This book critically reflects on the context in which lifelong learning policies and practices are organized in Europe with contributions of researchers and policy makers in the field. Through a critical lens the book reinterprets the core content of the messages that are conveyed by the European Commission in the ‘Memorandum for Lifelong Learning’, the most important policy document in the area, which after a decade from its publication still remains the vehicle for all current developments in lifelong learning in Europe. With references to research findings, proposed actions, and applications to immediate practice that have an added value for Europeans - but which either do not appear to correspond directly to what is stipulated by the European Commission, or are completely ignored as part of the lifelong learning process - the book offers an analytic and systematic outlook of the main challenges in creating the ‘European area of lifelong learning’. The book follows the same structure as the Memorandum in order to debate and critically approach in separate sections the core issues that Europe faces today in relation to the idea of making a ‘European area of lifelong learning’.
Summary from publisher’s website.
The chapters are: Introduction / Maria Gravani and George K. Zarifis; Part one, ‘Lifelong Learning and New Basic Skills for lifelong learning’, contains: The skills: a chimera of modern European adult education / Katarina Popovic; Computer literacy among the generations: how can older adults participate in digital society? / Bernhard Schmidt-Hertha and Claudia Strobel; Basic skills for becoming a citizen / Emilio Lucio-Villegas; ‘New basic skills’, nonbasic skills, knowledge practices and judgment: tensions between the needs of basic literacy, of vocational education and training, and of higher and professional learning / Martin Gough; Part two, ‘Lifelong learning and more investment in human resources’, contains: Incentives and disincentives to invest in human resources / Marcella Milana; An inconsistent policy: lifelong learning and adult education policy towards competitive advantage / Paula Guimaraes and Fatima Antunes; Vocational education: the tension between educational flexibility and predictability / Eva Andersson and Gun-Britt Warvik; Lifelong learning and employability / Andreas Fejes; Human capital and human activity in lifelong learning / Despina Tsakiris; Part three, ‘Lifelong learning, innovative teaching and learning, and rethinking guidance and counselling’, contains: Re-representing education’s image and status: in the ‘interest’ of pedagogical innovation / Stephen O’Brien; Teaching methods and professional teaching in adult education: questioning the Memorandum’s understanding of professional teaching / Regina Egetenmeyer and Patrick Bettinger; From ‘innovation’ to ‘quality’: the topic of professionalization for adult learning staff in selected European policy documents / Simona Sava; Being an adult learner and learning through life / Larissa Jogi; Perspectives on guidance and counselling as strategic tools to improve lifelong learning in Portugal / Maria Paula Paixao, Jose Tomas da Silva and Albertina L. Oliveira; Part four, ‘Lifelong learning and valuing learning’, contains: Contradicting values in the policy discourse on lifelong learning / Nils Bernhardsson; Quality in adult learning: EU policies and shifting paradigms? / Bert-Jan Buiskool and Simon Broek; The adoption of an international education policy agenda at national level: conceptual and governance issues / Alexandra Ioannidou; Vocational learning: shifting relationships between education and working life / Erik Kats and Jaap van Lakerveld; Evaluating learning and the work of a researcher in the era of lifelong learning / Kristiina Brunila; What about the learner-search for identity and meaning in autobiographic methods / Laura Formenti and Michaela Castiglioni; Part five, ‘Lifelong learning and bringing learning closer to home’, contains: ‘Bringing learning closer to home’: understanding ‘outreach work’ as a mobilization strategy to increase participation in adult learning / Barry Hake; Lifelong learning and schools as community learning centres: key aspects of a national curriculum draft policy framework for Malta / Peter Mayo; The rise and fall and rise again of learning cities / Lynette Jordan, Norman Longworth and Michael Osborne; Collective dimensions in lifelong education and learning: political and pedagogical reflections / Francoise F. Laot; Reinstating the invisible: a proposed framework for European learning collectives / George K. Zarifis and Maria Gravani.
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