Jarvis, P. (2010) Adult Education and Lifelong Learning, Chapter 3
2020 Spring Term, GS course Textbook:
Jarvis, P. (2010) Adult Education and Lifelong Learning: Theory and Practice, Routledge.
- 1. The concepts of learning & education
- 2. Formal learning
- 3. Non-formal learning
- 4. Informal learning
Chapter 3. Education and Learning
大意「フォーマル・ノンフォーマル・インフォーマルな学習」
1. The concepts of learning & education
1-1. Learning is an existential phenomenon
– it is intrinsic to our being –... it is about our experience of everyday life. At the same time, we have to recognize that learning is more than phenomenal since our experiences are affected by the experience we have; it is also affected by the social structures within which we exist, and so on. In making the claim that learning is intrinsic to our being, we can see immediately that the study of learning has as many academic bases as there are disciplines that study the human being – that the study of learning must be multidisciplinary (Jarvis and Parker, 2005; Jarvis, 2009a). (p. 38).
At its very least, learning is the transformation of our experiences of living so that they affect us as persons – in this sense they become part of our biography – and so we can begin to see the parameters of learning... Jarvis (2009a:25) have defined learning as [t]he combination of processes throughout a lifetime whereby the whole person – body (genetic, physical and biological) and mind (knowledge, skills, attitudes, values, emotions, meaning, beliefs and senses) – experiences social situations, the content of which is then transformed cognitively, emotively or practically (or through any combination) and integrated into the individual person's biography resulting in a continually changing (or more experienced) person.(pp. 38-39).
1-2. Learning is prescribed in the name of education
In a sense, we are constructing our own biography whenever we learn. While we live, our biography is an unfinished product constantly undergoing change and development ... We are always learning to be persons in society, and here we are confronted by paradox: the person is always complete whenever we consider a person whom we know, but we also know that the person is never complete and will not be so for as long as he or she can learn from conscious experiences. People are always becoming, and we develop our personalities in different ways as a result of our experiences. Since learning is social, learners are not always free to learn what they would like; often the learners’ learning is prescribed.
Education ... is the provision of learning opportunities, but these opportunities are often bound by parameters decided by what the providers wish the learners to learn... State-provided education, for instance, has been traditionally something restricted to children, who are expected to learn what is prescribed, although religious institutions educated older people many centuries before children were educated. (p. 39).
John Stuart Mill ... claimed that the content of education was to be found in ‘the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be their successors’ (quoted in Lester-smith, 1966:9). Emile Durkheim... regarded education in a similar manner: ...‘the influence exercised by adult generations on those who are not yet ready for social life’ (1956:71). But by the beginning of the twentieth century it was becoming more apparent in the West that an inter-generational perspective was not adequate to describe the educational process. John Dewey (1916:8)...was forced to add the prefix formal to the term education in order to express the same sentiments as those specified by Mill and Durkheim if society was to transmit all its achievements from one generation to the subsequent one. Today, formal education refers to both institutionalized learning and a teaching method – to the structure and the process. In addition, and the term most likely to be used to convey the same idea, there is initial education; the idea was that by a given stage in the lifespan, individuals have stored away sufficient knowledge and skill to serve them for the remainder of their lives, so that their education is then complete. (pp. 39-40).
1-3. Learning & education
Learning has to involve understanding, which is essentially a quality of critical awareness. Before a definition is offered, it is necessary to examine the term ‘humanistic’ here. Dewey claimed that knowledge is essentially ‘humanistic in quality not because it is about human products in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy’ (1916:230). It is this human element that was reflected in the discussion in the opening chapter when knowledge was separated from information. Dewey went on to suggest that any specific matter that does this is essentially humane, so that in this context ‘humanistic’ has two facets: it is concerned about the welfare and humanity of the participants and it is humane. Hence, this implies that the educational process is normative and idealistic. (p. 41).
