Lifelong learning driving universities’ ambitions for advanced teaching and research? Dare we? Can we? Let’s!

14/15 May

Within many universities, lifelong learning and adult education teeter on the brink of a vicious cycle of low status, poor resourcing, and reducing relevance. Within Europe and the wider world departments devoted to adult education are under threat while universities shift focus from the marginalised to attracting talented researchers and raising their international profile.

This seminar at the University of Edinburgh disseminated findings drawn from the EU Sixth Framework Project Lifelong Learning Policy and Practice in Europe (LLL2010), which ran from 2005 - 2011. The project involved 12 European countries and Russia and investigated various aspects of lifelong learning policy and practice, including higher education, adult education and workplace learning. The potential of lifelong learning to promote social inclusion as well as economic growth was a major focus of the study.

Today's tweet announcing this weeks edition of OBSERVATIONS Weekend was our 1000th!

Attached is the SIRUS report, Engaging in Lifelong Learning: Shaping Inclusive and Responsive University Strategies, by Hanne Smidt  and Andrée Sursock, which is based on material prepared by representatives of the 29 participating European universities.  It is based on a study of the institutional lifelong learning strategies of these universities by the European Universities Association, who suggest that frank and open discussions provided invaluable insights into strategic institutional development.

These notes and questions have been prepared to promote discussion of the ideas set out in the clarifying paper Living and Learning in EcCoWell Cities. This paper has been prepared to provide a possible framework for further exchanges between cities participating in the PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE) that go in the direction of broader more holistic and integrated strategies.[1]