Introduction: The Admired and Contested Concept of Lifelong Learning

Over the last three decades, ‘lifelong learning’ has certainly become one of the most fashionable concepts in contemporary social-political discourse. Here are some key events that have made it a slogan and ‘mantra’ for European policies:

  • 1996 was declared the European Year of Lifelong Learning;

  • The strategy for achieving the goal formulated by the Lisbon Declaration of 2000, that the European Union must become “the most competitive and dynamic, knowledge-based society”, included as one of its fundamental components “adapting education and teaching so that they will provide possibilities for individuals to learn during all stages of their lives” (CEC 2001, p. 6);

  • Likewise, in the year 2000, the European Commission published the Memorandum on Lifelong Learning (CEC 2000), which was the start of a series of initiatives in this field across all European countries;

  • The UNDP 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development delineates goal 4 as: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (UNDP 2015);

  • In 2018, the European Commission published a Proposal for a Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning (European Commission 2018).

Even as the term becomes central to European policies and programmes, sharp criticisms are levelled at it from academics. The critical emphasis lies in two main directions: (1) the epistemological status of the notion of ‘lifelong learning’ (Grace 2004; Boshier 2001; Duke 2001), and (2) the functions of lifelong learning policies and practices, along with the empirically tested cumulative character of educational (dis)advantages. The latter are revealed in the finding that people with higher levels of initial education are able to pursue opportunities for lifelong learning far more readily than those with less or inadequate formal education (Preston 1999; Wain 2000; Jarvis 2001a, b; Crowther 2004; Borg and Mayo 2005; Roosmaa and Saar 2012; Blossfeld et al. 2014). It is emphasised that “we are clearly not dealing with an unambiguous, neutral or static concept, but one which is currently being fought over by numerous interest groups, all struggling for their definition” (Coffield 1999, p. 488).

The concept of lifelong learning has been criticised as being vague and potentially serving too great a variety of political objectives (Smith 1996 [2001]). It has been furthermore characterised as “a chameleonic concept” (Grace 2004, p. 385), “bungee jumping” (Boshier 2001, p. 361), “a truism” (Tight 1998, p. 254), “a vacuous term” (Martin 2001, p. 6), and even “a Goliath-like term” (Duke 2001, p. 503) or “a catch-all concept, a problematic umbrella descriptor for all and sundry kinds of formal, nonformal and informal learning” (Grace 2004, p. 389). Field (2005) notes that the origins of the concept of lifelong learning lie in the sphere of policies rather than the social sciences and that this has led some scholars to question its value. It is contended that lifelong learning remains a “contested terrain in view of its multiple meanings, goals, and desired results” (Grace 2004, p. 386) and “a vague and contested term” (Ibid, p. 388). The term of lifelong education is viewed as one that “seeks to generalize the reference of the notion ‘education’ to such a wide set of parameters as virtually to empty it of all meaning” (Aspin and Chapman 2000, p. 2).

A great deal of criticism has also been directed at the objectives and practices of lifelong learning. Critics have qualified lifelong learning as:

  • part of the hegemonic neo-liberal project, under which all that matters is the economy and the market (Preston 1999; Crowther 2004; Borg and Mayo 2004, 2005);

  • reducing human capital to a labour force and education to vocational training (Wain 2000, pp. 39–40);

  • something that fully corresponds to market principles, that “represents learning as something that can be packaged, marketed and sold, and sets the learner in the role of consumer” (Wain 2000, p. 44);

  • “a ‘deficit discourse’”, which “introduces new mechanisms of self-surveillance” and “locates the responsibility of economic and political failure at the level of the individual, rather than at the level of systemic problems” (Crowther 2004, p. 125);

  • a mechanism promoting the fragmentation of the excluded (Field 2001);

  • a form of social control and a mechanism for reasserting the social-reproductive functions of education (Preston 1999; Coffield 1999; Jarvis 2001a, b; Crowther 2004);

  • a factor that is “transforming the governance of late modern societies, as the state sheds directive powers both downwards (to individuals and associations) and upwards (to transnational corporations and intergovernmental bodies)” (Field 2001, p. 4);

  • an element of the decline of the social state/ welfare state (Griffin 2000; Grace 2004).

Considering these claims and standpoints, it becomes so clear why lifelong learning is perceived as ‘a problematic notion’, that the question even arises whether it is worth using or developing (Smith 1996 [2001]). According to Field (2000, pp. ix–xii), there are three reasons we should continue to talk and write about lifelong learning: (1) It is important to keep the aspirations contained within the concept; lifelong learning is essential for making informed choices in modern societies; (2) Despite the shortcomings and confusion of present-day policies, something new is happening, and great changes are taking place in the way we view learning; (3) As far as lifelong learning also serves as a mechanism for exclusion and control, creating new and powerful inequalities, we should learn the reasons causing this and how to counteract it.

