Enhancing the interactive relationship between lifelong learning and social changes to carry out a learning society in Taiwan

Abstract

A national white paper was published in 1998 with 14 action plans to be the blueprints for developing lifelong learning. These were based on continuously strong recommendations of academics and lobbying groups in Taiwan. Many national policies were formulated and implemented based on the white paper and its action plans, and this has paved a way towards establishing a learning society. The Lifelong Learning Law took effect on 26 June 2004 and has laid a foundation for improving lifelong learning. However, mainly because of the frequent transfers of national governments, national lifelong learning policy‐making is becoming unstable. It is essential for academics and practitioners in Taiwan to search for more critical and influential arguments to pursue policy‐makers to develop lifelong learning. Enhancing the interactive relationship between lifelong learning and social changes would be the key to achieve that. The author analyses significant and concrete phenomena of Taiwan's social changes such as shift of population structure first and then explores how lifelong learning policy‐making can reflect the changes and lead the changes to achieve the vision of education for all. In Taiwan, the crucial challenges of lifelong learning would be how to make sustainable policies to respond to more multicultural groups of the social population. Since the ingredients of population are changing in the context of sociocultures, enhancing the interactive relationship between lifelong learning and social changes is getting critical. These Taiwan's current issues could be found the similarities in other counterparts.