Raffaela Kihrer became the new Secretary General of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA) in January 2025. What are her main objectives in this role? What brings her the most joy? And what worries keep her up at night?
In early 2025, you took on the role of head of EAEA. What changes do you foresee?
It is much too early to say. At the moment, I am concentrating on familiarising myself with my new role. After all, my new role is not only new to me, but also to my colleagues in the team, some of whom I have been working with for years in other roles at EAEA.
So it’s a mutual familiarisation process. We are working together to define tasks more clearly, and I am trying to find out what the team really needs from me. I am in the fortunate position of having a brilliant team in which everyone contributes their ideas and has a hands-on mentality.
What are your goals as the new Secretary General of EAEA? Do you see any quick wins ahead?
Quick wins—do they exist? I’m always open to suggestions and ideas! Unfortunately, I haven’t found a magic formula yet. But more funding would certainly help…
What about your long-term objectives?
What I would like to achieve is an even stronger interlinking of policy, practice and research. I want EAEA to remain a “thought leader” in adult learning and education and for us to actively shape the political agenda. I want us to be firmly established as the most important stakeholder in non-formal ALE at the European level, and to have a permanent place in important debates on education policy.
I aim to strengthen the connections between policy, practice and research.
With our Manifesto for Adult Learning in the 21st Century, we have already achieved an important prerequisite for this, but of course there is always potential to go even more in depth. To do that, we need to integrate policy, practice and research. ALE achieves so much in the communities and with the individuals with whom it works. It deserves to be heard, so my task is to raise awareness of this.
To achieve these objectives, I want to continue to maintain and deepen our partnerships with other stakeholders in civil society, researchers, social partners and policymakers. Ultimately, we are all facing the same challenges and only together can we create solutions.
What brings you the most joy in your new role? What are your biggest concerns?
In my new role, I most enjoy being there for the membership and working on ways to give members a stronger voice. I also very much enjoy working with the team to figure out how we can design work processes, listening to concerns and needs, and working with colleagues to develop innovative learning formats and projects.
What I enjoy most is finding ways to give members a stronger voice.
My biggest concerns are, of course, our funding and the long-term stability of our organisation. The reduction of USAID has already had direct and indirect negative consequences for our members, and we are also currently facing a great deal of opposition at the European level with regard to the funding of civil society.
In addition, there is the changing geopolitical situation and a change in the narrative at the European level. ‘Preparedness’ and ‘security’ are now dominating the political agenda, and this also has a serious impact on civil society and the role of adult learning and education. What is the space for ALE in this debate? What does this generally mean for all of us as citizens? How do we need to “prepare” ourselves, and above all, what do we fear will come? And what political impact will this have?
In the US, we see how quickly supposedly established rights and institutions can be completely dismantled or changed from one day to the next.
In Europe, the conditions for this are fortunately different and I believe that our democratic systems are relatively strong, but even these are not set in stone. These are questions that keep me up at night.
What are your strategies for maintaining a positive spirit and overcoming challenges?
I exchange ideas very intensively with other civil society organisations. Often, other organisations face exactly the same problems as us, and I believe that a problem shared is a problem halved. In addition, these discussions often lead to new ideas for overcoming current challenges.
How can adult learning and education benefit from flexible learning pathways?
We want to see flexible learning pathways that put the learner at the centre. This means designing funding instruments such as Individual Learning Accounts in such a way that they provide access to a wide range of different learning opportunities, reaching out to adults from all backgrounds and addressing them with relevant learning opportunities, actively including them in learning and increasing their participation in learning structures and decision-making, and identifying pathways to further learning and into employment.
We have prepared a background paper on this topic that will be published very soon.
Flexible learning pathways must place the learner at the centre.
Flexibility must be in favour of the learners, so that learning opportunities – in non-formal ALE, vocational education and training, and higher education – become permeable, for example with micro-credentials, and that adults can thus acquire their “portfolio” for lifelong learning.
Of course, this requires structures such as guidance services, accessible quality assurance methods, and professionalisation as well as good working conditions in ALE.
Do you have any personal experience with flexible learning pathways?
A few years ago, I did my Belgian teacher training. At the time, it was an evening programme offered as a collaboration between a Belgian university and an adult education centre.
Before I started the programme, I did a recognition and validation procedure of my previous studies and work experience, and, thanks to the wonderful guidance I received, quite a lot of my adult educator training and my work experience at EAEA were validated and recognised. This gave me a huge amount of motivation to complete this evening programme alongside my work and my baby.
From the very beginning, I felt that the programme really put us learners at the centre: we had great discussions, were involved in decision-making processes for the learning programme, gave each other feedback, and if there were ever problems with attending a course session, we could get all the relevant information online and actively participate via the course-accompanying Moodle.
I always went home from class with a smile on my face, even though it was often very late in the evening. Completing the programme gave me a real boost in terms of self-confidence and a sense of security in the labour market.
Raffaela Kihrer is Secretary General of the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA). She is also the elected Secretary General of the European Lifelong Learning Platform (LLLPlatform), which brings together all education sectors at the European level and is the central point of contact between European civil society and the European institutions.
Kihrer has a background in international development studies and is also a trained teacher in secondary and adult education. She is passionate about learning and takes every opportunity to visit adult education initiatives, especially at the grassroots level, and to reflect on what is needed to enable even more adults to participate and to make adult education more democratic and self-determined.
