Lifelong Learning and Ecological Thinking: A Convergence

Introduction: Two Movements, One Direction

Popularized social and cultural trends are merging, intentionally or not, toward laying the foundation for a new narrative about what it means to learn across a lifespan in an environment conducive to healthy living. This paper examines the coalescing of what is called lifelong learning alongside the theories and practices related to the evolution of ecological thinking and environmental awareness. The idea that life can be as meaningful at its end as it is at the beginning seems to run counter to normative philosophies that instead isolate and compartmentalize schooling and work. Yet when examined together, it becomes clear that both lifelong learning and ecological thinking are mutually reinforcing — and thus supportive of the broader acceptance of each other.

Lifelong learning and a mindset for environmental awareness share many philosophical and pragmatic elements. Each approaches its subject from a long-term perspective. Developed and developing nations, including the United States, openly center their expectations around very short-duration, purposive educational goals that reward the commercial acceptance of instantaneous gratification, straight-line advancement (such as moving from one grade level to the next), and other factors associated with throwaway consumption.

By blending the values of a lifelong pursuit of knowledge and understanding with a global and systematic awareness of the health of the world in which we live, however, these core presumptions are directly threatened (Emerson, 2003). At the same time, the core assumptions of both fields seem in many instances to make it hard for some to accept what each movement has to offer. It can even be said that such fundamental shifts in perspective and practice will never happen, even as many indicators suggest a transformation is already underway in its own kind of quiet revolution (Hawken, 2007).

The pages that follow review the state of the problem and suggest that a confluence of lifelong learning and environmental ecology is not just happening, but that the end results may be highly desirable. After a review of the literature and a look at global advancement indicators, I review a series of common definitions and assumptions that each sector offers, and then explore how the advent and pervasive use of connectivity technologies — from computers to handheld communication devices — are facilitating a marriage of these initiatives. Throughout the piece, findings are presented in light of changes underway in schools and communities, often through the lens of a new type of ecoliteracy grounded in ecological thinking and intelligence, which transcends each sector (Puk, 2002). The final section explores how specific teaching strategies are being combined with technological advancements in ways that make it appear likely that the two fields will successfully come together (Ceasar, 2009).

Statement of the Problem

The world's educational systems and philosophies are under scrutiny. This is true in both developed countries, which already have certain structural learning models, as well as in developing countries that are just now coming to grips with how to make learning and teaching most effective within the confines of a smaller yet highly competitive world. There are numerous indicators suggesting that contemporary formal educational models are not providing all of what they promise (Aspin and Chapman, 2007). Many young people are not completing school, and even those who do find they are not prepared for their working lives. As a result, there has been a rising tide toward the institutionalization of more structured, highly regimented learning tactics — a momentum gaining even more force in light of significant governmental and personal resource struggles.

Governmental initiatives such as the No Child Left Behind directives in the U.S. (and a similar Level 2 Qualifications framework in the UK) were designed over the last decade specifically to address these issues and to establish standardized teaching and testing directives (Hodgson, 2009). The argument being made through these efforts by both liberal and conservative advocates is that because other approaches are not working well, the better alternative for ensuring the preparation of a strong future workforce is enabling young people to be more "scientifically" ready for global vocational success. If all students take similar core courses — often called STEM courses (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) — it would be much easier to ensure that teachers everywhere were equally beneficial to student learning. Tests grounded in scientific and mathematical conformity likewise provide school administrations and colleges and universities the presumed ability to better judge learning achievement as they prepare students primarily for future job readiness (Van Kleef, 2007).

While this perspective remains prevalent, it exists in the face of another growing educational perspective that is clearly taking root. Lifelong learning as an object worthy of exploration is already finding a place in many social, community, employment, and advocacy sectors, even when it flies directly in the face of the movement toward standardized learning and testing (Aspin and Chapman, 2007; Puk, 2002), even though some might think the impact of this collision is being ignored or downplayed (Hodgson, 2009).

