Improving Learning in Later Life

Alexandra Withnall

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135278199
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Education
• Thema: Education General

With life expectancy increasing, there is growing emphasis on encouraging older people to continue learning. This comes as part of a strategy to allow them to remain healthy, independent and vitally engaged in society for as long as possible. All the same, policymakers have barely begun to address the issues involved and the perspectives of these learners. This book presents insightful research that will help shift the focus of debate onto the learning experiences of older people themselves. It offers a critical overview of the development of theoretical and philosophical approaches to later life learning that have developed over the last three decades, drawing on published work from the USA, the UK, Australia and other countries. It documents the individual experiences of older people through a variety of methods, including:

• Focus group discussions

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• Learning diaries kept by older people

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• Questionnaires considering, among other issues, older people's definition on what learning is

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• Interviews and commentary

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This material gives a sense of the breadth and diversity of older people's experiences, as well as the enormous range of learning activities, both informal and formal, in which they are engaged in retirement. In a climate of debate and change concerning the provision and funding of non-vocational learning opportunities for adults of any age, this study's findings will be of particular importance. It will appeal to researchers and students of education as well as those directly involved in the implementation of courses and classes involving older learners.

Part I
What is the issue?

Chapter 1
Lifelong learning

A new climate for older learners?

Introduction

This book is based on a research project, Older People and Lifelong Learning: Choices and Experiences, originally funded through the Economic and Social Research Council’s Growing Older: Extending Quality Life Programme (GO), which ran from 1999 to 2004. In 2005, following approval from the Programme’s Steering Group, the research became an associated project within the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), joining other projects that were concerned with aspects of lifelong learning. It was felt that the research findings would add a new dimension to the Programme and would have specific relevance to the TLRP crosscutting theme of learners through the life course. This resurrection of the project afforded an excellent opportunity to revisit the data and to reconsider some of the findings in the light of more recent developments in lifelong learning and the growing interest in active ageing worldwide as well as, hopefully, making a worthwhile contribution to the overall work of the TLRP.

The idea for the research originated in much earlier developments. Awareness of demographic trends and an emerging interest in aspects of education and learning in retirement among a small group of academics, practitioners and researchers in the early 1980s had led to a series of annual residential meetings at Keele University where participants began to identify and to examine what they saw as emerging issues in respect of making provision for these older learners. The result was the formation in November 1985 of the Association for Educational Gerontology (AEG), since renamed the Association for Education and Ageing (AEA). The Association launched an academic journal and instituted an Annual Conference as well as making links with others working in the same field both in the UK and overseas and with various older people’s organizations. Yet in spite of a steady flow of papers and articles that addressed a range of theoretical and practical issues in relation to education in later life, there had never been any well funded research in the United Kingdom (UK) that tried to explore older people’s experiences of education and, more particularly, of learning over the course of their lives, the factors that might affect whether they choose to learn in retirement and what role learning might play in their lives as they grow older. This study set out to address these issues in some depth using a range of different investigative methods including participation by a small group of older people themselves as interviewers of their peers. The research was carried out between 2000 and 2002 and contributed to the Growing Older Programme’s overall findings in respect of aspects of social support for older people. It also attracted some fleeting media attention, and coincided with strenuous efforts from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) to draw attention to the growing importance of later life learning through its Older and Bolder national development programme that was originally launched on a small scale in 1995 and was very successful in promoting the cause of the older learner. In 2008 this work was subsumed into the work of the NIACE Equalities Team and it is now intended to explore some new approaches and directions.

At this point it is important to clarify which older people are under discussion. At the outset, we took a decision not to make age a criterion for participation in our research but rather to concentrate on those people who are ‘post-work’ in that they are no longer involved in the work force on a full-time basis and/or have relinquished major responsibilities for raising a family. However, this did not preclude people who may be in some kind of part-time employment or voluntary work or have some caring duties perhaps for grandchildren or indeed for a disabled spouse or other family member. In this way, we hoped to involve a wide range of older people with a variety of commitments and different lifestyles in order to illustrate the very varied ways in which older people live their lives.

