Lifelong Learning: The Politics of the New Learning Environment

Citation

(1999), "Lifelong Learning: The Politics of the New Learning Environment", Education + Training, Vol. 41 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.1999.00441iad.002

Lifelong Learning: The Politics of the New Learning Environment

Lifelong Learning: The Politics of the New Learning Environment

Geoffrey ElliottJessica Kingsley Publishers1999176 pp.ISBN: 1853025801 (hardback)£18.95

Keywords Higher education, New technology, Learning, Students policy

The shift to a mass system of higher education has imposed immense pressures upon teachers, students and educational institutions, but relatively little has been done to examine the changes in teaching methods which are needed. Lifelong Learning: The Politics of the New Learning Environment explores this issue using information drawn from access students and foundation-year students and their teachers.

The book focuses on the implications and implementation of the Dearing, Kennedy and Fryer Reports, and the potential impact of new technology on education. It accuses Dearing of "a missed opportunity to reflect the needs and concerns of those working as students and teachers in the university sector and to link those concerns to those of their counterparts in further education". Elliott contends that current conceptions of education in the UK are market-led, and that consumerist education policies should be "consigned to the dustbin of history". He proposes an alternative, pedagogy-based system to establish a society truly capable of lifelong learning. The author succeeds in his stated aim of moving the debate about what happens in universities and colleges closer to those the system is there to provide for - the students.

The book explores policy within post-compulsory education as a whole, and not merely in higher education. It merits the attention of policymakers and advisers, further-education and higher-education governors, managers, lecturers, administrators, teachers and students of diplomas and degrees in education, course designers and evaluators.