Introduction

Over the years, Youth and Adult Education (EJA) has had a trajectory that has been entangled with Brazilian public policies, which do not always meet the needs of this type of education. Thus, there are discussions and debates taking place, aiming to benefit educators who work in the modality and students who participate in it.

The teaching and learning process is a constant challenge for educators, namely: how does learning happen, what do students need to learn, how to teach so that most students can understand the content? Does the use of new pedagogical practices and processes contribute to learning? These questions are part of the daily lives of many educators and it was from these concerns that the starting question for this systematic bibliographic review research arose: in the modality of Youth and Adult Education, are active methodologies used in the learning process?

The ideas that underpin the use of active methodologies are not new. The origins lie in the movement called New School, whose thinkers since the end of the 19th century, such as William James, John Dewey and Édouard Claparéde, defended a teaching methodology centered on learning through experience and the development of the learner's autonomy (^{Berssanete, 2021}). However, ^{Cortiano and Menezes (2020}) explain that the innovative nature of active methodologies is configured to the extent that they oppose traditional teaching.

The education proposed by ^{Dewey (1959}) is based on the education of learning by doing, where, through experiences guided by the principles of initiative, originality and cooperation with educational potential for the student, they make it possible to leverage their potential. In addition to Dewey (1959), ^{Freire's (2005}) pedagogical principles that deal with dialogical, participatory and awareness-raising education, which are developed through the problematization of reality, in its apprehension and transformation, are also in line with the perspective of using active methodologies for learning. Furthermore, reporting on Freire's pedagogy of problematization, ^{Berssanete (2021}, p. 40) points out the following reflection:

Thus, from the perspective of the problematization methodology, teaching means creating situations to awaken the learner's curiosity and allow him to think concretely, making him aware of reality, in order to be able to question it, so that one can then construct knowledge to transform it, overcoming the idea that teaching corresponds to a simple transfer of knowledge.

And also, to overcome banking and traditional education, focusing on the student's learning, with the objective of involving, motivating and dialoguing, which are some requirements for this learning to have meaning, because when it has meaning, the action of learning becomes more attractive since

In a personalized learning environment, learning begins with the student. The learner informs how he/she learns best so that he/she can organize his/her objectives actively, together with the teacher. In an individualized learning environment, learning is passive. Teachers provide instruction on an individual basis. Students have no say in their learning. In a differentiated classroom, students can be active participants in their learning. Teachers modify their teaching style through stations or flipped classrooms, presenting the same content to different types of students, but students still receive information passively. When students personalize their learning, they actively participate, directing their learning process and choosing a way to learn better (^{Bacich, Tanzi Neto, & Trevisani, 2015}, p. 53).

It is believed that, through active methodologies, this path can be followed in a more pleasant way for everyone involved. ^{Mattar (2017}, p. 21) establishes that the concept of active methodologies can be conceived as “[...] an education that presupposes activity (as opposed to passivity) on the part of students”. Mattar (2017) addresses the issue of students developing activities during the learning process and ^{Berssanete (2021}, p. 41) agrees, when referring to students' expectations regarding learning and the use of active methodologies:

Furthermore, it is necessary to consider that students in the formal education system have expectations regarding learning, as well as their own training and development, which are very different from previous generations. Therefore, immersed in this context, active learning methodologies present themselves as a possibility of transforming the teaching/learning process into motivating, creative, meaningful and contextualized experiences for students.

Like ^{Mattar (2017}) and ^{Berssanete (2021}), ^{Leite (2021}, p. 49) defines active methodologies as a “[...] critical-reflective, participatory and committed teaching and learning process. They are based on the principle of autonomy. In this constructivist model, the student is seen as the protagonist of his/her learning”.

By defining students as protagonists of their learning, it is understood that their role is that of autonomous subjects, ceasing to be spectators in the process and becoming protagonists. For this, active methodologies use experiences, real or simulated, to develop learning.

These experiences can come from social practice, from the context in which the student is inserted, with the intention of developing the analysis of the situation experienced by them, always respecting their place of origin. Thus, the use of active methodologies and their importance lead some authors, such as ^{Bacich and Moran (2018}, p. 39) to state that: “[...] active learning increases our cognitive flexibility, which is the ability to alternate and perform different tasks, mental operations or objectives and to adapt to unexpected situations, overcoming rigid mental models and inefficient automatisms”.