But whether it is being ignored or not says little about how well its roots are actually taking hold. Those who profess an allegiance to the idea of learning across the full spectrum of one's lifespan are succeeding in integrating their concepts into various philosophical and pragmatic domains. They are even directly implementing lifelong learning tools, tactics, and presumptions into what remain as some of the most solid groundings for traditional formal learning: the schools, and the separation of continuing adult education from ongoing lifetime knowledge acquisition (Eason, 2010). Even in the face of mounting evidence that learning works best when highly individualized and contextual, most people who view public and private schooling still see it as being entirely distinct from learning that happens elsewhere — such as when job skills need to be refined or when a new career becomes necessary — which makes it more difficult to integrate life-wide learning strategies (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001).

This struggle is problematic on many fronts. For one, it is age-related, which flies in the face of many assumptions about the importance of birth-to-death learning. For another, it has allowed for the development of a very isolated process of formal education, and many people and groups do not want to give up on this approach (Axford and Seddon, 2006). But perhaps even more important is the fact that even lifelong learning advocates still accept in their own ways that children and young people do learn so differently that the ways in which they are taught must be entirely separate and distinct. While it may be acceptable for adult or continuing education to be rather transcendental and transformative, this will not work for younger students who do not have the requisite personal and life experiences to learn differently (Dirkx, 1998). Early developers of lifelong learning were very clear that they were not looking to challenge the traditional schooling system for these reasons; instead, they were most interested in exploring the larger reasons and rationales for why adults could and should continue to value learning later in life.

The result of this, however, was not entirely what was expected. This trend has made it such that lifelong learning approaches have found themselves boxed into a number of traps that have made their cherished concepts seem unreachable, if not surreal (Resnick, 2003; Puk, 2002). One notable problem comes with how formal education is intensely oriented around job acquisition and work readiness — a situation that raises concerns about how selfish or wasteful non-work-oriented learning can be.

Some people believe that lifelong learning cannot really occur because it is very difficult to move people back toward books after they have become accustomed to their television remote controls and what those technologies represent: fast, bite-sized entertainment (Earon, 2006). This perspective flows from the acceptance that there is a very pervasive anti-intellectual stream in American and other global lifestyles that makes many people shy away from more than the minimum of educational requirement. In tough times or as one gets older, learning for the sake of learning takes time away from earning money and pulls people from their families and friends. This has been suggested to be most true of working-class people in America and elsewhere for fairly obvious reasons of their need to work more and play less. But even this assumption has given way to new considerations as affordable, interactive technologies are finding favor across socioeconomic, gender, racial, and other groups (Morrissey and Manning, 2000). Access to new forms of learning is being seen by students and teachers alike as a very desirable way to learn more than what schools have to offer.

A related problem is connected to the cost factors for governments as they struggle to pay for educational directives and systems. Continuing or nonstop learning through community programs is expensive. It requires large amounts of time, money, and psychic energy — resources that are becoming difficult for individuals and governments alike to justify spending (Scott, 2004). But whether this is entirely true is being called into question by some who propose that fundamental shifts in education must occur to make public education feasible (Jinchao, 2004).

Looking at the evolution of learning away from controlled schooling and toward a life-wide perspective cannot be fully understood only in these terms. An entire new mindset of understanding is taking place — one based on ecological thinking and acting mentalities (Lombardo, 2001; Puk, 2002). An entire movement is underway to ingrain the possibilities of what it might mean to "Think Like a Tree," as one commentator has called it, referring to the systemic approach to thinking from an ecological viewpoint (Resnick, 2003). Ecological perspectives are centered strongly in the idea of learning about and understanding the world as an integrated and interconnected reality. It is about understanding not just the pieces of knowledge but how those pieces go and work together — their relationships with each other in both narrow and very broad contexts. The elements of nature do not usually work in isolation, nor as simply as is sometimes presented within the confines of a small pond of life; and, as such, they need to be understood as a much larger portion of a different kind of recognition of patterns, purposes, and results. Understanding this requires full acceptance of an entirely new kind of ecoliteracy that some would argue is well under development.

