About the Project

The International Futures Forum in partnership with the European Journal of Education hosted two international seminars on the futures of learning in June and November 2005. These addressed the question of how our learning sytems can effectively innovate to take account of new research findings and new knowledge about the enabling conditions for real learning. Learndirect Scotland, one of the organisations that participated in the seminars (which were supported also by the Scottish Executive) subsequently commissioned a report on the findings. This is available for download below. With reference to UNESCO's report on the future of learning, the paper is entitled Policy Learning: can government discover the treasure within? The paper suggests that government is good at preaching innovation and lifelong learning but less good at acting that way in practice and in its traditional policy processes. It concludes with some recommendations for 'learning government' that will allow government to play a more effective role in the learning and innovation system.

Partners

learndirect scotland

Last updated: 3 Dec 2011

Status

'Policy Learning' was launched at learndirect scotland's annual conference in early March 2006. It will be discussed in a series of seminars and other events in the coming months. A version of the same argument was also published in the European Journal of Education special edition on Futures of Learning, Vol 42 No 2 June 2007. The article is available for download below.

Documents for download

Click on the documents below to download them to your hard disk.

Policy Learning

This pamphlet advances a simple thesis. In order to flourish in today's complex and fast-changing world we need to become a learning intensive society. Government cannot support that move unless the policy process itself reflects the theory and practice of lifelong learning it seeks to encourage in others. This is the case for 'policy learning'.

Date: 02 Mar 2006  Size: 779kB

Policy Learning - European Journal article

An article on policy learning by Graham Leicester published in the European Journal of Education special edition on futures of learning in June 2007.

Date: 24 Jun 2007  Size: 107kB