International organisations and the construction of the learning active citizen: An analysis of adult learning policy documents from a Durkheimian perspective

Abstract

The article analyses how citizenship is conceptualised in policy documents of four key international organisations. The basic assumption is that public policy has not turned away from adult learning for active citizenship, but that there are rather new ways in which international governmental organisations conceptualise and in some cases seek to operationalise active citizenship in the context of their thinking on lifelong learning. We argue that the language of citizens and citizenship continues to be an important thread in the publications of these organisations. The theoretical framework of Emile Durkheim is referred to since his work helps to explore and address the changes. The analysis of Durkheim draws attention to the crucial role of intermediary bodies which serve as a restraint on both individuals and state.     

Learning in later life: a bicultural perspective from Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

This article is concerned with how learning in later life has been constructed and practised by the two most numerous ethnic groups in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Pāk?hā (Europeans) and Māori (Indigenous people). It is argued that learning is heavily influenced by historic features of interaction between these two groups; Pākehā as the dominant cultural and economic group and Māori as subordinate. While contemporary perspectives are necessarily interpreted in the light of historical trends and events, fresh interpretations of what constitutes biculturalism in this country allow for more nuanced understanding of possibilities for and obstacles to older adult learning/education. Themes from lifelong learning are analysed with special reference to older people’s learning, the consequences of Māori sovereignty on pedagogy and trends identified for older adult education. Two linked case studies of Pākehā and Māori older adult education in a New Zealand university are described to illustrate complexities and tensions in provision in a bicultural context.     

An Adult Learning Approach to Preparing Mentors and Mentees

Abstract

This article approaches mentorship through an adult education lens. The author argues that using an adult education design for the initial preparation and continuing professional education of mentors and mentees enhances the value of the educational experience by making it responsive to adult learning needs and by communicating the importance of continuous learning. From this perspective, mentorship is seen as having tremendous potential to make a major contribution to adult learning for educators. By contributing to a philosophy and practice of lifelong learning, mentorship can breathe new life into the education profession.     

Ettore Gelpi: an appreciation

Abstracts

English

The aim of the paper is to argue for a curriculum model approach to problems of development in adult and lifelong (or continuing) education contexts.

The advantages of such an approach are outlined : relating theory to practice and social policies to educational processes; exploring professional role‐structures and their effect upon received curriculum assumptions in the adult sector, particularly the traditional needs‐meeting, remedial and compensatory elements of such assumptions.

The significance of recent theoretical and policy developments in adult and continuing education is reviewed in these terms and some distinctions made between alternative implicit models of the lifelong curriculum. It is suggested that adult education, as presently constituted, might, itself, be an obstacle to the development of an integrated lifelong education curriculum.

In order to elucidate this a number of curriculum concepts, familiar enough in the general theory of education, are considered in the less familiar context of adult and lifelong education: typologies of curriculum models are used to explore some issues of development in this context (e.g. objectives, provision, process, action, research models etc.)

Ideas of a ‘core’ curriculum, and of the ‘hidden’ or ‘latent’ curriculum, together with curriculum development and evaluation are also considered.

The existing state of the adult and continuing education curriculum is then analyzed within such a conceptual framework. The disposition of professional roles is described, together with the curricular implications of the structure of provision (the University Extra‐Mural Departments, the WEA and the LEA sector).

The ideas of ‘flexibility’ and ‘access’ are critically reviewed as a function of professional (rather than political) ideologies, and the adult‐lifelong curriculum is analyzed in terms of administrative criteria on the one hand and educational process and social action on the other.

A prevailing orthodoxy of continuing education is elucidated in curriculum terms, and contrasted with the curriculum implications of lifelong models. For example, such models stress the functional interdependence of learning stages in an ‘intrinsic’ rather than a ‘remedial’ way, whereas much thinking about adult and continuing education in Britain is concerned with compensatory responses to failures of early educational experience.

In conclusion, it is argued that, in curriculum terms, the development of a continuing or a lifelong education system is by no means as straightforward as is sometimes supposed, and that the obstacles lie primarily within the nature of present curriculum assumptions as much as the more obvious material obstacles to development. Adult education, as it is presently organized, articulates the same kind of curriculum assumptions as initial education. The curriculum assumptions of lifelong education, however, are much more concerned with education in terms of social control and knowledge‐content than with access to professional provision which reproduces curriculum models of initial education sectors.     