The learning systems and learning purposes of past efforts have often failed in these regards — both in the way we seek to educate our young and in the way we educate older people — particularly because of their vocational preferences and what those require. One contemporary early educational website on ecological teaching put it dramatically:

"A main lesson of ecology (indeed, the essential science of ecology) is that everything is interconnected. But the longer our students stay in school, the more they are 'subjected' to disconnection — taught, through subject specialization and reductionism, a worldview in which everything is disconnected. They can't see the real world 'forest' that is life for all the homework and marks given out as 'trees.'"

The vocational prejudices instilled in traditional schools for young people and the approaches used in continuation studies share this same problem — they favor very isolated, very closed concepts of learning. While these may be appropriate expectations when it comes to moving into or between jobs, they do nothing to reinforce the core understandings of a truly integrated ecological perspective (Attfield, 2010).

These assumptions do not fully overcome the problem of how selfish alternative pursuits can appear to be. While it is certainly possible that any individual can use education of whatever kind in ways that benefit society, it is also just as likely — and perhaps more so — that an individual engaged in pursuing education as an adult will study subjects that are again very self-specific. Personal interest or the opportunity for professional advancement is likely to be the primary motivation for choosing particular subjects to study. Benefiting the world is usually not the primary motivator for lifelong learning (Thomas, 2005), or at least that was the belief before other transformative approaches began to be considered.

A final cautionary note is worth mentioning. Since these issues have started to surface, other larger business and cultural trends have begun to take hold. There has been a significant force of people taking seriously the promises of work and responsibility perspectives that seek directly to blend the benefits of profitability with social and environmental positive impacts (Emerson, 2007). These double and triple bottom line viewpoints have given their own momentum toward developing hybrid educational models. While lower-level classrooms are starting to integrate green thinking across a broad range of subjects, it could well be this new collection of impact investors and revolutionary thinkers — people Hawken (2007) refers to as driving what he calls Blessed Unrest — who give their own financial substance to the need for new approaches. These new approaches are inherently justice-oriented and are being undertaken by some very well-respected wealthy business people and philanthropists.

These collective conditions and problems have given rise to progress on both fronts, advancing in parallel the lifelong learning and ecological awareness movements. Yet they still leave many questions unanswered. The remainder of this study seeks to advance the progress by posing the following questions:

What is lifelong learning? And how has it been changing and evolving since its inception? What is occurring in the social and environmental ecology movement that has relevance to a new learning model? And what commonalities exist as these two advances coalesce toward a very similar and united future?

Hypothesis: Lifelong learning and the affirmation of an ecological mindset are parallel constructs and philosophies that are evolving simultaneously toward a common language and acceptance of the importance of a lifespan of learning and environmental advancement.

Literature Review: Lifelong Learning and Ecological Thinking

In understanding the commonality of the progress associated with both lifelong learning and ecological advancement, it is necessary to review how each field has come into being and evolved in its own right. This provides the foundation for identifying their commonalities and the ways in which they are coming together in social, business, and organizational representations in the U.S. and across the globe.

Lifelong Learning

Lifelong education, as a concept, has its origins in the 1960s (Bostrom, 2003; Lombard, 2001). It springs from a larger philosophical and theoretical background whose preliminary work can be found in the various writings of Aser Deleon, Torsten Husen, Cyril Houle, and Ryszard Wroczynski, among others. Various studies have identified other important contributors as well, but these and other educational theorists are often credited with having been the primary movers of the idea (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001).

