Life-wide Learning Research Articles

The Application of Mind Mapping into College Computer Programming Teaching

Mind mapping is an effective diagramming tool which can be used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, solving problems etc. In this paper we focus on mind mapping application in programming language teaching for application-oriented undergraduate colleges. We adopt mind mapping teaching method to design and transform the abstract and invisible thinking mode into visible and radioactive thinking mode according to the teaching contents. The analysis and teaching practice show that it can strengthen the students’ ability of logical thinking and innovative thinking, motivate the development of students’ life-wide learning thinking, and enhance the students’ understanding.

Lifewide learning – Challenges for Andragogy

Background and aimsA “society in change” needs experts that are competent to support change processes at many places. This paper describes why Andragogy/Andragogues could play an important role in these changes. The aim is to widen the perception to the potential of Andragogy as a profession and to strengthen the identity of Andragogues.MethodsFor this, the concept of “lifelong learning” is complemented with the concept of “lifewide learning,” reminding that adult learning and education encompasses more than just teaching events. The methods are theory- and literature-reference, practical work (research and development), and empirical research.ResultsResearch confirms that Andragogues actually work successfully in a variety of functions and institutions, theories are available for a widened understanding of the role of Andragogues. As a result, it is claimed that the identity of Andragogues is not defined by specific institutions or one single function; a shared identity of Andragogues can be based on the...

Smart learning environments for a smart city: from the perspective of lifelong and lifewide learning

In the perspective of lifelong learning, lifewide learning and learning society, learning environments have expanded from schools to a more broader space, and even to the whole city. School, family, community, workplace, and museum can be regarded as typical learning environments in a smart city. But few research about learning environments had been found on the combination of schools, families, communities and other learning situations. The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the characteristics of typical learning environments in smart cities, as well as the relationship of these learning environments. A mixed survey was carried out, a secondary analysis of statistical data of 68 cities was conducted, and a telephone survey with a sample of 13,600 people in 68 cities was used for data collection. It was found that there were significant differences in the development levels of five typical learning environments in smart cities, i.e., school, family, community, workplace, and museum learning environments. Some relations among the five typical learning environments were found.School had high relationship with community and museum learning environments. Family was strongly correlated with workplace and museum learning environments. Community was associated with museum, family, and school learning environments, but no significant relation existed between participation in community activities and workplace learning. As a public learning space, museum was related to all other learning environments. Further research should be taken to explore the reasons behind these correlations and their influencing factors.

Citizenship education ‘goes global’: extra-curricular learning in an overseas campus of a British civic university

Active citizenship is increasingly being framed in the context of lifelong and life-wide learning. However, research on young people’s participation in and experience of different forms of civic practice, particularly in informal settings in different sociocultural contexts, is scarce. Consequently, little is known about how these experiences shape their learning about active citizenship, their understanding of the self and their relationship to society. This paper reports findings from a small-scale qualitative research on students’ experiences of participation in extra-curricular activities (ECAs) in a UK Transnational Higher Education institution in China, in relation to the development of active citizenship and lifelong learning capacity. The findings suggest ECAs can provide opportunities for students to accumulate knowledge and develop skills, attitudes and values that underpin the promotion of active citizenship, while developing habits and skills essential for lifelong learning.

Book Review: Self-construction and social transformation: Lifelong, lifewide and life-deep learning

Book Review: Self-construction and social transformation: Lifelong, lifewide and life-deep learning

Lifewide Learning for Early Reading Development.

The authors examine the relationships between children's reading abilities and the enabling environment for learning in the context of Save the Children's Literacy Boost program. They conceptualize the enabling environment at a micro level, with two components: the home literacy environment, represented by reading materials/habits at home, and the community learning environment (community reading activities). Using longitudinal reading scores of 6,874 students in 424 schools in 12 sites across Africa and Asia, there was 1) a modest but consistent relationship between students' home literacy environments and reading scores, and 2) a strong relationship between reading gains and participation in community reading activities, suggesting that interventions should consider both home and community learning environments and their differential influences on interventions across different low-resource settings.

The rise and fall of life-wide learning for adults in England

This article analyses policy and practice in social and cultural education for adults in England in the post Second World War era, beginning with the flowering of municipal adult education and the expansion of university extra-mural provision. It tracks the emerging policy focus on extending participation to under-represented groups, and on securing a rich breadth of curriculum (life-wide learning), which flowered in the 1990s. It maps, and deprecates the subsequent narrowing of public investment to an increasingly utilitarian focus on qualifications for labour market participation with the rise of Treasury (finance ministry) influence on adult learning policy from 2003. Evidence of the wider benefits that derive from participation in learning is used to re-assert the case for publicly accessible lifelong, life-wide education for adults.