Active methodologies focus on active learning, and with this, the student stops being just a spectator and becomes directly involved, participative, reflective and a protagonist in learning, and this learning becomes meaningful and the relationships of what is taught become closer to the reality of the student, so that what is learned becomes meaningful. The concept of active learning is opposed to the idea of passive reception of knowledge, which is the approach of traditional teaching, where the content and the main objective are presented, which is to complete the subject program (^{Bacich & Moran, 2018}). Thus, the definition of active learning by ^{Berssanete (2021}, p. 43) is:

Active learning can be conceptualized in a simple and generic way as any form of learning in which the learner is doing something other than just listening or, even, as any activity in which the learner actively participates in the process of constructing his/her knowledge.

The development of an instructional method, where students carry out significant learning activities, there is reflection on what they are learning and doing, the approach is centered on the learner, there is collaboration and interaction between educator and student with the content, it can be said that active learning is being practiced.

However, for active learning to effectively occur, there is a need for empirical and conceptual support. Thus, active methodologies, or also called active learning approaches, require planning by educators so that students become involved and actively participate in the process. The role of the student becomes that of an active subject in relation to the learning process, through challenging situations and problems proposed by the educator.

When exploring the benefits of applying the active methodology, ^{Leite's definition (2021}, p. 50) stands out when he addresses the contribution of the method:

The method can contribute to improving practice and developing positive attitudes, because innovative methodologies encourage critical thinking as they address real-world problems. Learning processes are multiple, continuous, and hybrid. [...] The benefits of active methodologies applied in the classroom environment are many, including student autonomy, problem-solving skills, empathy, protagonism, peer collaboration, and the development of critical thinking.

When referring to problems in the real scenario, in youth and adult education, it is possible, based on knowledge of the student's reality, to seek to act with situations exposed and experienced by students in their locations and act so that this can be contextualized and reflected in the content presented in the classroom.

The main intention is for students to participate in classes, to be able to construct their learning, reflect and learn about what is relevant, and for this knowledge to be used in their later studies, in their daily lives and/or in their profession. In line with this thought, ^{Leite (2021}, p. 50) corroborates by elucidating that: “[...] in this teaching process, the student is encouraged to seek their own learning, the capacity for self-education is stimulated, actively fostered by the search for information and the student is directed to reflect on their reality”.

What is currently observed is that the teacher-centered model makes the teacher transmit the content to the students in a horizontal relationship. “This model was created at a time when it does not correspond to the current situation and, therefore, may no longer meet the needs and perspectives of our students” (^{Berssanete, 2021}, p. 41).

In order to meet the diversity of students in an youth and adult education classroom and ensure that most of them obtain the knowledge necessary to pursue their professional careers or studies, the use of active methodologies can be an option to facilitate the learning process of students. Based on this premise, we sought to understand the scientific production published through articles in national and international databases, aiming to identify the research produced, where active methodologies are applied in the modality of youth and adult ducation.

Systematic literature review

The methodology for searching for articles to gain knowledge about the state of the art on the use of active methodologies in Youth and Adult Education was carried out through a systematic bibliographic review. The first step was to choose the keywords to be used in the search in the scientific databases. The study was based on the area of education, so the selected keywords are correlated to active methodologies and adult education.

Figure 1 shows the keywords used.

The keywords were grouped and crossed, forming 24 combinations:

a) Active methodologies and youth and adult education;

b) Active methodologies and EJA;

c) Active methodologies and adult education;

d) Active learning and youth and adult education;

e) Active learning and EJA;

f) Active learning and adult education;

g) Problematization and youth and adult education;

h) Problematization and EJA;

i) Problematization and adult education;

j) Flipped classroom and youth and adult education;

k) Flipped classroom and EJA;

l) Flipped classroom and adult education;

m) Digital teaching resources and youth and adult education;

n) Digital teaching resources and EJA;

o) Digital teaching resources and adult education;

p) Pedagogical practices and youth and adult education;

q) Pedagogical practices and EJA;

r) Pedagogical practices and adult education; s) Innovative pedagogical practices and youth and adult education;

t) Innovative pedagogical practices and EJA;

u) Innovative pedagogical practices and adult education;

v) Educational processes and youth and adult education;

w) Educational processes and EJA;

x) Educational processes and adult education.

