LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Editorial by Kristiina Kumpulainen: The right to learn

Many critical voices have been expressed in recent years about what is wrong with education and how it might be changed. This rush of concern from educators, policymakers, business people, and others is in many respects well founded. As our world has shifted into a complex world based largely on information technologies and knowledge work, the success and wellbeing of nations and people is now tightly tied to the individuals’ ability to learn. In fact, our future depends now, as never before, on our right and possibility to learn.

Although the right to learn is pivotal in our present time, educational practices that are truly successful in educating everyone to high levels of intellectual, practical, and social competence continue to be, in every sense of the word, exceptional. Although many such educational efforts have been invented, they have lived at the edge of the system, rarely embraced or supported by the systems in which they struggle to exist. Moreover, they have never become sufficiently widespread for every learner to have access to them.

This issue of LLinE is based on our January conference ‘Lifelong Learning as a Right? European Perspectives’ and explores the ways in which we can ensure a right to learn for everyone. We also ask critically whether our efforts are only lip-service or can we really take action and make a difference to educational policy and practice, and ensure the right to learn for everyone across the lifespan?

The right to learn in action
Although the right to learn is prominent in the rhetoric of lifelong learning policies, educational practices in many formal institutions are managed by procedures that have little chance of ensuring satisfying learning. It is rare to encounter the kind of democratic education that is able to provide access to everyone to think well and independently, to apply what has been learned, to produce high-quality work, to take initiative, and to work effectively together. These abilities are central to the changing demands of society and to the goals of current educational reforms.

Hundreds of reports have been issued and thousands of pieces of legislation passed to try to redesign education so it can prepare a more diverse group of future citizens who are able to learn at much higher levels, cope with complexity, use new technologies, and work cooperatively to frame and solve problems. Building a system that can educate people for contemporary society requires:
• Education for understanding. That is to educate all students, not just a few, to understand ideas deeply and perform proficiently.
• Education for diversity. That is, to educate in ways that help different kinds of learners find productive paths to knowledge as they also learn to live constructively together.
• Educating for wellbeing and joy of learning.
These efforts require a new paradigm for education policy - one that shifts policymakers' efforts from designing controls to developing capacity among educational institutions and educational professionals to be responsive to learners’ and community needs and concerns.

Joining forces
In addition to emphasizing the importance of the quality of education and expertise in educating diverse individuals, I would like to stress the importance of international and cross-disciplinary educational research to advance the right to learn for everyone. In particular, the research community should focus on:
• encouraging the development of a new research culture and new research partnerships and the creation of interdisciplinary and international research projects around the problems of learning;
• finding a way of managing the challenges of lifelong and life-wide learning in order to avoid a new kind of exclusion:
• creating a solid quality interdisciplinary research base for developing teaching and learning in different educational and working-life contexts; and
• anticipating future learning needs from the point of view of society, culture and the individual.
These are important areas for research which should guide educational policy and practice for lifelong learning, promoting the right to learn.

Kristiina Kumpulainen
Editor-in-Chief of LLinE
Director of CICERO Learning
University of Helsinki, Finland