With its incorporation into the TLRP, we now present the original research project findings in the context of today’s ageing society in which increasing numbers of older people are seeking opportunities to learn in a variety of settings and where the aspirations of the so-called ‘baby boomers’ are beginning to command attention as successive cohorts reach their sixties. What is apparent is that we can no longer afford to be complacent in respect of older people and their sheer numbers. The fact that many of them will have received a better education than their parents in a time of comparative peace and prosperity and that they can look forward to a reasonably healthy old age means that they will approach retirement, itself a changing concept, with a range of different expectations, hopes and dreams. Here we seek to explore further some of the issues that emerged within the study and to offer some pointers for the road ahead in the light of current policy developments in lifelong learning and their implications.

Certainly, the idea of lifelong learning has a familiar and comfortable ring to it; put simply, it implies an all-inclusive ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach to learning that offers the promise and availability of something for everyone whatever their age or situation. Indeed, its popularity as a slogan is illustrated by the fact that 1996 was designated European Year of Lifelong Learning. Since then, discourses of lifelong learning have moved beyond mere slogan status to occupy a major place in the policy agendas of supranational organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Health Organization (WHO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), UNESCO and the European Union (EU) and subsequently, in those of different countries across the world. This growing focus on lifelong learning has spawned a veritable explosion of policy documents, a range of academic papers and articles written from a variety of disciplinary perspectives together with a seemingly neverending debate about its definition and purposes together with analysis of ever-changing policies and practices in various different countries. At the same time, emerging demographic trends have raised awareness of the ageing of populations across the globe and the many challenges this is already bringing in tandem with rapid social, economic and technological changes affecting all areas of life.

This chapter begins with a brief overview of some of the issues that have emerged from recent debates concerning the nature and purpose of lifelong learning. It goes on to discuss some demographic trends and to examine some current thinking about the dynamic processes of ageing, notably the promotion of the concept of active ageing. Finally, it considers the extent to which older people as we have defined them here have featured within the discourses and policies of lifelong learning. Does lifelong learning offer a new climate in which older learners might flourish? This provides the context for an introduction to the aims and processes of the research study that is the main focus of the book, taking into account the time and the context in which it was carried out.

Perspectives on lifelong learning

Although notions of lifelong education are not new, it is generally agreed that ideas about lifelong learning first gained credence in Europe in the early 1970s as an increasingly important topic in debates within a range of international organizations. Its origins might be traced to what came to be known as the Faure Report (UNESCO 1972), a document that Schuetze has since described as having ‘formulated the philosophical-political concept of a humanistic, democratic and emancipatory system of learning opportunities for everybody, independent of class, race or financial means, and independent of the age of the learner’ (Schuetze 2006:290). From a range of critical perspectives, a variety of authors have since traced the historical development of the concept of lifelong learning from its origins in this social justice model through different phases to its re-emergence in the 1990s as the basis for a new international debate about the role of education and training in relation to the perceived need for economic competitiveness in the face of globalization; and the growth of its acceptance as a desirable policy goal among a range of international organizations, especially the European Union (e.g. Brine 2006; Dehmel 2006; Schuetze 2006; Tuschling and Engemann 2006; Pépin 2007; Slowey 2008). Other commentators have observed the ways in which policies have frequently been interpreted and implemented in different ways in different countries (e.g. Green 2002; Healy and Slowey 2006; Prokou 2008; Slowey 2008). Meanwhile, Schuetze (2006) argues cogently that, in the conceptualization and implementation of policies on lifelong learning, the debates that have ensued and the agendas of international organizations are highly influenced by national governments that make use of them to promote and legitimize their own political agendas.

In a perceptive analysis of some of the models of lifelong learning that have emerged over time, Schuetze (2007) argues that lifelong learning, although mainly an umbrella term, is based on three principles that represent a break with the traditional front-end model of education. By definition, lifelong learning is ‘lifelong’, but it can also be ‘life-wide’ and centred on ‘learning’ as opposed to the traditional focus on education and educational institutions. Lifelong learning basically assumes that everyone should continue to learn throughout their lives. Life-wide learning draws attention to the fact that organized learning occurs in many different ways and in a variety of settings outside educational institutions. This obviously raises questions about the nature of knowledge and skills, how they are acquired and how individual learning might be recognized and assessed. At the same time, underpinning this focus on learning is the individual learner’s motivation, capacity and responsibility to engage with learning, all of which depend on a range of other factors within people’s lives, an issue further pursued by other writers such as Deakin Crick and Wilson (2005) and Lambeir (2005). Current models of lifelong learning identified by Schuetze (2007) are briefly summarized in Box 1.1.

