Lifelong learning: How far have we come?

Abstract

Lifelong learning has long been held as an ideal for self-development. The quest for wisdom, incorporating both formal and informal learning, runs through history from Socrates and Aristotle to modern theories in education and psychology. It is an ideal that has always been patchy in its take-up, however, and even scorned as the pastime of elites. Yet the advances of knowledge and technology together have driven the need and demand for continuous learning in ways we could not have foreseen. At the same time, the nature of what is meant by lifelong learning and the means by which it is undertaken have changed dramatically. Or have they?.