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Work contexts are frequently referred to as spaces of learning and production of individual and/or collective knowledge. In such contexts specific dynamics are developed which cause the processes of learning and of knowledge production to have particularities. This paper aims at accounting for some dynamics that are associated with those processes, based on the main results of an ethnographic study on the adult educator team of a Portuguese local development association. The research identified ways of working/action rules based on the learning and knowledge production processes in the association. Mutual help, the reformulation and collectivization of practice, reflection in and about the action, and the negotiation of meaning about the practice are some of the mechanisms identified. The study also highlights how those dynamics of knowledge and learning and ways of doing may contribute to a practice which is closer to the needs of the adults to whom this team offers its education and training services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses Portugal’s adult education policy between 1999 and 2010. Our empirical material consists of Portuguese as well as supranational policy documents. We use a theoretical framework which distinguishes three models of public policy, with different views on the roles of public policy and of education: (1) participative policy/emancipatory education, (2) centralised policy/education for social conformity and (3) minimum policy/training for competitiveness. Our results show that European lifelong learning guidelines have been reinterpreted in the Portuguese context, leading to a rapid expansion of adult education provision in an attempt to catch up with European numbers. Although Portuguese policy is a hybrid of the three policy models, latest developments show a dominance of minimum public policies for adult education and training for competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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