Lifewide Learning: History of an idea

Norman Jackson

This chapter critically reflects on research on lifelong learning in the twenty-first century in three sections. The first section provides a brief overview of the history of lifelong learning, from its emergence in the 1960s to the present day, which we have categorized into three generations. In the “first generation” of lifelong learning, situated in the 1960s and 1970s, the concept was rooted in a progressive policy agenda invoking a broader learning perspective, although much of the research focused on the formal educational system. In the 1980s, in what has been labelled “the second generation,” driven by a neoliberal political economy, the discourse shifted towards investment in human capital and employability. The period of the “third generation” balanced the humanistic and instrumental approaches of the two previous generations while still prioritizing the employability aspect. The second section reviews previous research on lifelong learning, focusing on research for lifelong learning policy and research of lifelong learning policy. The third section discusses contemporary trends in research on lifelong learning and uses the UN Sustainability agenda to outline a research program that will consider long-standing social and economic challenges, made even more acute in the Covid-19 world. Against the background of the insights gathered from 70 years of research on lifelong learning and the dramatic inequalities that challenge the future of our societies, there is a need to go beyond the current focus on measurable outcomes and the utilitarian skills agenda in favor of greater attention to the democratic, nonformal, and pedagogical dimensions of lifelong learning.

This paper aims to understand and challenge the concept of humanity that has been embed in the meaning of lifelong learning, while asking the question: Is a new theory of lifelong learning practice possible? The paper argues that the concept and practice of contemporary lifelong learning is generally rooted in classical and neoclassical economics, which is the basis of the neoliberal agenda. Thus, the concept of lifelong learning dehumanizes and damages human beings and society. Drawing upon the analogy of the Tin Man, a character in the Wizard of Oz, this paper presents people’s struggle and hope for attaining humanity. Therefore, I suggest three fundamental actions, which are inspired by Polanyi (2001), for facilitating and creating possibilities for people’s humanization and re-signification of lifelong learning as education for all aspects of human life.

This chapter provides an introduction to the Lifewide Learning and Education in Universities and Colleges E-Book. It begins with a short commentary on the idea of lifewide learning and the core educational concepts underlying the idea. The value of an ecological perspective and relationship between lifewide learning and open education are also considered. Drawing on the contributions to the e-book, the chapter describes the characteristics and variations between different institutional approaches and provides some simple conceptual aids to enabling differences to be appreciated. Support for lifewide learning and development has grown rapidly in UK HE in the last few years. The speed of growth and diversity of approaches used by higher education institutions to recognise students' development and achievement beyond the academic curriculum appears to be unique to the UK suggesting that particular educational, economic and political reasons are causing this change. We might speculate that current developments in supporting lifewide learning in universities and colleges are developing learners in ways that will assist them in participating in open forms of learning in the future and build capacities for evaluating their own learning needs, designing and implementing their own pathways for development, and reflecting on the progress they are making. In short, UK HE is orienting itself towards a future where learning is lifelong, lifewide and open (Redecker 2014).

CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea Norman J Jackson SUMMARY This chapter provides a historical perspective on the origin and development of the lifewide learning and education to which it is hoped later contributions in the book can relate. The origin of these ideas can be seen in the educational philosophy and writings of John Dewey and Eduard Lindeman in the 1920s and 30s. For much of its history lifewide learning has been subsumed within the idea of lifelong learning promoted, since the 1970s, in the education policies of international agencies such as UNESCO, OECD, World Bank and EU Commission. Lifelong and lifewide learning are considered to be necessary for learning societies which view the whole of life as opportunity for learning. Different conceptions of lifelong/lifewide learning may emphasise one or more purposes of learning namely for: personal fulfilment, citizenship, social inclusion/social justice and work/employment. Jost Reischmann (1986) is credited with the first explicit use of the term 'lifewide learning' in the context of his all embracing concept of adult learning. In the first decade of the 21st century the idea is becoming more relevant to educational and social policy and practice and it has been utilised in a range of educational and learning contexts. According to an EU Foresight report, the future of learning is 'lifelong and lifewide.' BIOGRAPHY Norman Jackson is Emeritus Professor at the University of Surrey, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Director of the Lifewide Education Community Interest Company which he founded in 2011. Between 2005-11 he was Director of the Surrey Centre for Excellence in Professional Training and Education (SCEPTrE) which developed and implemented the idea of lifewide learning and education in a university environment. During a long career in higher education he has been a teacher, course tutor, researcher, inspector, policy creator and developer, and he has held senior positions with Her Majesty's Inspectorate, Higher Education Quality Council, Quality Assurance Agency, Learning and Teaching and Support Network and Higher Education Quality Council. His work on students' creative development and lifewide education are responses to his concerns that higher education could be doing more to prepare students for the complexities and challenges of a modern world. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 1 A PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE This e-book is devoted to exploring ideas and sharing perspectives on the related concepts of lifewide learning, personal development and education. But where do such ideas come from? In 2008, when I first thought that a 'lifewide curriculum' (Jackson 2008a) neatly embodied what in my mind would be an enlightened form of higher education, I felt energised by the idea that my concept of lifewide learning had grown out of a concern to help higher education students develop themselves for the complexities of the complex world they would inhabit. Furthermore, I could relate these ideas to another concern that I felt passionate about, namely how we might encourage and facilitate students' creative development (Jackson 2008b). It was only later when I began to connect my ideas to the history of lifewide learning ideas and practices that I realised I was merely revisiting ideas that had already been thoroughly examined and explored. Although I reached these ideas by my own experiences and thought processes, my original contribution was, in collaboration with others, to contextualise these ideas and create an educational design that could be implemented in my educational situation (Jackson et al 2011). This process of self-discovery served to remind me that, whenever we develop something we think is novel, we are nearly always standing on the shoulders of others. Through this realisation my conviction in the lifewide learning idea grew - for here was I discovering for myself what others, with far greater intellects than my own, had already discovered. And that, I suspect, is the way long standing ideas are given new life and new meanings: meanings that reflect the orientations, interests, passions and circumstances of the re-creator. In this chapter I will try to provide what can only ever be a partial account of the way in which the idea of lifewide learning (and the attendant ideas of lifewide development and lifewide education) have been brought into existence and continually adapted, extended and re-positioned in new contexts for new purposes. Indeed, the idea itself has its own lifecourse with dimensions of time, place and context which continually shape its meaning, value and use. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE There are two different but connected sources for the growth of ideas about lifewide learning. The first and most sustained influence, relates to scholars and educators (thought leaders and educational inventors) working mainly but not exclusively in the field of adult education. The second, and politically most influential, is the growth of ideas about lifelong learning by thought leaders in the national and international policy making community. The evolution of the lifelong/lifewide idea within these professional communities, is characterised by the interaction of the intermingling of thoughtful exposition and critique, political rhetoric for a rapidly changing perpetually challenging world and learning from the experience of applying the idea. These are the drivers of the history of an idea. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 2 Origins of lifewide learning idea The concept of 'lifewideness' in learning and education is not a new idea. It can, like all educational movements that are based on experiential learning, be traced back to the thinking of John Dewey. In the 1920s and 30s Dewey was critical of the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained content-based approach of traditional education which he believed was too concerned with delivering knowledge and not concerned enough with understanding students' actual experiences of learning. Dewey (1938) argued that to provide education that was effective in preparing people for life we must relate education much more closely to life. He argued that before educators designed educational experiences they must first understand the nature of human experience. Such experiences he maintained arose from the interaction of two principles - continuity and interaction. Continuity recognises that each experience a person has will influence his/her future life for better or for worse, while interaction refers to the situational influence on one's experience. In other words, one's present experience is a function of the interaction between one's past experiences and the present situation. The value of the experience must be judged by the effect that experience has on the individuals’ present, their future, and the extent to which the individual is able to contribute to society. Armed with this theory of the role of experience in learning, educators could set about organising subject matter in a way that took account of students' past experiences and provided them with new experiences to stimulate their development. We can see in these ideas the philosophical underpinning for lifewide learning and education. Dewey influenced many educators and in the 1920s and 30s one educator in particular, Eduard Lindeman, did much to put his ideas into practice. His inspiring vision for an all embracing form of education set out in 'The Meaning of Adult Education' (Lindeman 1926, see also Smith 2004) was not bound by classrooms and formal curricula. Rather it involved a concern for the educational possibilities of everyday life; non-vocational ideals; situations not subjects; and people's experiences. Many of his ideas and beliefs are as relevant today as they were in the rapidly changing world of the 1920s, and they provide foundation principles for our contemporary view of lifewide and lifelong learning and education. A fresh hope is astir. From many quarters comes the call to a new kind of education with its initial assumption affirming that education is life - not merely preparation for an unknown kind of future living. Consequently all static concepts of education which relegate the learning process to the period of youth are abandoned. The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings. This new venture is called adult education not because it is confined to adults but because adulthood, maturity, defines its limits... Secondly, education conceived as a process coterminous with life revolves about nonvocational ideals. In this world of specialists everyone will of necessity learn to do his work, and if education of any variety can assist in this and in the further end of helping the worker to see the meaning of his labor, it will be education of a high order. But adult education more accurately defined begins where vocational education leaves off. Its purpose is to put meaning into the whole of life. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 3 Thirdly, the approach to adult education will be via the route of situations, not subjects. Our academic system has grown in reverse order; subjects and teachers constitute the starting-point, students are secondary. In conventional education the student is required to adjust himself to an established curriculum; in adult education the curriculum is built around the student's needs and interests. Every adult person finds himself in specific situations with respect to his work, his recreation, his family-life, his community-life et cetera - situations which call for adjustments. Adult education begins at this point. Subject matter is brought into the situation, is put to work, when needed. Texts and teachers play a new and secondary role in this type of education; they must give way to the primary importance of the learner... The situation-approach to education means that the learning process is at the outset given a setting of reality. Intelligence performs its functions in relation to actualities, not abstractions. In the fourth place, the resource of highest value in adult education is the learner's experience. If education is life, then life is also education. Too much of learning consists of vicarious substitution of someone else's experience and knowledge. Psychology is teaching us, however, that we learn what we do, and that therefore all genuine education will keep doing and thinking together. Authoritative teaching, examinations which preclude original thinking, rigid pedagogical formulae - all of these have no place in adult education...... Small groups of aspiring adults who desire to keep their minds fresh and vigorous; who begin to learn by confronting pertinent situations; who dig down into the reservoirs of their experience before resorting to texts and secondary facts; who are led in the discussion by teachers who are also searchers after wisdom and not oracles: this constitutes the setting for adult education, the modern quest for life's meaning (Lindeman 1926:4-7 - reproduced with permission from the encyclopaedia of informal education www.infed.org). The first explicit use and elaboration of the actual term ‘lifewide learning’ (of which I am currently aware) was by Jost Reischmann in 1986 to represent the full scope of adult learning and development. it seems important to me to point out, that “adult learning” and “lifelong learning” not only include intentional learning; it includes as well unintentional, hidden, small scale, incidental learning (see Figure 1). To make aware of this wide “universe”, the whole life embracing understanding of the learning of adults I will use the expression “lifewide learning” (Reischmann 1986:3). Reischmann's view of adult lifewide learning (Figure 1) was comprehensive and it provides the foundation for contemporary concepts of lifewide learning (for example Jackson 2011a). all adults already have a universe of knowledge and strategies at their disposal that enables them to live their lives in a complex and changing world. No matter which field we take under consideration - profession, family, leisure, time, political, cultural, social behaviour, valuing - we will find wide fields of knowledge, abilities, attitudes that are available and clearly do not come from any form of outside organized education (Reischmann 1986:1). Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 4 Figure 1 The all embracing concept of lifewide learning developed by Jost Reischmann (Reischmann 2004 based on an earlier diagram Reischmann 1986:3) Reischmann's particular contribution (building on the work of Cann, 1984) was in recognising the incidental nature of much of adult learning: learning that complements the teacher-directed or self-directed intentional learning. This type of learning is of course present in the whole of our life, not just our learning as adults. He coined the term learning 'en passant' (learning in passing) to describe this type of learning and described its general characteristics in the following terms. this learning is low compulsory and highly individualized: it can happen - or not, and different people learn different things from the same situation. This type of learning cannot be produced in advance; there is nothing like a prepared curriculum; it only can be identified by looking back. Often this learning is holistic; it includes not only knowledge, but also reality-handling, emotions, valuing. By being integrated into reasonable activities it is meaningful and useful in itself, which means that it is not only stored for later use. It is successful without much effort (with increasing explicit effort we move over by definition to self-directed or formal learning). It uses a wide variety of support (people, media, objects, institutions), educationally prepared as well as natural. Often it uses and continues and reactivates and builds on previous learning. The level of threat, stress, and frustration is mostly low, or even a feeling of success, interest, thrill can be observed. This learning teaches answers as well as it opens questions when incorporating it into the set of Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 5 experiences the person already has. All these situations can be used as a basis for further learning. And they can be a starting point for intentional learning (Reischmann, 1986:2). In responding to criticisms that he had created unnatural boundaries between what he called 'fields of lifewide learning', Reischmann (2004, 2011) added the concept of 'compositional learning', whereby people compose their learning by bringing their knowledge together from different sources and connecting, combining and integrating it in ways that are meaningful to them. in addition to “learning en passant” I use today the phrase “compositional learning” to make aware that learners themselves compose many sources together when going through a learning experience: Reading books, talking to friends, watching television, exchanging with experts in hardware shops or pharmacies, starting trial and error, participating in the local adult education offerings, google, talk to their children … (Comment added to 1986 paper in 2004, Reischmann, 1986:7). In the endnotes I include a communication from Professor Reischmann, who very kindly offered his perspectives on the background to how he came to develop the idea of lifewide learning i. Important role of adult educators and theorists Reischmann's concept of lifewide learning was founded on a long tradition of thinking and practice in the adult education world. Dewey, Lindeman and Yeaxlee, who wrote the first book on lifelong education ii (Yeaxlee 1929), created a legacy of thinking and practice that influenced many educators and theorists including Knowles (1970), Freire (1972, 1995), Tough (1979), Brookfield (1983), Reischman (1986) and Jarvis (1987 & 1995). These writers continued to emphasise (1) the value of problem solving and learning from experience, (2) the community building benefits of adult education (3) its transformative and emancipatory outcomes and (4) the importance of self-directed/autodidactic learning. In the latter are the seeds of the psychological models of self-regulation (eg Schunk and Zimmerman 1998, Zimmerman 2000). Dewey's educational philosophies influenced many educational theorists including Robert Keegan, David Kolb, Carl Rogers, David Boud, and Donald Schön who have in turn influenced many other people who are involved in education. All these thinkers and writers provide important perspectives on learning which influence our evolving understandings of lifewide learning and personal development in a modern world. Carl Rogers in particular (Rogers 1961) provides important insights into the process of becoming a person and how teachers and mentors might facilitate this process. Influence of UNESCO The political importance of lifelong learning was stimulated by the UNESCO-sponsored review of education and publication of 'Learning to be - the world of education today and tomorrow' (Faure et al 1972). In the introduction to this report, Edgar Faure outlined a vision for lifelong learning and education. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 6 Four basic assumptions underlay our work from the start. The first, which was indeed the justification for the task we undertook, is that of the existence of an international community which amidst the variety of nations and cultures, of political options and degrees of development, is reflected in common aspirations, problems and trends, and in its movement towards one and the same destiny. The corollary to this is the fundamental solidarity of governments and of peoples, despite transitory differences and conflicts. The second is belief in democracy, conceived of as implying each man's (sic) right to realize his own potential and to share in the building of his own future. The keystone of democracy, so conceived, is education - not only education that is accessible to all, but education whose aims and methods have been thought out afresh. The third assumption is that the aim of development is the complete fulfilment of man, in all the richness of his personality, the complexity of his forms of expression and his various commitments - as individual, member of a family and of a community, citizen and producer, inventor of techniques and creative dreamer. Our last assumption is that only an over-all, lifelong education can produce the kind of complete man the need for whom is increasing with the continually more stringent constraints tearing the individual asunder. We should no longer assiduously acquire knowledge once and for all, but learn how to build up a continually evolving body of knowledge all through life - 'learn to be'. (Faure et al 1972:v) This report provided a stimulus for new conceptions of learning, development and education as policy makers, educators and economists began to examine the implications of lifelong learning. Twenty years later these ideas were reiterated and positioned in the context of learning for the 21st century in the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century report, 'Learning: The Treasure Within' (Delors et al 1996). This report emphasised the importance of the four pillars of education: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. Like its predecessor, this report stimulated much thinking in the adult education and policy world, and the 'lifewide' dimension of lifelong learning began to be considered in its own right. For example the 'Learning Without Frontiers' website last updated in November 1999 states: An increasingly complex and tumultuous world requires individuals and communities to be able to continually develop and utilize different kinds of knowledge frameworks, value systems, intelligence structures and skills in order to make sense of, adapt to and contribute to change in their social and physical environment in constructive and non-violent ways. Within this broader vision of human consciousness and participation, notions of lifelong and lifewide learning must take on new meanings. Learning can no longer be viewed as a ritual that one engages in during only the early part of one's life with an occasional refresher course to cater for incidental needs during adulthood. Nor can the value of learning be seen in one-dimensional terms as related only to obtaining a job. iii Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 7 That these ideas influenced Governments and educators is undeniable. By 1999 consultation documents used to promote thinking about reform of the Hong Kong education system were using the idea of lifewide learning (Education Commission Hong Kong 1999). Contemporary views on lifewide learning The lifewide learning concept began to emerge as a serious idea in the policy world over a decade after Reischmann (1986) had defined its meaning. A report by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket 2000) described the relationship between lifelong and lifewide learning in these terms. The lifelong dimension represents what the individual learns throughout the whole lifespan. Knowledge rapidly becomes obsolete and it is necessary for the individual to update knowledge and competence in a continuous process of learning. Education cannot be limited to the time spent in school, the individual must have a real opportunity to learn throughout life. The lifelong dimension is non-problematic, what is essential is that the individual learns throughout life. The lifewide dimension refers to the fact that learning takes place in a variety of different environments and situations, and is not only confined to the formal educational system. Lifewide learning covers formal, non-formal and informal learning (Skolverket 2000:18). The idea was picked up by economists concerned with measuring value in lifelong learning. A presentation entitled ‘Measuring the Impact of the New Economy in Education Sector Outputs’ dated 2002 on the UK Government Statistics Office website makes reference to ‘measuring lifewide learning’. Richard Desjardins (2004), utilised the idea of lifewide learning in his conceptual framework for the economic evaluation of lifelong learning and these ways of thinking were incorporated into a number of reports by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for example (OECD 2007:10). Learning does not occur just in school – it is both ‘lifewide’ (ie it occurs in multiple contexts, such as work, at home and in our social lives) and ‘lifelong’ (from cradle to grave). These different types of learning affect each other in a wide variety of ways. Their impact in terms of the outcomes of learning is equally complex – whether it is in the economic and social spheres, the individual and collective, the monetary and the non-monetary. Further complicating the picture are substantial gaps in our knowledge based on a number of issues, including the following: • The cumulative and interactive impacts of lifewide and lifelong learning • The potential impacts of informal learning, later interventions in adulthood or even different types of formal education • And the impacts of different curricula (general, academic, vocational) and impacts of different learning at different stages. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 8 Interest in lifewide learning and personal development was also growing in the USA, the home of liberal arts education. The influential report 'Learning Reconsidered: A CampusWide Focus On The Student Experience' (NASPA & ACPA 2004) did much to raise awareness of the lifewide dimension of students' learning. Although the words lifewide learning were not used, the report did promote action on campuses towards greater recognition and support for the holistic development of students through the whole of their campus experience. Learning is a complex, holistic, multi-centric activity that occurs throughout and across the college experience. Student development, and the adaptation of learning to students’ lives and needs, are fundamental parts of engaged learning and liberal education. True liberal education requires the engagement of the whole student – and the deployment of every resource in higher education (NASPA & ACPA 2004:6). Figure 2 The LIFE Centre Lifelong and Lifewide Learning Diagram (Banks et al 2007:9). The large rectangle represents the hours we have available in our life in which we are active (16 hours per day). It contains all of our learning environments - both informal (diagonal hatching) and formal (no shading ). The percentage figures give the approximate time we spend involved in formal learning situations as a percentage of the 16 hours. 16 W A K I N G 18.5% 7.7 5.1 UG GRAD H O U R S 0 -5Y Gr1......... 12 WORK RETIREMENT At the same time as the NASPA report was published, the Life Centre iv was established as a USA National Science Foundation Science of Learning Centre. Its purpose is to develop and test principles regarding the social foundations of learning. Life Centre investigators focus on complex human learning over the lifespan with the goal of understanding how and why human social processes affect learning. The Life Centre developed a representation (Figure 2) to provide a visualisation of the amount of time people spend learning in formal and informal learning environments. This representation shows clearly that most of our learning occurs in informal settings. Young children from birth to five years of age learn primarily in informal settings; and adults, after they have completed their formal education, learn in informal workplace environments. Even when children are at school, they spend less than 19% of their total time in formal education settings, a figure which reduces to about 10% during higher education study. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 9 In one of the pieces of research sponsored by the Life Centre, 'Learning in and out of school in diverse environments: Lifelong, Lifewide, Lifedeep’. Banks et al (2007) elaborate the dimensions of lifelong learning in everyday language. Life-long learning refers to the acquisition of fundamental behaviours (eg walking and recognizing faces) and real-world information (eg objects fall when dropped, steeper inclines require more exertion than gradual ones). Learning that extends from our childhood into old age includes all the ways we manage interpersonal sociability, reflect our belief systems, and orient to new experiences. Most of the time, such learning is intuited, “picked up,” and unconscious. Life-long learning may conjure up specific kinds of information that relate primarily to career choices and the practical needs of daily living. As learners have gained all these sorts of information, they have also developed particular skills on which effective and satisfying performance depends. Generally, learners prefer to seek out information and acquire ways of doing things because they are motivated to do so by their interests, curiosity, pleasure, and sense that they have talents to support a move toward certain kinds of tasks and challenges. Whether learning to play the banjo, build wooden boats, or whip up a perfect chocolate cake, learners take in information and techniques through observing, trying, testing, and finding satisfaction. Orientation toward these efforts begins in infancy and continues into old age. Life-wide learning involves a breadth of experiences, guides, and locations and includes core issues such as adversity, comfort, and support in our lives. It takes in everything from knowing as a seven year old how to say no to chocolate cake at a friend’s birthday party without explaining your allergy to learning how to predict traffic patterns on a busy freeway. It tells an individual where an open parking space might be in a crowded town centre and helps her figure out how to regroup if her wallet is stolen during a vacation in an unfamiliar city. This learning carries individuals through adaptation to new situations, ranging from unfamiliar terms and instructions on tax forms to relocation from one apartment complex to another. Negotiating human relationships, health maintenance, household budget management, and employment changes reminds learners that the wider the reach of their sets of skills, the better life runs. An individual needs only to face a plumbing problem during a holiday, misunderstand the fine print of an insurance policy, or puzzle over an unexpected credit rating to see the need for broad general know-how. If individuals cannot take care of these issues themselves, they at least want to know how to find someone they can trust either to do these tasks for them or to help them learn how to do them. Life-deep learning embraces religious, moral, ethical, and social values that guide what people believe, how they act, and how they judge themselves and others. Fundamental Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 10 in such learning is language. The symbol-making and processing capacity of humans is one of the most remarkable of human traits, underlying what they think and do and many of the ways they learn (Banks et al 2007:12). Banks et al (ibid) provide a concise summary of these three dimensions of learning (Table 1). Table 1 Summary of characteristics of lifelong, lifewide and lifedeep learning (Banks et al 2007:13) LIFE-LONG LEARNING Language and interactional strategies that determine orientations toward engaging one’s body and mind in learning. This learning begins in our earliest experiences of play, physical activity, and opportunities to plan and carry out ideas and work projects alone and with others. This learning shapes our foundation for curiosity, eagerness, communication, and persistence in continuing to learn and to keep on learning. LIFE-WIDE LEARNING Experience in management of ourselves and others, of time and space, and of unexpected circumstances, turns of events, and crises. This learning brings skill and attitudinal frames for adaptation. Here we figure out how to adapt, to transport knowledge and skills gained in one situation to another, and to transform direct experience into strategies and tactics for future use. LIFE-DEEP LEARNING Beliefs, values, ideologies, and orientations to life. Life-deep learning scaffolds all our ways of approaching challenges and undergoing change. Religious, moral, ethical, and social learning bring life-deep learning that enables us to guide our actions, judge ourselves and others, and express to ourselves and others how we feel and what we believe. LEARNING FOR THE FUTURE We are now educating young people who will become the citizens and workers in the first half of the 21st century - a student graduating from university today might still be working in 2060. The historical perspectives outlined in the above chart the progress of thinking about learning in a modern world. In an attempt to look over the horizon, the EU commissioned a Foresight study in 2010. The report of this study, 'The Future of Learning: Preparing for Change' (Redecker et al 2011) incorporated the concept of lifewide learning into its central learning paradigm. The future of learning : The overall vision is that personalisation, collaboration and informalisation (informal learning) will be at the core of learning in the future. These terms are not new in education and training but they will become the central guiding principle for organising learning and teaching. The central learning paradigm is thus characterised by lifelong and lifewide learning and shaped by the ubiquity of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). At the same time, due to fast advances in technology and structural changes to European labour markets related to demographic change, globalisation and immigration, generic and transversal skills are becoming more important. These skills should help citizens to become lifelong learners who flexibly respond to change, are able to pro-actively develop their competences and Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 11 thrive in collaborative learning and working environments. From these, and other perspectives outlined below, it would seem that thought leaders are increasingly recognising the value of a multidimensional visualisation of the lifelong learning concept. There seems to have been a shift in the policy world from the idea that lifewide learning is implicit within the lifelong learning paradigm to seeing it as an explicit dimension, worthy of consideration in its own right. But what about the present? Fifteen years ago William Strauss and Neil Howe (1997) predicted that at the start of the 21st century we would be involved in a great 'turning', after three earlier turnings that defined different periods: • 1950s - optimism, security, pragmatism, prosperity and social conservatism • 1960s-70s - cultural and spiritual awakening • 1980s-90s - individualism, self-centredness and general unravelling • 2000s - economic collapse, insecurity and conflict How true these predictions have turned out to be as we have experienced turmoil and collapse in the banking sector, economic recession, austerity measures resulting in massive cuts to public services, rising unemployment and social unrest, as the gap between the haves and have-nots widens. At the same there is a perception that inequalities in our society (UK) are growing rather than shrinking. Furthermore, general instability in the world reflected in the prolonged underperformance of financial markets, the Euro-crisis and the inability of Government to stimulate economic growth, undermines our confidence in a more prosperous future. Surveys tell us that most people feel that they are worse off than they were five years ago, as the costs of living escalate, taxes rise, pay levels remain static or fall, the value of pensions is eroded and we have to pay more and work longer in order to achieve the same benefits that were available only a short time ago. For the first time most young people believe that they will not be able to better their parents' standard of living. This is a very different world from that of the last fifty years. But out of this turbulent period, which is testing the very fabric of our society, Strauss and Howe (ibid) predicted that new structures, cultures and politics, as well as value and belief systems would grow and these would be profoundly different to that which existed before. This is the defining moment in which we now live and we have the opportunity to help implant new ways of thinking and behaviour through which a new prosperity and social order can grow. The time is right for thinking freshly about what it means to educate for an unstable world and to educate so that people are more able to create a better future world. This is the context in 2012 in which the ideas of lifewide learning and education are being developed and propagated. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 12 Andrew Hargreaves echoes these concerns and identified (Hargreaves 2011:339) four imperatives for the times we live in: • the economic imperative of developing 21st century learning [and learners] for an innovative and creative [knowledge-based] economy • the social justice imperative of developing better lives for all in a world that reduces inequalities • the ecological imperative of education for sustainable living • the generational imperative of developing dynamic and responsible citizens and leaders for the future who can properly address the other three imperatives. Addressing these imperatives is the challenge confronting every education system in the developed world and the contribution this book will make is to examine the potential that a lifewide approach to learning, education and personal development can make to meeting these challenges. Twenty-first century enlightenment Matthew Taylor provides another complementary perspective on the idea of educating for the modern world. In his essay on the Twenty-first century Enlightenment, Taylor (2010) argued that we need to develop new (enlightened) perspectives that are more relevant to the world of today. His approach was to revisit the key Enlightenment ideas of autonomy, universalism, and the human end purpose of our acts (Todorov 2009) and ground them in emerging models of human nature. In relation to the idea of autonomy – that every individual should be able to make their own choices about their own life free from overbearing religious and political authority – I suggest we need to aim for a self-aware form of autonomy, informed by a deeper appreciation of the foundations, possibilities and frailties of human nature. In relation to universalism – the idea that all people are deserving of dignity and share fundamental rights – I suggest we pay more attention to our capacity for empathy, which is not only vital to thriving in an interdependent world but is the motivation for acting on universalism. In relation to the humanist principle – that we should organise the world according to what is best for human beings – I argue that we should more often ask what is progress and acknowledge the fundamentally ethical nature of this question. (Taylor 2010:7-8). Taylor identifies what he calls a 'social aspiration gap' in UK society. In my first RSA annual lecture (Taylor 2007)....I described what I called a ‘social aspiration gap’ between the kind of future to which most people in a moderate, reasonably cohesive society like the UK aspire, and our trajectory relying on current modes of thought and behaviour. This gap can be said to comprise three dimensions; three ways in which tomorrow’s citizens need, in aggregate, to be different to today’s. First, citizens need to be more engaged, by which I mean more willing to appreciate the choices society faces, to get involved in those choices, to give permission to their leaders Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 13 to make the right decisions for all of us for the long term, and to recognise how their own behaviour shapes those choices..... Second, with the cost of labour intensive public services bound to rise, citizens need to be more self-sufficient and resourceful. Whether it is looking after our health, investing in our education, saving for our retirement or setting up our own business, we need to be comfortable with managing our own lives and confident about taking initiative. Third, we need to be more pro-social, behaving in ways which strengthen society, contributing to what the writer on social capital, David Halpernv, calls the hidden wealth of nations; our capacity for trust, caring and co-operation. Some of these issues featured in the 2010 election campaign. This suggested that the gap is less one of recognition and more one of intent. We seem to see that things need to be different, and that this has implications for us all, while responding to the empty promise that change can be achieved without challenging any of our assumptions and behaviours (Taylor 2010:8 ). These three challenges provide another test for any new proposals for educational reform: • more active and engaged citizens • more self-sufficient and resourceful citizens • more pro-social citizens, behaving in ways which strengthen society, At the heart of Taylor's analysis of how we need to develop ourselves to respond to these twenty first century challenges are two big ideas. The first is the development of greater self-awareness. Twenty-first century enlightenment involves championing a more self-aware, socially embedded model of autonomy. This does not mean repudiating the rights of the individual. Nor does it underestimate our unique and amazing ability deliberately to shape our own destinies. Indeed, it is by understanding that our conscious thought is only part of what drives our behaviour that we can become better able to exercise selfcontrol (Taylor, 2010:12). The second big idea is 'empathic universalism'. The emotional foundation for universalism is empathy.... Empathic capacity is also a core competency for twenty first century citizens. There have been many attempts to predict the path of human development once we have met our basic material needs and moved beyond the allure of consumerist individualism. The highest stages usually