To search for articles, from these 24 combinations, the following databases were selected: Scielo, Science Direct, Scopus and Web of Science. The choice of databases was defined by the breadth of each database. The Scielo database allows electronic access to full articles from journals in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru, Uruguay, Spain, Portugal and South Africa. It meets the needs of scientific communication in Latin America and the Caribbean. Scopus was used because it is the largest database of abstracts and citations with peer review. It offers a comprehensive overview of the world's research production in the areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities, the Scopus solution provides intelligent tools for monitoring, analyzing and visualizing research (^{Scopus, 2022}).

Science Direct is Elsevier's peer-reviewed full-text database containing over 15,000 e-book titles and over 2,500 journal titles in Science, Technology and Medicine, containing over 25% of all scientific information published worldwide, used by over 16 million researchers (^{ScienceDirect, 2022}). Web of Science is a unifying research tool that allows users to acquire, analyze and disseminate information from the database in a timely manner. This tool also allows the usual search by occurrence of words in the record, as well as the search for related articles and the establishment of links between articles that cite others or are cited by others.

Table 1 presents the results obtained in the searches in the databases, with each group of keywords used.

As there are articles that are indexed in more than one database, it is necessary to exclude duplicates, as well as the exclusion of articles published in conferences and/or events and books.

Table 2 shows the number of articles selected for the study.

The aforementioned method is structured in nine stages, aiming to select articles according to their scientific relevance.

The next step was to read the 1153 titles and abstracts to verify whether they were aligned with the proposed theme. Of these, 189 were found to be converging with the scope of the proposed study.

In order to obtain which articles are most relevant, an algorithm was used to categorize relevance following the systematic literature review, the Methodi Ordinatio by ^{Pagani, Kovaleski, and Resende (2015}, p. 10).

It employs an equation to rank papers, the Index Ordinatio (In Ordinatio), which aims to select and rank papers according to their scientific relevance, taking into account the main factors to be considered in a scientific paper: the impact factor of the journal in which the paper was published, the number of citations and the year of publication. The ranking task is carried out before the systematic analysis, so that the importance of the paper is recognized in the early stages of the process.

The steps of the Methodi Ordinatio are as follows:

1. Establishing the research intention: it must be related to the line of research to which the researcher is linked and/or his/her research object. For this research, the intention was to identify what has been produced by the academic community on the use of active methodologies in Youth and Adult Education.

2. Preliminary research with keywords in databases: this consisted of preliminary exploratory research with keywords in the databases chosen to delimit the research niche. At this stage, it is important to test the words and their ballers. The researcher must work with a reference manager such as Mendeley or Zotero, for example.

3. Definition of the combination of keywords and databases: the databases chosen for this data collection were: Science Direct, Web of Science, Scopus and Scielo.

4. Final search in the databases: conducting the final search in the databases and collecting data using the manager. The final search in the aforementioned databases, in stage 3, yielded a total of 1,458 articles. Mendeley was used as the reference manager for collecting and storing the data. The search did not include a temporal delimitation.

5. Filtering procedures: it is important to use the keywords and filters of each database in a standardized manner as possible and also to apply filtering procedures such as: a) exclusion of duplicate works; b) reading the titles with the intention of eliminating those that are not related to the topic; c) checking whether they are only articles, since books and chapters are discarded because there is no impact factor for them. After this step, of the 1,458 articles found, the research had 189 articles that were related to the topics.

6. Identification of the impact factor, year and number of citations: the sources used for this step were Google Scholar, to check the number of citations and the Scopus website to find the impact factors: CiteScore, SNIP and SJR. The articles were organized in a spreadsheet in the following column order: article, year, number of citations and impact factors.

7. Classification of articles using In Ordinatio: in this step, the equation In Ordinatio = (IF/ /1,000) + α *[10-(ResearchYear - PublishYear) ] + (ΣCI)) was applied. Where IF is the impact factor, α is a weighting factor that varies from 1 to 10 to be assigned by the researcher to, if necessary, increase the weight for a specific RBS group. In this research, the same value was used for all groups, understanding that they had the same order of importance in this study: ResearchYear is the year in which the research was developed; PublishYear is the year in which the article was published; and, ΣCi is the number of times the article was cited.

