Lifelong Learning

Education Across the Lifespan

John Field, Mal Leicester

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781135699383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

'Lifelong Learning' is a hot issue for educators across the world, as societies everywhere are concerned with developing a literate, skilled and flexible workforce and to widen participation in education at all levels and for all age-groups. This book covers all the major issues, with well-known academic contributors working in the field and covering the topics of theoretical, global and curriculum perspectives, widening participation and the industrial university.
Topics covered include:
* Community education
* Popular education
* Higher education
* The corporate university
* The school curriculum
* Vocational studies.
With contributors from China, Africa, USA, Canada, UK and other European countries, Lifelong Learning offers a comprehensive and challenging account of issues arising from varying lifelong learning decisions, and exposes the impact these decisions have on such a large majority of the population.

Part 1: Theoretical perspectives

1 Lifelong learning, lifelong learning, lifelong learning: A recurrent education?

Richard Edwards

Marx once wrote memorably that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. As a description, this is inaccurate, but nonetheless, it is a fine rhetorical flourish, one which points to two aspects of the ‘historical’ consideration of lifelong learning to be undertaken within this chapter. First, the continuities and discontinuities that weave and are woven into historical events. Second, the rhetorical power of the statement is suggestive of the discursive power and fabricated nature of ‘the historical’. The meanings of the notion of lifelong learning across time therefore need to be explored for the various significations in play. This chapter does not offer therefore a simple historical narrative, a diachronic story of the emergence and progression of lifelong learning as concept, policy and practice—themselves very different types of history. It engages rather with the historical as a multiple text and considers some of the more general moves in the emergence of lifelong learning and what can be learnt from this. In this way, it might be considered a work of historical sociology (Dean 1994).

Thus, when asked to write a chapter giving a ‘historical overview’ of lifelong learning, I find a series of issues in play that suggests the farcical nature of such an endeavour. Maybe that is the tragedy of history. It is in that spirit that I fabricate a mapping of lifelong learning. Given that I occupy certain spaces and places, it is perhaps less an overview and more a glimpse.

Lifelong learning

Different stories might be told about the emergence of lifelong learning as a notion. Whether it is a notion, concept, arena for debate, a discursive practice, and the range of individual, social and institutional practices encompassed by it, might be part of such stories. Lifelong learning is fabricated as an idealized goal for education (Parson 1990), a process (Parson 1990), a product (Hatton 1997), a moral duty (Wain 1991), an empirical reality to reconstruct (Belanger 1995). For some, it has a long history going back to Plato (Jarvis 1988)—although both the types of learning and its confinement to the cadres of philosopher kings suggest something very different from more contemporary notions, as does Jarvis’ section on ‘man as a lifelong learner’. Yet it is also absent from the text, if not the index, of a contemporary history of British adult education (Fieldhouse et al. 1996). It can also be said to be largely a ‘boy's (own) history’ given the gendered nature of its construction to which this chapter is yet a further contribution of course!

A search for ‘lifelong learning’ on the ERIC database elicited 1741 references between the years 1932 to 1983, an average of 34 per year. Between 1984 and 1998, the number of references to lifelong learning was 1581, an average of 112 per year. This is crude, and more refined searching, although still within the parameters of what is held on the ERIC database, would trace the historical and to a certain extent geographical emergence of lifelong learning more fully. However, it gives us the possibility of saying that there has been a developing interest in the academic study of lifelong learning throughout the twentieth century, and this has increased significantly over the last fifteen to twenty years. A comforting thought for those of us who work within this space.

However, this would be too easy, as a closer look at many of the papers identified as lifelong learning show them to be about related and differing notions, such as adult education, lifelong education, education permanente, continuing education. These related concepts might well be considered aspects of or strategies for lifelong learning, but the latter largely remains absent—lifelong learning is implied rather than explicit—a point to which I shall return. This is complicated further by language, insofar as lifelong learning is an English construct. Its historical emergence may differ therefore from related concepts and practices emerging in other parts of the globe. Sutton (1994) points out that lifelong education appeared in the English language in the 1920s. He also suggests that the various terms and their formulations in different languages has caused problems, as international organizations such as UNESCO and the OECD have promoted certain concepts in more than one language. Indeed much of the literature in the 1970s and 1980s has been generated or sponsored by UNESCO, with the OECD playing a more prominent role in recent years.

