 Today, I'm going to speak about life-long learning as a concept from the perspective of UNESCO as I represent the institute here at the conference and I will reflect a little bit on the past or historical evolution of the concept of life-long learning within UNESCO and outside UNESCO, but also together with you think about the present concept, how this concept is being used at the global education policy, at the national levels as well but also at the local level. Together, I would like also to think together with you about the future of life-long learning particularly in the context of advanced technologies which are being increasingly used in education and learning organizations as well. So before I start my presentation, I would like to pose a question to all of you and this question is about your own definition of life-long learning. I'd like you to take a few seconds to think about this concept because the theme of this conference is about celebrating life-long learning. How do you define life-long learning? Okay, although I'm a teacher, I would have loved to ask some of their definitions, but I'll pass. So if you want to go back to the historical evolution of the concept of life-long learning, I'm not going to take you to ancient civilizations in China, India, Greece, but I'll start from very recent one from 1970s from UNESCO's perspective. So at UNESCO, one of the foundational texts which we actually refer to and seminal work in the field of life-long learning is the publication by the International Commission on Education, which was commissioned by UNESCO and chaired by FORE, and it's known as a FORE report in 1972, and the title of it is learning to be the world of education today and tomorrow. The publication is one of the key texts in which life-long learning was mentioned, but in a different kind of conceptualization. It was mostly referred to as life-long education. Together with life-long education, the report highlights the importance of developing learning societies and learning throughout life was supposed to actually contribute to all the societies becoming learning and the context in which everyone, irrespective of their age, social status, location, whether it is rural or urban, and many other factors related to social factors as well as individual, should not really limit their opportunity to learn. In other words, learning should not be constrained to the walls of schools, which was oftentimes the case in the 1970s, but it should go beyond the classrooms, beyond the buildings where the learning was supposed to be happening, because learning was already happening in many places, not just in schools. The text also refers to the shift from the concept of education, which was more about provision, the role and responsibility of the government to provide education, to the concept of learning, which was more about the process, which allows the learner to make decisions as well as to give credit to the learner in their own ability to choose educational material, to choose learning pedagogies, as well as learning materials, so that they can develop their capacity and do the capabilities to learn throughout life, but also to act, to make social changes. Emphasis in this text from the lifelong education and the learning society perspective was on human freedom and capacity to act. So it was more about giving, removing authoritarian teaching and pedagogies and enabling more individuals' ability to learn themselves by the help of teachers as facilitators. And the text's entire report was also formulated in the tradition of humanism, and all of these issues which I have highlighted in this report were responses to the issues that were having during that time, at the global level, national, as well as local levels. And a few things I would like to highlight here is that during this time, 1960s and 1970s, there were rise in the student movements, social movements, demanding education to be free of charge, accessible, as well as move away from authoritarian teaching to making it more active learning process. We also know that during this period, majority of the former colonized nations became independent as well. So there was a lot of emphasis on providing education as one of the main means for development and independence of these nations. We also know that during this time, there was a lot of confrontations because of Cold War. There were a lot of wars and conflicts and the entire world was coming out of the Second World War and trying to build as the sense of humanism and multilateralism as well. The second text, we come to 1990s. Same, UNESCO's International Commission on Education. This time chaired by The Law and is known as The Law Report. 1996, it was published. And this text also refers mainly to the text of The Law Report. However, the difference between The Law Report and The Law Report on Conceptualizing Learning was about learning throughout life, but with the focus on four pillars of learning. They are known as learning to be, learning to know, learning to do, and learning to live together. Learning to be was to actually supposed to be developing one's personality to be able to act with growing autonomy, judgment, as well as taking personal responsibilities. Learning to know was about more understand developing understanding, knowledge with the opportunity to work in depth on a small number of subjects. Learning to do was more about not just occupational skills development, but also developing competence to deal with many situations and be able to work in small teams or in different teams. Learning to live together was more about developing and understanding about others and how to live in a society which was becoming more globalized during this period of time. I would like to pose another question, but this time I would like to pose this question so that you can chit chat a little bit with one another. Why is lifelong learning important now? If 1970s, 1990s, there was a focus on learning throughout life for many other reasons at the global level as well as national and local, why is it important now? I'd like you to think for a few