The content and implementation of shared professional knowledge in early childhood education

Drawing on the sociocultural view, shared knowledge is regarded as a basis for interdependent working and multi-professional learning in early childhood education. Shared professional knowledge can be seen as a central element in successful collaboration facilitating individual and collaborative professional learning. This study aims to investigate the content and implementation of shared professional knowledge in an early childhood context. Video-taped data were collected using a stimulated recall method from the two participating teachers. The results show that the content of shared professional knowledge was related to two areas in the teachers’ professional knowledge: professional self and professional tasks. In addition, the shared professional knowledge varied according to the teachers’ work contexts. This study offers new knowledge on early childhood education practices and teacher education, considering multi-professional collaboration, and shared learning.     

Lifelong learning characteristics,adjustment and extra-role performance in cooperative education

Many organisations hire students from cooperative education (co-op) programmes. These organisations are interested in students’ performance, particularly in their extra-role performance. Previous studies show that socialisation processes play an important part in establishing adjustment and performance. It may also be the case that students’ approach to learning (their motivations, attitudes and strategies) influences the socialisation process, and consequently adjustment and performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of co-op students’ lifelong learning characteristics on two organisational socialisation outcomes (role understanding and social acceptance) and three types of extra-role performance (proactive, adaptive and prosocial). Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey of undergraduates (n = 1698) enrolled in co-op who had just completed a work term in a new role. Regression analyses showed that lifelong learning characteristics influenced both forms of adjustment, and all three forms of performance. Further mediation analyses showed that both forms of adjustment partially mediated the relationships between lifelong learning and all three forms of performance. These results suggest that co-op students’ lifelong learning characteristics play an important role during organisational socialisation and subsequent extra-role performance. Implications for future research and for practice are discussed.     

Preparing professionals for lifelong learning: Comparative examination of master’s education programs

There has been continued debate regarding educational policies and practices regarding the lifelong learning social order with significant focus upon the preparation of educators of children and youth for this global lifelong learning society. However, there has been limited discussion and research regarding the professional preparation of lifelong learning adult educators. This article investigates the current status of graduate professional programs to prepare lifelong learning adult educators (individuals who are prepared and credentialed through a professional graduate master's degree in adult education and human resource development). Because of differing international policies and structures of graduate education, this discussion will present a comparative examination of current structures and characteristics of master's degree programs at two institutional sites located in Denmark and the USA. Current objectives, characteristics, and understandings of graduate professional preparation programs will be delineated between these two case studies. Contextual issues and influences in the preparation of lifelong learning adult educators will be discussed, with comparative discussions of cultural norms and policies regarding graduate professional preparation, innovative programmatic and instructional efforts, engagement of theory and best practices in lifelong learning, and comparative cultural differences between program students and faculty.     

The rise and fall of life-wide learning for adults in England

Abstract

This article analyses policy and practice in social and cultural education for adults in England in the post Second World War era, beginning with the flowering of municipal adult education and the expansion of university extra-mural provision. It tracks the emerging policy focus on extending participation to under-represented groups, and on securing a rich breadth of curriculum (life-wide learning), which flowered in the 1990s. It maps, and deprecates the subsequent narrowing of public investment to an increasingly utilitarian focus on qualifications for labour market participation with the rise of Treasury (finance ministry) influence on adult learning policy from 2003. Evidence of the wider benefits that derive from participation in learning is used to re-assert the case for publicly accessible lifelong, life-wide education for adults.     

Lifelong learning to empowerment: beyond formal education

Abstract

This paper discusses the relevance of lifelong learning vis-à-vis the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and stresses the need for an approach blending formal education, non-formal and informal learning. The role of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) in moving beyond formal education and the importance of integrating pedagogy, andragogy and heutagogy in lifelong learning are raised as key factors in ensuring that education and learning can generate positive externalities and impact livelihoods. Through a case study in the agricultural sector, this paper analyses the role of lifelong learning in empowering smallholders of backyard poultry enterprises in Kenya and argues that lifelong learning needs to be placed in appropriate social and economic contexts to generate outcomes and impacts such as empowerment.     

