The two components of a new learning society (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Learning Society. Patterns of Participation in Adult Education and Training. Working Paper 5
1997
This working paper is a product of a regional study in industrial South Wales of the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. It examines the notion of a learning society in Britain, suggesting that markedly different interpretations of the term are in common use among politicians, economists, policymakers, and educationalists. The paper outlines chief arguments currently being used to advocate the establishment of a learning society in Britain. These arguments have two strands-the claim that the standard of education and training in a country has a direct impact on its economy and that, therefore, expenditure on learning by the state and employers will be recouped, and the claim that there is a lack of justice in the distribution of education and its rewards in Britain today. Since this involves a brief description of the availability of education and training in Britain, the paper allows a preliminary consideration of the extent to which a learning society already exists or can be said to have existed in the past. It concludes that to some extent the "learning society" is used as a term of convenience. Appendixes include definitions and acronyms. Contains 103 references. (YLB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Two components of a new learning society
1998
This article uses the results of a large-scale study of patterns of participation in post-compulsory education and training over the past 50 years to identify some of the social determinants of adult participation. It is suggested that these determinants are of two types, those more relevant to immediate post-school education and training and those relevant to lifelong learning. This possibility is used to reinforce doubts about the wisdom of current policy in seeking mass participation in further and higher education and immediate post-school training. Such measures, while creditable in themselves are not sufficient to create the United Kingdom Learning Society so widely espoused in official discourse and its associated policy literature.
Participation in Post Compulsory Education in North East England
2002
The National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education (1997) concluded that "increasing participation in higher education is a necessary and desirable objective of national policy over the next 20 years" and a number of initiatives have been put in place to drive this agenda forward. However higher education policy is increasingly viewed as part of a broader strategy for increasing young people's participation in education. From this perspective, a key aim is that as many young people as possible continue their education in some form or other beyond the years of compulsory schooling.
1998
This study is part of a regional study in industrial South Wales on the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. The study combines contextual analysis of secondary data about education and training providers with a regional study of several generations of families in South Wales (a door-to-door survey of 1,104 representative householders), semi-structured interviews, and taped oral histories conducted in 1996-97. This study reports evidence emphasizing the importance of social background as a determinant of patterns of participation in adult education and training. By investigating the potential predictors of these patterns, the study finds that school-based qualifications are not particularly significant but are themselves predictable from an individual's background characteristics. Lifelong patterns of participation are highly predictable, although the theoretical model used here to explain them also involves individual rationality. The situation is changing, however. Over the 50 years covered by the survey data, while initial education has lengthened, later participation in formal learning has decreased in frequency, duration, and the proportion funded by employers. Thus, while extended initial education is now far less determined by socioeconomic characteristics, including gender, later education and training is slightly more determined by socioeconomic characteristics, especially gender. (Contains 40 references.) (KC) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Society is not built by education alone: alternative routes to a learning society
Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 1998
This article examines the notion of a learning society in Britain by outlining some of the chief arguments currently being used to advocate the establishment of such a society. These arguments have two main strands -that the standard of education and training has a direct impact on the economy and that therefore expenditure on lifelong learning is an investment that will be recouped, and the claim that there is a lack of justice in the distribution of education and its rewards in Britain today. The article also involves a brief consideration of the extent to which a learning society already exists. Using preliminary findings from a large-scale study of participation in adult education and training over 50 years in industrial South Wales, it concludes that to some extent 'Learning Society' is used by policy-makers and academics as a term of convenience. It is an ideal notion (but one with very prosaic targets couched in terms of certification) which helps mask the lack of real progress in some respects towards an 'educated public'.
This working paper is a product of a regional study in industrial South Wales of the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. Discussion begins with an examination of the way in which the official discourse of the learning society is dominated by a particular social theory of lifelong learning, called human capital theory. It demonstrates that human capital theory involves an unwarranted abstraction of economic behavior from social relations more widely, maintaining that participation in lifetime learning cannot be understood in terms of the narrow calculation of utility maximization. This critique provides the basis for the development of the lineaments of a theoretical account in which learning behavior is conceived as the product of individual calculation and active choice, but within parameters set by both access to learning opportunities and collective norms-parameters that vary systematically over space and time so that place and history must accordingly play a central role in any adequate theorization. The paper concludes that this kind of theoretical approach has important implications for empirical research and strategies aimed at creating a learning society. (Contains 49 references and 16 notes.) (YLB) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
Two dimensions of time: The changing social context of lifelong learning
Studies in the Education of Adults
This study is part of a regional study in industrial South Wales on the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. The study combines contextual analysis of secondary data about education and training providers with a regional study of several generations of families in South Wales (a door-to-door survey of 1,104 representative householders), semi-structured interviews, and taped oral histories conducted in 1996-97. This study reports evidence emphasizing the importance of social background as a determinant of patterns of participation in adult education and training. By investigating the potential predictors of these patterns, the study finds that school-based qualifications are not particularly significant but are themselves predictable from an individual's background characteristics. Lifelong patterns of participation are highly predictable, although the theoretical model used here to explain them also involves individual rationality. The situation is changing, however. Over the 50 years covered by the survey data, while initial education has lengthened, later participation in formal learning has decreased in frequency, duration, and the proportion funded by employers. Thus, while extended initial education is now far less determined by socioeconomic characteristics, including gender, later education and training is slightly more determined by socioeconomic characteristics, especially gender. (Contains 40 references.) (KC) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.
The rise and fall of life-wide learning for adults in England
International Journal of Lifelong Education
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 extramural provision 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 reassert the case for publicly accessible lifelong, life-wide education for adults.