ABSTRACT
The current discussion of lifelong learning makes it convincingly clear to us that we live in a ‘learning society’. At the same time, it also conveys the irritating impression that we attach very different notions to this label. Is it new knowledge that turns modern societies into cognitive societies and forces each of us to be a lifelong learner? Is it the breathtaking speed and nature of social transformation processes, with all their inestimable risks, that threaten us and coerce us to take part in incessant learning? Or is it ultimately our own life ‘programme’ that has changed – the biographical constructions that ‘reflexive modernity’ compels us to adopt, to borrow that almost populist label coined by Beck (1992) and Giddens (1990)?