This absent-presence of lifelong learning is to be found elsewhere. A search on the British Educational Index for ‘lifelong learning’ showed that between 1986 and 1998 there were no references. Similarly, a review of a range of dictionaries and encyclopedias of education and education research brought up only four references to lifelong learning (Page and Thomas 1977, Kallen 1979, Jarvis 1990 and Sutton 1994). Interestingly, while some took the view that lifelong learning was interchangeable with lifelong education, others did not. There are also differences in the conceptualization of the family of concepts, of which lifelong learning is a part. Some (Sutton 1994) suggest a spectrum from lifelong education, lifelong learning, recurrent education and continuing education, while others (Tuijnman 1991) see lifelong education as offering a holistic and humanistic philosophy, strategies for the implementation of which are developed through the policies of recurrent education. Earlier, Kallen (1973: 62) argued for recurrent education as a planning strategy for ‘lifelong or permanent learning’. By contrast, Gustavsson (1997: 238), eliding any distinction between lifelong education and life-long learning (and what does the hyphen signify?), sees recurrent education as reductive, focusing on the economic while lifelong education is ‘idealistic … applicable for any purpose’. Hatton (1997: 363) suggests that with lifelong learning ‘living becomes an open metaphor for learning’, which suggests that rather than dying we may simply stop learning!

Kirpal (1976: 110) distinguishes between the ‘lifelong education of the emerging future and the cultural learning of traditional societies … lifelong cultural learning’. He associates the latter with religion and ritual and contrasts it with the challenges of contemporary society which demand lifelong education, the main quest of which must be a ‘global humanism’. Here lifelong education takes on a mission which would seem to threaten the cultural lifelong learning already in existence. The traditional forms of the latter also need to be contrasted with the forms of reflexive individualism associated with more current and Western views of lifelong learning. Cropley (1980: 1) argues that ‘lifelong learning existed before the emergence of current interest in it, and would continue to occur even if educators ignored it’. However, in glimpsing the history, without being named, can it be said to exist, as the only evidence we have is that which is documented? Lifelong learning might be inferred from historical descriptions, but how do we evaluate them as learning rather than other processes and practices?

It is unsurprising perhaps that Giere (1995: 387) is particularly scathing about the conceptual confusion surrounding the literature in this area:

[An] even closer look at the concepts makes them blur. It brings into sharp focus their vagueness, their atheoretical nature …, their arbitrary quality, their inherent tensions and contradictions. This has split the lifelong education publishing community into believers and non-believers.

Similary, Larsson (1997: 251) bemoans the loss of richness and precision in the diversifying meanings of lifelong learning. More controversially, Boshier (1998: 8) asserts that lifelong learning is a regressive notion in comparison to the idea of lifelong education:

lifelong learning denotes a less emancipatory and more oppressive set of relationships than does lifelong education. Lifelong learning discourses render social conditions (and inequality) invisible.

This suggests that in the English-language global academic literature, lifelong learning may be emerging as a conceptual space of its own having previously been implied by other concepts—the absent-presence mentioned earlier. In a sense then, it has been fabricated through its absence to take account of changing economic, political and cultural practices. Lifelong learning has not been the focus for study, although studies of particular organizational and curricula practices have implicitly engaged with aspects of lifelong learning. The latter has been subsumed within the literature. Its emergence as the key framing mechanism in certain countries and international organizations signifies and is part of the challenge to established institutional structures associated with trends towards greater individualization and marketization and ambivalence. In a sense, its emergence points to that which it is posited as being the answer to—uncertainty and change, for it is itself an uncertain and troubled conceptual space.

Lifelong learning

Yet in many eyes this may not be the case, as the above offers tracings from within certain academic literature within which there is no shared disciplinary affinity nor unified community of practice. Indeed, the relative lack of literature both illustrates the relatively recent emergence of lifelong learning as a framing mechanism and a certain slowness to engage with it from within the academic community.

In many ways, lifelong learning has emerged from within policy and as a policy concept influenced initially to a great extent by the work of the international bodies UNESCO (Faure et al. 1972) and the OECD (1973) and their respective prescriptions for lifelong education and recurrent education. As such, it is more prescriptive and prescriptive than descriptive and analytical, an attempt to reform the post-school arenas of education and training by harnessing them to a different agenda, to rethink their roles and contributions to lifelong learning and a learning society. Tracing the emergence and migrations of this agenda through the policy texts of local, national and international governments and organizations, public and private, would be an intriguing task (Lingard and Rizvi 1998). In some ways, it appears almost to be the equivalent of a computer ‘flaming’, or in more earthy terms, a volcanic eruption. The focus in policy moves to lifelong learning as a pragmatic and desirable means to further ends and the strategies to achieve it, displacing to a certain extent such previous strategies as lifelong education, continuing education, education permanente.