Perspectives of lifelong education in Portuguese higher education: a critical analysis of learning outcomes

ABSTRACT

Nurturing students’ continuous learning is a current trend in the higher education agenda. Curricula and academic contents should enable students to take part in stimulating learning experiences, as well as promoting both developing and training opportunities in the course of their lives and careers. Despite the relevance given to lifelong learning in the educational system, there are still some open questions: how this concept is understood and put into practice by higher education institutions? The paper aims to analyse the conceptions of lifelong learning as reflected on the learning outcomes proposed in a sample of study programs. A qualitative methodology and a data-driven approach are adopted to explore the content of the learning outcomes proposed in 10% of total study programs submitted to quality accreditation, since 2009. Generally, results reveal that higher education institutions are committed to the lifelong learning paradigm, particularly in master and PhD degrees. Students are expected to ‘invest in personal and professional development through life’, to ‘develop learning competences through life’, as well as to ‘foster lifelong learning’. This study provides a better understanding of the range of perspectives and the relevance given to lifelong learning as a valuable learning outcome.     

Education and sustainability: reinvigorating adult education’s role in transformation,justice and development

Distinctively economic objectives for lifelong education, especially adult learning and education, feature prominently in policy-making agendas and educators’ practice in much of the world. Critics contend that humanistic and holistic visions of lifelong learning for all have been marginalised and neglected. The current turn of political attention to issues of planetary environmental sustainability and to global societal transformation and interconnectedness raises further questions and prospects. Two United Nations’ publications in 2015: UNESCO’s Rethinking Education: toward a global common good? and of the United Nations’ Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pose intersecting concerns for lifelong learning and environmental sustainability. This article engages with those questions in particular regard to the role of adult learning and education. It discusses a field study of non-formal adult education in Ghana. The field study contributes evidence that resiliently humanistic conceptions and practices of non-formal adult education practically succeed to foster transformation, development and human flourishing. That effective humanism gives credence to the ambitiousness of UNESCO and UN agenda for transformation and sustainability and informs international debates.     

台湾职成教育及社区教育对我们的启示

台湾的成人教育、职业教育、社区教育及推动终身学习独具特色,对促进经济、社会和人的发展发挥了重要的载体作用,取得一定的经验。面向各类学历、有志习得一技之长的职业培训,注重适应社会发展的实用型人才的培养,终身学习体系的建设,深入扎实地全面推进的社区教育等,为我们留下深刻印象,启示颇深。借鉴台湾经验,丰富、完善我们的工作,对推进教育改革与发展,构建终身学习体系,创建学习型社会,具有一定的参考价值。     

Learning is an ontological process: Jarvis and theories of Christian Religious Education in dialogue

Abstract

Both Jarvis and theories of Christian Religious Education (CRE) emphasise that learning develops the whole person, yet they differ in their understandings of how and why this is the case. Jarvis’s experiential learning theory begins ‘from below’ with experience, whereas many approaches of CRE begin with the end result: individuals themselves. By bringing the two into dialogue this paper offers critical insights into Jarvis’s work through an exploration of three conceptualisations of the whole person: biography, ontic self and wisdom. The discussion provokes and engages with questions focusing around the nature of experiential learning, how the whole person might be conceived and what the relationship is between learning and teaching in human becoming. The role of reflection in ‘forming’ people is then considered, together with its spiritual attributes. As a relational process, it also has a spiritual dimension, something which Jarvis, in his role of colleague, supervisor, mentor and friend, has frequently exhibited.     

Cumulative and segmented learning: exploring the role of curriculum structures in knowledge‐building

The present article extends Basil Bernstein’s theorisation of ‘discourses’ and ‘knowledge structures’ to explore the potential of educational knowledge structures to enable or constrain cumulative learning, where students can transfer knowledge across contexts and build knowledge over time. It offers a means of overcoming dichotomies in Bernstein’s model by conceptualising knowledge in terms of legitimation codes (bases of achievement) and semantic gravity (context‐dependency of knowledge). This developed framework is used to analyse two contrasting examples of curriculum – from professional education at university and secondary school English – that aim to enable cumulative learning. Analyses of students’ work products show that both cases can constrain knowledge‐building by anchoring meaning within its context of acquisition. The basis for this potential is located in a mismatch between their aims of enabling students to learn higher‐order principles and their curricular means that focus on knowers’ dispositions rather than articulating principles of knowledge.     

