ABSTRACT
The contemporary interest in lifelong learning should not cloud recognition that in earlier periods there have been similar eruptions of policy interest in lifelong learning. In the 1970s, notions of lifelong education and recurrent education were promoted by organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and OECD. For countries emerging from colonization, lifelong education was conceived as a fundamental human right and part of the strategy for economic modernization and development. Recurrent education was based on a more straightforwardly economistic rationale aimed at supporting the development of capitalist economies. However, while these notions were promulgated internationally, they had little impact on most national policy making. It is only since the 1990s that lifelong learning has become a significant part of policy development – and the shift in discourse is significant, as Colin Griffin argues in his chapter. With the development of contemporary lifelong learning discourse has come the development of a greater body of work concerned with lifelong learning policies. The collection provided here is an attempt to give a flavour of the breadth and depth of such work, drawing on a range of literature from around the globe that addresses some of the policy issues in lifelong learning.
