Lifelong Learning Policy Agenda in the European Union: A bi-level analysis (original) (raw)
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The Lisbon European Summit in 2000 has been a milestone in reframing education policies to foster a ‘knowledge economy’, whilst amid the challenges of the new decennium Lifelong Learning (LLL) has been propounded as a powerful lever for attaining ‘sustainable growth’. The present article aims to elucidate the development of an integrated European Union (EU) policy framework for LLL in light of the ‘Lisbon’ and ‘Europe 2020’ Strategies. Through a bilevel analysis of policy texts with high political significance representing a point of reference for a given discourse, it seeks to explore trends and identify interrelations between EU LLL policy and emerging challenges within the Union, as well as global socio-economic mandates that inform contemporary education policy. On the first level, Critical Discourse Analysis was employed, categorizing the data in five main discourse strands. On the second, the data underwent Implicative Statistical Analysis. The results have indicated a substantial shift in the relationship between education and politics, with education assigned a monolithic role in providing for a flexible ‘up-to-date’ workforce, so as to enable the EU to remain a strong global actor.
Making the Lisbon Strategy happen. A new phase of lifelong learning discourse in European policy
2011
The discourse of lifelong learning has undergone great changes, from its initial engagement when it was a matter of social and humanitarian issues as outlined in the early documents of UNESCO, to emphasising lifelong learning as a moral and individual obligation in a more competitive and market-oriented language. This policy trajectory has taken the discourse from an initial phase of great social visions to a second phase focusing on the need for self-regulated and morally responsible citizens. Recent research on the topic indicates that we are now standing at the threshold of a discursive shift where action instead of visions is at stake. Against this background the author asks if there is evidence enough to suggest that European policy on lifelong learning is now experiencing a discursive shift into what could be described as a new phase. The author uses critical discourse analysis as a methodological framework and the analysis of the empirical material points to a direction where...
Lifelong Learning in the EU: Changing Conceptualisations, Actors, and Policies
This paper explores the changing conceptualisations, actors, and policies of lifelong learning (LLL) in the European Union (EU) from the time the topic first emerged and was promoted by international organisations in the 1960s. The author uses Kingdon’s (1984) Multiple Streams Framework to analyse how the LLL discourse became an important part of the EU agenda from the mid-1990s onwards, ultimately resulting in numerous policy changes intended to address a wide range of economic and societal issues. The analysis is based on a critical reading of policy documents from the EU, UNESCO, the OECD and a number of other agenda-setting bodies. The results indicate that the LLL discourse has evolved from one of lifelong education intertwined with humanistic ideals promoted by UNESCO (and partly OECD), to the EU’s all-encompassing neo-liberal conception of lifelong learning which has been conceived as a cure for a wide range of maladies, ranging from high unemployment, to low innovation rates and the lack of entrepreneurship.
The many faces of lifelong learning: recent education policy trends in Europe
Journal of Education Policy, 2002
This article examines the rise of the discourse on lifelong learning across Europe and the variety of national policy trends which its rhetoric occludes. The ubiquitous presence of this meta-discourse in education and training policy-in-theory is seen as a singular event which can be ascribed to the impact of the variety of global forces on the education arena. It serves specific political functions in addition to signalling real changes in education and training systems. The duality of convergent rhetoric and divergent policy-in-practise is seen as a challenge to education policy analysis which requires multi-layered interpretation. Education and training policy can increasingly be seen as a global commodity. Armies of international think tank experts and consultants analyse, develop, adapt and package policies to order for governments, corporations and other interested parties; international organizations-notably the OECD, the World Bank and This article seeks to draw out some of the dominant trends in current education policy in Europe and the developed world, highlighting where these are convergent and, alternatively, divergent, and commenting on some of the implications of different policy models. In brief compass, this will not attempt to do more than sketch out some of the major overarching trends, although it draws on and updates a more detailed analysis of policy developments reported elsewhere (Green, Wolf and Leney, 1999). However, it does seek to analyse both policy-as-discourse and policy-as-practise where possible, albeit here with illustration rather than reporting of systematic analysis, to avoid the pitfalls noted above. Following one of Marx's better methodological precepts about 'rising' from the abstract to the concrete (and hence, although not here, dialectically back to complex higher order theory), the analysis begins with the contexts and themes which drive and overarch international policy discourse before exploring in some more detail the complexities of policy in practise in some different states. The rhetorics and realities of lifelong learning and the knowledge society The dominant and organizing discourse in education and training policy at the turn of the millennium was lifelong learning (in the context the learning/knowledge society). This idea, whose origins lie