Cautionary Tales in the Ethics of Lifelong Learning Policy and Management: A Book of Fables

ISBN-13: 9781402022142 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 193 str.

Richard G. Bagnall

Opis

This work is concerned with appraising the contemporary ethical impact of lifelong learning ideology and advocacy on education, through focusing on trends in educational policy and management that flow from the ideology. It has its origins in the author's concern that many of those trends are being defmed and promoted, or opposed, without an adequate understanding of their ethical dimensions. The 21 trends examined in this work are seen as defming important dimensions of the quite radical changes in educational policy and management that are flowing from the practical realisation of lifelong learning ideology and advocacy. In here evaluating those trends from an ethical perspective, the thesis is developed that they lead inevitably to distinctive ethical dilemmas or tensions in the lived experience of educational participants. The dilemmas, though, are not seen as realities that can intelligently be either avoided or resolved. They are, rather, inescapable features of the trends, although they and the experience of them may be managed intelligently to a greater or lesser extent. This analysis is premised on the belief that an understanding of the dilemmas may be of practical value in assisting educators, and policy makers and managers, to live and work more intelligently with them and to better manage the educational changes that are defmed by the trends. It may thereby contribute to moderating the excesses, sillinesses, and inanities so often evident in the directing and managing of refonns associated with the trends and to reduce the anguish and pain associated with them.

Spis treści

Acknowledgements Introduction Editorial by Series Editors 1 The Cultural Context 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Lifelong Learning and Education 1.3 The Contemporary Cultural Context 2 The Ethical Perspective 2.l Ethics 2.2 Ethics as Tensional 3 The Fable of Learning 4 The Fable of the Individual 5 The Fable of Outcomes 6 The Fable of Context 7 The Fable of Vocation 8 The Fable of Education and Training 9 The Fable of Education as Literacy 10 The Fable of Accountability 11 The Fable of Standards 12 The Fable of Technique 13 The Fable of Flexibility 14 The Fable of the Educational Market 15 The Fable of the Educational Contract 16 The Fable of the Educational Project 17 The Fable of the Educational Manager 18 The Fable of the International Provider 19 The Fable of the Educational Requirement 20 The Fable of the Present Moment 21 The Fable of the Educational Partisan 22 The Fable of Education as a Commodity 23 The Fable of Discriminative Injustice 24 In Closing References Index