Once this foundation was provided, Arthur Cropley detailed some specific elements in his writings in 1976 and 1980. As reviewed in Bostrom (2003), Cropley identified three important principles: that lifelong learning had to stretch from birth to death, that it had to occur formally, informally, and non-formally, and that it was highly dependent upon the characteristics of an individual and his or her personal ability to benefit from the process (Gough, 2009). Aspin and Chapman (2001) undertook their own three-pronged assessment, favoring instead the associations of learning across the life spectrum with economic progress and development (which connects to vocational advancement), the desire of some to achieve personal growth on many fronts, and the overall sense of social inclusiveness and democratic engagement that sometimes comes with the older years.

It was probably the work of a team of UNESCO educational specialists and thinkers who met over several years specifically to outline what this idea truly meant that gave the concept its greatest credibility. As the United Nations' operational arm for educational, scientific, and cultural issues, their focus would ultimately be considered extremely important in giving the issue legitimacy. It was likely also the reason why when other multinational collaborative efforts began to detail how their relationships would work — such as the EU — it would be the works of UNESCO and the lifelong learning concept that would be incorporated into their philosophical goals.

Dave (1976) reported on the work of this group and is often cited as the best resource for what was being done. In Lifelong Learning, Intergenerational Learning, and Social Capital: From Theory to Practice, Bostrom (2003) quotes Dave as noting that the UNESCO definition incorporates these specifics:

"Lifelong education is a process of accomplishing personal, social and professional development throughout the life-span of individuals in order to enhance the quality of life of both individuals and their collectives. It is a comprehensive and unifying idea which includes formal, nonformal and informal learning for acquiring and enhancing enlightenment so as to attain the fullest possible development in different stages and domains of life. It is connected with both individual growth and social progress. That is why ideas such as 'learning to be' and 'a learning society' or 'an educative society' are associated with this concept."

Following the introduction of this concept, others undertook their own discussions and studies of what the idea might mean in practice. Researchers examined and debated what formal, nonformal, and informal distinctions were, and even wondered about the role of age in the process (Gough, 2001). Ultimately it became accepted that life-wide might be a more encompassing description, though it has not fully caught on (Commission on the European Communities, 2000 & 2006). In the end, there seems to have been some coalescence around the idea that learning in various capacities, no matter who the teacher was or what the learning circumstances were, should be viewed as extending across all age groups. This return to the birth-to-death framework is most relevant because it was assumed that it would begin to break down other expectations that had previously separated formal school for children and young adults from adult learning (Gould, 2009).

Transformative Learning

As confident as these early definitions and later discussions have been about lifelong learning being widely considered across one's lifespan, this issue has not been settled. A good deal of active debate is still underway, albeit using different terms. Part of the reason for this is the earliest of efforts to quantify and qualify what was meant by learning across one's lifespan.

Transformative Learning is one consideration that received and continues to receive much attention, though there are indications that the seemingly spiritual nature of some of its work has fallen out of favor (Scandrett, no date). The concept is clearly worth noting, however, because it was instrumental in focusing on the adult elements of lifespan learning and the in-depth personal reasons why people in their later years want to gain more knowledge and understanding. Some of what is discussed in these layers remains relevant to the learning that is now starting to be recognized through distance and technology learning (Eason, 2010; Sims and Kays, 2011). It can thus be argued that it is this line of thinking that relates directly to some of the concerns associated with lifelong learning being separated or isolated from the type of education that happens in schools.

An instructive verification of this can be found in the early writings of Mezirow (1997), who laid out the parameters for the learning differences between adults and adolescents. He notes the necessity of children having to learn to become autonomous — acquiring the capabilities of recognizing causes and effects, using informal logic to make analogies and generalizations, understanding and controlling emotions, developing empathy, constructing narratives, and thinking abstractly. Adult learning, however, is more aware of and critical of assumptions, aligns frames of reference and paradigms, and is better situated to working collaboratively with others and reasoning through problems to arrive at judgments. As Mezirow surmised:

"Becoming critically reflective of the assumptions of others is fundamental to effective collaborative problem posing and solving. Becoming critically reflective of one's own assumptions is the key to transforming one's taken-for-granted frame of reference, an indispensable dimension of learning for adapting to change."