Box 1.1 Models of lifelong learning • The original emancipatory or social justice model where lifelong learning is available for everyone in the interests of equality of opportunity within a democratic society – the ‘cradle-to-grave’ ideal. • Lifelong learning as a system of learning for citizens of democratic countries that includes opportunities for embracing modern technology that will enable on-line and distance learning, although the onus is on individuals to take responsibility for seeking out and engaging with available learning opportunities. • The human capital model where lifelong learning refers to continuous work-related training and skill development in order to comply with the needs of the economy and of employers for a well qualified

and adaptable workforce within a changing labour market in order to ensure economic competitiveness. Once again, individual workers are responsible for their own educational and skill development in order to boost their employability. (Schuetze 2007:9)

Although the human capital model is currently dominant in the educational policies of many countries, Schuetze and Casey (2006) earlier observed that none of these models actually exists in a pure form and that official policy discourses change over time. Certainly, within Europe, the European Commission produced a Memorandum on Lifelong Learning (EC 2000) followed by a Council Resolution (EC 2002) together with a subsequent stream of Communications on the importance of lifelong learning, in which adult learning that encompasses learning for personal, civic and social purposes as well as for employment-related aims has most recently featured as an important component. Noting that participation by adults in lifelong learning varies widely across the Member States, the Commission adopted a Communication on Adult Learning in 2006 commenting that ‘lifelong learning has a key role to play in developing citizenship and competence’ (EC 2006). This was followed by an Action Plan in September 2007 in order to help strengthen what appears to be an increasingly complex adult learning sector across Member States. In particular, the most recent Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013 is designed to provide practical support for the implementation of adult learning policies. In its Grundtvig strand, it encompasses all types of learning and, for the first time, seeks especially to fund activities that will address the challenge of an ageing population across Europe (EC 2007).

Accordingly, NIACE (2007) has concluded that the role of lifelong learning within the European Union is now seen as important not just to ensure economic competitiveness in the global economy but to promote social inclusion and cohesion within ageing societies that are increasingly diverse; and ‘to ensure the well-being of individuals and communities who are seeking to achieve their potential’ (NIACE 2007:5). Yet in respect of the UK, NIACE has also commented that ‘too often, public policy lurches on a continuum between red-blooded utilitarianism and all-embracing, if utopian, permissiveness’ (NIACE 2007:5).

Meanwhile, Aspin and Chapman (2007) talk about the ‘vain quest for definitions’ of lifelong learning (2007:20) that they regard as probably inconclusive and ultimately self-defeating. They argue for the adoption of a different approach.

a more comprehensive analysis of all the various dimensions and features of the nature, aims and processes of policies for ‘realizing a lifelong learning approach to learning for all’ will have to be tackled, and a more wide-ranging set of justifications addressing the differences in those aims and purposes more clearly articulated and provided.

(Aspin and Chapman 2007:34)

Their point is that this more pragmatic approach will allow all the different desirable elements of lifelong learning currently advocated within Europe – economic progress, personal development and fulfilment and social inclusiveness – to cross-fertilize through the provision of a range of different initiatives. Yet as Edwards et al. (2002) have shown, a range of other writers has consistently questioned both the desirability and achievability of the various stated policy goals of lifelong learning. They critique the underlying assumption that the state has the ability to understand and interpret change and to devise appropriate policy responses and mechanisms. They further argue persuasively that any lifelong learning policy cannot achieve its aims because of this lack of understanding of change together with a failure to comprehend the diverse range of learning practices among people and the assumption that learning is cumulative rather than, as they see it, reflexive.

Whilst much of the debate on lifelong...