involve a deeper level of self-awareness and self-expression. The classic model is Abraham Maslow’s vi hierarchy of needs topped by the concept of self-actualisation, which he described in these terms: “The intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately of what is the organism itself . . . self-actualization is growth motivated rather than deficiency-motivated” (Taylor, 2010:16). Learning, information and knowledge-hungry societies Lifelong and lifewide learning are inextricably linked to the idea of learning societies. In such societies learning and living become synonymous and all of society's activities and Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 14 institutions become sites for learning. Zee (1998:78) defined a learning society as one 'in which learning is the whole of life and the whole of life is learning.' Gerwitz (2008: 417) makes the useful distinction between learning to live and living to learn. I am using the term ‘learning to live’ to stand for all the ways in which learning can be instrumentalised as preparation for life. This includes education for economic and civic participation at all levels of the education system from early years to higher education. By ‘living to learn’ I am referring to the ways in which all aspects of life are increasingly translated into domains of learning. This, for example, includes every aspect of the life course, from prenatal to third-age learning, and every aspect of the self, including emotional and spiritual as well as cognitive and moral components. Gewirtz (ibid) also identifies the four discourses about the purposes of learning in representations of learning to live and living to learn namely, discourses about personal fulfilment, citizenship, social inclusion /social justice and work-related learning (Gewirtz 2008:415-16) . Each of these different discourses can have different ideological inflexions... that are more or less conservative or progressive. To a large extent the model of the learning society with which we operate will depend upon how these discourses are combined, the relative emphasis placed on them, and the different ideological inflexions given to them. Personal fulfilment makes the purpose of learning to 'become human' the central purpose of all social institutions, indeed society itself. This discourse emphasises the ways in which learning produces personal development, personal growth and potentially personal fulfilment. Citizenship [stresses] the duties and entitlements of individuals in relation to other members of society, or increasingly future generations and helping to create a sustainable environment. Social inclusion or social justice - relates to... concerns that include social solidarity, equality of access, and respect for difference. Such discourses emphasise, for example, the role that learning can play in securing universal access to the skills deemed necessary for full participation in a ‘knowledge-based’ society, in promoting a sense of community, and in enhancing intercultural understanding and communication. More radical versions of these discourses – for example, those inspired by the emancipatory politics of Freire and the critical pedagogy school – emphasise justice rather than inclusion. Here, the concern is with promoting the kind of learning that can empower working class and minority groups to engage critically with and actively challenge the social and political injustices that shape their everyday lives. Work-related learning [emphasises the relationship] between learning in and through work. [This discourse] often produces quite narrow and instrumentalised conceptions of education as a means of enhancing individual employability and national and international economic competitiveness within a globalised economy. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 15 A particular conception or representation of lifelong/lifewide learning may emphasise one or more of these discourses or seek to combine and integrate them all. Learning societies are also information and knowledge-rich societies. An information society is a society where the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic, political, and cultural activity. The knowledge economy is its economic counterpart, whereby wealth is created through the economic exploitation of understanding. vii Such societies need highly skilled knowledge workers to function and maintain their competitive advantage and concepts of lifelong/lifewide learning are very much connected with sustaining the knowledge production enterprise. Knowledge and knowing The emphasis on knowledge begs the question - what do we mean by knowledge? How people understand what knowledge is and the way they develop the knowledge and knowings necessary for being in the world is of fundamental importance as societies develop strategies to prepare their people for their future. All too often education takes a narrow view of knowledge and knowing. Disciplinary education tends to value codified and theoretical knowledge and its utilisation by learners in abstract problem solving. This is not to say that handling complex information in this way is not useful – far from it: it is an essential process for enabling learners to develop the cognitive maturity required to function effectively in a modern world. Cognitive maturity (Baxter Magolda 2004:6-10) is characterised by the ability to reason and think critically and creatively, analyse situations and consider the range of perspectives necessary to make good decisions on how to act, and metacognitive and reflective capacity to create deeper meanings and enduring understandings. Cognitive maturity requires knowledge to be viewed as contextual recognising that multiple perspectives and understandings exist. Contextual knowers construct knowledge claims internally, critically analysing external perspectives rather than adopting them uncritically. Increasing maturity in knowledge construction yields an internal belief system that guides thinking and behaviour yet is open to re-construction given relevant evidence. Cognitive outcomes such as intellectual power, reflective judgement, mature decision making and problem solving depend on these epistemological capacities (Baxter Magolda 2004:9). By adopting a lifewide concept of education, learners can engage with the rich complexity and messiness of the knowledges and knowings that they encounter in their everyday 'doings'; in other words in all the contexts that form their lives. They do this anyway and the central educational proposition of this book is that by encouraging and supporting them in this enterprise they will gain more benefit from and recognition for their own learning and development. It is to be expected that a lifewide concept of education will be rich in individuals' embodied knowledge and that the way such embodiments will be communicated is through the stories they tell about their experiences and the illustrations they give of their embodied practices. Michael Eraut has developed a rich conception of personal knowledge based on his observations of the knowledge people develop and use in work situations This type of representation is also relevant for lifewide education. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 16 I argue that personal knowledge incorporates all of the following: • Codified knowledge in the form(s) in which the person uses it • Know-how in the form of skills and practices • Personal understandings of people and situations • Accumulated memories of cases and episodic events • Other aspects of personal expertise, practical wisdom and tacit knowledge • Self-knowledge, attitudes, values and emotions. The evidence of personal knowledge comes mainly from observations of performance, and this implies a holistic rather than fragmented approach; because, unless one stops to deliberate, the knowledge one uses is already available in an integrated form and ready for action (Eraut 2010:2). The significance of lifewide education for a knowledge society lies in its potential to embrace all of learners’ life spaces: their spaces for thinking, knowing, developing and using all these different forms of knowledge and knowing. Continuous, self-managed learning for personal/professional development Economic prosperity in an information/knowledge society relies on the creation and exploitation of ideas and the application of technology rather than the transformation of raw materials or the exploitation of cheap labour. Such societies place new demands on citizens, who need more knowledge and capability to be able to function in their everyday lives. And the development of knowledge and capability is an ongoing and continuous process. Over the last two decades thought leaders and policy makers have argued that equipping people to deal with the demands of a modern world, from both employability and citizenship perspectives, requires a new model of education and training, a model of lifelong learning viii (World Bank 2003). But continuous learning poses a formidable challenge to mainstream knowledge-driven societies. Individuals are often not equipped with the skills necessary to self-organise and self-manage long-term knowledge development processes; so developing the selfdirecting regulatory and metacognitive capabilities that will support continuous learning from self-determined and self-managed processes becomes very important. Learning to organise multiple sources of information, learning to learn from experience (experiential knowledge), dealing with the social dimensions of knowledge formation, learning to self-regulate the effort to learn, learning to forget and to un-learn whenever necessary and making room for new knowledge, combining – in adequate dosage – codified and tacit knowledge, permanently converting inert into active knowledge – these are but a few of the pressing challenges that form part of a learning culture. Thus, the emergence of a new breed of competent and self-regulated learners is absolutely instrumental to the formation of learning cultures addressing each and all five dimensions of the lifelong learning conundrum: motivation (to undertake and to overcome barriers to learning), innovation (in content, methods, and delivery), sustainability (over time and space), efficiency (broader reach with fewer resources) and dissemination (showcasing best practices and benchmarks) (Carneiro 2011:6). Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 17 But it's not enough to learn: learning with the capability to do something useful with the knowledge you and others have is also important. So the lifelong/lifewide concept of learning is also connected to the development of capability to deal with situations (Jackson 2011) and the capability and self-awareness to continue to develop self. The cultivation of habits of effective self-regulation is one of the reasons why Personal Development Planning has been introduced in UK higher education to encourage the habits of planning for self-development, self-regulation and critical self-reflection. A process that is mirrored by many knowledge workers whose professional associations require them to accept responsibility, and are held accountable for, their own continuing professional development. In order to sustain their professional credentials they must make public their record of continuous development of their own personalised professional knowledge, capability, values and identity. The e-portfolio movement is another dimension of this revolution in learning and personal/professional development. In the context of a knowledge society, where being information literate is critical, the ePortfolio can provide an opportunity to support one's ability to collect, organise, interpret, and reflect on his/her learning and practice. It is also a tool for continuing professional development, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for and demonstrate the results of their own learning. Furthermore, a portfolio can serve as a tool for knowledge management, and is used by some institutions. The e-Portfolio provides a link between individual and organisational learning. ix Advocates and champions of e-portfolios such as the European Institute for e-Learning (EIfEL), see the portfolio as an individual's digital identity: 'a personal e-Portfolio is a multidimensional digital representation (identity) of a reflective individual providing access to personalised services – eg learning and development, assessment, employment and personal development planning' (Ravet 2004). For EIfEL, what characterises the knowledge economy is the organic link between the different contexts of learning (Ravet 2004:2): • Individual learning –lifelong and lifewide • Community learning –professional communities, citizen networks… • Organisational learning –SMEs, corporations and public services… • Territorial learning (learning cities and regions) valuing all the assets of a territory – human, social, industrial, cultural, patrimonial… By organic link, we mean that any learning activity includes some kind of personal, communal, organisational and territorial dimension. For example, a nurse in her clinical practice will learn new methods and solve problems. This knowledge can be shared with peers (the community of nurses, and by extension, the community of health workers) and the institution (the hospital where the patients will benefit from this new knowledge). For a school district, the link with the territory occurs in the interaction with local libraries, learning centres, associations, art centres, etc. This will be reflected in the organisation of the information system (Ravet 2004:2). Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 18 In higher education too (at least in the UK) there have been many initiatives to create the conditions for students to develop the self-management skills considered necessary for working in a modern world, aided by technology (like e-Portfolios) for recording achievement. Student maintained Progress Files were introduced in 2000 and have progressively been implemented in all institutions of higher education to address the challenge of 'representing (documenting, certifying and communicating by other means) students’ learning for the supercomplex world' (Jackson and Ward, 2004:423). The progress ﬁle comprised a transcript, a process (personal development planning - PDP) and the products (records and claims for learning that underlie PDP). The transcript is now being replaced by the Higher Education Achievement Report (HEAR) x to provide detailed information about a student's learning and achievement to supplement and eventually supersede degree classifications. The process of personal development planning - which is essential to support the habits of self-directed lifewide learning and personal development, is now well established in UK HE. It is no co-incidence that the development of thinking about self-directed lifewide learning in and for a modern world is mirrored by the massive growth of web-based technologies, which open up the possibility of creating new personalised learning environments. Eportfolios, and the organisations that control and promote them, tend to be driven by requirements to make learning and development visible for purposes of accountability, assessment, appraisal or accreditation. Cohn & Hibbits (2004) champion a different strategy. 'Rather than limit people to the eportfolio model, why not develop a model providing a personal Web space for everyone, for their lifetimes and beyond?' 'That every citizen, at birth, will be granted a cradle-tograve, lifetime personal Web space that will enable connections among personal, educational, social, and business systems'. Inspired by this idea Barrett and Garrett (2009) outlined a vision for every individual to be entitled to have their own lifetime web space within which they created and archived their own digital record derived from their meaning making of their own lifelong/lifewide experiences. .......Online Personal Learning Environments ... may eventually replace what we currently call “electronic portfolios” in education. Based on the concept of “lifetime personal web space,” this online archive of a life’s collection of artefacts and memorabilia, both personal and professional, has the potential to change the current paradigm of electronic portfolios, mostly institution-bound, and focus instead on the individual or the family as the centre for creating the digital archive, which can be used in a variety of contexts across the lifespan, from schools to universities to the workplace. Finally, this archive can be used to develop personal histories and reflective narratives to preserve our stories for future generations... (Barrett and Garrett 2009:1). Since 2009, we have witnessed the massive growth of social networking sites in which individuals now spend large amounts of time recording and sharing the incidents of their lives. In one sense this vision or personal web space is being realised in an organic rather than systemised way. With web 2.0 website building tools has come the means for Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 19 individuals to create their own websites to reflect their own purposes and meaning making. These tools and new capabilities and literacies open up the world of lifewide learning in a way that hitherto has not been possible. The journey of becoming ourselves There is one more dimension of learning in and for a modern world that brings us back to a perspective on lifewide learning and personal development that has at its heart the idea of becoming who we want or need to be: the idea that once our basic needs are satisfied, the human spirit is driven by desires for self-expression and self-actualisation (Maslo 1943). We cannot separate our unique development as a person from our development as a person who can play a productive and fulfilled role in the modern world. Self-authorship is one well researched way, of representing how we develop as human beings through all of our life experiences. The concept emerged from the constructivedevelopmental research tradition based in the work of Jean Piaget, William Perry and Robert Kegan. Constructivism refers to humans’ tendency to construct meaning by interpreting their experiences. Developmentalism suggests that these constructions evolve over time through periods of stability and transition to become more complex. Kegan (1982) described a series of personal meaning-making structures that evolved from relying on external others for meaning making to taking responsibility for one’s own meaning making. The activity of being a person is the activity of meaning-making. There is no feeling, no experience, no thought, no perception, independent of a meaning-making context in which it becomes a feeling, an experience, a thought, a perception, because we are the meaning-making context (Kegan 1982:11). Kegan represented one of these meaning making ways as a journey towards 'selfauthorship'. Baxter Magolda's twenty-five-year longitudinal study (Baxter Magolda 1992, 2001, 2009) of one group of US college students has done much to reveal the detail of this journey. One way to portray this evolution is through the metaphor of rules and exceptions. We typically have ‘rules’ we use to make sense of our experiences. These rules come from prior experiences, including information from authorities, and assumptions we make resulting from these experiences. When we encounter an experience that does not fit with our rule, we typically view it as an exception. This allows us to maintain our original rule. However, when too many exceptions have occurred, we revise our rule so that it more effectively captures our experiences. Piaget called this process equilibration, suggesting that humans want to be in balance and reconstruct their meaning making to account for dissonance. This process refers to the basic structure behind our meaning making, or how we make meaning, rather than to the content of what we think. The significance of our lifewide experiences is that the more diverse our experiences are the more we are likely to encounter situations that do not conform to the rules we have formed. A good example is participating in travel where we are exposed to a culture very different from our own. Although this might be a transient experience, it is likely to expose Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 20 us to new ways of making meaning that are very different to what we are used to and, consequently, our own ways of thinking may be challenged. Similarly, daily interactions with others in our own community whose race, ethnicity, religious faith, social class or sexual orientation differs from ours provides exposure to multiple perspectives that potentially challenge our meaning making (Baxter Magolda 2011:79). The journey to self-authorship is the journey of our becoming a person. Not just any person but the person we want to be or need to become. According to Rogers (1961) the process of becoming involves the following activities: • examining the various aspects of his (sic) own experience to recognise and face up to the deep contradictions he often discovers (ibid:109) • the experiencing of feelings - the discovery of unknown elements of self (ibid 111) • the discovery of self - in experience - to find the patterns, the underlying order, which exists in the ever changing flow of experience (ibid 114) What emerges from this process is a different person, one who is: • more open to his experience - the individual is more openly aware of his own feelings and attitudes and more aware of reality as it exists outside of himself (ibid 115) • more trusting of himself (ibid 118) • more confident in his own choices, decisions and evaluative judgements - less and less does he look to others for approval or disapproval; for standards to live by; for decisions and choices (ibid 119) • more content to be a process (for ongoing self-discovery) rather than a finished product (ibid 119). It means that a person is a fluid process, not a fixed and static entity; a flowing river of change, not a block of solid material; a continually changing constellation