So, is there something paradoxical in the situation described above? How can we explain this important—but also tension-ridden—use of the concept of lifelong learning, both in the spheres of policy and in academic debates? Can we identify certain systemic or structural characteristics of contemporary society that are ‘responsible’ for the development of this concept? What path can lead us from the awareness that history is what produces lifelong learning policies and practices towards the formation of a theoretical view on lifelong learning? Might the concept’s fashionableness today not merely be part of the never-ending struggle for resource distribution, all the fiercer in recent years because of budgetary restrictions (Wallerstein 1996)? In this chapter, we attempt to address these questions by contextualising the renaissance of lifelong learning (theory, policies, and practices alike) within the societies of late modernity.

At first glance, ‘there is nothing new under the sun’ as regards the topic of lifelong learning—it is a rather old idea according to which people need to constantly enlarge their knowledge. Far back in history, the ancient Greeks attached the greatest importance to education, precisely because its impact on a person is not limited in time or space. “Other recreations”, Cicero (2014, p. 9087) says:

do not belong to all seasons nor to all ages, nor to all places. These pursuits [with science—authors’ note] nourish our youth and delight our old age. They adorn our prosperity and give a refuge and a solace to our troubles. They charm us at home, and they are not in our way when we are abroad. They go to bed with us. They travel about with us. They accompany us as we escape into the country.

That is why “[l]et no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul” (Diogenes 1925, X, p. 649). This lofty ideal for education was repeated by the intellectuals of the twelfth-century Renaissance. For William of Conches (von Conches 1980, IV, p. 40), the ultimate time limit for learning is death—when a wise man was asked about the limit for learning, he answered: “where the boundary of life is”.

We could continue on with quotations from the great thinkers of subsequent centuries who have admired the thirst for learning and insisted on the need to improve knowledge throughout one’s life. Just one example—according to the John Dewey (2001 [1916], p. 105) “the aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education—or that the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth”. But can we say that nothing new has happened? In fact, what we have witnessed during recent decades is our radically shifting understanding of education. The very notion has gradually been substituted by the concept of lifelong education/learning; and, likewise, ‘mass-scale school education’ by the idea of a learning society.

The first question that arises here concerns how to deal with the multiple definitions of lifelong learning, definitions that often ascribe different meanings to the same term. Given all this confusion amidst the various concepts, would it not be better to entirely give up all attempts to distinguish them, perhaps simply rather using them interchangeably? We believe that the effort to differentiate among these concepts is very important. Not only is it needed in order to achieve precision and consistency of analysis, but each meaning also entails a different solution to the problem of the state’s role in education; these different concepts could moreover serve as the basis for varied policy formulation. One approach we could use to understand the different meanings of lifelong learning is by analysing the history of the concept. This is based on the assumption that the content of concepts is influenced by their history and that their meanings can only be defined by taking into account the context of their formation and development through time. History helps us in understanding the social challenges being addressed when seeking out a given concept; it also prevents us from overlooking the historical determination of our interpretations of the world (Todorov 1998).

Starting from the above considerations in this chapter, we will first sketch a brief history of the concept of lifelong learning and its interpretation. Then the chapter will present a theoretical framework for better understanding both the tension-provoking presence of the lifelong learning concept in scientific debate and the (national) specificity of the development of lifelong learning in different socio-economic and cultural contexts. We will argue that the lifelong learning paradigm is essentially generated by the main socio-structural characteristics of the societies of late modernity and is a manifestation of the dedifferentiation process and the replacement of ‘Either-or’ logic with that of ‘And’. The chapter also outlines the specificity of adult and higher education within the scope of lifelong learning.

A Glance at the History of the Concept of Lifelong Learning and Its Interpretation

Even a brief introduction to the discussions on lifelong education/learning inevitably will be fraught with two problems:

  • there are a number of closely similar concepts: ‘permanent education’, ‘continuing education’, ‘recurrent education’, and ‘adult education’; and each of these concepts has its own history (e.g. Jarvis 2004);

  • the development of the concept of lifelong education/learning has passed through different stages which have connected it with various paradigms.

The existing paradigms relevant to lifelong education/learning differ importantly in three respects: (1) as regards their views on the meaning and direction of educational processes; (2) as regards the state’s and the market’s given role related to learning; and (3) in terms of which institutions should initiate and promote education.

The two main paradigms are lifelong education and lifelong learning. The first of these, for its part, embraces two essentially different views: the ‘maximalist’ project of a ‘learning society’, on the one hand, and the non-holistic concepts that are its alternative, on the other.

The former view considers lifelong education by drawing inspiration from UNESCO during the 1960s and 1970s. This approach is designated as ‘maximalist’ because it implies a holistic strategy on education, at the centre of which is building a learning society. Faure et al.’s report Learning to Be (1972) and Hutchins’s book The Learning Society (1968), both considered widely to be canonical, emphasise the understanding of education in terms of becoming, to be, and to have. This marks a truly deep, paradigmatic change in the way we think about education. Some authors would qualify it as utopian, inasmuch as the learning society represents a normative ideal tied to a political vision for a better world (Wain 2001).

