LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Orientation 1/2007

Peter Jarvis
THE LEARNING REGIONS AND EUROPEAN POLICY: A SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

Power is moving from nation states to transnational actors and conforming them. People’s minds are subdued and filled with entertainment caressing the senses. Why should they bother with the activities democratic power requires? The harsh consequences of globalisation and market economy may be ‘cushioned’ by lifelong learning policies, which many governments and international agencies have adopted.

Martin Yarnit
LEADING CHANGE: NEW MODELS FOR LEARNING COMMUNITIES IN ENGLAND

The great hopes of ‘education, education, education’ have faded. The current political focus on area regeneration is unprecedented in the UK in its comprehensiveness and the scale of investment, so lifelong learning sits with housing, urban regeneration, planning and local government as well as community cohesion and equality.
In regeneration programs people turned out to be eager and interested in developing themselves and their environment. And the changes were remarkable for both.

Anja Boon
CITIZEN ACTIVITY IN URBAN REGENERATION. CHANGE IN AMSTERDAM

In Poseidon, a big EU project, of regenerating cities both the administrators, experts, and the local people discussed and saw their plans, possibilities, actions and wishes from their own but also from other, foreign points of view. It resulted in a lot of new learning and a major change in processing them, as well as in the part of Amsterdam.

Jutta Thinesse-Demel
LEARNING REGIONS – LEARNING NETWORKS. THE CONCEPT OF LEARNING REGIONS IN GERMANY

To create Learning Regions, the German government is financing a project Learning regions – Providing support for networks. It has set out to create regional networks to reach out to people not seeking learning or sector with difficulties in organising opportunities of learning. Now they are starting a new programme in which communities are enforced to stabilise the system for learning by fostering regionalism, glocalisation, permeability through enhancing the Learning Regions.

Palmira Juceviciene
SCHOLARS AND PRACTITIONERS FINDING COMMON OBJECTIVES IN A LEARNING CITY PROJECT

The city of Kaunas chose to become a Learning City, but how? The university set out to find the development of the methodology and instrument for the research on learning partnership networks of researchers and practitioners who seek to develop a learning city. The true research goals were hard to find. It was a conflict between acquiring new knowledge and applying it in practice.

Lesley Doyle
LEARNING TO LEARN IN A LEARNING REGION

Two projects, LILARA and PENR3L, work to research the needs for training and learning in local and regional authority staff and its stakeholders to assist the development of Learning Organisations, Learning Cities and Learning Regions, and to create, test and modify learning programmes to satisfy those needs. They are under PASCAL Observatory, an international research and policy development alliance, to develop, communicate and explain new and emerging ideas about the key concepts of Lifelong Learning, the Learning Society, Place Management, Social Capital and the Learning Region, to avoid the ‘silo’ approach where departments and organisations function separately from each other.
LILARA increases knowledge of the learning city/ learning region concept among local and regional authority and other stakeholder staff, such as those in small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), and relates this knowledge to their own local and regional authority or employer. The project meets staffs’ training needs by locating and/or developing learning materials and delivery to engage staff, and increase their understanding of, and participation in, a Learning City or Region. The interactive method also sets people to defining what a ‘learning city or region’ means.

Eric Agbessi, Julie Billon, Simon Ensor, Gilmour Fontaine, Michèle Imbeaud-Celle, Patricia Mabrut, Andrew Murray and Stéphan David
ELIMINATING BARRIERS TO LIFELONG LEARNING: A PARTNERSHIP FOR A DISTANCE-LEARNING SYSTEM

In 2003, a European conference saw that universities should contribute more actively to local and regional needs and strategies. At the university level, the promoters of ICT wished to develop a project to address the needs of the region, devoted to foreign languages, the use of new technologies and the creation of pedagogical material for distance learning in a Research and Development strategy. In 2006 broadband access reached across the whole territory, to create an “e-teaching-learning environment”. The program required a lot of teamwork, and a redefinition of the role of the teacher.

Xianjin Dou
LIFELONG LEARNING IN THE NATIONAL STRATEGY REFORM IN CHINA
In China, there is a massive move from countryside farms to towns and industry. The economy has record high raise in GDP. The country sees that it needs not only a program but also practice of lifelong learning. Now they have programs on farming for millions, and distance education, but they are also implementing a system in which the employer pays 1.5 percent of the wages to lifelong learning for the employees.