Dirkx (1998) followed with a comprehensive overview of the transformative process in adult education. He focuses on the differences between transformative learning and instrumental education — the style and approach deemed more like what schools and other institutions use. While the substance of what is taught may not be that distinct, the why and how of teaching is unique. Dirkx states: "Transformative educators do not necessarily teach content that is remarkably different from more instrumentally-oriented educators…. However, they teach the content with a different end in view, often using quite different instructional strategies." These strategies are often associated with consciousness raising, critical reflection, developmental adjustments, or individuation.

Dirkx notes: "Central to our understanding of transformative learning is the emphasis on actualization of the person and society through liberation and freedom." In effect, we cannot actualize what we want from learning because of the forces that control and inhibit us. Thus, in seeking to undertake a lifelong pursuit of learning, adults who realize this are able to break away from constraints and realize their own potential.

This spiritualized and often internally focused perspective on lifelong learning began to change to some degree across the 1990s when various governments began to take the issues seriously. Particularly significant was the growing inclusion of the concept into many of the educational goals and directives of the European Union, which sought specifically to fundamentally change the nature of the way its citizens could be guided toward a healthier and more collaborative future. The validity of the concept gained some footing because multinational organizations realized its potential and wanted to instill into various rights and responsibilities the concept of extended adult learning (Bostrom, 2003). While few people doubted its impact on adults, this movement can clearly be seen as one of the steps that led to the highly formalizing of adult learning as being distinct from younger kinds of education.

The inculcation of this formalized government acknowledgement was timely. It was becoming widely recognized that the world was changing in dramatic ways. Climate change, the world's burgeoning population, and the aging of the population in developed countries fed into the transformative mentality. The model that had adhered for so long in developed nations — education that ends before an individual reaches twenty, encouragement to see oneself as a consumer, and a working life that ends in one's sixties — was no longer being seen as appropriate for the world's current conditions. It would begin to become necessary for individuals to shift their understanding of themselves from being consumers to being protectors of the environment (Axford & Seddon, 2006).

In a world with such serious challenges to human life, human prosperity, and the health of every other species on the planet, a system that sees education as limited to young people is not sufficient. Charles Darwin argued that the species most likely to survive is not the strongest or the fastest but the one that can learn and change the most quickly. His point is even more relevant now than in the 19th century. Lifelong learning is the path that will allow individuals to change fast enough to keep up with the ever-increasing rapidity of challenges and changes in the world around us (Matutinovic, 2007).

The Environment and Ecoliteracy

The ecology movement as an extension of environmental awareness is an expansive field. It tends to be associated with a high degree of technical understanding and competency. Science and scientific exploration and investigation have allowed us to understand and make sense out of the interplay of the various living, nonliving, physical, and even social elements that interact together to make a complex unit of survival. Humans are a critical part of this view, being the ones capable of solving the deepest of mysteries.

Jorgensen (2007) celebrates this progress in Toward an Integrated Ecosystem Theory: "The scientific world was very optimistic when it entered the 20th century: science was very close to a complete understanding of nature — maybe not all details but all important fundamental features of nature. A few more problems should be solved and science would have finished the jigsaw puzzle of nature."

Scientists had the depth and potential for understanding and finding solutions. Together with science, it was thought that people might be able to work in partnership with the planet and its resources for better results. Planetary resources and potential were generally considered reusable and thus contained within themselves the ability to heal from the pain inflicted upon them. Like in a small pond full of living beings and green growth, we could see how we might right certain wrongs and reestablish a sense of equilibrium — and if this was true of small biological units, the same was likely true for much larger units, up to and including the planet itself (Matutinovic, 2007).

