Abstract

VARGAS TAMEZ, Carlos. Adaptation and Transformation as Lifelong Learning Goals: Contributions from International Organizations. Sinéctica [online]. 2015, n.45, pp.01-24. ISSN 2007-7033.

In the last two decades, lifelong learning (LLL) has become an emerging field of study and practice, and an organizing principle of education policy world-wide. This new impetus is the result, on the one hand, of a search for new strategies to face the challenges brought forth by globalization in terms of well-being, demographic change, environmental sustainability, and inequality, and on the other, of the emphasis that different international organizations have placed on LLL to be adopted as a model for educational cooperation and development among their member states. The influence that organization like the European Commission, the OCDE, the World Bank, and UNESCO exercise upon their member states has different reach and implications for public policy. Depending on their mandates, these organizations have conceptualized LLL as an instrument for employment, economic growth, democratic action and participation, cultural development or social cohesion; however, in their latest developments, the discourses produced by these transnational organizations -the meanings and contents attributed to LLL- tend to look alike, and to converge in a homogenous rationale in which the economic dimension of education pre-dominates over other dimensions of learning, and in which adaptation takes preeminence over social transformation as a goal of LLL. From a sociological perspective, this article analyzes the construction of LLL as a public policy object in -and by- supra national organizations. It examines the transformations it has undergone in the last few decades, and elucidates the possible consequences of such formulations. This paper aims at contributing to the discussion on the orientations of LLL, its operationalization in education policy, programmes, and strategies, and to a greater debate about the instrumentality of education and its transformational nature.

Keywords : lifelong learning; international organizations; education policy; discourse and ideology; policy transfer.

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