Lifelong education

While the goal of lifelong learning commands a broad policy consensus, it has been widely criticized by adults educationists for its conservatism. This paper explores the origins of the concept in the 1960s and 1970s, and compares key themes with the dominant approaches of the recent period. While there was a turning point during the 1990s, its chief feature was that lifelong learning was less a slogan than a tool for the reform and modernization of aspects of national education and training systems. Its rise has accompanied a wider transformation in the relationship between civil society and state in the western nations. One result is that lifelong learning is becoming one among many factors that are transforming the governance of late modern societies, as the state sheds directive powers both downwards (to individuals and associations) and upwards (to transnational corporations and intergovernmental bodies).     

终身教育与个性化教育

个性化教育成为当今世界各国教育改革的一个重要趋势 ,而终身教育更能促进教育的个性化发展 ,探讨个性化教育思潮、终身教育与个性化教育的关系 ,以及世界各国对此作出的实践应答 ,有助于我国教育改革的发展。     

终身教育与现代远程教育

终身教育概念是进入２１世纪的关键所在。远程教育作为终身教育体系的一个组成部分，有它自身的特点和优势，在教育发展中起着越来越重要的作用。     

Lifelong education and philosophy of education

Problems of scale lead to the use of lay tutors in education for trade union members. These tutors need support from their organization. The design of this support is far from easy. A Dutch research project reveals some of the problems of providing support for these educational volunteers. Some results of this research are reported in this article. First, attention is devoted to some ideas about trade union education, based on British and Dutch literature. Second, the article concentrates on the investigated practices: local trade union education in the Netherlands, lay tutors and their tasks. In order to decipher the role of support activities, the elements of a model of volunteer activities are proposed. With a view to the diffusion of Dutch experience, a model of the support activities of trade unions related to the tasks of lay tutors is described. Five support environments for lay tutors are subsequently sketched.

Although some aggregation has been achieved, the level of knowledge remains quite low. Fundamental knowledge on support does not, as yet, exist. Knowledge is still far too limited to be able to provide advice on which environment to choose in a specific situation. Creating finely tuned support for lay tutors cannot be reduced to making a choice or to the combination of certain elements. If creating support is not the same as making a choice, this implies a design task. To assist efforts in designing support activities for lay tutors ten recommendations are made. Finally, their quality is briefly discussed.     

Contemporary trends in adult education research in Yugoslavia

While several have written about the connection between life experience and learning, there is little in the literature that explicitly deals with how a particular life experience can become a significant learning experience for one person, but not another. This qualitative study examines the underlying structure of the significance of life‐experience learning. Open‐ended responses to a question about one's significant learning experiences were collected from 405 adults. In addition, 19 interviews were conducted to probe more deeply about individuals’ learning experiences and the significance they held for the learner. Findings suggest that for learning to be significant: (1) it must personally affect the learner, either by resulting in an expansion of skills, sense of self, or life perspective, or by precipitating a transformation; and (2) it must be subjectively valued by the learner.     

Lifelong education and transnational migration

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether and through what mechanisms vulnerable adults are empowered through a second-chance education programme. At the same time, the paper aims at unveiling the obstacles hindering learners’ empowerment process and making suggestions for the improvement of the educational programme fostering further empowerment of the learners. To achieve the objectives set by the research, a hybrid methodological design was applied combining hermeneutic phenomenology and critical discourse analysis. Data collection was performed using three tools: semi-structured interviews, reflective journals and document analysis. The results led to the emergence of a multilevel empowerment scheme of vulnerable adults in the programme. The empowerment mechanisms that emerged were as follows: (a) empowerment through participation as a self-value, (b) empowerment through the reconstruction of past experiences, (c) empowerment through the strengthening of their social capital and (d) empowerment through literacy skills. At the same time, the study shed light on a number of factors that inhibit the process of learners’ empowerment, which unveil structural and operational weaknesses of the programme as well as of the policies pursued by the State.     

Lifelong learning: Universities and adult education

This paper argues that the driving force of social change in the contemporary world is economic globalisation, which has demanded and more highly educated work force. It discusses six major changes that are occurring in traditional university education, as a result, and notes that universities have now become a site where adults learn. Universities are becoming institutions of lifelong learning. In the final section traditional adult education is reviewed, which is also becoming lifelong learning, and the education of older adults is discussed.     

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.     

Lifelong education,space and the spirit of place

This paper begins by stating that adult education is facing two challenges. First, adult educators need to help people learn to live in harmony with the environment. Second, adult education must assist people in identifying ways to live peacefully with diversity. It is then argued that currently the field of adult education is characterized by a tension between those who subscribe to the professionalization of adult education and those who subscribe to radical adult education. This tension, it is argued, can be better understood as a shift in the structure of human consciousness. This perspective is then explored using as examples the agrarian and scientific/industrial revolutions as historical turning points in the evolution of new organizing structures of consciousness. This is then followed by an in‐depth discussion of the new emerging structure of consciousness and vision‐logic, and a brief discussion of the implications for adult education.     

Lifelong education: a test of the accumulation hypothesis

A path model of the lifelong education cycle is developed and estimated, using data relevant to a Swedish cohort of men and the method of linear structural relations analysis. The estimates are used to address the question as to whether adult education, by offsetting differences in educational backgrounds, has reduced the gap in educational attainment between the initially poorly‐educated and well‐educated groups comprising the sample studied. The results show that a cycle of accumulation is in operation, so that the quality of earlier experiences of education predict the quality and amount of educational experiences subsequently gathered. Hence, as the expansion of adult education has served to reinforce inequality of educational attainment, at least for the group of Swedish men studied, the accumulation hypothesis is supported. However, because the stability coefficients found in the model are only of modest size, it is concluded that there is room for interventionist policy designed to influence the social distribution of adult education resources.     

试论终身教育思想与我国高等师范教育改革

终身教育是人们在一生所受到的各种教育的总和。它打破了学校对教育的垄断，实现了教育由封闭走向开放，建立了由各种形式的教育机构组成的具有连续性和同一性的教育网络；它重视人的学习权，强调受教育的主动性、自觉性；它以学习化社会为基础，突出学习的意义，注重学习的个性发展。在终身教育思想的影响下，我国高等师范教育在教学内容、教学形式、教学方法、教育体制、职前培养与职后培训等方面的改革取得了一定的成绩。但是，从终身教育的视角来看，我国高等师范教育改革还存在一些问题：一是观念的不适；二是功能的不适；三是教育体制的不适。以终身教育思想为依据的我国高等师范教育改革：应更新传统教育观念，树立终身教育观；重新组合办学资源，开展多种形式的办学；改革教学内容与方法，适应社会发展要求和人们的发展需求；建立健全适应终身教育要求的评价与激励机制。