of potentialities, not a fixed quantity of traits (Rogers 1961:122). Here then is the essence of becoming: an essence that is echoed over and over again in the narratives of people engaged in their lifelong, lifewide experiences. Such journeys involve us combining and integrating - learning and development from formal education and training experiences where our learning is directed by others, from experiences that we direct ourselves through which we intend to learn and develop, and from experiences that make up daily life where learning is en-passant (Reischman 1986, 2011), an unintended consequence of our creating meaning from our experience. It was with these concerns for treating students as whole people and beliefs that the moral purpose of a higher education is to enable students to develop their potential as a whole person - in other words to help them become the person they wanted or needed to be that a lifewide concept of learning, personal development and education was developed at the University of Surrey (Jackson 2011). At the time of development (2008-2011) the people responsible had little of the knowledge that is contained in this chapter. The idea was driven by the 'wicked problem' of preparing students for the complexities of their future world - a world that will become increasingly different in 10, 20 30 and 40 years time to what it is now. In developing and applying the concept to a higher education the people Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 21 involved were mindful of its potential to disrupt the status quo. Ron Barnett, one of the people involved in this project, captures the meanings that were created. If lifelong learning is learning that occupies different spaces through the lifespan – ‘from cradle to grave’ – lifewide learning is learning in different spaces simultaneously. Such an idea throws into high relief issues precisely of spaciousness – of authorship, power and boundedness; for characteristically pursued in different places under contrasting learning conditions, the various learning experiences will be seen to exhibit differences in authorship, power and boundedness, as well as in other ways. In turn, such a conception of lifewide learning suggests a concept of liquid learning, a multiplicity of forms of learning and thence of being experienced by the learner contemporaneously. This concept of lifewide learning poses in turn profound questions as to the learning responsibilities of universities: do they not have some responsibility towards the totality of the students’ learning experiences? Does not the idea of lifewide education open here, as a transformative concept for higher education? In sum, the idea of lifewide education promises – or threatens – to amount to a revolution in the way in which the relationship between universities, learners and learning is conceived (Barnett 2011:223). Lifelong learning is learning across time, and ideally, as the term implies, more or less throughout a lifetime....Lifewide learning, in contrast, is learning in different places simultaneously. It is literally learning across an individual’s life at any moment in time... These places of learning may be profoundly different. These learning experiences will be marked by differences of power, ownership, visibility, sharedness, cost and recognition. Certainly, an individual’s learning journey through life can be seen as involving both lifelong learning and lifewide learning. His learning will be moving forward through his lifespan (lifelong learning) and will involve many learning spaces (lifewide learning); and often, at any one time, the individual will be experiencing several forms of learning all at once. So the timeframes of lifelong learning and the spaces of lifewide learning will characteristically intermingle. Through time and across space, the relationships between lifelong learning and lifewide learning are even more complex. For the learning experiences that an individual undergoes simultaneously in lifewide learning will themselves be associated not only with different timeframes but with forms and spaces of learning that have different rhythms. Within a short period of time, as well as being committed to his course of study – itself a complex of learning experiences with different pacings – a student may participate in a university sports team and its events, a weekly church service, some sessions in paid employment and a two-month charitable commitment in a developing country. Each of these activities has its own rhythm; fast and slow time jostle in the student holding onto his learning spaces. In addition, from time to time these commitments may overlap or clash; and so the student has to ‘manage his time’ and determine priorities as the various responsibilities are heeded (Barnett 2011:24-5). The scheme created at the University of Surrey to promote and validate lifewide learning and personal development (Jackson et al 2011) can be connected back to the central principles underlying Lindeman's work. …the approach to adult education will be via the route of situations, not subjects......Every adult person finds himself in specific situations with respect to his Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 22 work, his recreation, his family-life, his community-life et cetera - situations which call for adjustments. Adult education begins at this point. Subject matter is brought into the situation, is put to work, when needed....The situation-approach to education means that the learning process is at the outset given a setting of reality. Intelligence performs its functions in relation to actualities, not abstractions. …the resource of highest value in adult education is the learner's experience. If education is life, then life is also education. Too much of learning consists of vicarious substitution of someone else's experience and knowledge. (Lindeman 1926 4-7). CONCLUSIONS In this essay I have tried to identify some of the significant contributors to thinking about lifewide learning. The idea seems to have emerged through the educational philosophy of John Dewey and subsequently been developed and applied by educators like Lindeman, Yeaxlee, Knowles, Freire, Brookfield, Resichman and Jarvis. Dewey's thinking also influenced other educational theorists such as Kolb, Rogers, Keegan, Boud, Schön, Baxter Magolda and many others, and the collective thinking of all of these thought leaders informs our understanding of the nature of lifewide learning. In modern times the idea of lifelong and lifewide learning is inextricably linked to the idea of learning societies, a concept which has been progressively developed since the 1960s in which 'learning is the whole of life and the whole of life is learning' (Zee 1998:78). Different conceptions of lifewide learning, or contexts in which it is supported, may emphasise one or more of four discourses about the purposes of learning namely: personal fulfilment, citizenship, social inclusion /social justice and work-related learning (Gewirtz (2008:415-16). Looking back over the last fifty years we can see that, outside the educational community, thinking about lifelong learning and its place in society has been driven by the large international agencies like UNESCO, World Bank, OECD and EU Commission. We can see a pattern in which UNESCO developed a utopian, humanitarian and emancipatory concept of lifelong learning which was counterbalanced by an information society/knowledge economy view of lifelong learning promoted by OECD and the World Bank. With time there has been progressive convergence of thought leaders working for UNESCO, OECD and the EU Commission towards an inclusive concept of lifelong learning for sustaining employability, social cohesion and inclusion and personal fulfilment (Carlsen 2012). A lifelong learning framework encompasses learning throughout the life cycle, from early childhood to retirement. It encompasses formal learning (schools, training institutions, universities), non-formal learning (on-the-job and household training), and informal learning (skills learned from family members or people in the community). It allows people to access learning opportunities as they need them rather than because they have reached a certain age. Lifelong learning is crucial to preparing workers to compete in the global economy. However, it is important for other reasons as well. By improving people’s ability to function as members of their communities, education and training increase social cohesion, reduce crime, and improve income distribution ixi Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 23 For most of the modern era (post-1970) thinking about lifewide learning has been subsumed within the holistic and all too often politically motivated idea of lifelong learning. In doing so the lifewide dimension of lifelong learning, as a vehicle for personal learning and growth, has been neglected in education. It is only recently (since about 2000) that the lifewide dimension of lifelong learning is beginning to receive the attention it deserves by thought leaders, policy makers and educationalists in all phases of education. In addition to adult education, concepts of lifewide education have or are being applied in many other contexts eg school and out of school education (Mik and Chan 2002, Schugerensky and Myers 2003, Banks et al 2007), university education (Jackson et al 2011, Karlsson and Kjisik 2011), within the workplace (eg Staron et al 2007, Staron 2011) and in health education (Walters 2009). But there will always be a tension between the ideals of emancipated views of lifewide learning and the desire, by politicians, for lifewide learning to serve the needs of a knowledge society. The value that lifewide learning brings to the lifelong learning debate is in its ability to make the rhetoric meaningful to individuals by accommodating, recognising and valuing the learning and development they gain through their everyday lives. Still, as Jost Reischman reminds us we need to be wary of only adopting a positivist view of lifewide learning Because not only good things but also wrong and bad stuff is being learned en passant: querulousness of the state, political radicalism, religious fundamentalism. How, why and wherefore to lie, to betray, to elbow, to resign, to disregard others and to persist with our own prejudices is what is being learned en passant in biographical life situations. While the curriculum of learning provided by institutional ways, contents and aims are being chosen rationally and responsibly, there is no normative regulation for individual learning (Reischman 2011:25). But this is precisely why a lifelong and lifewide/lifedeep concept for learning, education and personal development is the most powerful and appropriate concept because it embraces every aspect of what being and becoming a person means. In reflecting back over the nearly 100 year history of the lifewide learning idea we might speculate that we are entering a new era when the visionary words of Eduard Lindeman (Lindeman 1926), 'The whole of life is learning, therefore education can have no endings', might become an educational reality. