The role of lifelong learning in the development of quality education and learning

The correlations of participation, performance and professional development in the context of the creation of opportunities

Abstract

This analysis elaborates upon the growing and changing roles and mission of higher education in the development of adult learning and education, laying a special emphasis on the impact of global trends in the local environment and on raising participation and performance. In accordance with the topic, it is necessary to provide a detailed overview and assessment of the UNESCO CONFINTEA process (UNESCO World Conferences in Adult Education) by which a special vision on adult education can be provided.  Likewise, the actualisation of this focus is necessary in the scope of UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development Goals since higher education institutions have recently had to reconfigure their roles and missions in lifelong learning in accordance with those SDGs.

Through those steps, universities have been able to get closer to target groups of non-traditional adult learners, as vulnerable groups and their members, so as to change their access to education and to raise the quality of their learning. The matter of second chance goes much beyond the question of public education, whereby it moves close to issues of young and adult learners outside formal education, and is connected to atypical forms of communities with open and digital knowledge transfers.

Higher education must support such trends as part of its social responsibility in which effective knowledge transfer and skills development openly aim at realising and spreading of practices based on participation and performance. One of the actions is the example of learning cities and of learning communities, and another form of that orientation is realised through professional development, which is a necessary frame of grounding and improving performance driven learning.

The example of European University Continuing Education Network (eucen) practices also highlights the impact of inclusion through shifting policy development by putting access, equity and responsible actions into the axis of its actions in the contexts of both adult learning and learning city engagements.

The paper will demonstrate that an effective policy on quality lifelong learning must integrate and rely on the active participation of higher education in order to fight back inequalities and inequities, since these definitely ruin the struggles to raise participation, access and presence in learning communities.