Concepts and Definitions of Lifelong Learning

This chapter introduces key concepts, including lifelong education, lifelong learning, recurrent education, and the learning society, and outlines key issues that have shaped this field. Firstly, the origins and main understandings of lifelong learning and cognate concepts from the 1970s are discussed. Commonalities across these key concepts are highlighted, as are crucial differences that created conflicting understandings. A schema is presented to compare and classify different understandings of the concepts. Secondly, the resurgence of interest in lifelong learning from the 1990s onward is traced, and the reasons for it are discussed. These include economic competitiveness and globalization, as well as the more recent emphases on knowledge creation and the learning society. The rise to pre-eminence of the concept of lifelong learning has put an unprecedented focus on learning itself. However, diverse understandings about the nature of learning have fueled ongoing disagreements about the role and significance of lifelong learning. Some interpretations limit the scope of learning to the kinds characteristic of formal education systems. Others regard lifelong learning as covering all kinds of informal learning. These differing valuations underpin much of the ongoing disputes about lifelong learning. Thirdly, the emerging notion of the learning society is outlined and discussed. Debates around the learning society have produced new variants of four common criticisms leveled earlier at lifelong education and lifelong learning. The conceptual conflicts stimulated by the notion of the learning society continue the now familiar pattern of major disagreements that earlier marked the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning.