Is lifelong learning still useful? Disappointments and prospects for rediscovery

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the potential significance of a concept of lifelong learning in the context of digital disruption. Having noted some contemporary contrasts in the visibility of lifelong learning policy, it revisits the earlier more widespread dominance of the concept, identifying not only variety but also tensions that are inherent and constituent. Drawing on examples from England and Singapore, difficulties arising from compass, scope and fluidity of goals are discussed, illustrating how lifelong learning can lose its meaning. The paper then turns to the prospects for a new concept of lifelong learning that may be more sustainable and meaningful in a context characterised by digital and other changes to the nature of work, suggesting that such a concept must be both life-facing and work-facing.

KEYWORDS:

• Lifelong learning
• digital disruption
• tension and fluidity of goals
• UK & Singapore

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Phil Brown, Arthur Chia and the other members of the Futures of Work: Reimagining Jobs, Skills and Education for a Digital Age research project team for our ongoing discussions in that project about lifelong learning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. For example: ‘Economic need alone is not driving the urgency to act. The social need is equally pressing: we need to offer everyone the chance of a lifetime of sustained employment and the opportunity to progress to the highest skills levels’ (UK GOV 2016, 22)

2. Though there are concerns that within the sustainable development goal 4 (‘Quality Education’), early indications are that the role of adult education is being interpreted rather narrowly (see Webb et al. 2019).

3. See James (2019) for an account of this contrast in regard to FE and skills policy.

4. Which in the UK includes a long history of provision starting with Workers Educational Association activities from the early 1900s and was sometimes prominent in government thinking, e.g. the Ministry of Reconstruction (1919) and the ‘Russell report’ (DES 1973). Liberal adult education enjoyed political support from across the spectrum – notably, from Sir Winston Churchill (See Holford 2016)

5. It is important to acknowledge that whilst the relative cultural valuing of academic and vocational qualifications varies from place to place, the relative undervaluing of vocational qualifications is especially widespread.

6. The irony here is that acting only on vocational training in the name of a lifelong learning policy will itself suggest that lifelong learning policies are ‘really’ about educational activity that is post-school.

7. Van de Pas was Director-General, European Commission Directorate for Education and Culture.

8. We are all accustomed to making this point in relation to the decline in ‘jobs for life’. Digital transformation gives the familiar point a new urgency.

9. Wheelahan’s 2012 book chapter presents the argument that in Australian VET, the instrumentalism of a narrowly-conceived competency model has incorporated ideas from constructivism (perhaps to make it more palatable for the professionals concerned?) but the net result is to deny the significance of knowledge, thereby undermining vocational programmes and denying access to ‘powerful knowledge’ (a la Michael Young’s work).

10. For example, Uflexreward.com, linked to Unilever, which is developing new types of agile contract formation between workers and companies. ‘Our mission is to help you inspire your employees by giving them the flexibility to personalise their reward package, and to provide you with an integrated global reward system to digitise, consolidate, and review your entire reward ecosystem’. See https://www.uflexreward.com/Accessed 19 June 2020.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David James

David James is Professor of Sociology of Education in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University.  His research spans governance, teaching, learning and assessment across educational settings, most often focusing on further, vocational, professional and higher education.  He chairs the Executive Editors of theBritish Journal of Sociology of Education.