Joern Skovsgaard presentation abstract

Session 1: Assuring Access to Lifelong Learning for All

The introduction will present the findings and experiences of the Asia Europe Meeting/ ASEM Life-long Learning Initiative. The initiative was taken in 1999 by Singapore, Malaysia, Ireland and Denmark. A first report was submitted to the ASEM 4 summit in Copenhagen September 2002 and it was de-cided to continue the work in the thematic working-group “Ensuring Basic Skills for All”. The work-ing-group submitted a proposal to establish “Asia-Europe Education and Research HUB for Lifelong Learning”. The proposal was brought forward by Denmark co-sponsored by Thailand, Singapore and Sweden and adopted by the ASEM 5 summit Hanoi October 2004.

The introduction will concentrate on the major outcomes of the work so far:
• An illumination of the polarity in the dominant approaches to education “Curriculum” and “Didactics” and a discussion of optional synergy between the two.
• An illustration of the emergence of the knowledge based society and the patterns of overlap be-tween other dominant modes of society – agriculture, industry and service and a discussion of how this pattern apply to different contexts – internationally, national and local.
• An overarching conceptual framework for key competencies for knowledge based society and a discussion of how this can be utilized in a specific national context.
• A qualifications framework for lifelong learning including a concept for recognition of formal, in-formal and non-formal learning.
• An introduction to the idea of the “Asia-Europe Education and Research HUB for Lifelong Learning”.

The introduction will be followed by a brief presentation of experiences from Thailand and Malaysia.