Discourse Of Lifelong Learning Research Articles

Untangling ideologies in lifelong learning discourse

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to research on lifelong learning (LL) by examining discourses of multilateral organisations through the lens of ‘progressive neoliberalism’, in which contradictory ideologies of social justice movements and capitalism are hybridised (Fraser 2017). LL has been interpreted as a means of upskilling to remain competitive in the global economy or as a device for promoting social cohesion, equality and personal fulfilment. This study locates LL within the context of educating global citizens of all ages to address world crises and aims to understand underlying ideological assumptions in OECD, UNESCO, WB, EU and IB policy texts. A critical discourse analysis reveals the entanglement of largely symbolic progressive language within the confines of neoliberal capitalism. This ambiguous conceptualisation offers an incoherent framework for LL and perpetuates what Gramsci (1971) describes as a hegemonic bloc. Findings suggest that LL discourses mediate contradictions between two diverging ideological orientations, legitimise social hierarchies and power relations, and provide a superficial approach to global injustices and environmental emergencies.

Building a hybrid and networked university through long-term lifelong learning agreements with the surrounding society

The current study focused on lifelong learning as a tool for higher education institutions to build relationships with surrounding society. As a theoretical point of departure, the study built on empowerment and human capital discourses of lifelong learning and the ivory tower, the factory, and the network as modes of higher education institutions' collaboration with the surrounding society. The study focused on a lifelong learning initiative to move a higher education institution towards a hybrid and networked mode. Particularly, the initiative focused on building long-term relationships with organisations in the surrounding society. Therefore, this paper aims to report results, in terms of a preliminary conceptual framework, from a higher education lifelong learning initiative. It answers the following research question: How can higher education institutions build hybrid and networked long-term relationships with the surrounding society through lifelong learning initiatives? The study was based on a design-based research method and described and analysed the conceptual development of a Swedish collaborative lifelong learning initiative between a higher education institution and an organisation. Data included in the analysis is taken from documents and field notes, including a long-term agreement, conceptual documents, and plans. The studied initiative included three phases. The first phase, preparatory work, embraced a course for the top management team of the organisation to strengthen their ability to plan, lead and organise professional and organisational development, followed by identifying the needs of the organisation. The second phase, implementation, included dialogue and analysis of the identified needs and development and implementation of suitable courses matching prioritised needs. The third phase, follow-up, included an evaluation of the different parts of the initiative, possible impacts, and a discussion of further needs of collaboration for both professional and organisational development. The conceptual development work included the design of a hybrid and networked framework based on the idea of collaboration partners subscribing to higher education courses under a long-term agreement called POD (collaboration for Professional and Organisational Development). Among others, these PODs include regular dialogues on the needs of the organisations and courses built on networked learning principles. Bring-your-own-data is a core principle to ensure a strong link between theory and practice. The early stage of the initiative included promising results, going in the direction of becoming a hybrid and networked higher education institution by signing its first POD.

Age-friendly cities and lifelong learning

This article investigates the modern phenomenon of age friendliness, more particularly the notion of an “age-friendly city,” from both a macro perspective as well as at the level of a localized application of age friendliness in a single city. Much of the rhetoric of age-friendly conceptualization has strong affinity to the themes of lifelong learning, and proponents of each sector can benefit from mutually understanding the respective principles and implementation strategies of the other. Allied concepts of aging (“growing older”) and active aging are discussed before discussion of the main discourses of lifelong learning. A case study of an age-friendly city in New Zealand is presented wherein achievements and challenges are discussed; an argument is presented that as “close cousins,” actors within these two domains can enhance the application of their humanistic principles by closer alignment of policy and practices. Further, challenges ahead for implementation of age friendliness are discussed, some of which are shared by the lifelong learning movement.

