Getting closer: workplace guidance for lifelong learning

The purposes of this article are twofold. First, it considers the policy links between guidance and lifelong learning, highlighting in particular the implications of findings from a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). Secondly, it critically compares two approaches to workplace guidance about education and training, drawing upon evaluations of various initiatives organized by trade unions and employers in Denmark and the UK. These evaluations are based on qualitative data collected from in‐depth interviews with those responsible for organizing and giving the guidance, as well as those who received it. Five interviews were conducted with recipients of guidance in each country, either face‐to‐face or by telephone, using a semi‐structured interview schedule. The conclusions suggest some issues that need to be addressed by guidance practitioners and policy makers, including employers and trade unions.     

Equity and social exclusion measures in EU lifelong learning policies

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to examine how EU lifelong learning policies are trying to reach the vulnerable by looking at what measures against social exclusion they offer and how equitable these measures are. It is a qualitative study that focuses on policy documents that form the European Union’s legal and political frameworks of reference in the lifelong learning area since 1992. The document analysis has been complemented by semi-structured interviews with EU lifelong learning experts. The findings show that early school leavers and migrants are the main target groups in the policies, leaving many other groups at risk of being excluded from learning opportunities. There is not enough attention to measures addressing wider social phenomena. There is also an overemphasis on basic skills which are understood in a very narrow way as literacy and numeracy when referring to the vulnerable. We argue that a greater variety of measures as well as better targeted measures are needed to address the multiple and complex needs of the vulnerable. Such measures would allow a broader understanding of lifelong learning where those that are hardest to reach are offered learning opportunities independent of their personal and social circumstances     

Improving workplace learning of lifelong learning sector trainee teachers in the UK

Learning in the teaching workplace is crucial for the development of all trainee teachers. Workplace learning is particularly important for trainee teachers in the lifelong learning sector (LLS) in the UK, the majority of whom are already working as teachers, tutors, trainers or lecturers while undertaking initial teacher education. However, literature indicates that LLS workplace conditions often inhibit teacher learning. This article reviews the research base on LLS trainees’ workplace learning. Billett’s (2008 Billett, S. 2008. “Learning through Work: Exploring Instances of Relational Interdependencies.” International Journal of Educational Research 47: 232–240.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) concept of relational interdependence, between the affordances (activities and interactions) that workplaces offer for learning and the ways in which individuals perceive and engage with these, is used as a framework to synthesise research evidence. Support and experience of teaching were found to be crucial affordances for trainees’ learning. The nature and availability of these affordances were shaped by workplace culture, organisational strategy, process and structures and the allocation and structuring of work. The ways in which trainees perceived and interacted with workplace affordances for learning were influenced by their prior experiences, confidence and self-esteem, career intentions, workplace position and status and orientation toward theoretical tools. The key properties of support and teaching experience and the workplace conditions needed to promote trainees’ learning are proposed. These provide a starting point for employers, mentors, teacher educators, policy makers and trainees to improve workplace learning. The findings and proposals are also relevant to HE and school initial teacher education. Proposals are made for addressing the gaps in the scale and scope of research into LLS trainees’ workplace learning.     

演进与质变：从终身教育到终身学刁

终身学习是在新的时代背景下对终身教育的继承和超越。从终身教育到终身学习的转变是一种质的飞跃，终身学习是对时代发展要求的应答，它实现了整个教育的重心转移，保证了终身教育制度的有效实施，更符合学习化社会的要求。     

Employability,globalization and lifelong learning--a Scottish perspective

This paper seeks to explain, or at least put in political context, the current approaches to Lifelong Learning as developed by the New Labour government, by locating them in the process of internal ideological transformation of the Labour Party. Secondly, it seeks to identify the strands in current New Labour thinking in relation to Lifelong Learning. The paper questions many of the assumptions which underpin these approaches and concludes that New Labour's approach will lead to different experiences of Lifelong Learning for different people.     

Learning to live: the relationship between lifelong learning and lifelong illness

This article draws a parallel between nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century promotion of self‐help learning; it notes that aim and outcome can be socialization rather than social advancement, order if not autonomy; it indicates ill‐informed advocates can ask too much of the adult learner and give too little; it gives evidence that successful self‐help schemes have rarely if ever been based on self‐help alone. In all the article challenges the morality and financial wisdom of promoting a concept without a full understanding and consideration of both the concept and the adult learner.     

Self-directed lifelong learning in hybrid learning configurations

Present-day students are expected to be lifelong learners throughout their working life. Higher education must therefore prepare students to self-direct their learning beyond formal education, in real-life working settings. This can be achieved in so-called hybrid learning configurations in which working and learning are integrated. In such a learning configuration, learning is typically trans-boundary in nature and embedded in ill-structured, authentic tasks. The goal of this study is to develop a set of design guidelines for an intervention that would strengthen students’ capacity for self-directed lifelong learning within a hybrid learning configuration, a one-semester elective course at a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands. The research approach was educational design research. An intervention was designed, implemented and evaluated during two iterations of the course. Evaluation methods included interviews with students and the course facilitator, questionnaires, and students’ logs and reports. We developed five intervention design guidelines that will promote self-directed learning. Our conclusion is that the intervention was usable and effective: at a basic level, the students did develop their capacity for self-directed lifelong learning. Further research is needed to investigate conditions for realizing higher levels of proficiency in self-directed lifelong learning throughout the curriculum and beyond.     

