First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this updated volume explores policy failures and the valuable opportunities for learning that they offer.
Policy successes and failures offer important lessons for public officials, but often they do not learn from these experiences. The studies in this volume investigate this broken link. The book defines policy learning and failure and organises the main studies in these fields along the key dimensions of processes, products and analytical levels. Drawing together a range of experts in the field, the volume sketches a research agenda linking policy scholars with policy practice.
The ongoing economic crisis raises fundamental questions about the political and social goals of the European Union, particularly the feasibility of harmonising social and education policy across member states. The forward momentum of the European project is clearly faltering, raising the possibility that the high water mark of European integration has been achieved, with implications for many aspects of education and social policy, including lifelong learning.
This timely book makes a major and original contribution to the development of knowledge and understanding of lifelong learning in an expanded Europe. Its wide range of contributors look at the contribution of lifelong learning to economic growth and social cohesion across Europe, focusing its challenge to social exclusion. It draws on comparative data from the EU Sixth Framework Project Lifelong Learning Policy and Practice in Europe (LLL2010), which ran from 2005 - 2011 and involved twelve European countries and Russia. Very little research has been conducted to date on the nature of lifelong learning in post-Soviet countries, and this book provides important insights into their evolving education and lifelong learning systems.
The book will be of interest to researchers and academics in the UK and Europe, especially those from social policy, adult and comparative education, equality studies and practice of lifelong learning.
Based on the Transforming Lives research project, this book explores the transformative power of further education.
Outlining a timely and critical approach to educational research and practice, the book draws extensively on the testimonies of students and teachers to construct a model of transformative teaching and learning. The book critiques reductive ‘skills’ policies in further education and illuminates the impact colleges and Lifelong Learning have on social justice both for individuals, their families and communities.
For trainee teachers, teachers, leaders, researchers and policymakers alike, this is a persuasive argument for transformative approaches to teaching and learning which highlights the often unmeasured and under-appreciated strong holistic social benefits of further education.
Lifelong learning is a key government strategy - both in the UK and internationally - to promote economic growth and combat social exclusion. This book presents a highly innovative study of participation in lifelong learning and the problems which need to be overcome if lifelong learning policies are to be successful. It:
provides a systematic analysis, based on innovative empirical research, of the social and economic realities which actually determine patterns of participation in lifelong learning;
shows what the factors are that shape people’s participation, or their decision not to participate;
offers new insights into the processes of lifelong learning, which have important implications for the development of more effective policies.
Working within the spirit of David Blunkett’s visionary foreword to The learning age: A new renaissance for Britain, David H. Hargreaves’ radical analysis challenges the myth that lifelong learning can or should be separated - in any sense - from school education. It asks the critical question: what changes in thinking, policy and practice are needed for the culture and process of lifelong learning, as visualised by David Blunkett, to become a reality?
Starting with a clear, unequivocal statement that “whether people are motivated to learn beyond the end of compulsory education, and have the capacity to do so, depends very much on what happens to them during the school years", the author explores ways in which policy and practice at school level will need to change in order to meet the crucial challenge of sparking and sustaining a person’s motivation and capacity to learn throughout life.
273 THIRTEEN Learning support Renze Portengen and Ben Hövels, ITS The provision of learning support, targeted at marginalised groups or individual students at risk, can be seen as a form of positive discrimination. Learning support aims to enhance literacy in order to improve a child’s chances of selection for specific types of secondary or tertiary education, or to improve attainment in external examinations. We can assume that the most common form of learning support is that provided by teachers in their day-to-day practices. An example of their learning
113 EIGHT Learning beyond institutions Perhaps because school improvement research has traditionally been so weak (see Chapter 7), or because policy-makers have forgotten that a key component of the Education Act 1944 was for schools to minimise the impact of family background, there has been increased UK interest in education beyond formal institutions. In some respects, this could be a useful trend if followed to its logical conclusions (concerning informal learning, see below), but it can also be seen as a sign of defeat. According to some accounts
147 six Community learning Community learning is about forms of learning that are shared both within and across communities, as contrasted with learning that is locked up within institutions such as schools and universities. The school system in capitalist society is a specific type of field with specific types of player (teachers, students, governors, parents, etc). Like other fields within capitalism schools are sites of both oppression and resistance, reproducing and yet also potentially challenging economic and social inequality and injustice. In recent
77 FIVE Public learning The story of Gladwell in Chapter Three illustrated that organisational learning: … is not the same thing as individual learning, even when the individuals who learn are members of the organisation. There are too many cases in which organisations know less than their members. There are even cases in which the organisation cannot seem to learn what every member knows. (Argyris and Schon, 1978, p 9) If this is true for the state of collective knowledge in organisations, it is even truer of systems. Separated by the boundaries of
119 SIX Collaborative learning In the last three chapters we have looked at how democracy can only function well if it manages to engender sufficient togetherness through establishing a shared mission, robust defence of mutual respect, and coherent membership arrangements among those who seek to govern themselves. In addition to these elements, for any group to steer itself democratically, its members must be able to discuss options and resolve differences with a high degree of objectivity. Without a common basis on which conflicting ideas can be explored