Education may now be defined as ‘any institutionalized and planned series of incidents, having a humanistic basis, directed towards the participants’ learning and understanding’...This basic definition of education does not restrict education to any specific learning process, to any time in life, to any specific location or to any specific purpose. At the same time, Biesta (2007) reminds us that focusing on learning rather than on educating presupposes that the learners know what they want and that education is now part of a learning market. (p. 41).
Schooling is part of the formal education system, as are further and higher education, but there are other forms of education and learning, as we will discuss in the following pages. However, we can see at this point that learning is a wider concept than education – for education is but one system through which we learn. Coombs and Ahmed... sought to distinguish formal education from informal and non-formal education. They define formal education as ‘the highly institutionalized chronologically graded and hierarchically structured “education system” spanning lower primary school and upper reaches of the university’ (1974:8). Their intention was to distinguish it from other forms of lifelong education occurring throughout the world, as the model shown in Figure 3.1 illustrates. (pp. 41-42).
from Fig. 3.1: A to F.
Type of learning: intended & incidental
Type of situation: Formal, Non-formal, & Informal
However, the degree of formality is not the only variable in the subcultures of social situations that might affect either the type of learning or the behavioural outcomes of such learning; the politics and culture of the social context, the social position of both learners and teachers ... will be among the factors that affect the type of experience...(p.43)
2. Formal learning
... the global capitalist expansion really occurred in the later 1960s and early 1970s. It was also at this time that we began to see tremendous changes in the education of adults, changes that were, in the first instance, a little unclear... Adult education had traditionally been outside the mainstream education... adult education could have been classified as non-formal education.
2-1. The foundations of lifelong education
The concept of lifelong learning was first adopted by UNESCO), although it was not a new concept:(Dewey, 1916:51) says, "It is common place to say that education should not cease when one leaves school... the purpose of school organization is to ensure the continuance of education by organizing the powers that insure growth. The inclination to learn from life itself and to make the condition of life such that all will learn in the process of living is the finest product of schooling."
Among his disciples was Lindeman, author of The Meaning of Adult Education (1961 [1926] ), who became a major influence on Malcolm Knowles and other influential practitioners in the field.
... the major difference between all of these earlier orientations to lifelong education and the more current ones is that formal lifelong education is now regarded as something necessary for work rather than for the humanity of the learner.
It was not until after the World War II that the term gained prominence and this was because organizations such as UNESCO adopted it, influenced by such individuals as Lengrand (1975). Thereafter, many publications emanating from UNESCO developed and expounded the concept. The Faure Report (1972) advocated that education should be both universal and lifelong, claiming that education precedes economic development and prepares individuals for a society that does not exist but which may do so within their lifetime. The report claimed that education is essential for human beings and their development, and that therefore the whole concept of education needs to be reconsidered. The sentiments of this report were echoed by the Delors Report (1996), in which it was claimed that learning has four pillars: learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. One pillar, however, was not discussed: learning to care for the planet.(p. 45).
2-2. Continuing education
2-3. Recurrent education
3. Non-formal learning
Human resource development: Among the major NFE developments... known as human resource development but the most significant of all was the development of liberal adult education and, more recently... the education of senior citizens.
3-1. Schultz (1961) introduced the term human capital
... By the mid-1990s all of these terms, except HRD (human resource development), were to be subsumed in a new term, lifelong learning (European Commission, 1995), when ... the term ‘education’ actually began to take second place to learning. ‘Lifelong learning’ has remained the significant term in Europe ever since, although the European Commission (2006) started to use the term adult learning since it recognized that education and training and higher education had their own identities that could never be subsumed within the all-embracing term ‘lifelong learning’.