In fact, a range of perspectives on lifelong education were widely publicised during the 1970s and 1980s. The general denotations connected with these views were: (1) training individuals to cope with the new challenges they would be confronted with in their adult lives; (2) extending education throughout the whole life of the individual; (3) stressing the educational functions of the entire life experience of the individual; and (4) equating education with the whole life course (Bagnall 1990). Actually, only the latter two (which happen to be very closely interconnected with, and reinforce, each other) coincide with the ‘maximalist’ paradigm.

The first of these corresponds to the term ‘continuing education’, defined as school education followed by higher education or vocational training—depending on the individual’s need for self-realisation or the requirements of the work environment. The second implies a distinction between education and real life, referring to the fact that people, being active citizens, can repeatedly find themselves in situations requiring improvement in their knowledge. Hence, people must often go back to various educational institutions (recurrent education). As Wain points out (2001, p. 185), the thing that likens concepts such as ‘continuing education’ and ‘recurrent education’ yet sets them apart from ‘lifelong education’ is “their common rejection of the close association of education with ‘life’, or raw experience”, that is, their rejection of the inclusion in education of the informal (unplanned, unforeseen) acquirement of knowledge through life practices. In both cases, education is viewed as necessarily including the kind of learning that is formal, conscious, and supervised. Clearly, how we understand lifelong education depends on what we understand as education in the first place.

The surmounting of the ‘maximalist’ project for a ‘learning society’ is mainly connected with the activities of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Council of Europe. These two organisations promote alternative educational strategies that envisage “only limited strategic ‘adjustments’”—they retain respect for school education and tie the need for lifelong education to the need for a larger scale development of adult education (Wain 2001, pp. 186–187).

The second basic paradigm for interpreting lifelong education became especially popular in the mid-1990s, when the concept ‘lifelong education’ gave way to that of lifelong learning.Footnote 1 While the first paradigm assigns a central role to the state—which is, in partnership with various national and regional institutions, assigned the duty of ensuring wider educational opportunities for all citizens—the second paradigm, that of lifelong learning, shifts this duty to the individual while also stressing vocational/professional training. Activities related to professional training have been considered an investment by many proponents of this view, especially during the first years of this concept’s ‘life’, while education unrelated to a given profession has been seen as ‘consumption’, thus falling into the sphere of individual choices and decisions.

Most authors take a negative view on the substitution of the ‘lifelong education’ concept with ‘lifelong learning’. They believe that the first of these concepts emphasises ‘education’, while the second stresses ‘lifelong’. Moreover, lifelong education is linked with ‘to be’, not ‘to have’; it is concentrated in the public sphere, focuses on equality and civil society, and is understood as a process aimed at growth, at achieving the qualitative development of individuals and their social life. Lifelong learning, for its part, includes all kinds of learning regardless of their quality, and is focused on the private sphere, on individuals as clients of education services, and is most often limited to continuing education and professional development (Boshier 2001; Wain 2001; Grace 2004).

Some, less numerous, authors believe that the concept of lifelong learning is preferable to that of lifelong education because the former asserts the active position of individuals in the educational process, unlike the understanding of education as a purposefully supervised activity in which individuals are mostly passive performers of another’s will (see Wain 2001, p. 188).

In the early 1990s, a powerful revival of the idea of a ‘learning society’ started taking shape. In Western European countries, this revival was connected with the activity of the European Roundtable of Industrialists (ERTI), which published the 1994 report Education for Europeans: Towards the Learning Society, as well as the European Union, which prepared a white paper entitled Teaching and Learning—Towards the Learning Society (ERTI 1995; European Commission 1995). The report of the Roundtable of Industrialists concluded with the warning that there must be no “second-rate citizens”, meaning people who do not get a good education, in the ‘learning society’ (ERTI 1995, p. 32). Although this might seem paradoxical, the Roundtable of Industrialists was the first institution to defend the view that “the essential mission of education is to help everyone to develop their own potential and become a complete human being, as opposed to a tool at the service of the economy” (European Commission 1995, p. 9).Footnote 2 It is beyond doubt that during 1990s UNESCO played a leading role in promoting a comprehensive humanistic view on lifelong and adult learning, defining its aim as “to equip people with the necessary capabilities to exercise and realize their rights and take control of their destinies” and asserting that “it promotes personal and professional development, thereby supporting more active engagement by adults with their societies, communities and environments” (UNESCO 2016a, p. 8).

In generalising, we may distinguish three basic approaches to defining lifelong education and lifelong learning (see also Aspin and Chapman 2000, pp. 3–6). We will designate the first approach as the positivist one. Falling into this category are all the authors for whom it is possible to achieve unambiguous consent regarding the meaning and use of these concepts and who have tried to propose their definitions. Such optimism was especially typical of authors in the mid-1970s.

