Influencing factors on lifelong learning and HRD practices: a comparison of seven European countries

The European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) is organised annually by the European Educational Research Association (EERA) to provide a European forum on discourse about the latest research findings on education in Europe and world-wide. This conference aims to foster mutual work and communication amongst researchers in Europe and encourage dialogue between researchers and those involved in decision-making in both policy and practice fields. Selected papers have been indexed from TD/TNC 62.562 to TD/TNC 62.595.

This paper presents the emerging results of a pan-European research project investigating the links between human resource development (HRD) practices and lifelong learning in learning-oriented organisations. The management team is based at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and the six partner institutions are drawn from Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom. The European Consortium for the Learning Organisation (ECLO) is also a partner. The paper begins with a brief description of the project and then focuses on one aspect of the research - identifying and exploring factors which influence lifelong learning. These factors were categorised as those which inhibited and those which facilitated a learning orientation within an organisation. The authors discuss the various factors and their positive or negative influences, and also the significant finding that the same factors could have both inhibiting and supportive influence. Show less