Education as a continuous and multi-referential process has become central within contemporary pedagogical thought. In recent years, conceptual frameworks have emerged for youth and adult education (YAE) that, influenced by worldwide social transformations, involve different agents. From a broad perspective, YAE includes both basic and work-oriented education, as well as education related to social and community development, health, environmental care, the strengthening of citizenship, and the promotion of cultures. In this sense, formal, non-formal and informal, school and out-of-school learning processes are valued here, focused on the subjects and their diversity. Understanding them in this way implies assuming learning as a right for all people throughout their lives, and recognizing that educational processes involving young people and adults extend beyond the school world and the realm of teaching. Literacy and the strengthening of educational attainment point toward the ongoing appropriation of the codes necessary for communication, human development, the exercise of political citizenship, and the construction of life projects, which also include school. It is essential that programs, curricula, the organization of time, the diversity of educational spaces, teacher training, and educational resources take into account the singular life and work conditions of men, women, young people and older adults. They must also address their ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, migration, and incarceration status, as well as the diversity of cultures that characterize the Latin American population, thereby adopting perspectives of intercultural education. Likewise, the profound transformations associated with the digitalization of social life, the expansion of digital platforms, and the development of artificial intelligence are reconfiguring the conditions of access to knowledge, work, and civic participation. These processes raise new questions for youth and adult education in relation to digital inclusion, technological divides, the construction of critical knowledge, and training for the full exercise of rights in societies increasingly mediated by technology. In this sense, it is necessary to problematize the possibilities and tensions that these transformations generate for public policies, educational practices, and lifelong learning trajectories. Latin America is a region of great inequalities and is extremely heterogeneous economically and culturally. Its realities are highly diverse in every sense, including the educational, especially with regard to the education of young people and adults. On the continent, there is still a large population whose human and constitutional rights have historically not been respected. This Symposium hopes to debate issues inherent to the education of young people and adults, research in this field, and strategies for consolidating state policies.