Reflections on Patricia Cranton's work as mentor and friend

Scholar, mentor, and humanist, Patricia Cranton touched the lives of numerous scholars and students, and leaves a formidable legacy to the field of education. Her passing in early 2016 left a significant gap in many lives and an important legacy in the adult education literature. This article provides an account of Patricia Cranton's influential contributions to the field of Education from the perspective of an international colleague and friend. It reveals aspects of mentoring and contributions to lifelong and lifewide learning. The article brings to the fore the wisdom she imparted through her publications in addition to noting some of the awards of highest order Patricia Cranton received during her life time.

Evaluating Lifewide Learning Habits of Academicians for Sustainable Development

Abstract In today’s higher education institutions in which sustainable development has been highly emphasized, individuals have changed the understanding of graduates of higher education; as such universities have emerged into a reconstruction period. In such a process, universities have been in need of academicians who are well development in both personal and professional domains. The concept of Lifewide learning, which is an important sustainable development tool, has underlined the fact that people should graduate as wholly-developed people to fulfill the needs of future societies, which releases the idea that academicians are to be role models for students. This study reflects on the research designed to develop and test an instrument that could identify the component of an academician’s Lifewide learning habits. Because of the complex nature of the Lifewide learning, considerable attempts were made in order to handle the process of classifying the cognitive, affective, social, technical and cultural domains related to academicians working in faculties of education. The developed instrument was trialled with 50 academicians, and the data was subjected to an explanatory factor analysis, allowing the identification of 6 sub-dimensions of Lifewide learning. These dimensions appeared to be capable of differentiating between problem-solving, professional habits, cultural interaction, leadership, care-based habits and leisure habits of academicians. The final version of the scale was applied to 211 academicians from faculties of education at 30 universities via “Google Drive”, and Lifewide habits of related people were assessed regarding their gender, title and department. Depending on the collected data, Lifewide learning habits of academicians were discussed, and some suggestions were proposed to support their professional and personal development.

Affordance theory and multiple language learning and teaching

ABSTRACTThis article argues that the concept of affordances as put forward by James J. Gibson can make a major contribution to our understanding of multilingualism. It can throw some light on multilingualism in general as well as on specific aspects like successful and unsuccessful transfer, the challenges involved in teaching for multilingualism, opportunities for enhancing learner autonomy as well as for creating a sound basis for lifelong and lifewide learning, the particular importance of cooperative learning in multilingual settings, the pivotal role of motivation in multiple language learning, the effects of the political and social context on the emergence, maintenance or decay of multilingualism and the possibility of developing new quality criteria for multilingualism research. Affordance theory with its focus on the individual, the environment and the emergent character of language learning opportunities is particularly well-suited for dealing with the complexity of individual and societal multilingualism. As affordances are located between past experience and potential future action affordance theory takes prior learning experiences, future learning opportunities as well as situational motivational factors into account.

Representing learning lives: what does it mean to map learning journeys?

‘Learning lives’, a double articulation both describing lifelong and life wide learning and the role learning plays in developing identity, relies on a process of portrayal. The vocabulary used to make sense of learning across contexts and over time is spatial in origin and metaphorical in application. Key terms include: mapping, connecting, navigating, tracing, pathways, vectors and networks. I suggest that we are now developing ways of representing learning that depend significantly on forms of narration, the filmic gaze and a visual frame making the concept of a “learning journey” more visible. Yet as we appear to capture and represent complicated forms of learning in “non-educational” contexts so the paradigm of studying such learning as movement is thrown into question.

A Family Business as a Space for Intergenerational Learning Interactions

The broadening use of the concepts of lifelong and lifewide learning has opened space for exploring learning processes beyond official educational institutions providing formal education. Environments where adults learn intensively in both informal and non-formal ways include businesses. The specific environment of family businesses is an attractive research topic in the context of intergenerational learning and consistent with the concept of workplace learning (Evans, Hodkinson, Rainbird, & Unwin, 2006; Novotný, 2009). A family business is a place where intergenerational learning is a necessary and desirable part of its everyday operation. One might even speculate that the success of the family business depends to a certain extent on intergenerational learning among the employees, who happen to be family members. This aspect of family businesses has not yet received research interest in the Czech Republic. This chapter presents findings concerning intergenerational learning interactions in family businesses, what initiates these learning interactions, and their form and content. The findings are then related to organizational culture, i.e. the culture of the family business.