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to my former colleagues at the University of Surrey - Charlotte Betts, Claire Dowding, Jenny Willis and Professors John Cowan and Ron Barnett for their help in developing my understanding of lifewide learning. I am also indebted to Professor Jost Reischmann for providing a commentary on the way he developed his understanding of lifewide learning (see end notes). I am also grateful to Professor John Cowan for his review and critique of the manuscript. Having written this article I am now more appreciative of the contributions of many thinkers and writers to the development of an idea that is so important to me. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 24 REFERENCES Banks, J.A., Au, K. H., Ball, A.F, Bell, P., Gordon, E.W, Gutiérrez, K.D., Heath, S B., Lee, C.D., Lee, Y., Mahiri, J., Suad Nasir, N., Valdés, G., Zhou, M. (2007) Learning in and out of school in diverse environments: Lifelong, Lifewide, Lifedeep. The LIFE Center (The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Centre), University of Washington. Barnett, R. (2011) Lifewide education: a new and transformative concept for higher education. in N. J. Jackson (ed) Learning for a Complex World: A lifewide concept of learning, education and personal development. Authorhouse. Barrett, H.C. and Garrett, N. (2009) Online Personal Learning Environments: Structuring Electronic Portfolios for Lifelong and Life Wide Learning On the Horizon Vol. 17 No. 2, 142-152, https://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd76m5s2_39fsmjdk Baxter Magolda, M. B. 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Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 27 15. Jg., H. 2, S. 92-95. Reischmann, J. (2004b): Andragogy. History, Meaning, Context, Function. Internetpublication. Available at: http://www.andragogy.net. Version Sept. 9, 2004. Reischmann, J. (2011) Learning to the power of ten - who is offering more? in M. Kozikowski (ed) (2011) Study on the move, for everyone, anytime anywhere. A source book for informal learning. EU Commission Lifelong Learning Programme EASY project LLP 2008 - 3427 http://www.projecteasy.eu/content/e1810/Easy_Handbook_EN.pdf Rogers, C.R., (1961) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Schugerensky D. and Myers J P (2003) A framework to explore lifelong learning: the case of the civic education of civics teachers. Int. J. of Lifelong Education v22, 325–352 Schunk, D. and Zimmerman, B. (1998) Self-regulated learning: From teaching to selfreflective practice. New York: Guilford Press. Skolverket (2000) Lifelong Learning and Lifewide Learning Stockholm. Online at www.skolverket.se/ sb/d/193/url/.../pdf638.pdf%3Fk%3D638. Smith, M. K. (2004) 'Eduard Lindeman and the making of adult education', Youth and Policy 82: 75-86. Staron, M. (2011) Connecting and integrating life-based and life-wide learning, in N.J. Jackson (ed) Learning for a Complex World: A lifewide concept of learning, education and personal development. Authorhouse. Strauss, W. and Howe, N (1997) The Fourth Turning, New York: Three Meadows. Taylor. M. (2007) Pro-Social Behaviour: the future – it’s up to us. Twenty-first century enlightenment. Royal Society of Arts: London. Taylor, M. (2010)Twenty-first century enlightenment. Royal Society of Arts: London Todorov, T. (2009) In Defence of the Enlightenment. Atlantic Books. Walters, S. (2009) Lifelong, Lifewide and lifedeep learning: Utilising the lens of HIV/AIds in South Africa. unpublished article University of Western Cape, South Africa Available at: http://www.ioe.stir.ac.uk/events/documents/Paper_084_ShirleyWalters.pdf Willis, J. and Jackson, N.J. (2011) Lifewide learning habits of students, in N.J. Jackson (ed) Learning for a Complex World: A lifewide concept of learning, education and personal development. Authorhouse. World Summit on the Information Society Geneva (2003) Declaration of Principles : Building the Information Society: a global challenge in the new Millennium. Available on-line at: http://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/03/wsis/doc/S03-WSIS-DOC0004!!PDF-E.pdf Yeaxlee, B. A. (1929) Lifelong Education, London: Cassell. Zee, H. van der (1998) The Learning Society, in J. Ranson (Ed.) Inside the Learning Society. London: Cassell. Zimmerman, B. (2000) Self-regulatory cycles of learning. In G. A. Straka (ed) Conceptions of self-directed learning, theoretical and conceptual considerations. New York, Waxman 221-232. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 28 END NOTES i I am grateful to Professor Jost Reischmann who provided these background notes to help me understand how he came to his own concept of lifewide learning (email 05/05/12): I was in some way thrilled by the concept of "education permanente" (French), later "lifelong learning" (English), but I also felt threatened: As I (like many others) was not a too successful learner at school, I did not feel very comfortable with the perspective that I should do it now "lifelong". In German we say that someone is given a lifelong sentence if they are punished for a serious crime. This subjective negative feeling at that time became confirmed much later when "lifelong learning," often became synonymous with company-centred continuous retraining of workforces. On the other side: I recognised more and more how interesting and challenging I was learning every day, "here and now" - "lifewide" - this seemed to me much more real and appealing than the idea of having to learn continuously for the next 10, 20 or more years (a lifelong sentence to learn!). One important theoretical input came from Allen Tough (Tough, Allen. 1971. The adult's learning projects: A fresh approach to theory and practice in adult learning. Toronto: OISE). Changing the perspective from the schoolmaster's perspective "How do I teach them?" (= constructive) he asked "What did you learn last year?" and went to the descriptive perspective. This new approach hit me like a lightning bolt "They DO LEARN!" I remember looking out of my office window that day, looking to the people walking by (including some of my students), and thought: What might be the learning projects they are in right now? - But after a while the (German) critical question came up : Tough asks (only) for intentional learning. But what about the accidents, incidents, the "walk through life" (here the "en passant" emerged) that changes and forms us to what and who we are? By "passing by" these accidents, incidents etc (often not wanted, expected, planned for) life teaches us the lessons we have to deal with, this makes us into to what we are. So methodically looking back in our life might be a good method to identify significant learning situations. This idea led me to identify the three "boxes" of non-intentional (better picture: en-passant)-learning in my 1986 article. - Equally important at that time became for me the Humanistic Psychology: Especially Carl Rogers "On becoming a person", paralleled my reflections on "how we become what we are". His "Freedom to learn" challenged me to think differently from my traditional understanding of learning vs. "significant learning". Fritz Perls' Gestalttherapie challenged me with the "Here-and-now"-principle, not complaining about past or fantasizing about the future, but living/learning here and now and in the wide fields of the present life. - Finally I came back to the German concept of "Bildung" - which means both a process and a result, the "forming" through everything that happens in life as well as the resultant form. Bildung encompasses the whole person, develops the person to his best possible "form", including all the wide possibilities a person can reach and leads to a unique "composition". In this way each individual makes himself out of his life in each minute. So with "lifewide" I referred to the here-and-now-situations, planned or not-planned, and the options they offer in the presence for the future. - The context for all of this thinking was to understand the specifics of the learning of adults (life), to overcome the (my) hermeneutic blindness by being fixed to a pedagogy that limited my thinking about learning to the learning of children in school (which motivated me to use the term "Andragogy"). - - At first this idea of "lifewide learning" was just a surprising discovery; by reflecting more on it, it began to grow into a concept, perhaps a "theorette" (naming it a "theory" seemed too big to me). But still it seemed to have not much practical value, because these life-changing accidents and incidents ("learning!") could not be didactically organized (I was still thinking as a teacher using traditional school-learning-categories). It took some years until I discovered the analyticalpractical value of the concept. By recounting lifewide experiences - often told as stories in the breaks of a seminar (an "en passant"-situation) - it was easier to understand why a person behaved and valued things in a certain way. - Furthermore, experiences in encounter-groups (for example Carl Rogers client-centered speech therapy and other aspects of Humanistic Psychology) provided practical methods to help people clarify, work on, understand the lifewide influences that blocked or supported them, perhaps leading to changes in their desired direction. Developing this idea further I claimed that "consulting / counselling" was a core competence for professional andragogs, consequently including seminars with this topic into our curriculum at my university. The clear feedback from our graduates was that preparation for these consulting/counselling/problem solving/conflict managing situations, was most important in their professional life. And the concept of lifewide learning showed great potential to connect to modern andragogical theories, as for example post-modernism, biographical approach, constructivism, or lifeworld-approach. Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 29 The book included a concern for everyday and informal education and learning and included chapters on growing up; the permanent need for education and the process of learning from life. iii http://www.unesco.org/education/lwf/ iv http://life-slc.org/index.html v Halpern. D (2010) The Hidden Wealth of Nations. Polity Press 2010. vi Maslow. A (1943) “A Theory of Human Motivation,” originally published in the Psychological Review in 1943 is available online: http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/ Maslow/motivation.htm vii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society viii Lifelong Learning in the Global Knowledge Economy: Challenges for Developing Countries TechKnowLogia, January March 2003 Knowledge Enterprise, Inc. http://www.techknowlogia.org/TKL_Articles/PDF/476.pdf ix http://www.eife-l.org/publications/eportfolio x http://www.hefce.ac.uk/learning/diversity/achieve/ ii Lifewide Learning, Education & Personal Development e-book MAY 2012 CHAPTER A1 Lifewide Learning: History of an idea 30

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