ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a critical approach to address the concepts of lifelong learning and learning to learn in their multifaceted dimensions – individual, social, and ecological. In the first section, we conceive development as freedom and consider individuals’ capability of learning to learn as a fundamental resource for personal and social development. We emphasize the qualitative nature of such an approach and focus on learning to learn as a core strategic competence for lifelong learning, since it can mobilize reflective and proactive behaviours. Learning to learn is interpreted as a capacity for all, which eventually facilitates the development of democracy. The next section offers a reflection and detailed analysis on learning to learn as a resource for facilitating lifelong learning and particularly adult learning, from international models found in literature. Reference is made to the concept of learning energy or learning power as a key feature of learning to learn. The last section provides a key to interpreting learning to learn as a competence, recalling the holistic dimension of lifelong learning where multiple personal, cultural, and social elements are involved. Learning to learn is considered ecologically according to Bateson’s theories, in which individuals are part of social living systems. The core of the discourse is placed on the need to move beyond a mere functionalist approach to embrace a broader transformative and constructive view of learning, in which learning to learn is a fundamental resource, due to its transformative and evolutionary nature, for individuals’ fulfilment and active citizenship.
This chapter develops the concept of learning to learn, from a lifelong learning perspective, as a resource for the benefit of individuals and society. The theoretical argument starts with a critical overview of a wealth of sociological, psychological, and pedagogical literature, related to lifelong learning and learning to learn, particularly in relation to learning in adulthood. The chapter stresses the importance of learning to learn as a tool and lever for global and ecological social change. Lifelong learning is central to the interpretation of the complexity of today's world. Lifelong learning goes beyond the psychological processes of learning and includes cultural, anthropological, and social processes that are increasingly relevant in the political and economic analysis of today's global society. The concept of globality is particularly relevant to lifelong learning. This new paradigm focuses on the ability to actively and strategically engage in the society in which we live and deal with the complexity of everyday life.