seconds, maybe turn to the right and share your thoughts, maybe one fact or two factors, why life should be emphasized now? Knowledge alive, because if it's in books but nobody knows it without reading the book, then knowledge is not alive and also by keeping it alive we can acquire more knowledge. Next slide, thank you. We'll have a lot of time to discuss during coffee break as well, but let's hear some responses. Why do we have to learn or why do we have to emphasize about lifelong learning today and in the future? Thank you. Yes. Yes, thank you. Yes, please. Yes, adapting. Yes, Lauren. Very interesting. Thank you so much for some of the points. Let's see. These are very few global challenges that we face today as global society. We have number one problem is climate crisis, climate change. We are talking about adaptability to kind of technological development, yes, but what about climate change? So lifelong learning is not just for adapting for the technological change, change in the labor market, change in the, let's say our society in terms of citizenship, migration, etc. But it's about also learning how we are going to survive and how we are going to do as humanity and whether we are able to save our planet from destruction. So it's not just about economic or social issues. It's about existential crisis almost. Of course we talked about demographic change. In some parts of the world we have very interesting bifurcation at the moment. We have in some regions we have population growth and fast. We have very young populations in some parts of the world who have no access to education. Forget about lifelong learning, but they don't even have access to basic education. We are talking about basic reading and writing skills, literacy and numeracy. We also have in another part of the world aging societies where the number of older generation is increasing, very few young people. So we have to think about how to operate in those kind of situations than the rest of us. Rise of populism, nationalism and it actually poses threat to democracy, threat to social cohesion in our societies, but also threat to citizenship principles globally. It decreases the role of importance of multilateralism because we don't exist in our silos, in our local community, neighborhood, city or nation state. We are more than globalized now. I mean look at around us. We have all, I mean people from 55 countries representing today at this conference speaking different languages. We also have, of course you know better than I do here, about rapid development in advanced technologies and implication of these on education or for education. What are we going to do with that? Lifelong learning should also respond to such questions. Transformations in the world of work, not just because of technological advancements in workplaces, but it's also about aging societies I spoke about. So we fast forward from 1996 to the current situation where we are facing enormous number of global challenges to the context of SDGs, sustainable development goals, 17 of them. And I would like to highlight that lifelong learning can respond and should be responding to all 17 of them. However explicitly clearly it is mentioned in the SDG4, which states ensure inclusive equitable quality education promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. The difference between this SDG goal from the previous education for all goal is that EFA focus a lot more on universal basic education whereas SDG number four on education focuses includes also lifelong learning for all. So how do we define what lifelong learning is? To understand but also to decide what kind of commitments member states of UNESCO have to make we had ancient declaration which is actually called education 2030 framework fraction. In that the commitments or the goal number four was elaborated further with many targets indicators that will be helping us to monitor the progress whether we are going to achieve this goal or not in the next 15 years. And just now as we are speaking there is a United Nations General Assembly discussing SDGs where are we reflecting on their progress on these SDGs all 17 of them including education. Sad story is that we are not near reaching the SDG goal number four including other goals as well. However let's come back to the definition of lifelong learning. In this framework correction document lifelong learning has been defined as integration of learning and living. So it is about life and it's about life wide and it's about throughout one's journey in this world. So it covers learning activities for all age groups including children young people adults elderly girls and boys women and men and etc. In all wide context life wide context not just schools not just universities not just vocational technical colleges but in families in communities and workplaces libraries museums health centers and many other places where our communities gather together or individuals experience their life in. It also can happen through a variety of modalities the emphasis here is about formal education training but also capturing non-formal education training and informal learning which is a little bit different from the previous education goal of the Millennium Development Goals. Together all of it will should be meeting a wide range of learning needs and demands and they're responding a wide range of purposes and challenges. Before I go to the next one I just want to clarify maybe these three concepts may be new or you have you know but we have it's get definitions here which is international classification on education their terminologies as well. Formal education and non-formal education informal learning the distinction between them are here formal education and training oftentimes institutionalized intentional there's a planning happening usually offered by public organizations but also recognize private sector it has to be recognized formally accredited as qualifications and there is a continuous educational pathway from early childhood until higher education. Non-formal education can be institutionalized can be intentional however oftentimes