Lifelong learning – beyond academic education

The emergence of the global knowledge economy has put a premium on learning throughout the world. Ideas and know-how as sources of economic growth and development, along with the application of new technologies, have important implications for how people learn and apply knowledge throughout their lives.

Lifelong learning is becoming a necessity in many countries. It is more than just education and training beyond formal schooling. A lifelong learning framework encompasses learning throughout the lifecycle, from early childhood to retirement, and in different learning environments, formal, non-formal, and informal. Opportunities for learning throughout one’s lifetime are becoming increasingly critical for countries to be competitive in the global knowledge economy.

Lifelong learning is education for the knowledge economy. Within this lifelong learning framework, formal education structures - primary, secondary, higher, vocational, and tertiary - are less important than learning and meeting learners’ needs. It is essential to integrate learning programs better and to align different elements of the system. Learners should be able to enter and leave the system at different points. The learning system needs to include a multitude of players, such as learners, families, employers, providers, and the state. Governance in the lifelong learning framework therefore involves more than just ministries of education and labor.

We all remember our younger days of going through primary, secondary, college or polytechnic and university education. For most of us, it was a routine and we were taught of stuff that we never really knew whether they are applicable. When our education was over and we joined the workforce, many of us lament that the things we had learnt were never really relevant for the work we do.

Lifelong learning is the continuous building of skills and knowledge throughout the life of an individual. It occurs through experiences encountered in the course of a lifetime. These experiences could be formal (training, counseling, tutoring, mentorship, apprenticeship, higher education, etc.) or informal (experiences, situations, etc.) Lifelong learning is the "lifelong, voluntary, and self-motivated" pursuit of knowledge for either personal or professional reasons. As such, it not only enhances social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development, but also competitiveness and employability.

"Traditional vs. Lifelong Learning"

Knowledge consists of different types:

• Knowing about - news events, basics of a field, introductory concepts
• Knowing to do - drive a car, solve a math problem, code a program, conduct research
• Knowing to be - to embody knowledge with humanity, to be a doctor or psychologist, to be an ethical person, to be compassionate, to relate, to feel
• Knowing where - to find knowledge when needed, web search, library, database, an organization, knowing who to approach for assistance
• Knowing to transform - to tweak, to adjust, to recombine, to align with reality, to innovate
• Journals, books, libraries, and museums house knowledge. Most knowledge in these structures is in the "about" and "doing" levels. Knowing to be, where to find knowledge, and knowing to transform are all outside of these. Higher-level understanding is through reflection and informal learning.

Traditional educational systems, in which the teacher is the sole source of knowledge, are ill suited to equip people to work and live in a knowledge economy. Some of the competencies such a society demands - teamwork, problem solving, motivation for lifelong learning - cannot be acquired in a learning setting in which teachers dictate facts to learners who seek to learn them only in order to be able to repeat them.

A lifelong learning system must reach larger segments of the population, including people with diverse learning needs. It must be competency driven rather than age related. Within traditional institutional settings, new curricula and new teaching methods are needed. At the same time, efforts need to be made to reach learners who cannot enroll in programs at traditional institutions. Online and distance programs are considered as some of the methods implemented to achieve this goal.

Providing people with the tools they need to function in the knowledge economy requires adoption of a new pedagogical model. This model differs from the traditional model in many ways. Teachers and trainers serve as facilitators rather than transmitters of knowledge, and more emphasis is placed on learning by doing, working on teams, and thinking creatively.

The lifelong learning model enables learners to acquire more of the new skills demanded by the knowledge economy as well as more traditional academic skills. In Guatemala, for example, learners taught through active learning - that is, learning that takes place in collaboration with other learners and teachers, in which learners seek out information for themselves - improved their reading scores more and engaged more in democratic behaviors than learners not in the program. In the United Kingdom learners taught thinking skills in science were able to improve their performance in other subjects, and the effects increased over time.

Benefits of lifelong learning

A number of important socio-economic forces are pushing for the lifelong learning approach. The increased pace of globalization and technological change, the changing nature of work and the labor market, and the ageing of populations are among the forces emphasizing the need for continuing upgrading of work and life skills throughout life. The demand is for a rising threshold of skills as well as for more frequent changes in the nature of the skills required.

Community-based programs

Whether a lifelong learning campaign for adults is aimed at personal, community or national development, it is expedient to organize programs or activities that are community-based. This approach has the potential to impact individuals, groups and communities in the way they live, inform and educate themselves.

Community-based adult education, as part and parcel of the lifelong learning movement, is a process whereby community members can identify their own problems and needs, seek solutions among themselves, mobilize the necessary resources and execute a plan of action or learning.

The community is seen as both agent and objective. Learning is the process and leaders, political or otherwise, are the facilitators or initiators in inducing change for the better.

Community is a very amorphous word. In a broad sense, it is taken to mean a group of people with a common location, common interests or social interaction.

Supply Chain Asia adapts itself within this structure of community and offers training outside the traditional model – by engaging industry professionals as its facilitators of knowledge gained from experience and sharing them with a group of learners through a facilitated learning environment. We believe that such learning networks would bring people together on the basis of shared enthusiasm and interests in a deliberate and efficient way and strengthen the connection between individual growth, community and industry development.

Challenges for lifelong learning

If learning is to be lifelong, a lifelong learning culture must be instilled. This requires a shift in our mindset from the fundamental unit of education in organized learning institutions to the learner as an intelligent agent with the potential to learn from any and all of his/her encounters in the world around him/her.

Attempts at creating a culture of lifelong learning will not have a fair chance of success until preparation is made for it during the years of adolescence in schools. People must acquire the skill to learn how to learn at an early age as well as the ability to identify learning needs, formulate learning objectives, locate and identify resources and strategies to accomplish objectives, carry out planned learning, and evaluate learning outcomes.

In other words, learners must be equipped with the ability and skill of how, what, why, when and where to learn. Therefore, formal education in schools should not be merely about the acquisition of knowledge but should also be about developing the mind and acquiring lifelong learning skills.

Conclusion

The issues involved in promoting lifelong learning nationwide are pervasive and systemic. The challenges seem daunting and the solutions to problems hardly simple. All stakeholders in the communities, the education enterprise and the government must have the vision and commitment to make the necessary paradigm shift to prepare for the future now instead of waiting to respond to it when it arrives.