Institutionalised forms of adult learning and education (ALE) such as community learning centres (CLCs) and related models are found in most parts of the world. These are spaces offering opportunities for literacy and skills training, health and citizenship, general, liberal and vocational education, in line with fuller recognition of the meaning…

The need for individual, community and institutional lifelong learning grows and changes with turbulent social, political and economic change. The national adult education non-government organisation (NGO), Adult Learning Australia, can influence the course of policymaking and ultimately the national culture through diverse activities within or…

Most learning takes place in communities, neighbourhoods and workplaces. Here practical solutions to big problems work or fall down. We may call this the iron law of social learning, recognised in "community development", "community capacity-building", "workplace", "work-based" and…

The authors show ways in which Jarl Bengtsson, a Swedish social scientist and policy analyst, has influenced international policy making. As a member and later director of the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation from the beginning of the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, he has contributed to the international discussion…

There can no longer be any doubt that adult education within lifelong learning is a key factor for economic and social development, as well as being a human right. New policies for adult education must now result in coherent forms of laws and legislation clearly spelling out ways and means for financing adult education. These must involve the…

Adult learning is now widely seen as a basic human right (the right to learn) and lifelong learning is similarly recognised. Adult learning within a lifelong learning concept has an agenda far wider than just employability skills. Yet educational inequalities between and within nations remain stark, as does the gap between rhetoric and practice in…

Lifelong learning is a powerful concept and perspective for transforming education systems and enabling learning societies. Developed in the advanced industrialised North, it is now being considered in poor countries where Education for All is a main educational preoccupation. The meaning of lifelong learning is confused and contested, caught up…

Extramural liberal adult education (LAE), as conceived in the particular UK tradition, was doomed by its high-minded origins and its privileged status, and contributed little to the new concepts of "éducation permanente," lifelong learning, the knowledge society, the learning society and region, or to the new understandings of university…

The language of the world of learning is popularised, trivialised and reduced in the meaning of some central terms and concepts. Much of the new communities and cities and social capital language of learning comes from a disinterested search for understanding, but too much is also innocent about social structures and political power, reluctant to…

To build the Learning Society requires universal higher education. In the 21st century, universities should embrace entrepreneurship by opening systems, building partnerships and networks, and becoming learning organizations. The entrepreneurial university is not in opposition to the academic university, but is an enrichment or enlargement of its…

Lifelong learning offers challenges and opportunities for universities to become more effective learning organizations. New functions must be added to established ones or modified. Organizational learning and staff development will become increasingly important. Higher education will diversify further, with more education taking place outside the…

Like the rest of British life around them, Great Britain's universities of adult and continuing education are currently in the midst of a period of great change. There has been much debate surrounding the relative importance of instruction, research, and community service in the overall mission of adult and continuing education in universities. It…

This book examines the changing role of institutions of higher education within the context of bids made by British universities to the Universities Funding Council for funding, the changed organizational structures of British polytechnics, and the increasing importance of continuing education. Emphasis is on the new role of the university as a…