they're considered to be alternative and complementary to formal education and many of us may be thinking about how technologies are actually revolutionizing learning and the non-formal education informal learning may be more accessible now than it was previously it's actually not any more complementary in the context of COVID-19 they became the main modalities of learning because formal educational institutions closed down during the lockdowns so not necessarily continuous non-formal education can be very short term one week one day few a month qualifications are usually not recognized but currently UNESCO is also working on developing different kind of tools mechanism for recognition validation accreditation of such learning and you may know this language I'm a vocabulary like continuing education mass education lifelong learning alternative non-formal education so that all of them can be used as synonymously as well informal learning is one of the areas which is actually very interesting however very little is known and this is because it is not intentional not deliberate it can happen unknowingly unconsciously someone may be actually acquiring such a knowledge and learning according in family workplace community for many other on many other topics for many other reasons can be also called informal learning it's usually self-directed family directed socially directed I want to go back to the education 2030 framework here now what we can pull out from that document which is the commitment of member states towards achieving SDG goal on education states five core messages first is all people especially those in vulnerable situations should have access to learning opportunities throughout life because we often see this is not happening oftentimes they're limited to basic education in some cases they don't even have that access particularly women indigenous women living in rural areas or remote areas and they're speaking a minority language lifelong learning must be embedded in the education system and requires cross-sectoral collaboration and strong partnerships so education is no longer just the responsibility of minister of education but many other line ministries because lifelong learning is about life-wide learning about learning different topics and themes and questions multiple and flexible learning pathways and entry re-entry points must be provided at all age and all educational levels you know we know all of us that we went through kindergarten school university and there were specific age requirements so education SDG four highlights the importance of multiple and flexible learning pathways for all kinds of learners giving opportunity for them the importance also has been made in terms of linking between formal education non-formal education and it wasn't included here informal learning as well so that outcomes of such learning can be recognized through tools and mechanisms developed as well learning spaces and environments must be widely made available and the great potential of educational technologies should be harnessed now we'll come back a little bit really later to this component of the last one as there are already new developments since it was adopted a long time ago in terms of technology and education very recently we published another international commission on futures of education this time which wasn't about just for today but future oriented one it's called reimagining our futures together a new social contract for education now this international report actually highlights about two things that the education in order to become social transformatory social transformative it needs to equip the learners with all kinds of capabilities and we need to learn for greater social good not just for individual empowerment freedom or action or benefit employment but about greater social good that support that contributes to our society to become better inclusive equitable and sustainable and learning throughout life was an important aspect to it one distinction between the previous two reports and this one is about the shift or suggestion to shift towards from right to education which actually was more about right to basic formal education to the right to learning throughout life according to the discussion at different regional levels demanding the right to lifelong learning not just basic education and training in this context our institute institute for lifelong learning has developed another piece of document in which we highlight about a vision of life and learning for the future and we got this 2050 as a date which is actually goes beyond the sdg timeline and the report was published as a result of discussions from different disciplinary researchers as well as scholars and I highlighted nine important I think it was 10 10 important messages number one is we need to recognize the holistic character of life on learning it's not just lifelong learning as I highlighted that for employment individual empowerment and their health benefits for the individual and the neighbor or family but it's more about learning to live together it's about taking action towards what said the impacts of climate crisis and many other issues and be active as citizens of a democratic society promote disciplinary interest disciplinary research and intersectional collaboration for lifelong learning one of the issues which we continue having is that oftentimes when you talk about life and learning it becomes very much the issue of education however it is not it has to actually capture researchers attention from different disciplines to make it viable option for improving our society at the global level at the national level as well we also need to highlight the reports highlight states the importance of putting vulnerable groups at the core of lifelong learning currently majority of the life on learning policies in around the world emphasize for everyone but when you actually emphasize everyone in your policy priority will be given everywhere on anyone the finance financial means are limited so where do you place the critical part of placing vulnerable groups at the core of