Pastoral power manifestations within the guidance professionals’ talk on guidance practices

ABSTRACT Young people in the Nordic countries have many options and face obligations to participate in career guidance and counselling (guidance). In Finland, young people are subjected to multiple institutionalized guidance practices especially in educational transition phases. Guidance has various objectives as a public policy, thereby setting a framework for guidance professionals too. By using Foucault’s conceptualization on ‘pastoral’ power, we studied how guidance professionals (‘shepherds’) guide young people (‘the flock’) towards ‘wellbeing’. Our aim was to analyse how pastoral power is manifested in guidance practices by asking what governmental discourses the guidance professionals refer to when talking about guidance and how these discourses are practiced in guidance. Our data comprise Finnish guidance professionals’ interviews (n = 15). As a result, dominant governmental discourses of employability, economic efficiency and lifelong learning were identified. Guidance involved pastoral power and demanded employability and educability for the young. Guidance professionals have a crucial role in implementing governmental discourses into guidance practices. These practices create a narrow perspective for young people and guidance professionals, who are simultaneously the mediators and targets of governmental power.

Od nowa? Edukacja przez całe życie w polskiej polityce publicznej

Introduction: This article concerns the public policy of lifelong learning in Poland after 2000, with particular emphasis on adult education. Research Aim: The purpose of the research is to evaluate this policy from the andragogic point of view, identified with the humanistic and social approach, which places man and his well-being at the centre of social life. Evidence-based Facts: The challenge of Polish public policy is the low participation of Poles in adult education in the light of comparative studies of the European Union and the external (i.e. on the part of employers) motivation of adults to learn. The analysis of the LLL strategic documents in Poland published after 2000 proves that there has been a broadening of the understanding of lifelong learning to the areas of non-formal and informal education, with a simultaneous tendency to standardize and quantitatively approach lifelong learning powered by the theory of rational choice. It was on this basis that the main tool for implementing the LLL policy in Poland, i.e. the Integrated Qualifications System, was constructed. The contemporary model of implementing LLL in adult education is characterized by the compensatory nature of goals, a market-based approach at the organizational level, and a mixed financing system. Summary: From an andragogic point of view, LLL public policy in Poland requires a re-evaluation of the basic assumptions, i.e. the placing of democracy over the economy, social inclusion over competition, citizenship and personal development over profit and productivity. In the discourse of lifelong learning in Poland, it is the administration of competences that prevails, and not the question of their meaning and significance, as andragogues would like. The implementation of the Integrated Qualifications System means a new beginning for the Polish LLL public policy, burdened with a high risk.

Revisiting the Faure report: Contemporary legacy and challenged legitimacy

Since its publication in 1972, the Faure report has been regarded as a foundational text on the subject of lifelong learning, offering a plethora of ideas and repertoires. This article contemplates why and how the notions of self-fulfilment and self-learning are interrelated and profoundly important in understanding contemporary lifelong learning discourses, and how both have been appropriated by subsequent policy texts embedded in neoliberal thinking. The author argues that pursuing lifelong learning for self-fulfilment becomes voluntary self-exploitation as the individual’s desire to learn unwittingly becomes driven by the instinct to survive and thrive in neoliberal socio-political environments. He also demonstrates that the ideas and repertoires provided in the Faure report function as a fertile ground for lifelong learning discourses, even though the abundant mix of ideas and propositions make it difficult to view the report as an ideologically coherent and conceptually tight-knit blueprint for the future of education. Nonetheless, the author argues that the legacy of the Faure report is still valid beyond its historical specificity. He points out that when read within the context of the unprecedented worldwide experience of COVID-19, the Faure report’s proposition and reservations regarding mass media and cybernetics can shed light on the potential for contemporary technologies to strengthen emancipatory experiences of lifelong learning. Reflecting on this, he suggests that it is necessary to think collectively about how we can appreciate and harness technological innovation as an emancipatory tool to liberate ourselves from ignorance and prejudice through borderless and limitless connections to others, and to learn how to live with them.

