Lifelong Learning Policies in the European Union: developments and issues

Abstract

Abstract This article is concerned with an exploration of some of the policy and research implications of lifelong learning. It is devoted to the description and critical analysis of the emergence of lifelong learning as the central strategy in the EU's policies towards education and training. The article is organized in three sections. The first section explores the incremental development of the EU's policies towards education and training and the policy‐making process up to the mid‐1990s. The second section looks more closely at the emergence of lifelong learning on the policy agenda of the EU since 1990. In the third section, attention is focused on a critical analysis of the EU's current understanding of lifelong learning as manifested in the 1995 White Paper on education and training entitled Teaching and Learning—Towards the Learning Society.