Richard G. Bagnall

Lifelong learning and the limitations of economic determinism

The contemporary efflorescence of lifelong learning discourse in education and social planning is argued here to be, substantially, the product of economic determinism. That discourse is evaluated from the perspective of three progressive sentiments that have informed lifelong learning advocacy: the individual, the democratic and the adaptive. Each progressive sentiment is seen as expressing a central programmatic purpose for educational reform and as capturing its ethical thrust. Contemporary lifelong learning discourse is found to be only superficially expressive of these informing sentiments. The progressive, ethical, liberatory nature of each sentiment is marginalized or excluded from the discourse, which may best be seen, accordingly, as seriously regressive, counter-ethical and non-liberatory. It is substantially lacking in critical concern, social vision, and any commitment to social justice and equity. It constructs education as a commodified private good, for which individuals should pay. It focuses strongly on individual interests and on vocational skills development. That education which is funded by the state, is focused increasingly on the development of basic life and vocational skills in the interests of engagement in and service to the global economy. Educational engagement is increasingly seen as desirably embedded in the economically productive activities that are its desired outcomes, further limiting any opportunity for socially progressive learning. It is suggested that if the prevailing lifelong learning discourse is to be made more culturally progressive- in both its educational activities and its learning outcomes- it cannot be through a return to traditional progressive ideologies. Rather, it must accept prevailing epistemology in refocusing that discourse. Paradoxically, although non-compliant educationists are now largely marginalized and ineffectual in their influence on the nature of the contemporary lifelong learning agenda, their vocation and their increasing suffusion throughout contemporary cultural formations places them in a potentially strong position to lead cultural and educational change in directions that are more culturally progressive.

A study of human impact on an urban forest remnant: Redwood Bush, Tawa, near Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract The impact of recent human activity on a 9.3 ha stand of mature lowland kohekohe (Dysoxylum spectabile}-tawa (Beilschmiedia tawa) dicotylous forest was studied, with particular attention to damage resulting from recreational use. Urban development that created new forest margins was found to initiate further receding of the margins and subsequently the growth of a protective lateral canopy. This marginal adjustment appeared to be leading to almost complete loss of the canopy trees in small outlier stands which were left in the midst of residential areas. The main stand was found to be critically small for the maintenance of species diversity, recent and proposed marginal development of the forest being associated with the extinction of several species. Damage to the stand from trampling was recorded, but most significant was that caused by children playing in the forest—cutting, felling, and otherwise injuring trees. This destructive activity was concluded to be altering rapidly the stand structu...

Cautionary tales in the ethics of lifelong learning policy and management : a book of fables

Acknowledgements Introduction Editorial by Series Editors 1 The Cultural Context 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Lifelong Learning and Education 1.3 The Contemporary Cultural Context 2 The Ethical Perspective 2.l Ethics 2.2 Ethics as Tensional 3 The Fable of Learning 4 The Fable of the Individual 5 The Fable of Outcomes 6 The Fable of Context 7 The Fable of Vocation 8 The Fable of Education and Training 9 The Fable of Education as Literacy 10 The Fable of Accountability 11 The Fable of Standards 12 The Fable of Technique 13 The Fable of Flexibility 14 The Fable of the Educational Market 15 The Fable of the Educational Contract 16 The Fable of the Educational Project 17 The Fable of the Educational Manager 18 The Fable of the International Provider 19 The Fable of the Educational Requirement 20 The Fable of the Present Moment 21 The Fable of the Educational Partisan 22 The Fable of Education as a Commodity 23 The Fable of Discriminative Injustice 24 In Closing References Index

A critique of the deep and surface approaches to learning model

This paper is a critical analysis of Biggss deep and surface approaches to learning model, which is prominent in the higher education and tertiary learning fields. The paper reflects on the models origins and the contextual pressures of the educational landscape extant at that time. It is argued that these pressures have led to a demonstrable lack of serious critique of the model, which has truncated the models development, leaving it underdeveloped. There are significant problems with the model in the areas of supporting evidence, imprecise conceptualisation, ambiguous language, circularity, and a lack of definition of the underlying structure of deep and surface approaches to learning.

