On the Contexts of EU Policies on Open and Distance Learning and Lifelong Learning (1990-2021)

Abstract

Lifelong learning has been a structuring element of competitive knowledge-based societies, but also in fields of personal fulfillment, social cohesion and active citizenship of people.

In 2000, the European Commission issued a Memorandum on Lifelong Learning, which strengthened the basis for policy cooperation in education and training. The EU Memorandum on Open and Distance Learning (1991) aimed to expand access to and participation of citizens in education and training. The economic framework and rhetoric of the EU's lifelong learning policy tend to obscure important elements of equity, citizenship and European identity. Among the goals of the Lisbon Strategy, the EU has made little progress in the field of lifelong learning. A new element in the related theory of education is the concept of lifelong-lifewide learning. In a holistic vision, a learner-centered approach is paramount rather than a labor / market-oriented approach. Open and distance learning has moved in the mainstream of European policy in education and lifelong learning. The pandemic has brought one of the greatest professional developments in the history to university education, while it is acknowledged that emergency distance learning is not quality online learning. The EU's renewed Digital Education Action Plan takes into account the experience of the COVID-19 crisis and the structural challenges for education in Europe. The pandemic has accelerated trends in online and hybrid learning. Weaknesses in teacher education and infrastructure and in the coherence of EU Member States' education policies remain fundamental problems. The sector known as distance learning, online learning, played a real and valuable role in the period 1970-2020. In the future, online learning will appear as an authentic part of education, so its integration into lifelong learning is both methodologically and technically self-evident.