Intergenerational Learning with ICT: A Case Study

In a context of rapid demographic and technological changes, digital skills are essential in order for citizens to actively participate in society. However, digital literacy for all citizens, especially for the older population, is not yet a reality. It is increasingly crucial for active ageing, lifelong learning, and life-wide learning that the elderly learn digital skills. Intergenerational learning can play a key role in achieving a wide range of goals. This paper focuses on the contribution of intergenerational learning to digital and social inclusion. We promoted ICT intergenerational workshops and chose the case study methodology to study three distinct cases of intergenerational learning with ICT. The results show that intergenerational learning with ICT contributes to the digital literacy of adults and seniors and fosters lifelong learning, active ageing, and understanding and solidarity among generations. We reveal the benefits of the intergenerational learning process for all participants and suggest some ways to achieve intergenerational learning through ICT in order to build more socially and digitally cohesive societies.

Lessons from the Road: Travel, Lifewide Learning, and Higher Education

Programs across the higher education landscape, including tourism education, are increasingly embracing experiential learning approaches, as provided through field schools, study abroad trips, and international internships. Most work on the value of such programs has tended to start in the most obvious place, by focusing on the programs themselves, the experiences students have with them, and the outcomes that ensue. Lurking beneath work on organized study trips, however, are deeper questions about the connections between learning and travel itself. What is it about travel that promotes learning? Are there certain conditions of travel that tend to be relevant for facilitating particular kinds of learning, and even for potentially transforming the way people see themselves and the world? This article briefly summarizes the outcomes of an empirical study on the relationship between travel and learning, for the purpose of offering discussion regarding how the insights derived from this work might be useful in the development and management of educational travel programs, in order to facilitate transformational learning and empowerment among students.

From Driver Safety to Lifelong Learning: Some Early Research Contributions

Although Arthur Cropley is best known today for his work on creativity and education, in the early part of his career he made substantial contributions to the understanding of driving behavior and traffic safety that had important implications for public policy and legislation. He also helped develop an approach to attitude measurement, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods, which has been used successfully in a number of applied settings. His extensive writings on lifelong learning culminated in a well-received monograph that was one of the first attempts to advocate a greater role for higher education in promoting lifelong and life-wide learning skills.

Autobiographical Methods for Broader Lifelong and Lifewide Learning for All: A Research Based on Original Format

Nowadays we are living in hyper-connected and increasingly knowledge-based societies, where their citizens need ever higher skills and knowledge “equipments”. Several recent international surveys agree that it is crucial and strategic what people know, what people know to know and how they can effectively and profitably use what they know to work, live and improve their life chances, not only about earnings and employment but also about health and social active relationships, as i.e. reported in PIAAC by OECD (2013). In this framework, we’re pursuing a qualitative research based on a original format who allow to collect autobiographical writings as well as key-words and key-experiences people lived. Autobiographical writings, indeed, collected through an original format titled “Parole di una vita. Parole per…” and elaborated by the research team allow to remember, focus on and give senses and meanings to all people lifelong and lifewide experienced, to better understand what they lived and did, what are their skills, education attainments and literacy, and even their lack, what have influenced their choices so to better understand past to better plan their future. We will report some interesting results from the survey, whose data have been analyzed through grounded theory principles, which will show autobiographical format is useful in education and self-education, especially in a perspective of lifelong and lifewide learning.

Lifelong literacy: Some trends and issues in conceptualising and operationalising literacy from a lifelong learning perspective

In a fast-changing and highly inequitable world, lifelong learning is becoming increasingly important, not only as a key organising principle for all forms of education and learning but also as an absolute necessity for everyone. It is particularly important for disadvantaged individuals and groups who have been excluded from or failed to acquire basic competencies through formal schooling. Within a lifelong learning framework, literacy and numeracy are viewed as foundation skills which are the core of basic education and indispensable to full participation in society. This article discusses recent developments in conceptualising literacy as a foundation of lifelong learning. Starting from the evolving notions of adult literacy, the author identifies some current trends, the most important being that literacy is now perceived as a learning continuum of different proficiency levels. Dichotomous states of being either “literate” or “illiterate” no longer apply. She analyses (1) findings extracted from UNESCO Member States’ national reports submitted to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) for the 2nd Global Report on Adult Learning and Education; (2) a desk study of national literacy campaigns and programmes as well as (3) some recent developments in formal education. Her suggested three-dimensional analytical framework considers literacy as a lifelong and life-wide learning process and as part of lifelong learning systems. She draws a number of conclusions for policy and practice of literacy as a foundation of lifelong learning. These conclusions are a timely contribution to the ongoing post-2015 education debate, in particular to the challenge of how to mainstream youth and adult literacy into the implementation of the sustainable development agenda for 2015–2030.