However, caution and analysis are still necessary, as the space of lifelong learning bounded within policy texts is itself diverse. In some, lifelong learning is focused on post-compulsory education and training, while others embrace aspects of schooling. In principle, it could provide a framework, like health, for considering learning from the cradle (or earlier) to the grave. Indeed lifelong learning increasingly carries with it the health warning, ‘learn or else’, a less than humane side to its conceptualization as the flourishing of human potential. Thus, a European Union White Paper (Commission of the European Communities 1995) sets out as its objectives: to encourage the acquisition of new knowledge; promote closer relations between schools and business; combat exclusion; develop proficiency in three Community languages; and treat investment in training on a par with capital investment. As Hake (1999) argues, there is a significant emphasis on initial education and training in this agenda. Similarly, the OECD (1996) calls for a strengthening of the ‘foundations of lifelong learning’ and for schools to become ‘community learning centres’, for more supple frameworks which ‘permit a more flexible response to the diverse aptitudes and backgrounds of student’. Here the OECD has moved from its notion of recurrent education which excluded initial education, to a view more in line with that of UNESCO which embraces lifelong education.

By contrast, the various reports in the UK (Kennedy 1997, NCIHE 1997 and Fryer 1997) which fed into the government's Green and White Papers on lifelong learning (Secretary of State for Education and Employment 1998 and 1999) all identify the latter as concerned with the post-school sectors of education and training. In his useful summary of these documents, Tight (1998a: 484) suggests their message to be that:

lifelong learning for all is the new imperative. Its curriculum is primarily vocational in content and intent. It is our fault if we have not participated to date. We risk social and economic exclusion if we do not participate in the future. We must pay directly for our participation.

This somewhat overstates it, but it is suggestive of the ways in which a more explicit policy focus on lifelong learning by national governments has reconfigured its conceptualization, embracing a different prescriptive framework to that articulated within the earlier documents, for instance, on lifelong education from UNESCO.

This is reflected in the alignment of lifelong learning with changes in the economy and workplace, the need to invest in human capital to ensure economic competitiveness in conditions of increasingly globalized capitalism. This maps lifelong learning to that required for employment and the workplace, the vocational and the accredited. While subject to much criticism for its limited and limiting perspective, the space of human capital may be broader than is often suggested. Two examples are suggestive. First, some, but by no means all, workplaces in parts of the globe are changing to involve team-based practices, involving a wider range of skills, a focus on self-management, interpersonal skills, etc. In some ways, this brings educational principles into the workplace and elides a certain elitist and radical dismissal of training. In certain contexts, there is a social aspect to the development of human capital. Second, where partnership rather than conflict models are to the fore, the support for trade unionism and learning opportunities provided through trade unions can be promoted as a significant part of lifelong learning. Policy spaces and policy implementation are chaotic and messy rather than rational processes. Thus, critiques of policies as merely or mostly vehicles for the development of human capital can be overstated.

A further area of concern in the policy formulations of lifelong learning is to do with its adherence to certain institutional structures. Thus, while there has been increased concern given to individuals as consumers in many countries and areas of policy, and individuals as learners, the focus has remained on reforming established structures to reconcile the agendas of different stakeholders—individuals, governments, employers, etc. For Tight (1998), this means that, for instance, the UK government Green Paper, The Learning Age, focuses on lifelong learning as participation in vocational and accredited courses rather than taking the full diversity of people's lifelong learning for granted. Of course, while at one level a fair criticism, it also overlooks the legitimate role of government in governing and organizations in managing the production of services and goods. Adults may not need structural and organizational supports to engage in learning, but governments and societies do, to pattern social and economic practices according to conditions, prognostications and possibilities. The extent to which these match the aspirations of populations and benefit them is obviously subject to analysis and contest. It is the re-patterning of those opportunities which results in certain radical propositions concerning lifelong education (Gelpi 1985), although this can be subject to the critique offered by Tight of more contemporary policies towards lifelong learning in its valuing of only certain forms of learning, those aimed at an under-theorized notion of ‘liberation’.

Lifelong learning …

There would appear to be many manifestations of lifelong learning in the glimpses we have taken of it. The above has brought to the fore human development, human capital and liberation as at play within the texts of lifelong learning—implied or explicit. No doubt we see and experience different aspects of it in our daily lives. Academics and policy makers are discussing and debating its range and significance, ways of promoting it, etc. There are professorships in lifelong learning being established. Above I have briefly explored some of the academic and policy tracings that are and can be made. With that in mind, I now want to provide a further glimpse, to begin to fabricate a recent history of lifelong learning, as it has emerged like a chrysalis from its predecessors to become a powerful family member—at least for the present.

Since the economic crises of the mid-1970s, there has been a growing interest in the development of lifelong learning opportunities among policy formers and makers in many of the industrialized countries. This has developed from and to a certain extent displaced earlier discourses of lifelong education as a condition of and for equality and (usually liberal) forms of democratic politics and citizenship. ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables and figure
• Contributors
• Introduction: Lifelong learning or permanent schooling?
• Part 1: Theoretical perspectives
• Part 2: Curriculum
• Part 3: International perspectives
• Part 4: Widening participation