Institutionalization of Lifelong Learning in Europe and East Asia: from the Complexity Systems perspective

Abstract

East Asia shows newly emerging experiments in lifelong learning that contrast with European experiences. The concepts and ideas share a similar platform, while the trajectories of institutionalization reveal great differences. It is because the idea of lifelong learning was coined by international agencies, like UNESCO, to share, it rather shows divergent mode of institutionalization in different contexts. In this article, I intend to grasp the particular characteristics of ‘institution formation’ in lifelong learning practices, especially shown in East Asian countries, including the Republic of Korea, Japan, and China. In so doing, I adopt social systems theories in interpreting the phenomena. Education is presumed to be a social system, or ‘autopoiesis’ that functionally differentiates and expands itself by self-referential reproduction. In this context, lifelong learning is a relative newcomer with new frameworks and ideas, which sometimes conflict with traditional education, and institutionalizes itself by competing the contested terrains of the system, most of which are preoccupied by early sectors of education. In this paper, I focus on how the ‘idea’ of lifelong learning embodies into the system, secures its own education spaces, and keeps expansive reproductions as a part of the education system in general.