Life-long Learning has no Reasonable Alternative

by Ivo Eesmaa, Estonian Core group participant

What is it What we are Working on?

At first glance it feels like an inappropriate question. Education, of course. What is education? A set of skills and proficiencies. There is definitely a certain place for skills as well as for proficiency – but there is more to it than that. The following is a short approach to education and the teacher’s role in it.

Education is a Constant State of Preparedness

Preparedness for What?
Preparedness to live, work, learn and develop as a member of society and as a representative of a particular culture. And this preparedness is based on understanding this culture. In other words – the preparedness of each of us to cope in society is based first of all on our cultural background, i.e. what kind of understanding we have of values, taboos, norms, what is our way of living, etc. Thus, education cannot be either bad or good, education can only be sufficient or insufficient for coping in society.
The necessary preparedness is like a certain period’s cross-section of norms, values, required skills and knowledge etc. This is presented in figure 1. In the figure the required preparedness is presented by circles with different patterns for every period of time. And it is clear that the preparedness that was required ten years ago is not sufficient today, let alone in ten years’ time.

What does the Preparedness Consist of?

Talking about preparedness we have to go back to the concept of education. If we claim that education is a sequence of constantly changing states of preparedness, then we are talking about a dynamic approach to education. Should we want to find out of what the preparedness consists of, we have to approach the issue according to the static approach to education.
During the project we used models for handling several matters, and as Ülo Vooglaid was involved as an expert, I now intend to use Ü.Vooglaid’s model of education (fig.3) as it was also a basis of our work. According to that model, parts of preparedness are:

1. Knowledge and skills. None of these has a meaning on their own for preparedness as a whole. It is their unity that is significant, i.e. knowledge has value only in case some skills come along for implementing this knowledge. And the other way around – there is nothing to do with very good technical skills if no knowledge follows.
   
2. Position and behaviour. This presumes a very precise understanding of the role and behaving according to the role. A teacher is able to appear in his/her (i.e. in a teacher’s) role only when the student is able to appear in his/her i.e. in a learner’s role. In other words – to be a teacher, there has to be something to learn from that teacher. To learn exactly that something which the teacher is hoping to convey to the students.
   
3. Comprehension and understanding. To take part in the process it is necessary to understand what kind of process one is dealing with. For managing something it has to be understood what is being managed. And whether it is possible to be managed at all. And people and their behaviour have to be understood as well.
   
4. Knowing the past and foreseeing the future. It is not possible to foresee the future without knowing the past. Without foreseeing the future no responsibility can arise, as responsibility is a decision-making based on results. The results of one’s decision-making have to be foreseen.

All in all – we have to be ready for constant changes, which in turn means constant learning. In other words – there is no reasonable alternative to life-long learning. At least in a society where progress is a value.

About the Significance of Life-long Learning

Estonian society has developed very fast during the past ten years. The rapid development of the economy, the striving for membership of the European Union and NATO, faster and faster globalisation – all this has put our people into a totally new situation that needs a completely different kind of preparedness than ten years ago. And the whole population of Estonia needs it at the same time and in as short time as possible. And exactly this fact expresses best the significance of life-long learning in Estonian society:

• Estonia needs constantly learning citizens with a high degree of adaptability and a sense of responsibility;
  
• Constant self-development in Estonia is necessary for all the people irrespective of their formal status, i.e., citizen or non-citizen.

It is clear that it is impossible for us to send all citizens back to school. Thus, the preparedness described above can be created only through non-formal adult training activity. And that is what Estonia has done so far.

The Roles of Non-formal Education in Estonia

In Estonia (just as anywhere else) non-formal education has several roles to play:

• It helps people understand differences in relations with themselves, neighbours, Europe and the whole world arising from cultural identity or people’s diverse nature in a continuously accelerating globalisation process;
  
• It supports the formation of an individual’s co-responsibility for his own community and for the entire society;
  
• Supports initiative and interest in one’s surroundings;
  
• Supports people’s self-confidence and faith in themselves as well as in the potential of their society.

Concerning the roles I mentioned above, I would point out four very important aspects for the development of the whole society concerning non-formal education:

The political aspect of non-formal education
a) Preparedness for active participation;
b) Cooperation, decision-making;
c) Development of civic society;
d) Formation of loyalty;
e) Formation of tolerance necessary in the open and globalising world.

The social aspect of non-formal education
a) Supporting social coherence;
b) Creating equal possibilities to study;
c) Supporting social and cultural identity.