Graduate feedback on a teacher education program and school district support: An argument for a continuum of professional learning

This phenomenological study aimed to explore how early career teachers were supported in their transition from teacher education to professional practice. It involved interviewing seven recent graduates from a post-degree teacher education program on their perceptions of both the program and their local school district in supporting them as early career teachers. Results involve numerous recommendations for supporting these teachers during their induction into the profession leading to the articulation of a continuum of lifelong professional learning that includes teacher education, induction and mentorship, and professional development. Key responsibilities for school districts, principals, and teacher education faculty are included.     

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.     

The local embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatch and of lifelong learning policies for its overcoming

ABSTRACT

The article’s aim is twofold: to outline the specificity of the embeddedness approach and to explore the embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatch and the formation of lifelong learning policies. The study is based on both quantitative and qualitative data, obtained from the Bulgarian Universities Ranking System, and from interviews with experts and young adults engaged in a lifelong learning programme. The analysis uses multilevel modelling. It also relies on mapping lifelong learning policies in Bulgaria through a thematic content analysis. The article argues that the misbalances for highly educated people on the labour market mirror structural problems in the economy and the educational system. The argument is reflected in the historical and structural embeddedness of graduates’ education-job mismatches and the lifelong learning policies applied to overcome this. The results show that the extent of vertical education-job mismatch depends on the different profiles of higher education institutions and professional fields; they also demonstrate different ways in which the embeddedness approach could help shed new light on, and critically assess, lifelong learning policies. The findings reveal a differentiation between national and local levels of lifelong learning policy towards graduates and that regional policies are actively embedded in local contexts.     

多视阈中的成人学习研究

随着人类社会步入全球化、信息化、知识化的时代,学习已经成为人们生存和发展不可或缺的条件,成为人们生活的重要方式。由于成人在社会经济和科技进步中发挥着主体力量的作用,使得成人学习的必要性、重要性更加突显,成人学习对于成人群体的自我完善、自我实现、促进社会可持续发展具有重要的意义。本文对成人学习的含义进行了回顾,并将成人学习置于终身教育、终身学习、学习型社会建设这三大理念中进行深入分析,继而对学习型组织中的成人学习和成人教育中的成人学习问题进行了理论梳理。     

Blurring the boundaries: connecting research,practice and professional learning

Educational researchers can incorporate benefits for themselves and teacher participants by planning for interactions between research, practice and teachers’ professional learning from the outset of a project. However, the dual role of a researcher as a professional learning partner has rarely been explicated and theorised in studies of teacher–researcher relationships. The study described in this paper occurred in the context of early childhood education. The notion of a critical friend was extended and validated as a useful theorisation of the relationship. Four ways that I acted as a critical friend are described. The expertise, roles, boundaries and hybridity of a co‐constructed approach to research are discussed. The importance of a researcher as critical friend having research and theoretical knowledge to shift teacher knowledge and practice is argued. Implications for teacher–researcher partnerships in terms of strengthening coherence between research, practice and professional learning are suggested.     

Canadian and US adult learning (1945–1970) and the cultural politics and place of lifelong learning

This essay examines adult learning in Canada and the USA (1945–1970). It explores this emergence in relation to moves to establish academic adult education as a cultural force that could help citizen learners to negotiate a way forward amid the collision of instrumental, social, and cultural change forces altering life, learning, and work in the emerging postindustrial society. In this regard, it focuses centrally on lifelong learning as an idea designed to have broad appeal in rapid-change postindustrial culture. In particular, it attempts to explicate a cultural politics of lifelong learning, which academic adult educators hoped would give the field a higher profile within what they perceived to be an emerging change culture of crisis and challenge. Two key factors are considered in these deliberations. First, this essay explores the relationship between public education (understood as schooling for children) and adult education. It takes up how this problematic relationship interfered with a post-war turn to lifelong learning. Second, it examines the shift in the meaning of the social in understanding adult education as social education in postindustrial society. It argues that the post-war discourse of democracy delimited this meaning, locating the social predominantly within a concern with preserving the dominant culture and society.