Lifelong learning and schools as community learning centres : key aspects of a national curriculum draft policy framework for Malta

The island of Malta has been engaged in policy document formulations for curriculum renewal in the country’s educational system (4-16 years of age) since 1988 when the first National Minimum Curriculum (henceforth NMC) was launched (Wain, 1991; Borg et al, 1995). In 1999 a revamped NMC (Ministry of Education, 1999) was developed following a long process of consultation involving various stages and stakeholders. It was a compromise document (Borg & Mayo, 2006) which emerged as a result of reactions to a more radical and coherent draft document produced in 1988. Both curricular documents were subject to debates and critiques (Wain, 1991; Darmanin, 1993; Borg et al, 1995; Giordmaina, 2000; Borg and Mayo, 2006). More recently a series of volumes providing guidelines, key principles and aims for a national curriculum framework (henceforth NCF) have been produced (MEEF, 2011a,b,c,d) and are currently the target of debate and the focus of reactions by various stakeholders in education including teachers who were asked to read the volumes and provide reactions in the form of answers to a set questionnaire. In this paper, I will focus on one aspect of the documents, the first of its three aims: ‘Learners who are capable of successfully developing their full potential as lifelong learners.’ It is that aspect of the framework documents that falls within the purview of the title for this special issue. The use of this notion attests to the influence of the EU’s policy communications on member states, Malta having joined the Union in 2004 (Mayo, 2007).peer-reviewe

Economics and the Political Economy of Adult Education

This chapter provides a critical overview of the contribution of economics to research and policy on adult education. It discusses three distinct political economy perspectives and links these to the shifting policy agenda related to adult education at the OECD over the last five decades. This is done to reveal the link between different political economy perspectives and the implications for analytical as well as political perspectives when approaching the study and policy of adult education. Some implications and challenges for research on adult education are discussed

How to produce correct software -- an introduction to formal specification and program development by transformations

The task of software production is to build software systems which are to fulfil certain requirements. For years the approach has been to build up by trial and error a program which, having satisfied carefully prepared test data, offers a plausible solution to the problem. But is it correct? Even for toy examples this is not obvious. In particular, it is often not even clear whether the original problem has been fully understood. The reason for this dilemma is that the transition from the informal problem statement to the final program is too big to be intellectually managable. To master these problems, we advocate a software development method where the whole process is split into smaller steps by introducing formal specifications for (parts of) the problem and then stepwisely deriving efficient programs by correctness-preserving transformations

Conceptualising lifelong learning: a reflection on lifelong learning at Middlesex University (UK) and Lund University (Sweden)

Lifelong Learning has in recent years become a fundamental element of many educational policy strategies aimed at achieving the goal of socio-economic development. The role of universities in this is viewed by some as crucial and requires some attention. This article examines the concept of lifelong learning and suggests another way in which it could be conceptualised. It further reflects on how two European universities understand and implement lifelong learning and the implications for European regional educational policies in view of the knowledge society