A social capital approach to the analysis of continuing education: evidence from the UK Learning Society Research Programme

The paper reports from one of the projects of the Economic and Social Research Council's Learning Society Research programme. The project compared initial and continuing education in Scotland and Northern Ireland, in both cases relating these to performance in England. This paper presents results from the fieldwork in Scotland, involving focus groups and individual interviews in a number of economic sectors. It discusses the use of social capital as a central concept in the research, which led to a focus on the nature of relationships between stakeholders: providers of education and training, employers, the state, the community and professional bodies.