Lifelong learning involves learning activities undertaken throughout life to improve knowledge, skills, and competence. It promotes natural curiosity and helps individuals adapt to change, find meaning in life, and make positive contributions to society. Effective lifelong learners are active investigators, critical thinkers, and self-directed communicators who integrate learning across contexts both inside and outside of formal education. Teaching students to be lifelong learners requires focusing on student-centered and lifelong learning skills that can be applied throughout their lives.
2. What is Lifelong Learning
Europa (2003) defines lifelong learning
as:
all learning activity undertaken throughout
life, with the aim of improving knowledge,
skills and competence, within a personal,
civic, social and/or employment-related
perspective
3. Top Ten Benefits of Lifelong
Learning
1. Help fully develop natural abilities
2. Opens minds
3. Creates a curious, hungry mind
4. Increases wisdom
5. Makes world a better place
6. Helps us adapt to change
7. Helps us find meaning in life
8. Helps us become active contributors to society
9. Helps us make new friends
10. Leads to an enriching life of self-fulfillment
From Nordstrom
4. Why is Lifelong Learning Important?
1. It promotes our natural and human curiosity
2. It is good for business
3. It is the best way to encourage students and motivate them, knowing that there is
more available beyond the school walls
4. It does continue beyond graduation of high school or college
5. The above video is about creating fieldtrips2.0 blogs like at EduBlogs.org and
Wikispaces.com
6. Lifelong Learning helps to foster continuous activity and good mental health thus
prolonging life and wellness.
7. As the population ages, particularly the baby boom generation, it will be more
important for them to find things they want to learn about and do
8. Lifelong Learning is about experiencing the new and unknown
9. Whether you are in school or not, lifelong learning can continue
10. Whether it is picking up a book at a library or reading in a bookstore
11. Watch a play, see a movie, travel, relax, ……live the life you were meant to
12. Be the teacher that you need in your own life, or find someone who can be
13. Seek out new experiences and work at what is stopping you
14. Be inspired, or inspiring to others
15. Learn from others mistakes and your own
16. Achieve a balanced lifestyle
17. Know what personal success means to you so that you don’t bring yourself down
18. Be a Legend…..
19. Do what you want or love to do
20. Find your place in the world and know that there is a reason for everything
http://educationation.today.com/2009/01/05/why-is-lifelong-learning-important/
5. Tips on Assisting Students to
Become a Lifelong Learner
Active investigator:
teach your students to initiate questions
Search for information
Draw conclusions
Critical thinker:
How to analyse and synthesise information
Teach them how to judge data.
Self-directed learner:
You can help your students by considering their learning styles,
their prior knowledge, and their strengths and weaknesses.
This will help your children plan and organize their own thinking.
Effective communicator:
Your students will need to demonstrate and express one’s
feelings, thoughts, and ideas concerning a topic of investigation.
Your students need to work in collaborative situations to help
facilitate good communication. To be an effective communicator will
help children become lifelong learners.
6. What is Lifelong Learning
from University of Adelaide
the basic idea behind the term 'lifelong learning' is
that deliberate, focused learning does and should
occur throughout a person's lifetime
For University education, the following are
considered crucial:
student-centred learning;
.. a focus on learning so as to equip students with the
attitudes and skills to learn for themselves both in formal
education and long after they have graduated;
.. recognising that learning occurs in a wide variety of
contexts both in the University's academic and non-
academic settings, and beyond, in the community, the
workplace and the family (i.e. "lifewide learning").
7. What A Lifelong Learner Look Like
Plan their own learning
Assess their own learning
Are active rather than passive learners
Learn in both formal and informal settings
Learn from their peers, teachers, mentors etc.
Integrate knowledge from different subject areas
when required
Use different learning strategies for different
situations.
From Knapper and Cropley (2000, p. 170)
8. Why is Lifelong Learning Important?
the need to meet the expanding educational needs
and expectations of larger numbers of students
from increasingly diverse backgrounds
the emergence of new occupations and careers
and the rapid transformation of others
the explosion in knowledge and technology
the shift to an information society
economic restructuring, organisational reform, and
changes in the workplace and career patterns
financial stringencies and the need to find more
effective ways of learning and teaching within
constrained resources.
12. Evaluation of Lifelong Learning
The Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs
(DETYA) has begun trialing multiple choice tests of
university graduates' generic skills.
These types of tests are sometimes seen as assessing
lifelong learning skills.
We would take the view that tests of generic skills are fairly
limited, in that they fail to take into account the attitudinal
dimension of learning.
That is, a student may have critical thinking skills or IT
skills (or whatever else passes as a generic skill) but still
not take responsibility for their own learning or even be
capable of designing and assessing their own learning
experiences.