This perspective began to change very dramatically in the 1990s, however, when it became clear that existing educational approaches and assumptions were coming up short of what they promised (Gough, 2001). The efforts toward solving or minimizing the damage that humans were inflicting on their planet were not working well. Efforts that began even in the 1970s were showing little promise in the 1990s (Gough, 2001). It was even being directly asserted that there would be no way of fixing the degradation without a dramatic shift in the way that problems and solutions were being viewed. We as humans would never be able to fix or even understand the problems of the social and environmental ecology in which we lived by using the same viewpoint that supported the problems we were experiencing. The time had arrived for coming up with an entirely new language and mindset about ecological advancement.

Early ecological efforts focused first on personal languages and theories of action (Klemow, 1991b). Gough et al. (2001) would later summarize this as:

"A person's theory of action, therefore, is an attempt to resolve competing claims and uncertainties as these are experienced by that person, within the constraints (and opportunities) of their particular context. It might be seen as an attempt to establish local certainty where, globally, none exists: an attempt which is necessary because action is clearly necessary and 'irreducible ignorance' offers such a poor basis for it. Theories of action have their origins in the need to solve real problems, whether personal or professional, within a given set of constraints."

Rejecting such constraints, whether personal or professional, is very similar to the movement away from structured learning. A different, more comprehensive viewpoint was needed, and it would be this that would lay the groundwork for yet another transformative reevaluation of perspective — this time in regard to what we might today consider the greening of the world about us. It was no accident that at about this time a number of articles and pieces began to appear about changing the very lexicon of understanding our world — a vocabulary grounded in the whole, not just its parts; in relationships and processes and the patterns of why nature does what it does to survive on its own terms (Orr, 1992).

Klemow took a first cut at developing the outlines of an ecoliteracy through several works (1991a; 1991b). Orr (1992) and others followed, offering additional detailed discussions of what was conceived of as postmodern ecological thought. It would be through this kind of effort that variations on the theme of what an ecological mindset might be like — and how this would bring about a fundamental realization of the ways in which we could understand the world about us — began to emerge. People as individuals could begin to comprehend the layers of interdependence regarding the world and its various social, biological, and physical components, and about how humans interacted with or interfered with those realities.

Ecological Thinking and Ecological Intelligence are thus extensions of what it fundamentally means to look at the nature of the world differently as one tries to comprehend solutions built within an entirely unique framework (Lombardo, 2001). At the time, this was a quiet revolution in the making — and yet it would be the very justification for Hawken's (2007) call for Blessed Unrest, building a bridge between environmental ideals and learning about justice — social and environmental justice (Scandrett, no date).

The Center for Ecoliteracy is now a recognized resource for the growth of this perspective. To this site, the thinking that is necessary remains unique:

"Ecological intelligence allows us to comprehend systems in all their complexity, as well as the interplay between the natural and man-made worlds. But that understanding demands a vast store of knowledge, one so huge that no single brain can store it all. Each one of us needs the help of others to navigate the complexities of ecological intelligence. We need to collaborate."

Collaboration comes from a common sense of understanding and a common lexicon. Being as challenging as it is, it also comes with genuinely generating a fully realized ecological mindset. And that could not happen without a much different, more inclusive sense of learning — a learning that was not constrained and that spread across much larger fields of growth and potential. To undertake a journey of this type, one would have to be comfortable with allowing for "imaginative engagement" by individuals, groups, and institutions that have their own contributions to offer (Gough, 2001). This is the essence of lifelong learning, and thus the beginning of a truly entwined adventure.

Global Discussions

In completing this literature review, I include here a brief reference to a number of studies produced within and for various sectors of the international community. This includes pieces produced by governments and industries, and reviews of governance perspectives. It is presented here to demonstrate the types of work underway at this time that clearly blend the values of lifetime learning and possessing an ecological mindset for action.

A writer named Areeya Rojvithee (no date), a Thai representative of one of their working committees on adult lifelong learning and employment, produced an overview report on efforts in assuring education for all. The report summarizes basic details about Thailand's work-based programs and was presented to the Global Forum on Education in Chile in 2005.