lifelong learning policies is that you will have more equitable educational and lifelong learning opportunities and many other things I think you can just look at it repeats to be honest the previous reports but with the focus on lifelong learning is a viable option for creating a new social contract for education and learning so that we can develop better sustainable future of our societies so I spoke a lot about utopian vision UNESCO has been actually criticized a lot about this is you I mean it's a good idea but it's not very pragmatic it's difficult to take actions it will be difficult to actually get these visionary ideas and put it into policy documents how do we do it so our institute has been contributing to the interpretation of the visionary goals of education from UNESCO's international commissions on education reports to make it as a reality through policy practice and initiatives at the global local as well as national levels a couple of things I would like to highlight here is that we do so by developing guidelines for policymakers how to put the concept of lifelong learning from those visionary contexts a reality for a local as well as national levels we do so by developing also capacity building trainings for policymakers and stakeholders civil society at the national local level as well we do so by working on research teaming up with researchers course from around the world and publishing different kind of thought pieces but also case studies exemplary initiatives so that member states and other stakeholders can learn from each other and very recently we also during covid time covid was very good I think in terms of help and making us think out of box we developed our own multi-model platform online platform using Moodle and I mean we are hosting on Moodle platform and Lauren has been helping quite a bit as well on that and we started engaging policymakers on an online platform learning about lifelong learning developing the capacities of course we are also adding hybrid versions because we know that there should be a lot of discussions and learning cannot be done just online and in many parts of the world I mean access to technology is still a problem we work with 193 countries around the world so we develop such online opportunities and the team up with other national level agencies to strengthen capacities at the national local levels and some of the publication you can see here our learning hub capacity building platform is very young it's we have launched it 2021 and actually official launch was this year may and that we are planning to organize more such or online learning for policymakers researchers as well as practitioners and providers and to make it available in multiple languages and I'd like to make a plea here we actually have very limited capacity as a team we have five people only in my entire team and we always look for capacity in terms of developers but also instructional learning designers in other languages Arabic Spanish French Chinese Russian and many other national languages as well because we see increasingly we don't have such capacity we look for such consultants and experts in the field to help us design our trainings so that it is accessible to our members as well very quickly I want to highlight one more example from our institute where we are trying to make a lifelong learning as a reality at the very local level our institute hosts or we are the secretariat of the global network of learning cities we have more than 300 cities from around the world and in which we are trying to understand but also support capacities at the local level at the municipal level on how a city can become a learning city what are the things actually characterizes characterize cities as learning cities you remember we talked about learning society from that concept we are trying to see learning neighborhoods learning cities learning villages etc but this model it has been successfully implemented for 10 years we will be celebrating 10 years here this year and these are the building blocks for a learning city I think if you can use the QR code you will get more information about that in which these 300 learning cities actually are supported by creating their own clusters on different themes and they learn from each other so our institute's role really to create this platform for them for knowledge exchange in terms of policy as well as practice and learning cities also celebrate learning festivals we are different kind of initiatives at the very local level very small scale or large scale are being presented as well some of these initiatives use technologies in education quite successfully as well I would like to highlight another matter here educators in the current context educators role has been changing also they are shifting it has already been conceptualized in 1970s in the foreign report as teachers to be more facilitators of learning rather than the ones who have all the knowledge with themselves technology made knowledge or information available now teacher is no longer a textbook textbook very single textbook in some parts of the world is no longer the authority of knowledge so however we also know educators play a fundamental in promoting tolerance encouraging dialogue improving gender equality advancing different kind of cultural and social values but also contribute largely in the preparation or creating the next generation for our sustainable future but one of the things which we have identified at the institute is that oftentimes when we talk about the educators at the global level there is a lot of emphasis on formal school teachers but lifelong learning is about all sectors for all ages we have to include educators who are working in the early childhood as well as TVET higher education but more importantly those who work in the communities within NGOs civil society organizations as well although we have been talking about educators being having low digital skills lower than they are students oftentimes we also know many of the educators given opportunity and provided training relevant trainings they can become active