8. Location of articles in full format: search for complete articles through the databases and websites of the journals where they were published.

9. Systematic reading and analysis of articles: complete reading was carried out in 15 articles where the In Ordinatio indexes were the highest (^{Pagani et al., 2015}, p. 10-12).

Thus, the 189 articles were grouped in an Excel spreadsheet and classified as proposed by the methodology used.

Based on this data, the research continued by reading the first 15 articles listed by In Ordinatio. The objective was to briefly describe the central idea of ​​each article, identify its objectives, and show whether there is research in the area of Youth and Adult Education using active methodologies. This process gives depth to the analysis, in establishing the relationships, interfaces, limits, and openings that the set of material treated can offer to research.

Classification and results

The classification carried out by In Ordinatio indicated the following first 15 articles, which are described in Table 3:

Among the articles analyzed, eight were articles produced in Brazil and seven articles produced by authors from other countries, namely: United States, Scotland, Iran, Argentina, Chile and Spain.

Of the 189 articles, the one that obtained the highest Index Ordinatio was the text ‘Notes on the redefinition of identity and public policies for Youth and Adult Education in Brazil’ by Maria Clara ^{Di Pierro, from 2005}. This text had 401 citations on Google Scholar.

^{Di Pierro's text (2005}, p. 1) points out as its objective “[...] to identify emerging themes and processes in the field of public policies for youth and adult education in Brazil”. The text addresses the challenges and impasses of public policies to overcome the marginal position occupied by youth and adult education in the educational reform, in addition to addressing the initial and continuing education of educators who work in youth and adult education. Even though the article was produced in 2005, the research points out aspects that are still under discussion when referring to EJA, and the ‘training of professionals’ for this teaching modality is one of these aspects.

The second text by ^{O’Byrne and Pytash (2015}) addresses the use of active methodologies, especially hybrid learning, by American educators. It considers that it is not the use of technologies in the classroom that will spark student interest, but rather the educator’s approach to the content presented to students.

The authors present additional skills that educators need as they build, teach, and learn in hybrid spaces. Such as: improved communication skills, time management in asynchronous classes, teacher planning time to be extended and enriched, among others. According to ^{O’Byrne and Pytash (2015}, p. 140): “We need to empower educators and students to work together to collaboratively define and redefine what it means to be able to teach and learn across time, pace, path, and place”.

The third text addresses the principles of adult learning. It is a text intended for medical lecturers, but the principles of the study can easily be converted for use in the classroom. The author highlights that adult learners need to know why they need to learn something before they begin to learn. They need to know how learning will be conducted, what learning will occur, and why learning is important. “Adults come to learning situations with accumulated experience; therefore, in any group of adults there is a wide range of individual differences in terms of background, learning styles, motivation, needs, interests, and goals” (^{Palis & Quiros, 2014}, p. 115).

The authors also address active learning and argue that active learning techniques can be effective in various areas of knowledge.

^{Oliveira's article (2007}) reflects on the curricular organization and pedagogical practices developed for youth and adult education students, where these individuals do not have an active voice, only school content is considered, in addition to often ignoring the age of the students, working with materials intended for children.

It seeks to understand the development of pedagogical work, based on the life stories, interests and knowledge that students bring to the classroom. “The prior and collective definition of guiding principles for the work of selecting and organizing content becomes a valuable instrument for work in EJA” (^{Oliveira, 2007}, p. 15). Presenting content to students that will be useful in their daily lives would be ideal.

The fifth article, by Chilean authors ^{Muñoz Olivero, Villagra Bravo and Sepúlveda Silva (2016}, p. 77, our translation) mentions the objective of presenting the “[...] results of a reflection process carried out by a group of teachers of an integrated adult education program, in order to improve their practices for developing student learning”. They highlight the evaluation process not only as a measure, but as a learning opportunity. The emphasis is on deepening the use of evaluation, since the teacher could have mastery in the development of instruments and application of evaluation procedures, but not use them with a formative sense.

The article entitled ‘Impact of the educational stage in the application of flipped learning: an analysis contrasting with traditional teaching’, by Spanish authors ^{Pozo Sanchéz, Lopez Belmonte, Moreno Guerrero and Lopez Nunez (2019}), portrays the comparison made between the application of the traditional methodology and the flipped classroom, in three levels of education, early childhood education, elementary and secondary education.

