This book seeks to develop different approaches to policy analysis through a discursive and rhetorical engagement with the themes of flexibility and lifelong learning.

This text reviews the strategies adopted in a range of behaviourist approaches to the setting and realization of standards - identifying the background from which they emerged and ways in which they might be further developed.

Researching Transitions in Lifelong Learning presents new research from Britain, Australia and North America. The authors include leading scholars with established international reputations - such as Kathryn Ecclestone, Norton Grubb, David Boud and Gert Biesta - as well as emerging researchers with fresh and sometimes challenging perspectives.

Skills are the key to shaping a better future and central to the capacity of countries and people to thrive in an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. This report, OECD Skills Strategy Ireland: Assessment and Recommendations, identifies opportunities and makes recommendations to secure a balance in skills, foster greater participation in lifelong learning, leverage skills to drive innovation and improve firm performance, and strengthen skills governance to build a joined-up skills ecosystem in Ireland.

This book addresses contemporary contexts of flexible learning and its practices, and looks at the directions in which education and training providers may be required to go, in order to implement flexible learning.

Lifelong Learning is essential to all individuals and in recent years has become a guiding principle for policy initiatives, ranging from national economic competition to issues of social cohesion and personal fulfilment. However, despite the importance of lifelong learning there is a critical absence of direct, international evidence on its extent, content and outcomes. Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work provides a new paradigm for understanding work and learning, documenting the active contribution of workers to their development and their adaptation to paid and unpaid work. Empirical evidence drawn from national surveys in Canada and eight related case studies is used to explore the current learning activities of those in paid employment, housework and volunteer work, addressing all forms of learning including: formal schooling, further education courses, informal training and self-directed learning, particularly in the context of organisational and technological change. Proposing an expanded conceptual framework for investigating the relationships between learning and work, the contributors offer new insights into the ways in which adult learning adapts to and helps reshape the wide contemporary world of work throughout the life course.

This text explores the different ways in which the various social practices in which people participate becomes signed as learning, how and why that occurs and with what consequences. It takes seriously the linguistic turn in social theory to draw upon semiotics and poststructuralism through which to explore the significance of lifelong learning as an emerging discourse in education.

This book offers a unique, machine-generated overview of the current state of research in Connected Learning, Networked Learning, Digital Badges, Micro-Credentials, and Lifelong Learning. The concept of Connected Learning picks up learners where they are, and that is no longer just the classroom or seminar room. Connected Learning seeks to understand the context of learning and the motivation of learners in order to design a more contemporary and effective learning experience. Central to this is the understanding that Connected Learning is collaborative and takes place in peer-to-peer networks, that it is based on participation, problem orientation and application, and that the more personalised the learning, the more interested learners are. This volume condenses and synthesizes research from a large variety of English-language articles into a concise yet comprehensive overview. Readers will benefit from the selection and synthesis of articles that allow them to get a quick understanding of the research area, while also being able to click through to the original sources to dive deeper into any particular topic. This volume is a key source of information and insight for those interested in the current research, as well as serving as an inspiring starting point for their own research.

First Published in 1997. Pressures to find ways of delivering courses to new markets, lifelong learners and part-time students have all contributed to the growth in finding ways of delivering flexible learning. This book provides case studies to illustrate the diversity of approaches and gives advice on good practice. The case studies paint a broad picture of flexible learning developments in higher education in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of America. Several trends concerning the introduction of flexible learning have emerged, and the contributors examine strategies that have been developed at an institutional or departmental level for supporting flexible learning initiatives.

Flexibility has become a watchword in modern education, but its implementation is by no means a straightforward matter. Flexible and Distance Learning in Higher Education sheds light on the often taken-for-granted assumptions that inform daily practice and examines the institutional dynamics that help and hinder efforts toward flexibility. Contributors to the volume were asked to reflect critically on a series of questions, including: - What precisely is flexible learning? - Who or what is driving the flexibility agenda, and for whose benefit? And who or what is resisting it? - What challenges must be overcome in order to achieve flexibility, and what are some of the compromises it can entail? International in scope, with authors from North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore, and Japan, Flexible and Distance Learning in Higher Education offers a wealth of theoretical insights and practical experience that will be invaluable to anyone seeking to extend the reach of higher education.