lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for europe

Image courtesy of Permamarks at http://permamarks.org/in-an-age-of-collective-learning/

© Prof. Georgios K. ZarifisPresentation prepared for the 7th International Course of Lectures 2013-2014

“Lifelong Learning”12 December2013

“Lifelong learning as collective learning:

a proposed framework for Europe

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Presentation’s scope and structure

1. LLL in crisis: How far are we since 2000?

2. LLL and the power of policy language

3. The need for shifting the paradigm

4. Developing European learning collectives

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

LLL in crisis: How far are we since 2000?

Since 2000 the discourse on lifelong learning in Europe revolves around four distinct

objectives: employment, education and training provision, citizenship and inclusion.

These objectives that appear in the Memorandum messages are very much related to each other and operate as the platform on which a number of more intrinsic topics evolve: skills and competences, learning outcomes, quality,

innovation in teaching and learning, access, guidance, values and equity.

How far are we since the Memorandum?

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

In the midst of an economic crisis with vast sociopolitical repercussions that nearly

divide Europe into the ‘sluggish South’ and the ‘diligent North’ and revive stereotypes among Europeans largely fomented by certain national and international media, lifelong learning seems to be totally out of place in

Europe

Image courtesy of CASUS BELLI at: http://casusbellifilm.com/el

LLL in crisis: How far are we since 2000?

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

LLL in crisis: How far are we since 2000?

In spite of the deep commitment of European policymaking to the idea of

lifelong learning, the language of the Memorandum and of all relevant texts thereafter echoes the neologies of

globalisation.

The relevant discourse however does not deserve to be called neoliberal, at least not in its intention as the

Memorandum messages reveal a kind of naivety suggesting steps and solutions that do not respond to the real nature of the proclaimed goals and do not give

a realistic direction for reaching them.

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Despite the strong rhetoric on promoting the idea of lifelong learning in Europe and after over a decade of

ongoing adjustments, relevant policies have neither responded to nor have they fulfilled any concrete social demand or a coherent attitude towards learning (as a mode of development) amongst

Europeans.

LLL and the power of policy language

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

It is the language and the meanings proclaimed by the usage of neoliberal

terminology that consist the underbelly of the current European policy agenda on lifelong learning. And although one could argue that language does create realities, at the time Memorandum was

released, this was not much the case as it is today.

In Europe LLL is used as a mechanism of social control mediated by the market. As promoted in this context, the word “learning” does not refer to those reflective incidentally acquired understandings which enable us to

navigate our daily lives.

LLL and the power of policy language

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

LLL and the power of policy language

In most cases contemporary usage of the term lifelong learning refers to the process of allowing ourselves to be exposed to pre-packaged gobbits of knowledge, allowing ourselves to be

assessed on the mastery of that knowledge, accepting the implications of the resulting indicators of our

performance for access to the labour market and our resultant positioning

within it

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

What we need today is a new paradigm that will be based on a collective

approach on how different appreciations (narratives) of learning in Europe may

support thedevelopment of participatory learning ‘networks’ that will involve exchange

of ideas, decision-making and collaboration among different actors in

a small scale

The need for shifting the paradigm

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

The ecology of lifelong learning in Europe differs greatly from the initial approach. The overarching notion today

is that of lifelong learning for employability and a narrowly defined notion of active citizenship which

overlooks the collective dimension of education for social change and which provides a very problematic notion of

individualised learning

The need for shifting the paradigm

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Today educational policymaking in Europe is exceedingly connected to economic benefits and human capital

growth rather than social and cultural capital development

Lifelong learning in Europe is increasingly looking upon the learner

as an employable unit that needs to fit in the market rather than a free

individual that validates the benefits of its own learning

The need for shifting the paradigm

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Developing European learning collectives

We need to reinstate the learners in the centre of the objectives set by the

European Commission

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Developing European learning collectives

The term collective stresses the need for a shared promotion of lifelong

learning from the learners and for the learners

Although the word ‘collective’ is not totally absent from European policies of lifelong learning (it is used twice whereas the word ‘individual’ is used

29 times in the Communication on Making a European Area of Lifelong

Learning a Reality ), it is ‘the centrality of the learner’ – understood as the ‘individual’ learner – that is

considered to be ‘the key characteristic’ of lifelong learning

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Developing European learning collectives

It is an old idea, already present in the labour movement in the first half of the nineteenth century in Europe, long before the creation of trade

unions, which later strongly defended this principle

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Developing European learning collectives

The collective (or the group or the society or the labour market) becomes the entity in which the individual learner has to be included (or

empowered or employed) depending on various levels of networking

This collective promotion should be understood as promotion inside and to the benefit of one’s social group

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe

Developing European learning collectives

Image courtesy of the Centre for Collective Learning and Action (CCoLA) http://www.ccola.cc/

Thank you for your attention

gzarifis@edlit.auth.gr

Lifelong learning as collective learning: a proposed framework for Europe