The analysis of this study shows that the applicability of the flipped classroom varies according to the educational stage in which it is put into practice. The methodology presented positive results with elementary and high school students. The finding with early childhood education students was due to the obstacles to autonomous management on digital platforms and the requirement of a minimum level of abstraction to apply the approach (^{Pozo Sanchéz et al., 2019}).

^{Cocquyt, Zhu, Diep, De Greef and Vanwinget (2019}) address adult learning and their social interaction through acquired knowledge.

The authors defend the use of hybrid teaching for adult learning, arguing that “[...] it offers the means to implement andragogical and socioconstructivist principles” (^{Cocquyt et al., 2019}, p. 4), in addition to carrying out a study on student-content interaction, student-instructor interaction and student-student interaction as part of the adult learner's learning process and stating that hybrid teaching helps during the process.

The article by ^{Rummert and Ventura (2007}) brings discussions about public policies related to the EJA public, between 1990 and 2000. Excerpt from the doctoral thesis, the discussions are relevant for understanding situations that, currently, are still known to those who work in this stage of education.

However, the article does not directly address the learning of youth and adult education students, but rather how public policies have little influence on their development.

The article by ^{Laffin and Alcoforado (2022}) presents the organization of a thematic dossier published in the Educar Journal. As this presentation is in the format of an article, when searching using the keywords, it was presented, but it will not be used as a reference in the research as it is only a presentation document.

The study by ^{Gomes, Freitas, and Marinho (2022}) aimed to identify and understand the profiles of Proeja students at a Federal Institute of Education that offers the modality, in the following dimensions: demographic, socioeconomic, and educational. This study became important for the institution, as the data presented provide conditions for improvement, from educators to management, regarding students who attend technical courses.

The twelfth article, entitled ‘Educational memories and (auto)biographical writing in the Supervised Internship in youth and adult education’ by ^{Soek, Alcoforado, and Haracemiv (2022}), focuses mainly on describing the autobiography of initial training students in the pedagogy course during the supervised internship in EJA. The contribution of this article to this research refers to the statements of the students when they report the lack of training for the youth and adult education teaching modality:

The limits of initial teacher training courses in preparing to face educational diversity were also highlighted, not only in terms of student profiles, but also the specificities that each teaching modality requires, mainly the insufficient pedagogical preparation to work with Youth and Adult Education (^{Soek et al., 2022}, p. 17).

In ^{Ghanim's article (2022}), the pedagogical strategies used in teaching English are highlighted, which, linked to traditional methodologies, emphasize the development of routine teaching activities, supported by the official language, the inclusion of a limited variety of teaching resources, as well as reduced use of the school's infrastructure.

Of the articles classified by In Ordinatio, ^{Ghanim's article (2022}), ranked thirteenth, is the first to address the use of traditional methodology, but adds that it uses a variety of teaching resources. Traditional methodology currently fails to satisfactorily serve students and, it is believed, educators as well.

The article by ^{Silva and Barbosa (2022}) aims to analyze the potential and limits of pedagogical practices mediated by digital technologies, in the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic with youth and adult education students. The discussion focuses on the low knowledge and purchasing power of students for the use of cell phones and/or computers with internet access for studying, as well as educators, since not all of them knew how to use the technologies available for teaching.

Another point addressed was the question of whether elementary school students in the initial years have greater difficulty with remote/online teaching, as they are in the literacy period and personal contact with educators makes a difference when it comes to learning.

The article by ^{Soares, Corrêa, Folmer, and Copetti (2022}) addresses the continuing education of educators on active methodologies, with an emphasis on the use of problematization, based on the Manguerez arc. The course held with educators in the final years of elementary school was conducted following the five stages proposed by the Manguerez arc methodology. The 15th article classified by In Ordinatio addressed the training of educators and the use of active methodologies, but not in the area of ​​ youth and adult education.

Argentina is also present with reports and analyses of changes in secondary education, which point to the flexibility of teaching and how some of the problems identified in relation to how these proposals, with more flexible formats, affect teaching processes. Authors ^{Bargas and Cabrera (2022}) report on the aspects present in the teaching situation, where flexibility, with the reduction of in-person hours at school, can limit the process of conditional expansion. In addition, the research also points to the working conditions of educators, who face unequal infrastructure and material conditions, little training and support, which are unable to meet the conditions established by law.