A relativistic viewpoint emerged as a kind of response to the positivistic approach. It finds its theoretical foundation in the philosophical programmes of Wittgenstein, Kuhn, and Lakatos. According to some authors, for instance, “to think that one can find an ‘essential’, ‘basic’ or incontestable definition of lifelong education is to embark upon a search for a chimera” (Ibid, p. 6). So instead, they propose that we follow Wittgenstein’s advice and look for the uses of this term, that is, how various authors employ it. Wain (1987) believes that the different theories on lifelong education are not only mutually incomparable but compete with one another. Referring to Lakatos, he accepts the idea that there are multiple rival interpretations—or ‘educational programs’—of education and, respectively, of lifelong education. Such views, in turn, have been criticised for their epistemological and moral relativism (Bagnall 1990).

The third approach to understanding the concepts of lifelong education and lifelong learning is a pragmatic one. According to its supporters, there may be different interpretations of these concepts and, instead of dealing with said interpretations in a way that might prove self-defeating and unconvincing, it would be better to discuss the conditions under which separate theories and policies have arisen, developed, and been applied. In other words, what interests those authors trying to understand lifelong learning is, for instance, “how, why, and in response to what pressures and quandaries the various versions of lifelong education have been developed” and also what problems may be solved by upholding the idea that learning must continue throughout life and should be open to all (Aspin and Chapman 2000, p. 13). The nature of lifelong learning is defined as “triadic”, inasmuch as the problems that it aims to solve include economic progress and development, personal development and fulfilment, and social inclusion and democratic understanding (Ibid, p. 17).

As a rule, the various conceptions of lifelong education and lifelong learning are connected with various ideological and social-political platforms. As was demonstrated in the beginning of this chapter, a critical attitude prevails in the literature as regards the way in which lifelong learning is perceived and defined, an attitude that essentially critiques the modern global and market-oriented society as well.

Learning is a broader concept than education. In order to differentiate between them, Rogers suggests using the analogy of flour and bread: “bread is made from flour; but not all flour is bread, bread is processed flour. Similarly, all education is learning; but not all learning is education, education is processed, i.e., planned, learning” (Rogers 2014, p. 12, emphasis in the original). It is “learning that is deliberate, intentional, purposeful and organized” (UNESCO 2015, p. 17). Bearing in mind the ongoing debate about the proper terminology, either lifelong learning or lifelong education (e.g. Wain 2001; Tuijnman and Boström 2002; Jarvis 2009; Holford and Milana 2014), we follow Peter Jarvis’s argument that “lifelong education became lifelong learning” (Jarvis 2009, p. 36) and prefer using the term ‘lifelong learning’ for three main reasons. First, whereas education refers to the provision of learning opportunities in an institutionalised and planned manner, learning is a wider term that could encompass not only formal but also non-formal and informal forms of learning. Second, by moving the focus from structures and institutions to individuals, it emphasises the agency aspect of the educational and learning processes and the active role of the individual in them. Third, lifelong learning pays special attention to the individual, who can make her/his own choice regarding what s/he wants to learn in accordance to what s/he has reason to value. This is of key importance, especially when we consider the forms of education that follow the compulsory one.

Lifelong Learning as a Manifestation of the ‘And’ Principle of Late Modernity

In order to designate the radical nature of the changes the contemporary world is undergoing, sociologists use different concepts: ‘late modernity’, ‘risk society’, ‘reflexive modernity’, ‘second modernity’, ‘high modernity’ (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992; Beck et al. 1994; Beck 1997; Bauman 2002; Meyer et al. 2006). We will use the concept of late modernity.

We argue that the lifelong learning paradigm is essentially generated by the societies/cultures of late modernity and—in the conditions of global openness—transmitted ‘cross-borderly’ to less developed societies.

During the period of early modernity, education was equated with school. The concept ‘lifelong learning’ reflects and combines the three basic dimensions in which this equating has been questioned: (1) the temporal aspect, according to which education is connected only with childhood—here it is qualified as continuing throughout the whole life of a person; (2) the spatial aspect, where it was limited to school but is now linked with the activities of multiple institutions; and (3) in pedagogical terms, where it was equated with the activities of professional instructors in schools, but here it extends to a non-formal and spontaneous process of learning and acquiring knowledge (see also Wain 2001). This concept does not merely delineate between in and out of school, but to a much greater degree, supports:

the lessening of the power of the educator to define what constitutes ‘worthwhile’ knowledge and ‘serious’ learning, a questioning of the role of discipline and normalization and a refusal to acknowledge that learning must always be shaped by the values of a particular conception of progress. In the process, what a ‘learning opportunity’ is and who legitimately provides such opportunities is problematised and reconfigured. (Usher 2001, p. 181, emphasis in the original)

That is why the key words related to lifelong learning are ‘diversity’ and ‘choice’.

The revival of the concept of lifelong learning during the 1990s and the way in which it has come to be understood can be grasped only in the context of the changed structural characteristics and new sociality within the societies of late modernity. In attempting to find a concise characteristic of the contemporary world, Ulrich Beck refers to Wassily Kandinsky’s article bearing the impressive title of ‘And’. In it, Kandinsky tries to find the precise word that distinguishes the twentieth century from the nineteenth. Beck (1997, p. 1) finds Kandinsky’s answer surprising:

while the nineteenth century was dominated by Either-or, the twentieth was to be devoted to work on And. Formerly: separation, specialisation, efforts at clarity and the calculability of the world; now: simultaneity, multiplicity, uncertainty, the issue of connections, cohesion.

