From Adult Education to

Lifelong Learning

Unit-2
The changing concept of
education

The front-end model of education

 The changing concept of
education
• John Stuart Mill, for instance, claimed that the content of
education was to be found in ‘the culture which each
generation purposely gives to those who are to be their
successors’.
• Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist and educationalist,
regarded education in a similar manner: for him it was ‘the
influence exercised by adult generations on those who are not
yet ready for social life’
• by the beginning of the twentieth century, it was becoming
more apparent in the West that an intergenerational
perspective was not adequate to describe the educational
process.
 The changing concept of
education
• John Dewey (1916:8), for instance, was forced to add the prefix
formal to the term education in order to express the same
sentiments as those specified by Mill and Durkheim if society was to
transmit all its achievements from one generation to the subsequent
one.
• Today, formal education both refers to institutionalized learning and
a teaching method – to the structure and the process.
• In addition, it is the term most likely to be used to convey the same
idea is initial education.
• Coombs and Ahmed sought to distinguish formal education from
informal and non-formal education. They define it as: ‘the highly
institutionalized chronologically graded and hierarchically structured
“education system” spanning lower primary school and upper
reaches of the university’
• Their intention was to distinguish this initial formal system from
other forms of lifelong education occurring throughout the world.
 The changing concept of
education
• The idea underlying initial education is that at a given stage in
the lifespan individuals have stored away sufficient knowledge
and skill to serve them for the remainder of their lives, so that
their education is then complete.
• Peters (1972:9) regarded being educated as a state that
individuals achieve, whilst education is a family of processes
that lead to this state (status).
• Indeed, if the state were achieved then the process must
continue or else it would be lost. Hence it is maintained here
that the process is significant, perhaps more significant than
the state or the end-product.
 The changing concept of
education
• a learning process which is institutionalized; the learning
process should not be a single event; the process should be
planned rather than haphazard; an essentially humanistic
process because knowledge is humanistic and because the
process involves human beings as learners and, also, maybe as
teachers; learning has to involve understanding, which is
essentially a quality of critical awareness. Peters (1966)
• ‘humanistic in quality not because it is about human products
in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human
intelligence and human sympathy’ .
 Teaching, learning and
education
• many of the adults’ learning projects are completely self-
directed and that neither a teacher nor an educational
institution is necessary to their successful implementation.
• It might be more true to claim that the more self-directed the
project the greater the likelihood that learners can respond to
their own learning needs and also self-actualize in the process,
thus demonstrating the humanistic nature of education and
learning itself.
 Teaching, learning and
education
• Teaching is dependent upon the learners being present –
either actually or virtually, but not that they learn. Teaching
may be regarded as the intention to bring about learning
(Hirst and Peters, 1970:78),
 Teaching, learning and
education
• Learning is often defined in behavioural terms; Hilgard and
Atkinson, for instance, define it as ‘any more or less
permanent change in behaviour which is the result of
experience’
• However, the acquisition of new knowledge need not result in
behavioural.
• It has been defined as the process of transforming experience
into knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, and so on.
 Teaching, learning and
education
• Many different learning processes occur during the human
lifespan, but not all of them may be considered educational.
• education is regarded here as an institutionalized and
humanistic process, it is seen as one in which the value of the
human being and the quality of interaction between teachers
and learner are recognized.
 Adult education and the education of adults

Who are adult:

• An adult also has to be mature, experienced and over twenty
years of age. (Wiltshire)
• People are deemed to be adults because of their age but,
although they are not necessarily mature, they are expected
to behave in an adult manner. (Paterson, 1979)
• Adulthood is regarded here as having reached a level of social
maturity in which individuals can assume a responsible
position in society and only then may they be regarded as an
adult.
 Adult education and the education of adults

• In the United States, ‘adult education’ is used within a liberal

education framework, sometimes carrying with it implications
of a front-end model of education
• Liberal Education
 Adult education and the education of adults

• In the United States, ‘adult education’ is used within a liberal

education framework, sometimes carrying with it implications
of a front-end model of education

• Liberal Education
1. Intellectual education
2. Moral attributes
3. Spiritual guidance
4. Aesthetic Sense
 Adult education and the education of adults

Education for Adults

• It was more desirable to employ the term ‘education of adults’
because this refers to any educational process undertaken by
adults,, whether liberal, general or vocational and located in
the spheres of adult, further or higher education or outside
the institutional framework entirely.
• This term also implies that education is not completed at any
stage in the lifespan and, indeed, that the education of adults
may begin in the period of initial education and, for some
people, it continues into post-initial and post-compulsory
sectors.
 Continuing Education

CE & LLL
• Lifelong education should make no distinction between initial
and post-initial education whereas continuing education refers
only to the latter part of lifelong education.
Human Resource Development
Community Education
• German sociologist Toennies (1957), who wrote in the
nineteenth century about social change. He recognized that a
change in the type of human relationships was occurring, from
one that may be seen as personal and long lasting
(community) to one that was formed by personal inter-action
(association).
• Toennies actually considered that these personal, long lasting
relationships were disappearing as society became more
urban and its members more mobile
Community Education
• German sociologist Toennies (1957), who wrote in the
nineteenth century about social change. He recognized that a
change in the type of human relationships was occurring, from
one that may be seen as personal and long lasting
(community) to one that was formed by personal inter-action
(association).
• Toennies actually considered that these personal, long lasting
relationships were disappearing as society became more
urban and its members more mobile
Community Education
Community
• Individualized Vs Socialized
• groups of people who live together in a
specific place but the boundaries of the
community are even more tightly drawn
• ‘extra-mural’ in its widest sense
Community Education
• Education for community action and/or
development
• Education in the community
• Adult education beyond the walls
Community Education
• Community education refers to a range of learning
opportunities designed for people in a specific community to
acquire new knowledge, skills, or competencies. It’s typically
aimed at improving personal development, enhancing
community involvement, or addressing local issues.
• Community education programs can cover a wide variety of
subjects, including literacy, vocational training, health
education, civic engagement, arts, and cultural development.
They are often run by local governments, non-profit
organizations, or educational institutions.
Community Education
Fletcher (1980a, 1980b) suggested that there are three
premises in community education:
• the community has its needs and common causes and is
the maker of its own culture
• educational resources are to be dedicated to the
articulation of needs and common causes
• education is an activity in which there is an alternative
between the roles of student, teacher and person.
Lifelong Education
• ‘a process of accomplishing personal, social and professional
development throughout the lifespan of individuals in order to
enhance the quality of life of both individuals and their
collectivities’ (Dave, 1976)
• Education is regarded as institutionalized learning
• Lifelong education is every institutionalized learning
opportunity, having a humanistic basis, directed towards the
participant’s development that may occur at any stage in the
lifespan. This development might refer to knowledge, skills,
attitudes, values, emotions, beliefs and the senses – the
whole person. (Peter Jarvis)
Lifelong Education
• LLE rests ultimately upon the nature and needs of the human
personality
• no individual can rightly be regarded as outside its scope
• social reasons for fostering it are as powerful as the personal
Lifelong Education
• after the Second World War that the term gained prominence
and this was because organizations such as UNESCO
• The Faure Report (1972) advocated that education should be
both universal and lifelong
• Delors Report (1996) in which it was claimed that learning has
four pillars
Lifelong Learning
• The concept of lifelong learning is extremely confusing since it
combines individual learning and institutionalized learning
• lifelong learning embraces the socially institutionalized
learning that occurs in the educational system, that which
occurs beyond it, and that individual learning throughout the
lifespan, which is publicly recognized and accredited (Jarvis,
1996)