The economic aspect of non-formal education
a) Formation of preparedness for reasonable consumption;
b) Supporting small business enterprises;
c) Supporting economic subsistence;
d) Creating a saving lifestyle.

The cultural aspect of non-formal education
a) Preserving the national culture, including the learning traditions;
b) Formation of values and norms;
c) Formation of a creative individual with cultural identity.

Life-long learning and self-development is possible if a favourable material and non-material environment has been created. The material environment consists of natural and artificial environments. The non-material environment is mainly considered to be the social, intellectual and psychological environment.

The teacher plays the key role in the formation of the psychological environment necessary for learning.

The material environment plays a significant part in forming f the learning process, but as learning is an intellectual activity, the non-material environment becomes primary. The non-material environment is created by a teacher and by a community through its cultural background. The teacher has several roles to play in creating a favourable environment for learning – the teacher is (or at least should be) active in public life, a researcher, a training organiser, a tutor and a consultant. And first and foremost, the teacher is, just as all of us, a culture bearer. The teacher appears simultaneously in all of those roles throughout the study process. This presumes the teacher’s preparedness to play all these roles, providing proper education and exercising constant self-perfection.

Consequently, different kinds of competency are needed for successful activity.

Competence is considered to be the right to plan one’s action independently, make decisions, arrange activity and, furthermore, to have the necessary preparedness. In other words – a competent teacher knows, sees the results in advance and dares to make the necessary decisions. A competent teacher is the one from whom the others learn.

The necessary competence of an adult educator (but it also applies for a regular school teacher) can be divided into three groups. First of all – according to the teacher’s roles described above general competency is important for a teacher.

Competency as a teacher

The necessary skills and knowledge, sufficient motivation and right orientation – preparedness to support and guide learning in the best possible and necessary way according to students.

Competency as an organiser of the training
Preparedness to plan, prepare, carry out and assess through feedback and if necessary to correct the existing programmes, to predict new trends in the training spheres.

Competency as a researcher
Preparedness to understand the connection between practical knowledge and theory in everyday activity, to systemise new knowledge relying on one’s own practical knowledge, in this way creating new theories, to be an interpreter of academic sciences and not a guard following strict rules.

Competency as a public figure
Preparedness to set a good example, to be a spokesman if necessary, to be an analyst and a critic as an opinion-former of social life.

Competency as a culture bearer
Preparedness to know and value the culture at different levels and to be able to put it into practice creatively in the working environment as well as in private life. Openness in intercommunication with other cultures – the ability to have a free dialogue with other cultures of the world. Filtering and domesticating global culture – the ability to treat the flow of faceless and rootless mass culture in a discriminating way, picking out the useful and beneficial information. Knowing the local cultural context.

In addition to the general competency, the field competency should also be substantial.

Competency of nature
Preparedness to orientate in the phenomena of animate and inanimate nature, in principles connected with these; in the knowledge and ways of thinking of natural sciences, a nature-saving attitude to life.

Social competency
Preparedness to orientate in social life; understanding the social phenomena and developments of modern times and the past, preparedness to support democratic changes in society.

Competency of reflection and interaction
Preparedness to understand and assess oneself and the relations among people according to the norms of culture, to choose a suitable mode of behaviour, to have a healthy lifestyle, to solve the problems arising in connection with one’s psychological, physical health and human relations with oneself.

Communicative competency
Preparedness to understand, record, transmit, change, interpret and create texts by means of language. In its broadest sense, communicative competency means the ability to communicate in different situations and on different subjects in written and in oral forms.

Technological competency
Preparedness to use modern technologies in one’s everyday work and understand changes in people’s life and work style caused by the technological changes, to function in a modern high-technology world, to be an economical user of existing resources.

Cultural competency
Preparedness to orientate in culture, to use artistic means for creative self-expression and self-determination.

Thirdly, as the teacher’s main activity is primarily connected with a certain subject, subject competency is also essential.
Subject competency covers:

• Formulating the subject’s goals accordingly general the goals set in the study plan, composing the subject’s plan according to subject’s goals, constant updating of new knowledge in the subject taught, and preparedness to change the subject’s plan according to the latter;
  
• Knowing the methodology and methods necessary for teaching the subject;
  
• Preparedness to see the subject taught in connection with other subjects, to treat the study process described in the general part of the study plan as a whole and not as a sum of individual subjects.

In order to contribute to the formation of preparedness of teachers involved in adult training, the Estonian Non-formal Adult Education Association was one of the pioneers of the Nordic countries’ and the Baltic state’s co-project L4S. The final outcome of the Estonian work group became a curriculum of the principal ideas the present article touched upon.

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