In other words, while early modernity is connected to the processes of differentiation, both at the level of society as a whole and that of separate social spheres, a contrary process develops in late modernity: one of obliterating strict distinctions in social life, surmounting dividing lines, and the mutual interpenetration between social spheres. In early modernity, the social order is achieved through functional differentiation between social subsystems, while late modernity problematises this differentiation and produces social forms based on coordination and mutual interpenetration. That is why the world and life in early modernity are much clearer and more predictable, while late modernity is constantly confronting us with problems. Moreover, some of these problems derive from the very nature of late modernity, from the predominant ‘And’ in it, which renders its outlines vague and fills them with dilemmas and ambivalence (Beck 1997). Other problems, however, are not unavoidable: they arise because we live in the ‘And’ world but continue to think in the logic of ‘Either-or’.

To this indisputably concise and accurate definition of the basic problem facing the societies of late modernity, we should add a few concrete characteristics of these societiesFootnote 3 in order to understand more clearly the social context reflected by and developed within the notion of lifelong learning. We must outline the essential changes in the systemic-structural characteristics of societies and in the role of the individual in them, as well as in the status of scientific cognition and institutions of knowledge.

The societies of late modernity are societies in which change transforms from a sporadic occurrence into a permanent feature of their existence and the lives of individuals. But the greatest difficulty which people must deal with is “meta-change”, the change in the way the situation changes (Bauman 1997, p. 24).

The wide-scale and all-encompassing processes of globalisation gradually bring forth various mechanisms for overcoming the situation in which human activity is ‘anchored’ to the narrow scope of local contexts and institutions; now, social relations are organised in broader spatial-temporal ties (Giddens 1990). At first glance, it appears that globalisation is an “out there” phenomenon but, in fact, it is an “in here” matter that influences—or rather is dialectically connected with—even the most intimate aspects of our lives (Beck et al. 1994, p. 95). The global society is global not in the sense of being a world society but as one of “unlimited space” in which social ties must be created, not inherited from the past (Ibid, p. 107).

The new role of change in contemporary society, as well as the overcoming of ‘anchoring’ mechanisms, has been aptly captured by Bauman through the concept of a liquid society (Bauman 2000). In such a society, borders are mobile, traversable, and constantly questioned. Under conditions of constant change and mobility, the systemic totalities of the modern world are problematised and break down, which decreases and even abolishes their role as a determining force in the conduct of individuals (see Bauman 2002).

In order to understand the specific distinction of the societies of late modernity, we should add one more characteristic of the process of individualisation: its political nature. These societies involve a new way of thinking about the political—it rejects equating politics with the state and the political system and, instead, politics are seen as penetrating into spheres once separate from it in an industrial society, such as the private sector, business, science, cities, and everyday life (Beck et al. 1994). Thus, late modernity is “a political modernity, a modernity, that is, which stimulates the reinvention of politics” (Beck 1997, p. 5, emphasis in the original). That is why every theory that tries to interpret the manifestations of late modernity must include politics in its focus from the very start (see also Bauman 2002).

A characteristic that indisputably belongs to late modernity, one that is essential for understanding the specifics of lifelong learning, is the changing status of scientific knowledge and its related institutions. The place and role of science in society today is the topic of constant discussions, both at the political level (with the ideas of a knowledge-based society and economy) and at the theoretical level (with discussions on the changing epistemological status of knowledge). When rethinking science, one above-mentioned essential feature of late modernity has key importance: that of the ‘dissolving’ institutional boundaries between various public sectors. One manifestation of this mutual penetration and the ‘permeability’ of separate social spheres is the market’s entry into areas that used to be sheltered from market mechanisms, like healthcare, public administration, science, or education.

In designating the radical change in scientific cognition and the notion of rationality, Nowotny et al. (2001) have introduced the concepts ‘mode 1 science’ and ‘mode 2 science’. ‘Mode 1’ is related to a single discipline and is a comparatively autonomous kind of science, while ‘mode 2’ is mainly interdisciplinary and accountable to society (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001). Thus, the modernist understanding of cognition as culturally universalist, autonomous from society, and politically emancipating, has been substituted by the deconstruction of knowledge and emphasis on its contextual production (see Delanty 2001, pp. 130–133). Together with this, the production and possession of knowledge has become more democratic: more and more people are participating in the social construction and comprehension of reality. According to Delanty (2001), whereas knowledge in liberal modernity was meant to serve the state, supplying it with a national culture and professional elites, in ‘organised modernity’ it serves the professional order of mass society while also enhancing the power and prestige of the state. Knowledge has become even more important today, but it is not being produced from a single source. The relationship between science (and cognition in general) and society has become more complicated: the linear model of early modernity, where society has a gradually growing need for certain kinds of specialists and knowledge, is ceding ground to the heterogeneous and quickly changing social demands of various social actors (see Kruecken 2003, pp. 315–316). This makes possible the appearance of multiple different institutions which produce and offer knowledge.

