Lifelong Learning

Fischer ["Lifelong Learning - More than Training", 1999] described a very sensible vision of how Lifelong Learning should be. Fischer's vision of a more practical and real world oriented approach to Lifelong Learning was not new when he presented it more than 10 years ago. Back in 1988, Zuboff, for instance, talked about how learning should not be separated from working: "Learning is not something that requires time out from being engaged in productive activity … Learning is the new form of labor." [Zuboff, 1988].

I think very important change has occurred since then, however, quantitatively speaking very little has change. The importance of the change achieved lies in its strategic level. Like any major institutional change, it should start from the top of the organizational pyramid for a true success to be realized. Now a days, the believe in and commitment to Lifelong Learning is evident in the speech of Leadership of various organizations across the economy sectors. Since joining the HCT in 2005, I don't recall witnessing any of the HCT Leadership speeches where Lifelong Learning importance was not mentioned and emphasized. However, I think we're still going through a transitional stage in terms of making this great vision a complete reality.

The commitment to Lifelong learning is obvious in the day to day operations as well as in most of the initiatives taking place at the HCT colleges. Right from the very beginning of hiring a new teacher, HCT looks for practitioners that bring real experience to the classroom. Teachers are also encouraged to maintain strong ties with the industries they come from to keep the flow of up to date experience to the classroom. Such distinguished teachers manage to arrange the best real world learning opportunities for their students, such as: team based projects with real life scenarios, integrated and cross discipline projects, objective driven work placement, fieldtrips, and guest speakers opportunities. Such activities go beyond the traditional training by instructions approach to properly prepare the students to real work place with a very seamless transition.

HCT also allocates a substantial annual budget for teachers Professional Development opportunities. Moreover, HCT creates various learning and networking opportunities for the HCT community through investing in high profile conferences that brings the latest and greatest in various disciplines from all over the world. Another important priority for the HCT is involving students and teachers in national and international fieldtrips to see applied knowledge in action. On top of the various investments of the HCT to make the Lifelong Learning vision a reality, HCT plays a leading role in Education Technology investments among other UAE educational institutions.

The wisdom behind the above described investments can be justified by examining the demands of the future society. According to the World Bank, knowledge societies of the future are characterized with:

1.     The increased mobility of services, information, and workforce;

2.     The need to derive local value from information often in creative ways that go beyond expected performance;

3.     The need to work in multidisciplinary and distributed teams;

4.     The need to use information technology (IT) for knowledge management, sharing, and creation;

5.     The need to update and change ones skills throughout one’s lifetime; and

6.     The need to “act autonomously and reflectively, joining and functioning in socially heterogeneous groups”

[The World Bank Group, 2003, p. 17]

Fischer has predicted at the very beginning of his paper problems in the future Information Age, to build a case for his following arguments in relation to the nature of effective Lifelong Learning. There is a great consensus among the problems Fischer discussed and those described in various resources like the one referenced above in this regard. I would particularly highlight his emphasis on the need for creative and innovative use of Information Technology to provide intelligent Knowledge Management solutions that would help future workers to manage information overloads to fetch specific information on demand.

Fischer has also highlighted the importance of multidisciplinary approach to learning in order to build the learner’s ability to confront real life scenarios and creatively control them by providing a solution or a management strategy. He accused the instructionist approach of decontextualizing the knowledge by providing artificial scenarios that has defined prescribed solution. Fischer also talked about the importance of changing this approach to a more cross-disciplinary and demand-driven approach to better meet the needs of the future and to make Lifelong Learning relevant. Finally, in this comparison among Fischer’s paper and the emerging requirements of the Knowledge Societies, it’s worth focusing on his description of the three phases of learning outside the classroom. Fischer seconded Sch.n [Sch.n, 1983] opinion regarding reflection-in-action, through providing self-critics following learning breakdowns.

With all the commitment, investments, and initiatives that came as a response to these anticipated and justified demands of the future knowledge societies, many challenges are still degrading the progress towards a more effective Lifelong Learning approach. Instructionist approach is continuing to be the widely adopted approach in conducting classes for two main reasons. Students require a lot of training on essential skills that can be best taught direct instructions in preparation for Lifelong Learning experiences. Fischer criticized his own model in this regard: “the acquisition of certain essential skills should not be deferred until they are needed because the time to learn them may be not available or the environment may be too dangerous for safe learning processes.”.

On the other hand, the instructionist approach is widely adopted in conducted teachers Professional Development training, which makes it very challenging for teachers to transfer the knowledge to their students in any better way. Fischer recommended the use of Simulation environments, what he calls Domain-oriented design environments [Fischer, 1994a], which proved to be a powerful and versatile environments for learning. Although I strongly agree with this point, but proper Simulation programs seem to be scarce for the difficulty in identifying and acquiring them. The evidence is that there are rarely any PD opportunities for teachers that are done using such tools. Again how teachers are supposed to educate their students in a way that they themselves lacked education on.

For all the reasons discussed above, I believe Fischer's vision has a long way to be fully realized in higher education. We need to revisit our programs structures to draw realistic boundaries for commencing Lifelong Learning approach in the education process. This should be done with consideration to the essential skills that the learners would need in order to be reasonably prepared to go through Lifelong Learning experience. We also need to adopt Fischer’s “Working Shops” model in teacher’s professional development. Action Research discussed in our PGCTHE text [“How People Learn”, p. 199] can be the way to achieve this. The approach can be further enhanced by strategies recommended in “Communities of practice” [Smith, M. K. (2003, 2009)].

The brightest side of the picture is that leaders have rethought and guided our ongoing thinking of the way we practice our profession as educators. We're living a great time where lots of developments are taking place in a constant and combined effort to reinvent our schools and universities. I think we're moving towards Fischer's vision; however, a lot is yet to be done to make it a complete reality.