The Issue of Integrated Approaches in Lifelong Learning : Comments on Papers Presented in the Kuala Lumpur Conference on Lifelong Learning *

 

Felix Librero

Abstract

My role as discussant in this conference is one that is challenging because, as discussant, I have to make informed comments on the six presentations. I hope I shall be able to do justice to these excellently prepared papers.

The focus of discussion in this panel is integrated approaches to lifelong learning. If by integration we mean that formal learning takes into consideration existing knowledge from different fields and in the real world setting, then we have a vast area of coverage. This means that we must do a lot of synthesizing and integrating knowledge from various fields and disciplines that may be useful in our specific concerns at any given time in order to solve problems that we may encounter in real life. That, by itself, is a formidable task.

Fortunately for us today, we are focusing our attention to six major concerns for which papers have been written and presentations made. These presentations, we have heard, reported on a lot of excellent experiences from various countries in Europe and Asia . We have two papers from international organizations, three from Europe, and one from Vietnam , representing the ASEAN region. I wish to comment to these papers as they are arranged in our programme.

complete paper in PDF file format

* Discussion paper presented at the ASEM Lifelong Learning Conference, University of Malaya , Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia , 13-15 May 2002