Making lifelong learning a reality: a handbook

The complexities of modern life demand adaptability - populations that are resilient, open to change and willing to engage in learning throughout life. Increased mobility, population displacement, the climate crisis, technological change, threats to global health and democratic systems, and new patterns of production and consumption affect, in different ways, all countries in the world. Lifelong learning (LLL) represents an effective and potentially transformational means of addressing many of these challenges. This handbook provides information, evidence and basic conceptual models to facilitate the adoption of LLL in national and local settings. It provides evidence from diverse initiatives and describes some of the contemporary issues to which LLL responds - including how it shapes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This handbook can be used by anyone tasked with or interested in the promotion and facilitation of LLL. It is designed to be particularly useful to national policy-makers.

The handbook is structured in such a way as to guide the reader from the basics of LLL as a concept to the concrete implementation of LLL initiatives. Chapter one introduces LLL as an integrated policy for sustainable development, chapter two provides guidance for the formulation of national LLL policies, chapter three supports the design of national LLL implementation strategies that address contemporary issues and, finally, chapter four moves to the local level and relates the guidance of previous chapters to the UNESCO learning city model.

Edited excerpts from publication. Show less