The aim of this study is to determine the way education for self-reliance can lead to lifelong learning in previously colonised countries to trigger sustainable development. The intention of the colonial education system was to train individuals for the service of the colonial powers. The colonised people were exploited and dehumanised by their…

Jiddu Krishnamurti was a contemporary of the first non-European Nobel Laureate from Asia, Rabindranath Tagore. Their educational ideas and practices of reform were deeply informed by their own troubled experiences of schooling within the highly mechanised industrial model of education imported from colonial England. Both were school dropouts and…

While retrieval practice has been studied for over a century, it has gained a significant body of research within the past fifteen years in cognitive psychology and the learning sciences. However, there is little discussion in its study and application within topics of adult learning. In this article, we examine the historical and philosophical…

Personal narratives can be seen as iterative theories-of-valued-selves: thick, deliberate outlines traced over and selectively enhancing and obscuring the finer details of life as lived. Through telling such stories we represent and orient ourselves towards certain potential actions while turning away from others. Biographical narration is in this…

The guiding principles of the education of older adults have been stated in three landmark publications. In their statements of principles, the authors of those publications affiliated themselves with one of two older-adult learning philosophies: a humanist or a critical one. Thirty years since the first statement, the field of educational…

This paper examines transnational circulation of political and pedagogical ideas associated with "éducation permanente" with particular reference to post-war Western Europe. It offers a socio-historical reconstruction of pan-European dissemination and reception of policy repertoires articulated by governmental and non-governmental policy…

The idea of learning rooted in behavioural psychology has become dominant in the field of teaching and learning for several decades. Even though it has been widely used in formal education it is inadequate for informing lifelong learning policies and plans. In this paper, first I critique the psychological foundation of learning and in the second…

This paper takes up an existing discussion around critical perspectives on adult education, in particular how empowerment and emancipation have been understood. Previously in this journal, concern has been raised with traditional understandings of critical adult education. The problem is that these tend to assume that learners require assistance…

Within current interfaith dialogue scholarship, perspective transformation towards the religious other is one of the most desired outcomes. However, exactly how such transformed perspectives come about and the characteristics of this transformation have not been adequately researched. In this study, we examine transformative learning within…

This paper examines Peter Jarvis's conceptualisation of lifelong learners, who are seen as being the individual products of their learning engagements, constrained by their individual biological potentials. They are presented as seeking existentially authentic resolution to dialectically oppositional disjunctures between their individual…

By comparing Peter Jarvis' understanding of learning with two other approaches--which Jarvis himself has referred to as "the most comprehensive": Etienne Wenger's "social theory of learning" and my own psychologically oriented theory of "the three dimensions of learning"--it becomes evident that Jarvis' understanding…

The German gymnasium teacher Alexander Kapp (1800-1869) was to all appearances the first one to use the "andragogy concept" as a term for "adult learning." In 1833 he published the book "Platon's Erziehungslehre, als Pädagogik für die Einzelnen und als Staatspädagogik. Oder dessen praktische Philosophie." This book…

Major supranational organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Union, and the World Bank have used lifelong learning as a strategy to boost economic competitiveness both at individual and national levels. In the literature related to lifelong learning this is characterised as the economistic model…

In the wake of new museology and constructivist learning theories, the traditional unidirectional educational role of the museum has been contested and challenged. Museums have the potential to be progressive pedagogical sites and are an ideal terrain to explore educational theories and attitudes. Jacques Rancière, in his seminal book "The…

The article analyses how citizenship is conceptualised in policy documents of four key international organisations. The basic assumption is that public policy has not turned away from adult learning for active citizenship, but that there are rather new ways in which international governmental organisations conceptualise and in some cases seek to…