Six Ages towards a Learning Region — A Retrospective

Learning Cities and Learning Regions are terms now in common use as a result of the growing importance of lifelong learning concepts to the economic, social and environmental future of people and places. Why ‘learning’ regions? Why not intelligent, creative, clever, smart or knowledge regions? In truth, all of these can, and some do, also exist, but we argue that this is not a semantic debate. The basis of intelligence, smartness, cleverness, creativity and knowledge is effective learning and its intelligent application in creating a better future. We can, we believe, only learn our way into the future and the same is true, in developmental terms, of cities, towns, regions and communities. What therefore is a learning region? Definitions tend to differ according to perception, situation, occupation and objective. Where the focus is on technology a learning region will emphasise the advantages of hi-tech for the development of a physical infrastructure that will assist regeneration and be useful for more efficient behaviour and learning by people and organisations. Hence the growth of ‘smart cities,’ mainly in North America. Where it is on employment, employability, organisational management and training for industry, the development of human and social capital for economic gain and competitive edge tends to predominate. Most regions concentrate on this aspect. Where the motivation is based on the use of valuable resources, it will concentrate on volunteering, active citizenship and the building of social capital. Such an approach is not well developed in many regions and the optimum balance between economic, community and personal growth is poorly understood. Where the goal is the competent use of organisational potential a learning region will mobilise all its stakeholder institutions as partners in the service of the region as a whole. Here, very little is understood or implemented. This article argues that all of these approaches and others in the fields of environment, personal and cultural growth, innovation, diversity and communication are a holistic part and parcel of learning region development. Its meaning and its characteristics will become clear as it charts the development of ideas about learning regions, particularly those that have occurred during the past 20 years. It suggests the existence of a paradigm shift at work — the age of education and training, which has served us well in the late 20^th century in satisfying the needs of a growing, upwardly mobile proportion of the population, has now given way to the era of lifelong learning, in which the means, the tools and techniques are employed to target and motivate everyone in a city, town or region. Those regions that achieve this nirvana will be the winners in the apparent paradox that intelligent local action leads to success in a globalised world, a version of the concept of ‘glocalisation’ coined by Robertson (1995) .     

Pastoral Care, Spirituality and Physical Education

Within the sphere of Physical Education (PE), many observers ( Shields and Bredemeier, 1995; Capel, 2003; Green, 2003 ) have identified PE staff as having a special empathy for children's pastoral care needs and the development of Personal, Social, and Health Education (PSHE). Such factors as the varied situations and venues in which the subject is delivered, including off-campus and extra curricular activities, perhaps lead interested staff into work that locks into the welfare and personal development needs of children. Accordingly, one of the more interesting challenges posed by National Curriculum Physical Education (NCPE) in England and Wales is that it requires the teacher to address the spiritual development of the pupil; this obligation is made clear through the Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC) elements of the subject. This paper focuses attention on the merging of this separate spiritual dimension with the other three concepts. While the moral, social and cultural elements of SMSC are recognized components of PE participation, the grouping raises the question of whether PE teachers can develop children's spiritual growth. This paper argues that such a pathway may be possible but that at present there is considerable confusion related to the challenge.