Goals of European Adult Education Policies at Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

The article analyzes the changes in the goals of adult education policies in the European educational area during the COVID -19 pandemic. Different forms of policy changes, incremental and radical changes of goals are analyzed. Elements of historical institutionalism, discursive institutionalism and elements of rational choise policy (optimal action within the given possibilities) are used. From the analysis of documents and available analyzes, it was concluded that the dominant discourse of lifelong learning in the knowledge society has remained in the context of significant economic, demographic, health, technological and climate challenges. It is shown how the key instruments of educational policies fit into this discourse. The introduction of micro-qualifications, an individual learning account and strengthening of digital and green skills is especially presented. As the instruments are not neutral, they also contain the goals that adult education in Europe must achieve.

Lifelong learning as cruel optimism: Considering the discourses of lifelong learning and techno-solutionism in South African education.

This article seeks to examine how two discourses –of lifelong learning and techno-solutionism – tangle with each other in South African education policy imaginaries, particularly the latter discourse as a response to an (arguably manufactured) frame of “crisis”. The author suggests that the discourse of lifelong learning constructs a relation of what Lauren Berlant terms “cruel optimism” for the marginalised majority of South Africans, sustaining a fantasy of liberatory education despite empirical evidence to the contrary. First, the prevalence of this discourse in key policy texts (predominantly education policy white papers) is examined, along with how both instrumentalist and humanist framings of lifelong learning promote and sustain this relation in spite of the ordinariness of the “attrition of the subject” (in Berlant’s terms) as a defining experience of everyday life. Next, the ubiquitous frame of crisis in education analysis in South Africa is considered, along with techno-solutionism (a term coined by Evgeny Morozov in 2013) as a popular response amongst the dominant middle-class minority. The article suggests that cruel optimism is sustained for this middle-class group through techno-solutionist education utopias, as what Berlant terms a “redefinitional strategy” for manufacturing ahistorical moments of agency in the face of persistent structural issues centuries in the making. The lens of cruel optimism is thus offered as a mechanism for denaturalising the political work of both discourses, a necessary (albeit insufficient) move towards better grasping the nature of South African education concerns, as well as theories of change that might offer genuinely emancipatory learning for all.

Biopolitics and lifelong learning: the vitalistic turn in English further education discourse

ABSTRACT This paper argues that a shift in discourse about the nature and purpose of Further Education is under way in England. A recent White Paper, ‘Skills for jobs: lifelong learning for opportunity and growth’, issued by the UK government, is couched in terms which suggest that a prior reliance on the ideology of neoliberalism is now moving towards the objectives and instruments of what Michel Foucault termed biopolitics or the exploitation of life itself. I analyse the White Paper and related recent texts to show how a form of vitalist discourse accompanies attempts to accelerate potentially problematic processes of value-extraction. While these developments respond partly to the societal changes resulting from the threats to life of the Coronavirus pandemic and other existential crises, their likely impact suggests a shift in the discourses of lifelong learning: an existing apparatus of normalisation and control is now turning to biopolitical exploitation.

The signs of frenetic standstill: The concept of change in the discourse of lifelong learning and the tempo of the Czech National Qualifications Framework

The aim of this study is to interpret recent developments in the field of adult education in the Czech Republic through the theory of social acceleration. The study is designed as focused ethnography, drawing upon observation, interviewing, and document analysis. The material is read through the concepts of acceleration and frenetic standstill and contextualized in the discourses on industry 4.0 and recognition of prior learning. The study shows how the notion of constant technological change drives the Czech discourse of adult education, introducing a sense of urgency and pressing for faster developments in the further education of adults. However, the field of adult education exhibits a lack of consistency in its development, translating into absenting sense of progress. Within this context, the Czech National Qualifications Framework (NQF) has produced a steady output of qualification standards even though its internal processes have been prolonged. The tempo of the NQF and the absenting sense of progress can be read as signs of a frenetic standstill, accompanied by a high fluctuation of individuals on all levels of an organizational hierarchy. The study argues that acceleration is not driven by technological change in the observed context as the examined discourses expect. Instead, social acceleration seems to be perpetuating itself as a relatively independent force, eroding institutions that are seen as key in adapting to the incoming transition.

