Building a learning region: Whose framework of lifelong learning matters?

Abstract

This chapter is part of a book that aims to provide an accessible, practical and scholarly source of information about the international concern for the philosophy, theory, categories, and concepts of lifelong learning. In this chapter, the author examines the development of ‘learning regions’ in various parts of the world as a means for understanding how lifelong learning is enmeshed in the socio-economic and political approaches of a region. The development of indicators in one learning region in the Western Cape Province of South Africa, is used to demonstrate how complex and contested lifelong learning is. It is also used to identify a range of paradoxes, which are at the heart of lifelong learning.