Life-wide education: a new and transformative concept for higher education?

Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, University of London

Abstract

If lifelong learning is learning in that occupies different spaces through the lifespan – ‘from cradle to grave’ – life-wide learning is learning in different spaces simultaneously.  Such an idea of life-wide learning throws into high relief issues precisely of spaciousness – of authorship, power, and boundedness; for characteristically, pursued in different places under contrasting learning conditions, the various learning experiences will be seen to exhibit differences in authorship, power and boundedness, as well as in other ways.  In turn, such a conception of life-wide learning suggests a concept of liquid learning, a multiplicity of forms of learning and thence of being experienced by the learner contemporaneously.  This concept – of life-wide learning – poses in turn profound questions as to the learning responsibilities of universities: do they not have some responsibility towards the totality of the students’ learning experiences?  Does not the idea of life-wide education open here, as a transformative concept for higher education?  In sum, the idea of life-wide education promises – or threatens – to amount to a revolution in the way in which the relationship between universities, learners and learning is conceived.