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This paper looks at the discourse of lifelong learning as it has emerged in many countries (especially Europe) over the last few years, with its concentration first on learning for work and latterly on learning for citizenship .The failure of lifelong learning to pick up on the earlier tradition of adult education is noted and some reasons for this are suggested. The paper argues that a social transformation approach to lifelong learning based on a diversity paradigm rather than a deficit or a disadvantaged paradigm is possible within its existing conceptualisation, especially within the fields of the reflective practitioner, learning and identity and the learning organisation/society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article brings into question the issue of regional network strategies aiming at implementing structures of lifelong learning in the local context, the so-called learning communities. Facing a broad diversity in their implementation all over Europe, one can observe on the other hand much less effort to discuss conceptual frameworks that deal explicitly with this subject as a whole. Yet it seems essential to categorise these colourful patterns of practice and to identify key issues—notably with regards to the aspect of lifelong learning—to develop the discourse further and to render it adaptive to international debate. For this purpose the paper draws attention to three instrumental case studies of learning communities (a Norwegian one, an English one and a German one) that were conducted within an exploratory research strategy. Designed as a between-method triangulation, the case studies represent a mixed qualitative-quantitative approach by means of an anonymous questionnaire and half-standardised interviews. The members of the network and its key stakeholders from the meta-level were investigated just as the local framework itself. Hence, the study intends not only to demonstrate exemplarily the European variety of learning communities, their origins and leading structures, but also to propose a further structuring of the topic by introducing a typology of learning communities. This eventually opens up controversial issues about lifelong learning strategies in general; for example the question, if these strategies will possibly rather widen already existing structures of inequality and exclusion than raising participation in lifelong learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines New Zealand experiences and understandings of lifelong education and lifelong learning over the past 30 years or so. It investigates the place of lifelong education and lifelong learning discourses in shaping public policy in Aotearoa as well as questions about the similarities and differences between the discourse in New Zealand and in Europe and the UK. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the following questions: what effects, if any, have notions of lifelong education or lifelong learning had on public policy discourses on tertiary education and the education of adults? Is there evidence to suggest that notions of either 'lifelong education' or 'lifelong learning' have provided a vision or sense of purpose or set of guidelines in developing public policies? Have they served to justify or legitimate new initiatives or funding arrangements? And, if so, what is the nature of this influence? Finally, in the light of this discussion the article also examines the question whether notions of 'lifelong education' and 'lifelong learning' as they have featured in the academic and policy literature are predominantly located in a Euro-centred discourse and hence how they might be reconstituted to reflect more adequately discourses of learning and education in other parts of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]