creators of educational online content and the different kind of learning resources because they know practice well they know their learners they have experience to rely on I think very critical examples emerged during COVID-19 when many teachers started developing their own content across the world sharing with each other using zoom or lesson study groups really learning on the job as we highlight in there one of their publications we had this year last year technology in education report in which we have to think technology is not going should not replace teachers it should be complementary it should be about helping teachers and learners in the process of learning and teaching but not replacing them I think many countries also oftentimes in order to save money in order to come up with different kind of strategies they may deploy they or see in some parts of the world they start deploying already technology technological tools to kind of compensate or to address the issue of teacher shortages we have we have a lot of I mean there's an increased shortage for trained teachers all around the world I mean the Hamburg where I'm coming from they have shortage of teachers as well because their population of students are increasing because of the migration but the teachers are aging as well they're retiring so we have these kind of issues and oftentimes maybe the quick solution policy makers may come up with using technologies for that however again technology cannot cannot replace human touch human interaction in terms of I didn't want to talk about policies around technologies in education but a few things I want to highlight sorry yes I saw one minute yeah here UNESCO is currently working very hard and very also fast I think on developing policies and frameworks on technologies that are being used in education field this includes generative AI as well in we had very recently at the beginning of September digital learning week in which there was a lot of discussion around human centered learning centered design of technologies the importance of technologies being used as a complementary as a support but not replacement of teachers and other teaching staff and personnel and in many the studies of UNESCO has shown also many countries many ministers of education parents learners themselves are not protected from the some of the abuses of technology as well here UNESCO's role is really supporting member states and all the stakeholders to make sure that all the technological developments in education are ethical so by creating ethics in the application of these technologies including especially in generative AI has been highlighted in these policy documents as well it is not to say that we should shy away block use of technologies in education but use it ethically and use it with evidence study evaluate the impact before we start scaling and before we start promoting it as a product to be used in our educational processes I think I will sum up now very quickly if it's few highlights I think one important thing is that we need to adopt the concept of lifelong learning in its entirety as I highlighted already from the beginning and we have to also not forget that you have seen 1972 1996 2020 2021 we are still seeing the evolvement evolution of this concept of lifelong learning we need to keep thinking around that what it is to be a lifelong learner in today's time tomorrow and in the in the next 10 years we need to recognize the value of lifelong learning as a public good oftentimes learning is considered private however we need to understand that learning education should remain as public good it should be accessible affordable it should be even if possible free and it has to respond to variety of challenges not just employment which is oftentimes investment in education is seen as from the perspective of human capital theory only employment training for work by workforce for their market needs it has to be about environmental sustainability it has to respond to citizenship issues and challenges in our countries it has to be about inclusion as well it has to strengthen our capacity to learn but act for so greater social good and as I highlighted again I don't want to repeat again here one of the important thing is that learning is about human interaction self-directed learning is good but it has to add social learning aspect as well because our knowledge our learning experiences enrich is enriched by our interaction with the others and I would like to thank all of you for your attention and thank you so much for this invitation awesome I think for all of us to think about how individually and collectively we can contribute to a model of life long learning across our countries so yeah really awesome presentation everybody we now have some time for questions we have some roving microphones so please perhaps put your hands up if you have a question you'd like to ask and we'll send the microphone over to you hello first of all thank you so much for that presentation I just had one question you mentioned that we are not close to STG goal number four which is about ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education I want to understand that is there a particular reason why we are not close to that goal and if so then what can we do to get nearer to that goal thank you so much for this question yeah unfortunately we are not we are off track because if you look at the indicators when these goals were defined these are very generic goals and the SDG four has if I don't if I'm not mistaken four global indicators four global indicators include learning outcome based for example all children having proficiency basic proficiency the level is also defined already at the global level at particular level have to have numeracy reading skills etc and you know very well that we have children who are out of school still COVID-19 has impacted seriously on the learning of children in all the countries as well we also have increased conflicts disasters we just know I think two weeks ago we had disasters in earthquake in Morocco in Libya we have continued conflict in Afghanistan Syria