Under the conditions of late modernity, “[k]nowledge ceases to be an end in itself” (Lyotard 1984, p. 5, emphasis added), it has lost its unity, has been broken down into independent parts that may be acquired and used separately, and has even turned into a commodity. The instrumentalisation of knowledge and its transformation into a commodity both result in the gradual questioning of the validity of the “old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals… Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold” (Ibid, pp. 4–5). These new characteristics of knowledge—its fragmentation, instrumentalisation, and commodification—determine the new way it is transmitted:

Outside the universities, departments, or institutions with a professional orientation, knowledge will no longer be transmitted en bloc, once and for all, to young people before their entry into the work force: rather it is and will be served “á la carte” to adults who are either already working or expect to be, for the purpose of improving their skills and chances of promotion, but also to help them acquire information, languages, and language games allowing them both to widen their occupational horizons and to articulate their technical and ethical experience (Ibid, p. 49, emphasis in the original).

In the context of the development of late modernity as a society of choices and fragmented knowledge, we understand the postmodern critiques of education which argue the impossibility of a single curriculum and the need for the greatest possible variety of curricula (Aronowitz and Giroux 1991).

The changing systemic-structural societal characteristics of late modernity have been accompanied by changes in value attitudes towards education. Without taking these into account, we cannot fully understand the emergence and development of the concept and practices of lifelong learning.

Usher (2001) is justified in asserting that theories on education fail to point out the place and importance of consumption in contemporary society. This refers to the consumption of not so much commodities as signs and meanings; it refers to understanding the functioning of objects of consumption as a system of classification, markers of difference which distinguish individuals from one another. Consumer culture is an economy of signs in which individuals exchange messages about their social positions. Hence, we could not penetrate into the complex and diverse nature of educational activity among people in modern society if we were to limit our examination of these activities to only economic terms. Here we should add at least two kinds of attitudes towards education: (1) educational activities as an object of desire, as something related to pleasure rather than discipline, and (2) educational choices in the context of the “sign economy of ‘lifelong learning’” (Ibid, p. 177), of communication acts. In this sense, the level of education one attains is viewed as a marker of the degree of individual self-development, identity, and difference from others.

The role of education is usually seen as being connected with the professional realisation of a person and her/his socialisation. Under the conditions of late modernity, the attitude to being educated and to learning is also subject to the ‘And’ principle. A person evaluates her/his education not only as a tool, a means for achieving professional and socially necessary knowledge and skills, but also as a value in itself. Moreover, the independent value of education also has different dimensions. It may be inherently valuable because it satisfies personal needs for knowledge, the need to understand the world. But it might also constitute a sign of belonging to a prestigious social group and inclusion in a certain social milieu. In other words, ‘education is a commodity to be bought’ for various reasons: in order to enable future professional realisation, but also because it distinguishes the individual from all others, because it designates a person’s individuality and proclaims their social status to those with whom they communicate.

The higher the educational level, the more that level performs the function of identifying its possessor in a specific way and distinguishing her/him from others. In this perspective, the widespread striving to obtain a higher education—and in general to increase one’s education—becomes understandable, despite the difficulties of professional realisation in one’s concrete specialty which have recently been witnessed in many countries (e.g. Verhaest and Van der Velden 2013). Diplomas of completed education are signs; moreover, they are signs that speak for themselves, without needing to check whether they are covered by real knowledge. Thus, the signs of those universities leading the global ranking systems are much more attractive and have more to say about their holders than the signs of those universities which do not appear in the global rankings. This classificatory power of the sign explains some people’s growing desire to ‘buy’ certain signs. Late modern societies have also brought about the great importance of CVs, which ‘store’ educational signs and give them great prominence. The CV precedes the individual in her/his socially important contacts; in many cases, it remains a person’s only means of identification. We would not be able to understand the growing interest and activity in education without taking into account that education is a sign, that it has the power to classify and designate people.

Keeping in mind the basic systemic-structural characteristics of the societies of late modernity and the changed status of knowledge and education in them, now we will return to our attempt at understanding the nature and practices of lifelong learning.

Just as mass-scale school education is a response to the needs of early modern societies, so are the concepts, practices, and policies of lifelong learning made possible and understandable in the context of late modernity. They are related to the increasing ‘permeability’ between the social spheres, to the process of individualisation, and also to the deconstruction of knowledge and of the institutions producing and using knowledge.

Lifelong learning is a sort of manifestation of the ties between the various kinds of education and the interpenetration between education and life. It is both a manifestation of this interpenetration and a factor in its acceleration. That is why it:

can be understood as a metaphor that foregrounds the simultaneous boundlessness of learning, ie. that it is not confined by pre-determined outcomes or formal institutions, and its postmodern quality, ie. its inherent discursivity, significatory power, and socio-cultural contextuality (Ibid, p. 166).

