Towards recognition of Lifelong Learning

2. Lifelong Education, Lifelong Learning, and the State 2.1 Some basic concepts for education policy analysis This book discusses ALE strategies in the European context. It also looks at education and training policies and even discusses policies that have been developed in non-European countries and regions. This discussion is sustained by certain concepts that are set out and explained below. Education policy, education politics, and strategies of education The discussion of ALE policies involves several levels of analysis, including the debate on education policy, education politics, and strategies of education.

2005

British Journal of Educational Studies, 2013

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 article tackles on the social and cultural dimension of education, illustrated in the concept of lifelong learning/ continuous formation and the developments of this type of education in a specific institution: Babeș-Bolyai, Romania. The first part introduces a theoretical background of the concept and the challenges to incorporate it under cultural policies. The paper proposes an approach of the cultural dimension on the one hand as a cause – a framework for social policies, seen from the perspective of the issues in the social area, and on the other hand as an effect – the result of such issues that lead to the inclusion of the cultural dimension on the agenda and among the priorities of the EU. The second part is a study case of a continuous formation program initiated by a higher education institution, analyzing the attempt to offer adult education to a community. It also contains a report of lifelong learning strategies integrated at Babeș-Bolyai University and a detailed report of the program that is unrolling at the moment. Keywords: lifelong learning, social policies, cultural policies, university in community.