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The Institutionalization of Lifelong Learning in Global Scale

Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

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Abstract

The institutionalization of lifelong learning is a continuous and recursive process of building a lifelong learning system throughout a whole society. Lifelong learning allows individual learning activities, being private in nature, to be selectively endowed with social values through the institutionalization process, and allows them to possess social meanings for a certain form of social functionality, while creating an organizational system and structure that can collectively reproduce this functionality at the societal level. Also, by linking parts and parcels of learning activity systems that share similar kind of structures, the comprehensive emergent systems of a lifelong learning system are territorialized. In this chapter, characteristics of the institutionalization process are explored through three perspectives or theories – economic determinism, assemblage theory, and social systems theory – which might be embedded in the global practices of Europe and East Asia during the last 50 years. It is also argued that lifelong learning is not a phenomenon that can be defined and configured deductively by any a priori concept. Rather, institutionalization creates traces of self-territories through continuous repetition (or structural drifts) and at the same time conceptualizes its own meaning through those obtained territorial differences. Now, the answer to the question of “what lifelong learning is” must be obtained by observations of the traces revealed in the historical, cultural, and political events that actually took place in the name of lifelong learning. Capturing emergent patterns and recursive expansion processes hidden in such complexity is ultimately a possible way of capturing and develo** a “general theory” of lifelong learning.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Soonghee Han

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  1. Soonghee Han
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Correspondence to Soonghee Han .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK

    Karen Evans

  2. Lifelong Learning Institute, Singapore University of Social Sciences, Singapore, Singapore

    Wing On Lee

  3. 3S Research and Consultancy Insitute, Vienna, Austria

    Jörg Markowitsch

  4. Dept of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, UK

    Miriam Zukas

Section Editor information

  1. UCL Institute of Education, London, UK

    Karen Evans

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Han, S. (2022). The Institutionalization of Lifelong Learning in Global Scale. In: Evans, K., Lee, W.O., Markowitsch, J., Zukas, M. (eds) Third International Handbook of Lifelong Learning. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_6-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_6-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-67930-9

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  1. Latest

    The Institutionalization of Lifelong Learning in Global Scale
    Published:
    18 November 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_6-2

  2. Original

    The Institutionalization of Lifelong Learning in Global Scale
    Published:
    25 August 2022

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67930-9_6-1

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