Lifespan Learning: Implications for Educators

Abstract

This chapter describes implications of lifespan learning for educators. The basic activities in the learning process include some which are internal to the individual taking in information, searching for, and assigning meaning, and value to information, utilizing information, making decisions, acting, and receiving feedback from internal sources on the consequences of actions, and some which involve the external environment receiving feedback from external sources about the consequences of actions, interacting with objects, and other persons, and having access to additional sources of new information. The learning process continues as the individual searches for, and assigns meaning and value to information. Personal meanings and values are often idiosyncratic, and emerge from the ways in which an individual makes sense of direct personal experience. Social meanings and values are acquired through socialization, and make it possible for members of the same social group to communicate with each other.