A beautiful metaphor: transformative learning theory

This article presents a critique of both transformative learning theory and critical comments on it to date. It argues that transformative learning theory remains substantively the same as its initial exposition, in spite of a raft of problematic contentions voiced against it. The theory is argued here to be conceptually problematic, except at the level of a conceptual metaphor, which latter renders its many inconsistencies inconsequential and which explains, not just its continued popularity among educational practitioners, but also it’s largely being ignored as a subject worthy of serious critique.

MORAL EDUCATION IN A POSTMODERN WORLD : CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION

Abstract This paper seeks to examine the nature of moral education in a postmodern cultural context with a particular focus on continuing professional education. It is argued that postmodernity sees the radical privatisation of moral responsibility. Building upon a critique of modernist ethics and moral education, five types of response to that privatisation are postulated and evaluated: foundationalism, codification, egocentrism, neotribalism and situationalism. Only the last of these types is seen as an acceptance of the moral responsibility of postmodernity, the other four being forms of retreat from it. Eleven dimensions of moral situationalism are presented as the sort of learning outcomes indicated by it. Those dimensions are then recast in the notion of situational sensitivity, as defining an appropriate curriculum for continuing professional education. Continuing professional moral education in particular is seen as calling for the deconstruction of modernist ethics and its reconstruction in the c...

The Dry Weight and Calorific Value of Litter Fall in a New Zealand Nothofagus Forest

Summary Litter fall and throughfall material were measured for one year in a 79-yearold, low altitude, New Zealand Nothofagus solandr; var. solandri forest. Total fall was 5,688 kgjhajannum (26 × 106 kcal/ha/annum) for a lower hill-slope, and 4,970 kg/ha/annum (23 × 103 kcal/ha/annum) for an adjacent upper hillslope. There was a peak winter fall of green leaves.

Performance Indicators and Outcomes as Measures of Educational Quality: A Cautionary Critique.

The current, pervasive concern with educational quality arises from a context of pressure for enhanced educational accountability. This pressure derives from the increasing popularity of economic rationalism, in which a premium is placed on efficiency and effectiveness. Educational accountability in terms of these properties requires that assessments of performance be based upon indicators of educational outcomes in terms of educational costs ‐‐ what is here termed ‘outcomes‐driven education’. The influence of outcomes‐driven education on educational quality is here examined through a philosophical analysis, from a lifelong education perspective. It is argued that the attainment and maintenance of quality in outcomes‐driven education requires the satisfaction of various assumptions with respect to: the specifiability, observability, quantifiability and stability of educational goals and outcomes; the attribution of outcomes to educational events; the appropriateness of consequentialism; the educational ef...

Locating Lifelong Learning and Education in Contemporary Currents of Thought and Culture

This chapter presents a picture of the ways and extent to which lifelong learning discourse is dependent on the broader cultural contexts of which it is a part. This is done by firstly articulating three progressive sentiments that may be seen as informing lifelong learning ideology, theory and advocacy. Against that more traditional background is then examined the sort of educational discourse that is generated in the contemporary cultural context, and which therefore prevails in contemporary lifelong learning policy and practice. It is argued that, although this context valorizes lifelong learning, the progressive sentiments are largely and substantively incidental to prevailing lifelong learning discourse, although they do give that discourse its aura of symbolic value. In so arguing, this work builds upon such recent critiques of contemporary lifelong learning discourse as those of (1999), (1998), (1998), (1998), (1996) and (1999).

The Contingent University: an ethical critique

Whatever their relative importance or determining priority, globalisation and virtualisation may be seen as just two constructed dimensions of a raft of interrelated changes taking place in contemporary culture. Those changes are both impacting on and expressed in higher education systems and universities throughout the world. The ways in which, and the extent to which, they are so may be articulated and evaluated from various perspectives. An ethical perspective is used in this paper. This is done by firstly and briefly outlining constructs that are commonly used in describing the cultural context of change to which public universities are responding and the sorts of changes that are evidenced in the university sector in response to that context. A construction of ethics congruent with that context is then introduced and used to shed some light on the ethical impact of the changes noted. This work is essentially analytical, critical and speculative, in the tradition of contemporary social philosophy. It is grounded in scholarship of a like kind, particularly that which focuses on the ethics and epistemology of contemporary cultural change and its impact on and implications for the nature of post-compulsory education.