This book re-imagines the essence and role of adult education at both the individual and societal levels. It provides arguments for understanding adult education as a process of agency and empowerment, which has not only instrumental but intrinsic and transformative roles to play. This book brings together ideas from the capability approach with insights from recognition theory; the embeddedness approach; the political economic perspective for understanding public and private goods and the common goods perspective. The analysis draws on data from large-scale international studies – alongside qualitative data - and adopts a wide-ranging European comparative perspective. The book develops original instruments for measuring different dimensions of adult education as a common good, and its realisation in different social contexts. It is aimed at academics, students, practitioners, and policy makers interested in adult and/or higher education and the social justice perspective to human life.
Lifelong Machine Learning, Second Edition is an introduction to an advanced machine learning paradigm that continuously learns by accumulating past knowledge that it then uses in future learning and problem solving. In contrast, the current dominant machine learning paradigm learns in isolation: given a training dataset, it runs a machine learning algorithm on the dataset to produce a model that is then used in its intended application. It makes no attempt to retain the learned knowledge and use it in subsequent learning. Unlike this isolated system, humans learn effectively with only a few examples precisely because our learning is very knowledge-driven: the knowledge learned in the past helps us learn new things with little data or effort. Lifelong learning aims to emulate this capability, because without it, an AI system cannot be considered truly intelligent. Research in lifelong learning has developed significantly in the relatively short time since the first edition of this book was published. The purpose of this second edition is to expand the definition of lifelong learning, update the content of several chapters, and add a new chapter about continual learning in deep neural networks—which has been actively researched over the past two or three years. A few chapters have also been reorganized to make each of them more coherent for the reader. Moreover, the authors want to propose a unified framework for the research area. Currently, there are several research topics in machine learning that are closely related to lifelong learning—most notably, multi-task learning, transfer learning, and meta-learning—because they also employ the idea of knowledge sharing and transfer. This book brings all these topics under one roof and discusses their similarities and differences. Its goal is to introduce this emerging machine learning paradigm and present a comprehensive survey and review of the important research results and latest ideas in the area. This book is thus suitable for students, researchers, and practitioners who are interested in machine learning, data mining, natural language processing, or pattern recognition. Lecturers can readily use the book for courses in any of these related fields.
This book provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information about the international concern for the philosophy, theory, categories and concepts of lifelong learning. Written in a straightforward understandable manner, the book examines in depth the range of philosophical perspectives in the field of lifelong learning theory, policy, practice and applied scholarship.
The new focus in learning is on developing the individual's capability. This work looks at this in the context of improving skills, lifelong learning and welfare-to-work. It debates the issues within the setting of institutional strategies, work-based learning, skills development and assessment.
The 60-Year Curriculum explores models and strategies for lifelong learning in an era of profound economic disruption and reinvention. Over the next half-century, globalization, regional threats to sustainability, climate change, and technologies such as artificial intelligence and data mining will transform our education and workforce sectors. In turn, higher education must shift to offer every student life-wide opportunities for the continuous upskilling they will need to achieve decades of worthwhile employability. This cutting-edge book describes the evolution of new models—covering computer science, inclusive design, critical thinking, civics, and more—by which universities can increase learners’ trajectories across multiple careers from mid-adolescence to retirement. Stakeholders in workforce development, curriculum and instructional design, lifelong learning, and higher and continuing education will find a unique synthesis offering valuable insights and actionable next steps.
The defining attributes of the 21st-century economy and fourth industrial revolution are innovation, technology, globalization, and a rapid pace of change. Therefore, an organization's capacity to enhance the capabilities of its workforce and create a culture of continuous learning are vital to remaining competitive. These trends make an effective learning-and-development (L&D) function more critical than ever. This compendium of articles, from L&D professionals at McKinsey & Company, discusses every facet of professional development and training-from ensuring that L&D's efforts are closely aligned with business strategy to elements of advancing the L&D function, designing learning solutions, deploying digital learning, executing flawlessly, measuring impact, and ensuring good governance. For L&D professionals seeking to hone their organization's efforts, Elevating Learning & Development: Insights and Practical Guidance from the Field is the ideal resource.
This book clearly articulates the foundations of an educational vision that is distinctively supported by eportfolio use, drawing on work in philosophy, sociology, higher and adult education, and elearning research. It is academically rigorous and accessible not only to scholars in a range of disciplines who might study or use eportfolios. It surveys the state-of-the-art of international eportfolio practice and suggests future directions for higher educational institutions in terms of curriculum, assessment, and technology. This resource is written for scholars, support staff, instructional technologists, academic administrators, and policy makers.
This text focuses on the political context of lifelong learning. It addresses the background, European and policy elements of lifelong learning, as well as providing a detailed consideration of the linkage of educational and political issues in this subject.
In today’s complex and ever-changing world it has become obvious that even highly developed knowledge and skills are no longer sufficient to meet new challenges, situations and problems facing individuals, organisations and nations. This raises an enormous and potentially confusing issue for educators and trainers: how is it possible to generate and assess abilities to deal with challenges and problems unknown – or not even in existence – at the time when the learning takes place? The book builds on the experiences and insights of its expert contributors, all of whom have worked with, studied and analysed competences and how they are developed. Their collected work presents Comprehensive explanation and analysis of the concept and nature of competence. Specific contexts of competence development, e.g. in the public sector or small business. Competence development as a national strategy for building an up-to-date education and training system. With chapters from around the world, including the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, this book illustrates in an engaging and convincing manner the importance and innovative nature of the concept of competences, resulting in a varied, differentiated and empathetic guide to the topic. It will appeal to educators, both in academic and management circles, as well as students and administrators of education.
This book focuses on professional practice capability development in workplace contexts. It is built around the idea of workplace learning spaces being like crucibles in which many human, material and ephemeral factors are brought together through interactive exchanges of purpose and energy. A Crucible Model for Professional Development is presented and explored as a means for better understanding workplace learning as a place and vehicle for learning for professional practice. The power and potential for such learning spaces resembles the power of the apparently simple bowl of a crucible. However, when combined with the fire of enthusiasm for learning and teaching, and the rich learning resources and opportunities these settings can provide, the resultant catalytic reactions of professional growth and development can be both rewarding and outstanding. This book challenges contemporary models of workplace learning and their ability to develop a broad range of professional practice capabilities. The authors examine the nature and context of workplace learning in relation to capability development, explore the potential of the Crucible Model to enhance workplace learning and provide narratives of professional practice capability development in action. The discussions generate a range of implications and recommendations for workplace learning and capability development relevant to workplace learning educators and supervisors, academic educators, practitioners, students and those with the power to shape the future direction of workplace learning for professional practice. We invite you as readers of this book to consider the themes we have presented to reflect on your own experiences (whether as a student, workplace learning educator/supervisor, academic educator or a practitioner seeking to enhance your own capability development) to re-imagine workplace learning pedagogy and in so doing harness the potency of workplace learning experiences to develop professional practitioners capable of flourishing in and constructively contributing to 21st Century professional practice contexts.
