(With Peter Wells). Beaujolais Ed-Nouveau: Decanting the importance of life-long learning in the challenging, changing Europe of 2020 (original) (raw)

Beaujolais Ed-Nouveau: Decanting the Importance of Life-Long Learning in the Challenging, Changing Europe of 2020

Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, 2015

The modern European university as we know it is changing, has changed, and will continue to in order to adapt to modern needs and to what is happening around it. This process has been revealed by the huge upsurge in higher education reform programs, of quality assurance initiatives, of Higher Education (HE) league tables across the region and beyond, purporting to measure this-and-that all-vital “indicator” or “criterion.” The authors posit that all of these policy innovations have their merits, for each in its own way is beginning to move HE away from being an pedigreed ‘acquired taste’ elixir for an elite, to a new and more palatable drink that is open not only to different partakers of all knowledge and skill varieties, but also enticing to a novice post-secondary learner attracted to try attractively bottled ‘New World’ Beaujolais of Life-Long Learning (LLL) courses and programs. This is seen generally as especially good news for fulfilling individual personal aspirations for professional and personal advancement as well as meeting knowledge societies’ present and future needs of national prosperity, growth and stability. The accompanying downside of this positive development, the twinned phenomena of diploma inflation and job inflation, present a real threat to these real lifelong learning successes, however. To begin to unpack these intertwined phenomena will require that the authors first discern the real spirit or wine of “lifelong learning” in modern education and labour market circles and specifically how this, or indeed if this, is of any relevance to the process and function of HE generally and the modern university in particular.

Popular universities: An alternative vision for lifelong learning in Europe

At its inception in 1993, the European Union (EU) did not consider education one of the pillars of its regional cohesiveness and identity. As time went by, recognition of the potential role of education at individual and social levels increased. This concern for education, however, is much more centred on the acquisition of knowledge and skills towards developing a competitive labour force than towards facilitating the integration of all citizens in the European community – a bias which is reflected in EU policies and recommendations. At local levels, communities need to offer educational opportunities to all members of society, irrespective of their social, cultural and linguistic background and their level of education. In many EU member countries, this kind of learning is offered by popular universities (PUs), which are not state-funded and run in close collaboration with their respective local communities. The authors of this paper carried out a qualitative survey, collecting data on PUs in Spain and France. Their purpose was to examine how European PU offerings align with community needs, and to what extent they address emerging issues such as immigration, the refugee crisis, an aging population and youth unemployment. In the evaluation of their comparative survey, the authors link the grassroots approaches of PUs in Spain and France to the broader European Union (EU) discourse on lifelong learning (LLL) as seen in policy documents such as the European Commission's Memorandum on Lifelong Learning. Finally, they examine the ways in which PUs' approach to LLL works to contest the dominant consensus on the meaning and scope of lifelong learning, offering an alternative way forward.

LIFELONG LEARNING – AN ESSENTIAL CONCEPT OF THE EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM University Lecturer

2010

At the Lisbon European Council (March 2000), the governments representatives set a fundamental objective for the EU, to be accomplished until 2010: to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustained economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”. A central element of this strategy is lifelong learning, not only to competitiveness and employability, but also to social inclusion, active citizenship and personal developmen. In a Communication from the European Commission, adopted on November 21, 2001, it is formulated the common goal of a European Area of Lifelong Learning. Its aim is ”to empower citizens to move freely between learning settings, jobs, regions and countries, making the most of their knowledge and competences, and to meet the goals and ambitions of the European Union and the candidate countries to be more prosperous, inclusive, tolerant and democratic”. The achievement of this goal demands the e...

Lifelong Learning Policies and Higher Education in Europe and Spain

2015

This paper describes and analyzes the set of increasing policies related to lifelong learning in Europe and Spain in the last 20 years. Lifelong learning and related concepts ― lifelong education, formal-non formal-informal learning, etc. ― are discussed to clarify and contextualize their use. The contribution of higher education to lifelong learning is specially mentioned. The paper provides an overview of the European strategies and programmes, acknowledging Europe 2020 strategy and its Education and Training 2020 strategy and the Lifelong Learning Programme (2007-2013) and its successor, Erasmus+ (2014-2020). Spanish policies and conceptions about lifelong learning are pointed out. The case of UNED and its continuing education activities is described. Special mention is devoted to initiatives about open education, framed within lifelong learning actions. Final section remarks some challenges and future steps, such as recognition and accreditation of non-formal, informal and open learning or integration of open education initiatives.

The Pressure on Higher Education Performance and the Process of Lifelong Learning

Central European Public Administration Review

Knowledge has become the central resource in the economy of the "information" or "post-industrial" society. Therefore, analysis in the article elaborates European higher education system and the relationship between educational attainment and the employment rate in EU countries and their position in world leading markets. Enclosed, the study analyses the progress and current trends of lifelong learning (LLL) performance in EU and Croatia. The research analyses five EU benchmarks for education and training system set by the European Council, and their implications’ on labour market performance. Some synthesis of previous studies is also used. The methodological approach uses the worldwide UN Education Index, the European Commission data on higher education, Eurostat LFS data, and Cedefop data of Vocational Training.

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,

Lifelong Learning in Swedish Universities: a familiar policy with new meanings

European Journal of Education, 2001

The Swedish LLL Study Our Swedish lifelong learning study was mainly limited to the national and institutional levels of the higher education system. We examined the policy and its contextual embedding and the links between policy and practice and tried to find out whether a lifelong learning-influenced policy (defined in the terms that were agreed upon in the project. See the Editorial) could be supported or hindered by structural and organisational measures and economic and epistemic preconditions. Emphasis was laid on the institutions as providers of educational opportunities, and in particular on such activities that could be seen as promoting lifelong learning according to our definition. The first phase of our national study Ð an overview of the literature Ð provided an historical perspective on the development of a lifelong learning policy in Sweden and with basic data on the development of the higher education system in the last 40 years. We used official reports, research work, and national statistics produced by state authorities. In particular, the array of governmental commission reports, governmental propositions and Parliament decisions provided precious information about how ideas of lifelong learning have been introduced and defended in the policy-making processes during the last decades and how they influenced the step-wise creation of the Swedish higher education system of today. This part of the project was reported on in a previous issue of the Journal (Askling & Foss-Fridlizius, 2000). Our main impression was that, although`lifelong learning' did not appear in the official literature as a politically significant term until the mid-1990s, there has been strong political support for a lifelong learning-influenced policy since the 1960s, not just in the educational policy rhetoric, but also in the very structure of the system. The second phase, and in particular its four institutional case studies, gave us more in-depth information about how the institutions now use their broader space of action. Their offers of programmes and courses were analysed with regard to content and form of distribution. (The small number of informants Ð about 10± 12 at each university Ð allowed us to make only tentative conclusions about attitudes, norms and values among different categories of staff members). The case studies encouraged us to return to the national level of rules and regulations in order to have a better understanding of what formerly framed the space of action for institutions and students. The major question that we wanted to answer here was whether the higher education institutions have the capacity and readiness

Institutions of higher education and the idea of lifelong learning, „Journal of Education Culture and Society”, nr 1, Wrocław 2011.

The idea of lifelong learning is very popular in the XXI century. This paper presents how Polish universities reflect this idea. The main theories of andragogy were compared with each other and a relationship was shown, between this concept and adult education. Moreover, it analyses the effectiveness of different management styles continuing education in Polish universities and their implications for institutions of higher education. It also describes the main programs of the European Commission to promote lifelong learning in Europe.