The above discussion entails recognising that lifelong learning:

  1. 1)

    is not a system that remains unchanged over time with respect to the elements that comprise it and the connections between those elements; instead, it is the principle of the connection between constantly changing elements that engender an open set of significantly different practices;

  2. 2)

    is not limited to a certain time period in the life of an individual, nor to certain institutions, that is, it is both lifelong and life-wide;

  3. 3)

    implies various kinds of activity (both purposeful and spontaneous, as well as unforeseen);

  4. 4)

    can be localised in different contexts and in different social practices (formally institutionalised or informal, organised or spontaneously arising);

  5. 5)

    may have different goals (formulated beforehand yet vague, or gradually emerging in the course of learning, and tied to individual professional and civic realisation, personal development and identities that designate individuals as different from others);

  6. 6)

    may refer to both knowledge and skills recognised as useful and knowledge and skills with an unclear or even questionable social relevance but which do satisfy specific individual needs;

  7. 7)

    is not necessarily connected with the cumulative growth and deepening of knowledge but might involve rejecting the initially chosen field of knowledge and reorienting to closely related or entirely different new fields of knowledge;

  8. 8)

    is not confined to an institutionally defined way of conducting learning, external to the individual, but learners are constantly being placed in a situation of having to choose and in which support from a counsellor may be required;

  9. 9)

    may involve conducting different policies and may give rise to ethical problems.

If, following the example of Kandinsky and Beck, we look for the word that best characterises lifelong learning as opposed to formal education, we would certainly choose the conjunction ‘And’. Lifelong learning relates to formal education and non-formal education or independent learning as well; it relates to purposefully planned educational activities and sporadic, spontaneously arising educational practices; to knowledge that is needed for professional and social realisation, and knowledge that may be practically useless but brings satisfaction to a person. Being a basic reflection of all these different learning practices, lifelong learning is a sort of manifestation of the dedifferentiation process, that is, of the breakdown of clear and settled demarcations between different sectors of learning and education and from learning and education to the other social spheres (see also Usher 2001).

Thus, within the context of late modernity, lifelong learning emerges as a concept which captures hybrid realities. Etymologically, ‘hybridisation’ designates the processes of mixing, of crossing various races, various animal or vegetable breeds. This is a mixing of living systems that have different natures and different rhythms, and it also denotes the tensions thereby arising, including the arrhythmic states that may occur when a common modus vivendi is sought. Recognising the hybrid character of lifelong learning means acknowledging the fact that it is a principle of learning and education which leads to the emergence of an assembly of different practices and that it includes different kinds of knowledge and skills within different perspectives.

Adult Education within the Scope of Lifelong Learning

We share UNESCO’s view that “[a]dult learning and education is a core component of lifelong learning” (UNESCO 2016a, p. 6). However, like lifelong learning, adult learning and education also has a heterogeneous character which often results in “intangible conceptual tensions” (Milana et al. 2018, p. 1) and “poses a challenge to empirical research… making it difficult, maybe even impossible, to draw general conclusions regarding the effects of adult education and training” (Weiss 2019, p. 409).

It is widely understood, especially among international organisations, that learning includes a triad—formal, non-formal, and informal. However, this view is contested in the academic literature. Thus, Colley et al. (2003) argue that most learning contains a mixture of informal and formal elements. According to them, the various aspects of formality and informality relate to four areas: the location of learning, the purposes of learning, the processes of learning, and the content of learning. Furthermore, they classify the content of a given activity as formal, whereas its purposes, process, and location are informal. Hodkinson (2010, p. 43) also points out that the boundaries between formal and informal learning are blurred and that “learning which would be classified as informal by one group of writers would be seen as formal by another group”. Rubenson (2019, p. 299, emphasis in the original) states that, in fact, the triad—formal, non-formal, and informal—“is really about the context in which learning takes place, and does not say anything about learning as such”. This discussion touches upon an important issue which deserves further research and careful attention within each concrete study.

As Jarvis (2004, pp. 46–62) shows, there are three lines of differentiation which have to be followed in order to clearly define the meaning of adult education: (1) outline how it differs from some close concepts, such as continuing education, recurrent education, or further education; (2) define the meaning of ‘adult’; and (3) differentiate between education and learning. Even a brief glance at the literature, however, reveals that there are different definitions of adult learning and education. Some authors use adult education and adult learning or adult formal education and adult formal learning interchangeably (Vono de Vilhena et al. 2016; Kilpi-Jakonen et al. 2015). Torres (2013) coins the term ‘adult learning education’. The authors of the well-received volume on life-course perspective on adult learning in modern societies define it as referring to both formal and non-formal learning activities (Kilpi-Jakonen et al. 2014, p. 4). The editors of the Palgrave International Handbook on Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning (Milana et al. 2018) prefer the generic concept ‘adult education and learning’. This is in line with UNESCO’s definition, according to which adult learning and education:

denotes the entire body of learning processes, formal, non-formal and informal, whereby those regarded as adults by the society in which they live, develop and enrich their capabilities for living and working, both in their own interests and those of their communities, organizations and societies. (UNESCO 2016a, p. 6)

It has to be further emphasised that the definitions of adult education applied in different countries in their legislation and policy documents vary widely (UNESCO 2016b). A fruitful direction for clarifying the concepts ‘lifelong learning’, ‘adult education’, and ‘lifelong education’ is suggested by Seddon (2018). He views them as “historically specific forms of more general political rationalities, institutionalized spaces and necessary utopias” (Ibid, p. 111). Thus, adult education is defined as:

the institutionalized space of education for adults, where space-time boundaries are contingent on a particular governing learning regime. […] The space of adult education operates through standalone organisations and also organisational forms integrated into workplaces, community settings, and social webs, through cultures that are increasingly transnational, and manifest at different national, supra-national, sub-national scales (Ibid, p. 128).

