The growth of the global knowledge economy is transforming the demands of the labour market in economies worldwide. It will require workers to develop new skills and knowledge, whilst education systems will need to adapt to the challenges of lifelong learning, and these changes will be as crucial in transition and developing economies as it is in the developed world. This publication explores how lifelong learning systems can encourage growth, discusses the changing nature of learning and the expanding role of the private sector in education, and considers the policy and financing options available to governments to address the challenges of the global knowledge economy.

This book presents some of the most trenchant critical analyses of the widespread claims for the recent emergence of a knowledge economy and the attendant need for greater lifelong learning. The book contains two sections: first, general critiques of the limits of current notions of a knowledge economy and required adult learning, in terms of historical comparisons, socio-political construction and current empirical evidence; secondly, specific challenges to presumed relations between work requirements and learning through case studies in diverse current workplaces that document richer learning processes than knowledge economy advocates intimate. Many of the leading authors in the field are represented. There are no other books to date that both critically assess the limits of the notion of the knowledge economy and examine closely the relation of workplace restructuring to lifelong learning beyond the confines of formal higher education and related educational policies. This reader provides a distinctive overview for future studies of relations between work and learning in contemporary societies beyond caricatures of the knowledge economy. The book should be of interest to students following undergraduate or postgraduate courses in most social sciences and education, business and labour studies departments, as well as to policy makers and the general public concerned about economic change and lifelong learning issues. D. W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work and Professor Emeritus at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. David Guile is Professor of Education and Work at the Institute of Education, University of London.

Leading scholars from the US, the UK, Australia and New Zealand question whether current policies relating to knowledge, learning and assessment are consistent with the kinds of workers and skills required for the knowledge economy?

This book introduces a new perspective on the knowledge economy and the learning challenge it presents for individuals, communities and societies. It demonstrates that the debate about the role of knowledge in the economy has been framed in terms of Cartesian notions of objective and subjective knowledge and human capital notions that the aim of learning is to support people to adapt to a pre-given economic reality. The book argues that these framings rest on questionable assumptions about knowledge and learning and, in the process, deflect us from asking questions about our future economic, political and social direction. Taking ideas from Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), Social Theory and the Philosophy of Mind as its starting point, the book rethinks the relation between knowledge, learning and human activity. It explores this rethinking through the form of learning—Professional, Vocational and Workplace—most closely associated with the use of knowledge for economic, political and social purposes.

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.

Over the last twenty years there has been increasing interest in the work of Michel Foucault in the social sciences and in particular with relation to education. This, the first book to draw on his work to consider lifelong learning, explores the significance of policies and practices of lifelong learning to the wider societies of which they are a part. With a breadth of international contributors and sites of analysis, this book offers insights into such questions as: What are the effects of lifelong learning policies within socio-political systems of governance? What does lifelong learning do to our understanding of ourselves as citizens? How does lifelong learning act in the regulation and re-ordering of what people do? The book suggests that understanding of lifelong learning as contributory to the knowledge economy, globalisation or the new work order may need to be revised if we are to understand its impact more fully. It therefore makes a significant contribution to the study of lifelong learning.

This book presents a comprehensive, international and up-to-date review of the key contributions of information services to the Knowledge Economy. Chapters contributed by experts in different areas of LIS focus on the crucial roles libraries, archives and museums are playing in their home institutions -private, public, non-profit-, as much as their impact on the economy and society as a whole. Boosting the Knowledge Economy: Key Contributions from Information Services in Educational, Cultural, and Corporate Environments has a particular interest in learning services, exploring principles and strategies for their implementation - from marketing strategy to analytics -, and covers implications for the LIS profession. - Provides new insights into the value of information services in the context of the Knowledge Economy - Presents an overview and analysis of cutting-edge practices in information services, with a particular focus on learning services and their particular contribution to LAMs' (Libraries, Archives, and Museums) brand awareness and to social capital building - Introduces a collaborative reflection on the role of information professionals at challenging times, with implications for the design of educational programs in the informationfield

This is a book with a difference: it produces a completely new perspective on lifelong learning and the learning society and locates them within humanity itself. Five themes run through this book: Humankind has always been aware of the imperfections of human society: as a consequence, it has looked back to a mythological past and forward to a utopian future that might be religious, political, economic or even educational to find something better. Lifelong learning as we currently see it is like two sides of the same coin: we learn in order to be workers who produce, and learn we have a need to consume. We then devour the commodities we have produced, whilst others take the profits! One of the greatest paradoxes of the human condition has been the place of the individual in the group/community, or conversely how the groups allow the individual to exist rather than stifle individuality Modernity is flawed and the type of society that we currently have, which we in the West call a learning society, is in need of an ethical overhaul in this late modern age. There is a need to bring a different perspective – both political and ethical – on lifelong learning and the learning society in order to try to understand what the good society and the good life might become. In Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society, the third volume of his trilogy on lifelong learning, Professor Jarvis expertly addresses the issues that arise from the vision of the learning society. The book concludes that since human beings continue to learn, so the learning society must be a process within the incomplete project of humanity. All three books in the trilogy will be essential reading for students in education, HRD and teaching and learning generally, in addition to academics and informed practitioners. The Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Trilogy Volume 1: Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning Volume 2: Globalisation, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Volume 3: Democracy, Lifelong Learning and the Learning Society Peter Jarvis is an internationally renowned expert in the field of adult learning and continuing education. He is Professor of Continuing Education at the University of Surrey, UK, and honorary Adjunct Professor in Adult Education at the University of Georgia, USA.

Recent changes in the world effected by the transformations of information technology, globalisation, and the move towards a knowledge economy over the last thirty years have been as radical and fundamental as the changes resulting from the invention of the wheel and the printing press. We are now living in a new age in which the demands are so complex, so multifarious and so rapidly changing that the only way in which we shall be able to survive them is by committing to a process of individual, communal, and global learning throughout the lifespan of all of us. A number of international bodies and agencies have taken cognisance of these transformations and the demands they impose upon societies and communities of the twenty-first century and have developed and articulated policies intended to enable all citizens of the world in the twenty-first century to face these challenges. It is now a declared policy of many governments and international agencies that the only vehicle for such preparation is `education, education, education', and that preparing for the knowledge economy and the learning society of the future has to be a lifelong undertaking, an investment in the future that is not restricted merely to the domain of economic advancement but also to those of social inclusion and personal growth. Realising this, policy-makers across the international arena are grappling with the need to move from systems that emphasise education and training to the radically more unworked construct of lifelong learning. In this volume the editors and authors analyse, criticise, and rework the ideas, principles, and theories underpinning policies and programs of lifelong learning, re-interpreting them in the light of examples of `best practice' found in a range of educating institutions around the world. We believe that students of educational change and community development will find it useful and helpful to have available in this volume some of the most up-to-date thinking on the chief concepts, theories, and values of increasing policy interest in lifelong learning, together with a review of some significant examples of the different forms, focuses, and nexuses of thought and practice on this topic. All this enables us to offer some policy recommendations and practical suggestions as to ways forward in the endeavour to make lifelong learning a reality for all.