addressed.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We appreciate the dedication of research assistants who helped gathering data in the communities: Mireya Pérez, Guadalupe Huerta, Lilian Rodríguez, and Silvia Elena Amador. We also thank the valuable comments to the article by Professor Gary Boyd (Concordia University, Montreal); Enrique Pieck (Universidad Iberoamenricana, Mexico City).

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: We thank the financial support and the academic follow-up provided by the Programa de Promoción de la Reforma Educativa para América Latina y el Caribe (PREAL; Fondo de Investigaciones Educativas supported by Global Development Network and World Bank).

Bios

Laura Helena Porras-Hernández is a professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Her research interests are in technology integration, training, and self-perceptions.

Bertha Salinas-Amescua is a professor in the Department of Educational Sciences at the Universidad de las Américas Puebla. Her research interests are in community action and adult education.

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