The chain of lifelong learning: linking private and public; singular and societal

We concluded the last issue of this journal with a paper by discussing how lifelong/ lifewide learning is being operationalised in adult education in New Zealand. The author identified significant tension between the market-oriented priorities of the state and the life development needs of adult learners (Zepke 2015). We begin this issue on a similar note, with an analysis by Kapil Dev Regmi of a broad range of national and international policy documents on lifelong learning. The author identifies two principal models that underlie most of these policies; the ‘‘human capital model’’ and the ‘‘humanistic model’’. The former aims to increase productive capacity by encouraging competition, privatisation and human capital formation so as to enhance economic growth. The latter aims to strengthen democracy and social welfare by fostering citizenship education, building social capital and expanding capability. The advantage of boiling things down to these two models is that we can more easily identify the main ideological seams that run through the lifelong learning discourse. In this paper, entitled ‘‘Lifelong learning: Foundational models, underlying assumptions and critiques’’, Regmi adopts a dispassionate and even-handed approach, advocating for neither of the two models. Rather, he succeeds in revealing the assumptions and rationales that motivate the two strands, presenting the arguments for and against each model. One of the main critiques of the human capital model is that it is founded on competitiveness, which, while enhancing efficiency in some circumstances, produces losers as well as winners. Its critics also charge that it fosters acquiescence with the existing order, rather than active critical citizenship. This model is reflected in policies advanced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and, to a lesser extent, the European Union, and has had most influence in the Anglophone

Out of Europe

The demands laid on the individual by increasingly fragmented life-wide learning imperatives lead to constant pressure on adults of 'migratory background' to display agency and take up a position vis-à-vis cultural-ethnic 'belonging', while around them an integration/assimilation debate continues to rage in German public discourse. The focus of this paper will therefore be the experiences of transition and transformation in learning biographies which are often experienced as self-'translation'. The paper will address agency, inclusion/exclusion in the learning biographies of young adults who straddle the precarious identity of German-Turk/Turk-German. I use here talk elicited in the learning biography of a student of Turkish origin. The assertion of agency-in-diversity is given voice in uneven ways. The extracts allow us to listen closely to the workings of agency in the subjective, shared experience related in auto/biographical narratives.

The co-curriculum: Re-defining boundaries of academic spaces

The University of the Western Cape, South Africa, invited two renowned speakers to address issues concerning the co-curriculum in a colloquium on 14 May 2014 entitled “The co-curriculum: An integrated practice or fragments at the fringes of university experience?”. Impetus for this colloquium came from the emergent policies at various universities in South Africa, such as the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of the Western Cape, which aim to promote and regulate the co-curricular spaces. Debates surrounding the co-curriculum raise issues of boundaries and roles, not only traditional boundaries of what constitutes academic spaces, but also who teaches and what is learnt. Notions of the co-curriculum challenge the very raison d’etre of traditional higher education. Education is re-contextualised and includes the intersection of the curriculum with student life. The notion of the co-curriculum encompasses issues of student engagement, lifelong and life-wide learning (Jackson, 2010), student development and support, authentic learning and graduate attributes, the uncommon–traditional and the ubiquitous–non-traditional student and how these issues relate to student success. Student affairs is a key role-player in shaping and enabling complex learning within the many explicit and invisible curricula in higher education that are contributors to student success. The understanding of learning, on the one hand, as a segmented and boundaried event, or on the other, as a seamless experience of inand out-of-classroom development, impacts on the conceptualisation of higher education learning and development. The co-curriculum and engagement are such a catch-all and “loose concept that both those who advocate neoliberal reforms in higher education and those who oppose them tend to agree that it is a good thing” (Klemencic, 2013) – so no one is really sure what it is and what it entails. While South Africa is asking questions about the co-curriculum, it seems the higher education sector across the globe is also grappling with it. This is evident in some of the definitions, which include terms like customer satisfaction, holistic development, citizenship, skills development and have slogans such as “shape your own future” and