New issue of the International Review of Education published

The new issue of the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning considers some of the potential wider benefits of education and learning – including for economic and community development, social inclusion and mental health – and the challenges and opportunities for its development.

The article topics range from implementing intercultural bilingual education in Latin America; (self-directed) lifelong learning among homeschooled children in the United States using digital tools; local community development and higher education institutions in Rwanda; post-COVID distance-education support services in Ghana; a multi-criteria decision-making framework for institutional support of instructors engaged in distance education programmes; to the importance of literacy for rural seniors in the Republic of Korea.

The editor’s introduction to the issue argues that some of these wider benefits of lifelong learning have been neglected in past decades and highlights education’s role in fostering personal responsibility and creating ‘critical and independent thinkers, capable of questioning themselves and others, full of doubt, durable and resilient, and, of course, concerned for the future’.

‘Education’s focus on the development of human capital and the individualistic pursuit of wealth and other private benefits has undermined its potential as a source of social solidarity and responsibility and human connection’ he writes, contrasting this with the conviction of adult educators that ‘through the free negotiation of meaning and curriculum in a non-adversarial, collaborative space somehow something new and unexpected could arise’.