and many other countries that's why we are off track on all the indicators of education for example what we can do all of us as individuals we are already contributing to some extent making sure that learning is happening whether it is through non-formal informal I think I would encourage you to continue doing that of course in the cases we're very obitiously set let me put it this way and financial resources oftentimes were not also given provided or were not planned through and these contribute also of ambitious I mean our inability to achieve ambitious goals that we have set forward for us but of course I think what else can we do I mean I will be happy to hear more ideas technology can as I said can complement how to improve learning of children adults as well for example one of the indicator of SDG for global indicator is on the functional literacy and numeracy all youth 100% and a substantial percent proportion of adults I mean the substantial proportion can be set by the national nation member states themselves for example it's about developing different kind of tools supporting teachers educators of adult educators in the field in the development of pedagogies using online offline contributing voluntarily to some of the developments for example or creating some social social relevant projects I think these are the actions but most important one as citizens of your countries you need to also raise this issue of investing in education as public good we see in many parts of the world because of these ambitious goals I'm not I'm not suggesting it's bad there is an increased reliance of the governments on private sector which you know that it creates a lot of issues in terms of equality because private sector oftentimes is not free and not affordable yeah we have increased inequality in learning outcomes between poor and rich I hope I responded to your question thank you other questions yes here hello I'm Steve from inclusive education we're a joint venture with Save the Children the INGO um thank you for the QR codes that was fantastic I've got a lot of reading to do in the gem report that you gave us a link for the intro says there are often bitter divisions in how the role of technology is viewed what advice would you have to us as passionate e-learning practitioners we love technology we want to be in supportive consulting roles but often come up against those bitter divisions what advice would you have for us if we're wanting to work in the sector thank you so much I think I wouldn't have the the best advice right away because I think we are still thinking about on the role of education technology on education I mean gem report highlights about this kind of very uneasy position in terms of use of technology over reliance or using technology as a silver bullet for all the challenges to fix and using relying on the tools specific tools to bring changes in the challenges that we are facing I think that's the isolated development of technology without having the general perspective or larger impact I think that's where the issue lies in many countries also we don't have as I stated really good evidence-based impact studies evaluations in some in some cases there are evaluations but they are self evaluations where the external review hasn't been done I think all of this kind of highlights the importance of different kind of stakeholders being involved not just one sector for example leading in the development of technologies in education or using it as an opportunity to sell their products I think that's what that's what has been highlighting as well another issue which gem report also specifies I think is the role of educators themselves in the choice in the you know being more knowledgeable about these tools and you know very well the majority of the time our educators are lagging behind the development education is a sector is lagging behind we are like in the mode of catching up we are not leading the discussions I think that's where there are a lot of issues live because we are coming up with the frameworks and policies a little bit later when there such a technology has been already entering our side our social lives is consultants as practitioners in this field I think always be vigilant about what kind of consequences these advice or your the what is that suggestions recommendations we are making are having on the lives of children on the lives of lunes for the adults or youth as well time for one more question I think Michelle here the problem is that most of the governments are still very swayed or under the pressure of the corporate technologies I think there's a variety of people here if you really want moves towards stg4 which you need to push projects all the open source what is being released in the world but I mean at the bottom of the line bottom line is governments are decreasing in their gdp's in education and it's impacting further and further and this exacerbating I think it was a comment I think thank you so much for highlighting these issues about it about financing education this is where we have a little bit problematic in terms of terminology change from education to learning and I have been reading a little bit about criticism against UNESCO's concept of life and learning was that when we education oftentimes about provision states responsibility to provide basic education free affordably whereas with a shift happened on learning then the responsibility oftentimes shifted to the learner himself or self and then the entire then learning process is commodified it becomes like the any other services as well I think that's where the issue lies many governments do not think investing in education is going to bring change very quickly because investment in education yields are what the results only after a generation so that's why I think most of the time they do not they're not willing to invest as well it's better to invest in building roads than investing in the education of young children who are going to become adults after few several years no thank you wonderful thank you again Rahat we really appreciate you joining me on my global