The Learning Society: Challenges and Trends Challenges and Trends

This reader critically examines the demographic, technological, economic and cultural challenges which have led to interest in the idea of a learning society and explores their policy and practical implications for lifelong learning. It also explores and evaluates trends in the education and training which support the development of a learning society. Overall, the book provides readers with a range of opinions on the learning society within which they can place their own practice.

The 'learning society' is not a new idea, although its popularity has grown in recent years with the suggestion that lifelong learning is a condition for economic competitiveness in a global economy, replacing the earlier conception of it as a condition for democratic citizenship. This reader, designed to accompany Module E827 of the MA in Education, critically examines the demographic, technological, economic and cultural challenges which have led to interest in the idea of a learning society, and explores their policy and practical implications for lifelong learning. It also explores and evaluates trends in education and training which support the development of a learning society. Overall, the book provides readers with a range of opinions on the learning society within which broad context they can place their own practice.

Introduction 1. Lifelong Learning: thirty years of educational change A. Stock 2. The Expansion of Adult Education and Training in Europe: trends and issues A. Tuijnman 3. Scramblloed Eggs: Social Policy and Adult Learning A. Tuckett 4. An Alysis of VET policies in the EU in the 1980s A. Clarke 5. Learners of the Future: preparing a policy for the third age T.Schuller and A. Bostyn 6. Educating Cheap Labour M. Hart 7. The Age of Leisure K. Worpole 8. Adult Education in the Light of the Risk Society T. Jansen and R. Van Der Veen 9. Open Learning and Consumer Culture J. Field 10. Education and the Marketplace T. Lett 11. The Learning Society H. Van der Vee 12. Investment: adding value through lifelong learning Commission for Social Justice 13. Towards a Career Resilient Workforce R.H. Waterman and B.A. Collard 14. Conflicts and Partnerships: employee development schemes J. Payne 15. Guidance and Cherence in Flexible Learning C. Cooper and J. Sadler 16. Open Learning for the Learning Society A. Jones andG. Kirkup 17. The Idea of the University in the Twenty-first Century: a British perspective Peter Scott