Bruce Wilson | [email protected]
Abstract
In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted its Agenda to 2030, Transforming Our World. Goal 4 on Education included reference to the importance of promoting lifelong learning. Since 2020, the European Union Centre of Excellence at RMIT has hosted a Jean Monnet Network project on ‘Social and Scientific Innovation to Achieve the SDGs’, bringing together researchers from Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. Bruce Wilson outlines the integral role which learning plays in the achievement of any of the Goals. The Network project has demonstrated that learning partnerships in themselves can be innovative, exploring new ways of encouraging the kind of learning which underpins broader kinds of innovative projects.
Keywords: Lifelong learning, informal learning, Sustainable Development Goals, Jean Monnet Network
Introduction
In September 2015, the United Nations (UN) adopted its Agenda to 2030, Transforming Our World. At its heart were the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with Goal 13 on climate action reinforced at the Paris Convention in November 2015.
Goal 4 on Education included reference to the importance of promoting lifelong learning, which many other Goals acknowledged, not least health and innovation, peace and justice, the importance of learning to the achievement of specific targets. In this way, the Agenda to 2030 was a ringing endorsement of the priority which should be accorded to lifelong learning.
Since 2020, the European Union Centre of Excellence at RMIT has hosted a Jean Monnet Network project on ‘Social and Scientific Innovation to Achieve the SDGs’, bringing together researchers from Europe, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The project has revealed a broad range of case studies of place-based initiatives that all contribute in one way or another to the outcomes sought under the UN’s Agenda. Each of these, in one way or another, illustrated the integral role which learning plays in the achievement of any of the Goals. Furthermore, it demonstrated that learning partnerships in themselves can be innovative, exploring new ways of encouraging the kind of learning which underpins broader kinds of innovative projects.
In the next few months, PIMA will publish a special bulletin which shares some of the key examples of these dimensions of the work to achieve the SDGs. This article points to the importance that the Network’s results accorded to informal learning, and to the need for stronger advocacy for that importance to be recognised.
Place-Focused, Globally Oriented Learning
Amongst the case studies that were shared by Network members, there were examples of agricultural innovation that were implemented in circumstances marked by significant conflict. Others were in the context of sustainability transitions, whether the closure of a coalfired power station or the end to native forest logging. Yet others were in large cities, reimagining processes of production and consumption.
Despite the significant differences in context, there were some common themes: the importance of bringing together diverse stakeholders each with distinctive knowledge to share; the challenge of building effective collaboration, given different types of knowledges, priorities and resources; the richness of the exchanges that occurred once the essential negotiation to support conversations had been undertaken. In each case, the conversations resulted in broader perspectives and new knowledge. In some cases, there were structured workshop programs which facilitated productive outcomes; in others, it was through a focus on field sites, working together to observe specific events and to make decisions about how to proceed. These were ordinary citizens and workers coming together to find strategies to address the local manifestations of global forces.
These were examples of structured learning, yet informal: led by program facilitators, negotiated with all stakeholders, and involving processes of co-design and evaluation even where quite sophisticated knowledge was involved. Program notes, presentation slides and background reading might have been part of the process, with facilitators also as learners. However, even when extending over months or possibly years, these examples of informal learning were documented in variable ways (if at all), and learners absorbed new learning that was critical for delivering innovation, without any recognition other than from the peers with whom they were working.
Recognition of Informal Learning
Insofar as the UN 2030 Agenda refers to education, the implication is for support for formal education, whether in schools and universities, further education institutes or other credentialled institutions. However, the Network’s findings have demonstrated the importance of informal lifelong learning. That is to say, learning which occurs in community or organisational or perhaps blended settings, in a defined context and often with a quite purposeful agenda. Often, this kind of learning occurs in a collaborative setting, experiencebased, peer mentoring, and targeted at achieving a socially or technologically innovative outcome.
Whether in a developed country such as Australia or Scotland, or in emerging economies such as Fiji, the Philippines or Bangladesh, informal learning has been shown to be a crucial means for developing the capability necessary for communities to work towards one or the other (or several) of the SDGs. Yet, it is almost invisible, supported by ad hoc resourcing, valued only by the participants and then often in ways in which they struggle to recognise themselves.
Not only is this discriminatory, especially when it is vulnerable groups participating in the project, but it leads to public neglect of a crucial part of the work necessary for there to be any hope of delivering on the UN’s ambitions. From a policy perspective, we now need to find ways of providing formal recognition of this kind of informal learning. This will not only strengthen the resources available to support informal learning, but it will also provide respect for learners in a way that will in itself contribute towards the SDGs.
About the author
Professor Bruce Wilson has been Director of the European Union Centre of Excellence at RMIT since 2010, leading research and debate on EU-Australian relations, encouraging mobility for staff and students, and building partnerships between Australian universities and organisations and their European counterparts. Over the last decade, he has worked on various investigations into the European Union’s involvement in Asia Pacific, including major projects on the EU and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); the importance of building place-based innovation systems capability in country districts, cities and regions; and EU-Australia trade. He has published regularly on these topics, including the EU-Australia trade negotiations. He has presented keynote presentations in EU Joint Research Centre forums on Smart Specialisation and placed-based innovation and was co-editor of the Australasian Journal of Regional Studies (2015-18, 2021-22).
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Resources:
https://www.uil.unesco.org/en/articles/confintea-vii-follow-meeting-europe
https://www.dvv-international.de/en/materials/global-processes-and-policydocuments/confintea
