Back to the Future?

Abstract

We live in times of change and uncertainty, and ideologies and perspectives of lifelong learning compete in a whirlpool of rhetoric, policy and practice. Challenges come from several arenas: from people from a variety of cultural and ethnic groups, examining the relationship of the oppressed and the exploited to educational structures; from post-modernists and post-structuralists, calling into question previously held beliefs and ideologies; and from feminists who criticise the lack of gender analysis in current lifelong learning debate. Whilst competing definitions of and developments in lifelong learning have extended and enhanced educational debates, feminists continue to argue for the inclusion of added dimensions of gender.