Investigation on the role of the lifelong learning discourse in actual governmentality

Investigation on the role of the lifelong learning discourse in actual governmentality

Discourses of lifelong learning: health as a governing technique in the shaping of the Swedish population

ABSTRACTThis article focus on how the Swedish population is shaped into desirable citizens as resources for the nation’s prosperity. The aim is to analyse how health operates as a governing technique in discourses of lifelong learning. Within such current discourses the population is today described as generally well-educated and healthy, but not educated or healthy enough. When constructed as being in need of enhancement, measures of learning are suggested for regulating certain groups of the population into becoming what is regarded as desirable. Making use of Foucault’s notions of governmentality and genealogy, white and green papers from the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs from 1930s and today (2017) are analysed. The analysis shows that although the population is described as having different problems originating from ignorance, the solutions that are suggested in the different time periods are basically the same. The relation between learning and health is described in different ways in the 1930s and the present. In the 1930s learning is explained merely as a means to achieve a healthy population while in the present health is described both as a prerequisite and as an effect of learning. Further, there is also a difference in how the governing is conducted.

DISCOURSES OF LIFELONG LEARNING AND ADULT EDUCATION: BACK TO THE FUTURE?

DISCOURSES OF LIFELONG LEARNING AND ADULT EDUCATION: BACK TO THE FUTURE?

Lifelong learning for (re)making future citizens through South Korean curriculum reforms and OECD PISA

ABSTRACT The purpose of the study is to analyze ‘systems of reason’ that govern the discursive practices constructed in terms of lifelong learning under the name of education reform. This study examined the notion of lifelong learning as a cultural thesis describing modes of life for producing (future) citizens through an analysis of documents from the OECD and South Korea. Along with other OECD member countries, South Korea is deeply involved in a contemporary discourse about educational reform that includes lifelong learning. At the center of this discussion in South Korea, there is an increasing amount of attention being given to comparison, standardization, and school accountability. School accountability in relation to student achievement aims to make citizens more intelligible; it also aims for effective transformations of national education systems and greater productivity and competitiveness nationally. However, (inter)national discourses about lifelong learning are not neutral elements that explain the present and plans for the future, but systems of reason associated with the construction of a particular mode of life for students. Findings of the study suggested that the lifelong learning discourse by the OECD and South Korea embody a particular category for creating particular images and narratives of students and citizens. National boundaries of education systems are now being crossed because of supranational governance of education. Examining the OECD and its influence can draw attention to who the student and the citizen should be and who is excluded from the space of success. By exploring these issues at national and international levels, the study presented how the discourses of the OECD and South Korea are assembled and connected.

Governmentality of disability in the context of lifelong learning in European Union policy

ABSTRACT The possibility to participate in education and lifelong learning has been introduced in EU disability policy in recent decades as one of the key means to improve the socioeconomic position of disabled persons. Simultaneously, lifelong learning has been developed as the defining concept of EU education policy to increase social cohesion and economic competitiveness. However, the education, employment rate and socioeconomic status of disabled persons have remained far below the EU average. In this article, we theorize governmentality to explore (1) how EU lifelong learning and disability policy discourses constitute and govern disabled persons and (2) how disabled persons are positioned in the policy discourses. The data consist of the most relevant EU policy documents concerning lifelong learning and disability policy in the twenty-first century. We argue that the policies constitute and govern disabled persons as a group who do not fulfil the premises set for the lifelong learner, and that consequently, policy discourses marginalize disabled persons instead.

Strengthening early childhood and school sector continuities in producing the lifelong learner in Aotearoa New Zealand

Recent education policy analysis has revealed the standardisation of education systems and an intensified focus on learners and learning to meet the requirements of the global economy and neo-liberalism. In this paper we analyse the way that early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand has become increasingly entangled with school sector priorities and international discourses of lifelong learning as it has encountered these requirements. We trace the shift from an explict rejecting and countering of school sector pedagogy to the promoting of increasing continuity with school sector priorities. We draw attention to dynamic, contrasting and competing interests and entities that have shaped the construction of learning and learners and curriculum and assessment priorities. We argue the need to attend to the complex mix of constitutive forces at work in the formulation and enactment of early childhood sector priorities, in particular to these crucial entanglements with school sector priorities, international discourses of lifelong learning and neo-liberal economic rationalities.