The article does not specifically address the use of active methodologies in Youth and Adult Education, but it does address public policies that change the conditions for the development of quality education.

As in Brazil, other Latin American countries are experiencing changes resulting from public policies, which do not always benefit students or educators.

The articles classified by In Ordinatio cover numerous situations, but only in the 124th and 152nd classifications do articles produced by Brazilian authors exclusively address the use of active methodologies with youth and adult education students. The articles are, respectively, ‘The practicalities of active methodologies in biology classes in Youth and Adult Education - EJA’, by authors ^{Silva, Silva, and Enedino (2019}) and the article ‘An active learning methodology for teaching mechanics in Youth and Adult Education’ by authors ^{Santos and Sasaki (2015}).

^{Silva et al. (2019}) aim to analyze the methodological diversity applied in Youth and Adult Education - EJA, in order to verify whether the pedagogical resources used in youth and adult education are adequate to the teaching and learning process. They emphasize discussions on “[...] traditional liberal pedagogical trends and innovative educational practices to make pedagogical resources more interactive and dialogical so that the student is attracted to participate collectively in the student-teacher relationship with regard to the construction and production of youth and adult education citizen knowledge” (Silva et al., 2019, p. 1).

^{Santos and Sasaki (2015}, p. 1) present in their article the use of the POE methodology - Predict, Observe, Explain, where “[...] for each subject covered, students are encouraged to present their knowledge and, later, compare it with videos of experiments and simulations”. The POE methodology (Predict - Observe - Explain) was created by White and Gunstone, two Australian constructivist researchers.

The POE methodology is structured in three stages: at the beginning of each class, first, through a real situation, we seek to discover the students' individual ideas and their reasons for that specific event - prediction. Then, the students describe what is seen in the phenomenon to be analyzed - observation. Finally, the students must discuss in groups and reconcile any conflict between prediction and observation - explanation (^{Santos & Sasaki, 2015}, p. 2).

The authors conclude that the methodology used has good potential to promote learning in EJA classes, as the quantitative results, although modest from a global perspective, proved to be significant in specific topics.

In the classification, In Ordinatio points out that the articles produced in Brazil come from a discussion about the importance of youth and adult education for the population that did not have access to school at the right age, and from the public policies denied to youth and adult education. There is, to date, little research and discussion about the learning of students who attend this type of education, as well as about specific training for educators who work in youth and adult education, whether this is initial or continuing education.

Articles published outside Brazil provide contributions on the use of active methodologies and adult education. Hybrid learning, a branch of active methodology, addresses the control that students have over the path, pace, time and place of study. Another point addressed is the knowledge needed by educators about adult education and its specificities.

There is still a lack of research in the area of ​​training educators to work in EJA and, mainly, that this training is focused on student learning.

Final considerations

At the end of the research, 189 articles were published in four different databases, which deal with the use of active methodologies or innovative pedagogical practices for teaching, as well as articles that presented discussions on educational policies for Youth and Adult Education.

When analyzing the first 15 articles classified by In Ordinatio, it is observed that the articles that addressed the theme of Youth and Adult Education brought up as discussions: identity and public policies, curricular organization and pedagogical practices, which addressed what the curricula are like in Youth and Adult Education and pedagogical practices mediated by the use of technologies during the pandemic. Articles addressing the use of hybrid teaching and flipped learning, analyzed in other teaching segments, were also cited.

Articles were presented with different approaches, but they fail to answer the initial question: in the Youth and Adult Education modality, are active methodologies used as part of the learning facilitation process? Only the articles listed in the 124th and 152nd positions present the theme of Youth and Adult Education and active methodologies. In the article by ^{Silva et al. (2019}), the authors also conduct a literature review, without having practical application. Only the article by ^{Santos and Sasaki (2015}) presents the application of an active methodology, although little known in the Brazilian educational system.

The answer to the question - do active methodologies be used as part of the learning facilitation process in the Adult Education modality? - is as follows: if educators who work in this modality use active methodologies during the development of classes, these are not being externalized in the scientific research model, with the academic production of articles or research, and therefore, are not detected in the search for databases. Thus, as there is little published research on the subject, the possibility of developing research in this area and also the dissemination of information on the subject in question is open.