Research and policy in lifelong learning

It has long been acknowledged that adult and lifelong educators have exercised little influence over national education policies. This article addresses the issue, with particular reference to the research elements of policy advocacy. Researchers and policy‐makers are distinguished and related as communities of practice and intellectual categories of social function. It is argued that the concept ‘policy‐maker’ is too ambiguous to be of either theoretical or practical use, especially since the focus has shifted over the years away from the advocacy of adult education to the implementation of lifelong learning. Also, the concepts of both ‘policy’ and ‘research’ have undergone significant shifts of meaning, so that traditional ideas of the relation between research and policy are now outdated. We live in an age of public scepticism about the political uses to which research is put, and this also needs to be taken into account in the case of lifelong learning. Thus, the relation between research and the policy process needs to be reconceptualised in a future beyond lifelong learning in order to be meaningful, with the focus much more upon process than outcome. Only in this way could adult and lifelong educators expect to have any influence upon national policies.     

Lifelong Earning: working-class women and lifelong learning

This article argues that despite the rhetoric that surrounds lifelong learning, barriers to participation for working-class women are too often ignored or made invisible. Starting from a critique of current policies and practices of lifelong learning that are based in instrumentalism and individualism, the article addresses the diversities of working-class women's multiple identities and considers some of the (apparent) wider benefits of learning for working-class women. The article concludes that many working-class women are trapped in a cycle of lifelong earning that centres on low-paid, low-status jobs. What they learn is that, in a learning society that remains driven by market forces based in inequalities of gender, race and class, there is no political escape.     

Educational patterns in lifelong learning settings

Education involves interactive processes in which symbolization plays a major role. Poetry promotes a unique approach to symbolization that is characterized by (a) fostering creativity within the realm of meaning, and (b) generating the development of sensibility. Despite these important educative functions, poetry has never been recognized as part of the core curriculum in schools. However, poetry has continuously managed to promulgate its educative functions from the periphery of schools. The focus of this paper is on the aspects of critical thinking the poetry of two Persian poets has fostered not only in the Iranian audience but also in a larger community since the 11th century.     

全民参与 终身学习

从2001年8月以来,常州按照贯彻"三个代表"重要思想和十六大关于"形成全民学习、终身学习的学习型社会,促进人的全面发展"的要求,紧紧围绕加快富民强市步伐,力争在江苏省率先全面建成更高水平的小康社会、率先基本实现现代化的目标,大力创建学习型城市,不断推进现代城市文明进程。经过两年来的探索和     

Integrating lifelong learning in university management

Universities in a capitalistic society have been expected to produce graduates for the labour market which in turn contributes to the economic development of the nation. In today's environment where the social spending on education grows faster than the economy, it becomes increasingly difficult for the education system to maintain an existing level of provision. Hence, institutions are required to legitimate themselves through the value they provide. The capitalistic process in Hong Kong has generated the demand for lifelong learning in the higher education system. The resulting evolution of the system has compelled the policy makers of higher education to redefine the purpose of higher education and re-evaluate the university management. This paper discusses Liu's (1997) holistic approach of evaluating and planning for the university academic programmes as well as building an ‘enterprise culture’ at the institutional level with a Hong Kong case analysis. When strategically planning for the future in a volatile and transient environment, university management plays an important role in integrating continuing professional education (CPE) and mainstream academic programmes and in cultivating a market-oriented ‘institutional enterprise-culture’ which responds to environmental changes more proactively.     

Fiction,empathy and lifelong learning

The article aims to demonstrate that the impact of fiction on adult learning could be illuminated by a deeper engagement with research into empathy. It recognises that the lifelong learning literature acknowledges the importance of empathy in adult learning and that discussions of the role of fiction in adult learning often refer to fiction’s capacity to promote empathy. There is limited adult education literature exploring how fiction generates empathic feelings or how such feelings might lead to sustained changes in perceptions or actions. This article analyses an example of Hoffman’s work on empathy to illustrate the benefits of engagement with empathy research. This analysis leads to a consideration of fiction’s capacity to promote an involuntary empathy that can help adult learners develop deeper understandings of difference and of excluded groups. It also shows that an understanding of the factors that inhibit the development of empathy and enable individuals to justify the sufferings of others could be of value to educators. Finally it suggests that Hoffman’s examination of conditions that lead to empathic anger is helpful for educators wanting to use the potential of fiction to encourage and promote action in the cause of social justice.     

No yoga for Eric: lifelong learning from a small firm's perspective

An emphasis on lifelong learning as a route to economic competitive advantage forms the basis for current governmental policies directed at both firms and individuals. Since small firms are seen as vital for economic growth and development, this sector is a major target for lifelong learning based programmes. However, the views of those in this sector on lifelong learning are less well known. This study of 128 small firms explored the views of owner managers and key staff in these firms about lifelong learning. Despite the hype, owner managers still seemed unsure about the concept, showing the same resistance to embracing learning for all staff seen in earlier studies. However, whilst not recognizing its value for their company to achieve business needs, it was described as important in their own lives, particularly to achieve personal rather than business aims. Examples were also given of transfer of ideas and skills from leisure to work environments. Staff designated as ‘key’ by their managers saw learning as a continuous process, vital for their own future development. These staff had been the main participants of formalized firm learning and had also taken part in learning outside work for personal development. Further research would be needed to identity whether non-preferred staff shares this positive view of learning.