Social inclusion and active citizenship under the prism of neoliberalism: A critical analysis of the European Union’s discourse of lifelong learning

The aim of this article is to investigate the impact neoliberalism has in shaping the discourse of the European Union’s policy of Lifelong Learning. The literature review initially presents the theoretical framework of neoliberalism as the dominant ideological and economic paradigm of our time. Thereafter, it takes a view on how neoliberalism perceives the four objectives of the European Union’s Lifelong Learning policy, namely employability/adaptability, personal fulfillment, social inclusion, and active citizenship. Through the analysis of European Commission’s policy documents on Lifelong Learning, this article explores whether these objectives, with focus on social inclusion and active citizenship, can be realized within the ideological, political, and economic framework set by the neoliberal paradigm. The data underwent Qualitative Analysis using the methods of Critical Discourse Analysis and Qualitative Content Analysis as well as Quantitative Analysis of textual data. The results indicate that only employability and adaptability seem to be compatible with the neoliberal rhetoric since the flexible and adaptable employee better serves the needs of the markets. The role neoliberalism holds for the individual is that of the consumer, product user, and voter. Therefore, the non-economic objectives of Lifelong Learning cannot be equally developed as they constitute the complete antithesis of neoliberalism’s basic principles.

ICTs for non-formal education in rural Thailand

Non-formal education (NFE) has a role to play in the education of marginalised groups such as out-of-school adults. NFE is based in the discourse of lifelong learning with its agenda of economic growth and active citizenship. This discourse requires moving beyond traditional conceptualisations of primary, secondary and tertiary education to conceptualise lifelong learning as formal, non-formal and informal. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can potentially support NFE, but not enough is known about this potential. This study investigated ICT use in NFE in rural Thailand. The study compared collaboration, content knowledge and satisfaction in a Career Education course between students learning face-to-face (F2F) versus students learning F2F with desktop computers (F2F+DT). We compared the same variables in an English in Daily Life course between students learning F2F versus students learning F2F with mobile phones (F2F+M). Comparisons of the F2F and F2F+DT modes revealed no significant difference in content knowledge, in students’ perceptions of collaboration or in satisfaction. Comparison of the F2F and F2F+M modes revealed content knowledge and satisfaction were higher for the F2F+M mode but there was no significant difference for collaboration. Comparisons of F2F+DT with F2F+M revealed no significant difference for content knowledge or for satisfaction. The F2F+M mode was significantly higher for perceptions of collaboration.

Older adult education in two universities: A comparison in the New Zealand and Scottish contexts

This article examines the character of older adult education provision in two universities at opposite ends of the globe. The universities of Waikato (New Zealand) and Strathclyde (Scotland) are analysed in terms of specific domains: funding, curriculum and provision, older people’s participation and university–community relationships. These two universities’ work in these areas is contextualised in the wider framework of prevailing societal trends, lifelong learning discourses, higher education, and adult and community education. While both institutions have much in common from the perspective of a British influence, there are significant differences across the four domains as both universities contest the right to engage with older adults’ learning in a neoliberal environment.

Groundhog day? Nietzsche, Deleuze and the eternal return of prosumption in lifelong learning

This conceptual article examines George Ritzer’s concept of prosumption in the context of lifelong learning in the United Kingdom. Ritzer’s references to prosumption as a form of eternal return of a ‘primal act’, which draw on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Gilles Deleuze, introduce some ambiguity into the concept. This ambiguity echoes a certain polarization in the debate about co-creation, especially regarding the nature of consumer participation in the creation of value, but it is central to defining the limits of consumer freedom and agency. Critical analysis of UK lifelong learning discourse shows how prosumption can work as a tool of control in this context, producing docile subjectivities, compliant forms of creative co-production and disposable ‘nothing’ products through repetition and a return of the same. Where prosumption is able to challenge this repetition, however, it involves creativity and the return of difference. These examples show how eternal return, ultimately, underpins prosumption’s claim to offer a valid description of emerging practices of prosuming lifelong learners.