way back and buried in the writings of forgotten educationalists some 70 years ago (eg Basil Yeaxlee, 1929), gained currency through the late 1980s and 1990s, not least through the advocacy of the OECD (1996) and the European Commission (1995), to become by the turn of the century almost ubiquitous in the developed world. Although similar in some ways to earlier 1970s discourses around 'recurrent education', 'continuing education' and 'lifelong education'-the latter notably in the influential Learning To Be report by Edgar Faurė (UNESCO, 1972)-the 1990s idea of lifelong learning in a learning society decisively shifted the policy ground by stressing 'learning' rather than 'education', and 'society' rather than 'school'. The publication of Van der Zee's The Learning Society in 1991 and the European Commission's report Teaching and Learning: towards a Learning Society in 1996 provide two markers in continental Europe of the new society-wide emphasis. In the UK similar landmarks are visible with the publication of Stewart Ranson's book Towards the Learning Society in 1994 and the initiation in 1996 of the ESRC's Learning Society Research Programme. Now almost every OECD country-from South Korea to Canada-makes reference to lifelong learning and the knowledge society in its education policies and the idea now constitutes something of a meta-discourse in policy terms. The notion is, of course, hopelessly vague, masking many different policy approaches, but it captures something real and significant in modern policy trends, and thus provides a convenient way into analysis. As a meta-discourse, which is a relatively rare phenomena in the annals of education policy, lifelong learning has no doubt served various complex ideological purposes connoting, as it does, vision, change and, above all,
The present paper, through thorough review of policy papers, draws on European Union (EU) policies for Lifelong Learning. Adopting an interpretative approach, it seeks to define trends and detect interrelations between EU education policy and developments in the context of European enlargement, as well as global socioeconomic mandates. Ambitious objectives set at the Lisbon Council, in 2000, legitimised enforcement of a coherent European education policy. Hence, in alignment with the Lisbon Strategy mandates (since 2010, renewed as “Education and Training 2020”), widening access and raising adult participation in education throughout lifespan emerged as a major component of sustainable economic growth and social cohesion reinforcement, so as to allow Europe to retain its strong global role.
Lifelong Learning: conceptualizations in European educational policy documents
European Educational Research Journal, 2010
Over recent years, lifelong learning has been a central and guiding principle in the formulation of European educational policies. Within this general framework, the authors have been developing a research project that allows them to approach the theme of lifelong learning and European educational policies, taking into account four levels of analysis, namely: the supranational, the national, the institutional and, finally, the individual level of analysis. This methodological strategy reflects a theoretical understanding of policy as the result of the actions of a diversity of actors at different levels. This article focuses on the supranational level of analysis, drawing on data from an analysis of European educational policy documents. First, the authors clarify the methodological issues raised by the research findings presented. Second, they discuss the results concerning the process of definition of European educational policies. Third, the authors briefly revisit the evolution of the idea of lifelong learning and discuss the results regarding its plurality of meanings and conceptualizations within the documents considered for analysis.
Investment in human capital emerged as core priority for European Union (EU) policies at the Lisbon European Council of 23 and 24 March 2000, shifting the perspective as regards the correlation between economic and social capital, and providing for strategic goals in order to strengthen employment, economic reform and social cohesion. Hence, novel priorities have emerged for Greek educational policy, accrediting exceptional significance to lifelong learning so as to raise compatibility with the “knowledge based society” mandates. The present paper attempts a policy impact analysis through thorough review of Greek education and training policies undertaken to respond to the European challenges. In the light of the evolving Lisbon agenda, it takes account of the legal context and underlying principles of Greek educational policy with respect to lifelong learning, to draw upon the impact of an EU convergence policy activating educational initiatives and objectives to attain sustainable growth development.
The EU Memorandum on lifelong learning. Old wine in new bottles?
Globalisation, Societies and Education, 2005
This paper provides a critical analysis of the EU's Memorandum on lifelong learning in light of the evolution of the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning from the late sixties onward. It also analyses this document in light of the forces of globalisation that impinge on educational policymaking in Europe as well as the all-pervasive neo-liberal ideology. The paper moves from theory to practice to provide critical considerations concerning certain 'on the ground' projects being presented as 'best practice' in EU documents. It brings out the neo-liberal tenets that underlie much of the thinking and rationale for these projects, and indicates, in the process, how much of the old UNESCO discourse of lifelong education has been distorted to accommodate capitalism's contemporary needs. An alternative conception of lifelong learning is called for.
European Strategies in Lifelong Learning: A Critical Introduction
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