The present book focuses on the study of formal and non-formal adult education. Deferring to UNESCO (2009, p. 27), we define formal adult education as learning which “occurs as a result of experiences in an education or training institution, with structured learning objectives, learning time and support which leads to certification”. The main characteristic of non-formal education is that it does not lead to certification for the acquired level of education; however, it is structured in terms of learning objectives, learning time, and learning support. Thus, formal and non-formal education are both institutionalised, although to differing degrees; both are also intentional from the learner’s perspective.

Adult education includes institutionally organised forms of education for adults, but it is essentially different from the traditional kind of formal education with respect to the positions of the basic actors involved in it. This difference stems from the diversity of learners’ positions as subjects of education. In modern society, an obligatory education up to the age of 16 is increasingly becoming a general rule. This practically deprives learners in that age group of the possibility for an independent position regarding their entry into formal education. The situation in formal adult education is significantly different—there, the students are indeed subjects of their own actions, for their inclusion in the education process can only occur as a result of their personal decision.Footnote 4 The positions of teachers in the two kinds of education vary as well. In formal education, the teacher definitely has a position of power, inasmuch as this position is made legitimate and guaranteed through the requirements for discipline and the effect of normative sanctions for maintaining discipline. In formal adult education, this asymmetry in teacher-student relations decreases and the position of the teacher is based primarily on her/his authority.

Most of the analyses in the following chapters will refer to both formal and non-formal adult education. This is because, as many previous studies have shown, there are significant differences in the effects of these two types of adult education on their benefits for individuals and societies (Blossfeld et al. 2014; Kilpi-Jakonen et al. 2015; Boyadjieva and Ilieva-Trichkova 2017). In some of this book’s chapters, the focus will also be on one form of adult formal education—higher education. Following Desjardins (2017, pp. 19–20), we accept that adult higher education is a kind of formal adult education which could be either distinguishable or indistinguishable from regular higher education. Defining higher education as a type of adult education is in line with the view shared by Rubenson and Elfert (2013), who develop a typology of adult learning: foundational learning, higher education, workplace-related learning, labour market-related learning, and personal/social learning. Another argument for this understanding is the fact that higher education has recently begun to gradually introduce policies for lifelong education (e.g. gradual growth in part-time higher education, the introduction of schemes for accrediting prior learning, credits transfer) which might result in higher educational institutions developing opportunities for education throughout students’ lives. Higher education and adult formal and non-formal education have common characteristics: on the one hand, they differ significantly from compulsory education and, on the other hand, they have become indispensable ingredients within societies of late modernity—where even the reproduction of the social structure and institutional status quo requires “incessant growth, acceleration, and innovation” (Rosa 2018).

The heterogeneity of adult non-formal education is greater than that of adult formal education, as it includes different forms and programmes. It was already outlined in the introductory chapter that the empirical basis for most of the analyses will be data from large-scale international comparative studies. We will clearly explain how adult non-formal education is operationalised in these surveys and data from which questions will be used in the analyses.

The Boundlessness of ‘And’ as a Starting Point

Lifelong learning is a radical and all-encompassing change in education occurring under the conditions of the societies of late modernity. It implies the quantitative growth of learning and educational opportunities, a constant rethinking of the contents of educational activities, the unfolding of new forms of learning and educational initiatives, significant changes in the status of the individuals and institutions involved in the educational process, and qualitative change in the lifestyle of individuals.

The way we have presented and characterised lifelong learning here might support the conclusion that this concept is too broad and has very vague boundaries. Such a view would seem to reflect the vagueness of ‘And’. ‘And’ is both enticing and fearsome—it entices with the opportunities it opens to experiment and unleash creative energy, but it provokes fear with its vague outlines, dilemmas, and ambiguities. Yet, the enticing force of human creativity is far more powerful than the deterrent fear of uncertainty.

However, the boundlessness of ‘And’ in lifelong learning is only our starting point. We go further and argue for the need adult education research to be based on relatively clear definitions just because of the heterogeneity of the phenomenon of adult learning and education. As Weiss notes (2019, p. 409), just because adult education comes in many different forms, which may have different effects on individuals and societies, “classifications and definitions are an important fundament for adult education research, maybe more so than for research on education at traditional ages of learning”. The present book focuses on adult formal and non-formal education and on one specific form of adult formal education—higher education—which will be clearly operationalised in the analyses of each one of the next chapters.