3-2. The foundations of AE
... the 1919 report ... became a benchmark for adult education. In many ways the University of Nottingham led the way by creating the first Department of Adult Education and the first Professor of Adult Education in the world. ... Knowles introduced the term ‘andragogy’ (well known in eastern Europe) to American adult education. Andragogy vs. Pedagogy ... being downplayed. ... andragogical techniques could be used with children and pedagogical ones with adults... AE as post-school liberal education reached a high point in the 1970s and 1980s, but this was also the time when Kerr and his colleagues expected education to become work based – economically useful – and all other forms of adult education to become leisure-time pursuits ... Significantly, libraries and museums, and other such cultural institutions, were regarded as adjuncts to adult education, but when liberal adult education became adult learning, they assumed a more significant place, so that by 2009 the UK government White Paper treats them as of equal significance in non-work education has all been subsumed within the idea of informal learning. This adopts the OECD's approach, which emphasizes the work-based nature of lifelong learning. While we can safely claim that much work-based education is also non-formal, most of the adult education that existed prior to the impact of economic globalization – concerned with culture and the humanities – was to become regarded as a leisure-time pursuit. (pp. 53-54).
3-3. Community education
Fletcher (1980a, b) suggested three premises in community education: 1) The community has its needs and common causes and is the maker of its own culture; 2) Educational resources are to be dedicated to the articulation of needs and common causes; & 3) Education is an activity in which there is an interplay between the roles of student, teacher and person. Jarvis (2010:57) Three distinct forms of community education: 1) education for action and/or development; 2) education in the community; & 3) extra-mural forms of education. .. at the conceptual level, Lovett et al. (1983:36ff.) also sought to distinguish between different forms of community education, suggesting four types: 1) community organization/education, 2) community development/ education, 3) community action/education and 4) social action/education.
i) Education for community action and/or development: Paulo Freire maintained that education can never be neutral and formulated his ideas in Latin America against a background of illiteracy and poverty, and his thinking was a synthesis of Christian Theology, existentialism and Marxism – one that underlay liberation theology ... emphasized that education should make the learners critically aware of their false consciousness and their social condition. In becoming aware, they should reject many of the myths erected by the ruling elite that inhibit the learners from having a clear perception of their own social reality. Having undergone a process of conscientization, learners should act upon the world to endeavour to create a better society. Among those in the United Kingdom whose approach to education is similar to Freire's is Lovett (Lovett, 1975, 1980; Lovett and Mackay, 1978, etc.). In the USA, perhaps the best-known institution organizing radical adult education is Highlander, which was founded by Myles Horton in Tennessee and worked with labour unions and citizenship groups...
One of the clear distinguishing features about the education being described here is that these are not formalized educational systems; they are non-formal and occur beyond the boundaries of the traditional formal, bureaucratic educational system that exists in many societies in the world. But this form of radical education has declined in significance in recent days ... Community education is a necessary form of education if we are to enhance democracy, but in a society corrupted by neo-liberalism and parliamentary excesses it is hardly surprising that those in power welcome a form of education that stands for democracy; in fact, it is not only that there is no ‘body capable of representing these concerns to government’ (Wallace, 2008:4) (p. 58).
ii) Education in the community: in the UK that the day school is a community resource, and we are now beginning to see the concept of the extended school emerge. Schools now have an obligation to the community, and they are beginning to run courses for the parents of their pupils and for other people in the community. In addition, schools are using their premises for community education activities, so that a local historical society and a University of the Third Age computer group both known to me regularly use the local comprehensive school's facilities.
iii) Adult education beyond the walls: ... But with the advent of neo-liberal economic policies and practices, universities have had their funds curtailed to such an extent that they are ceasing to provide such education, and thereby impoverishing the civility of contemporary society (Stanistreet, 2009; Jones, 2009).
3-4. Education for senior citizens
In recent years there has been a tremendous growth in non-formal learning for seniors, with perhaps the two best-known organizations being the University of the Third Age in Europe and the Elderhostel institute Network in North America (LLL programs for learning by travelling).
4. Informal learning
4-1. Learning in everyday life: We all live in a social context (life-world) in which we learn (Jarvis, 1987)...there are two conditions essential for learning in everyday life: social interaction and disjuncture.
4-2. Self-directed learning: set by self.
4-3. Informal learning: by OECD and UK government, actually include almost all types of non-school, non-university, non-vocational accredited education under the banner of informal learning (p. 66).