Another piece, Australia's Farmers Plan for Sustainability and Growth: Innovative Approaches to Adult Lifelong Learning (Innovations in Non-formal Education, no date), found that their project inspired much creativity and success for agricultural businesses, brought about an affirmation of social justice, helped generate skills-building opportunities, and engaged more people in civic involvement. They linked the success to the project's grounding in educational theories and practices.

In 2003, the City of Cape Town, South Africa, completed a very extensive document outlining a comprehensive environmental and community learning initiative. It is geared for community growth, business improvements, and tourism, but includes many other details and discussions on related democratic and local issues. Within their strategic elements they include a comprehensive definition of what they mean by environmental education.

In 2009, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education for England and Wales prepared another in a series of reports on Collaborative Local Learning Ecologies: Governance of Lifelong Learning in England. While not tied directly to environmental issues, it nevertheless confirms that the best approach in the lifelong learning strategies they are using is tied to the stewardship model of sustainability, and directly suggests that ecological thinking, because of its reliance on organic modes of development, brings about slower and more deliberative local community processes.

Finally, the EU Commission of the European Communities undertook an assessment of their adult lifelong learning advancements in 2006. The Commission helped ensure the inclusion of educational guarantees into the EU's overall human and national rights directives and continues to stay involved. Their review showed that progress in adult initiatives has mostly impacted young people and has failed to break the link to adult job skills training — a link that seems to hinder the philosophy from fully achieving its predicted benefits.

Methodology and Shared Assumptions

This project is a qualitative research project based on a review of representative literature regarding lifelong learning and ecological refinement. Because both fields are vast and have been viewed from a wide range of perspectives, this assessment is not meant to be exhaustive (Baldauf McBride, 2011). Instead, it turns attention toward a momentum that underlies many activities already underway to better understand why the two phenomena are alike and how these similarities can propel a convergence of possibilities and opportunities. The natural pattern of consistency noted in the literature review provides ample justification for the existence of the convergence that is underway.

The remainder of this paper identifies and reviews a set of commonalities that have already become evident across both fields. Relevant characteristics of the concepts of lifelong learning and ecological awareness will be noted, and then simpatico constructs will be examined. This is done by highlighting specific assumptions and presumptions of ecoliteracy and noting how they overlap with lifelong learning expectations.

The discussion that follows centers on these commonalities: the language of openness and adaptability within the definitions of both concepts; the "life-wide" reach of each perspective, including how each deals with the consistent understanding that knowledge and wisdom transcend age from birth through youth to active and valuable adulthood; the consistency of other terms and concepts that make up the assumptions and presumptions of ecoliteracy and their impact on lifelong learning; and a short summary of how the growing need for technological connectivity is advancing each sector separately and helping to merge both together as one larger movement for healthy planetary change.

Language of Openness

An online posting of a contemporary textbook overview on Ecological Evolution offers this as one of the author's core propositions (Lombardo, 2001):

"Rarely do the principles of nature confront humanity so dramatically as in the present controversy over the ecology of the earth and our relationship to it. The science of ecology is founded upon the central principle of reciprocity. Living forms and the environment, which includes other living forms as well as inorganic structures and processes, form a web of interdependencies involving a complex system of natural cycles and exchanges. Life and the environment are interactive open systems."

This is the heart of an ecological mindset. Yet at the same time it is also the soul of the concept of lifelong learning. An updated publication by UNESCO's Institute for Education (2004) entitled Revisiting Lifelong Learning for the 21st Century seeks to capture the grander conceptualization of what they first put into print about 30 years before (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001):

"Lifelong learning is closely tied to the challenge of openness and change the modern individual must face in his/her lifetime. Lifelong learning encompasses both continuity (stability) and discontinuity (change) in learned capacities over time as a result of interactions with the man-made environment — culture."

For both fields, it is about reaching across a broad spectrum of knowledge and finding ways to use that reach to guide continuous and more impact-oriented action from the knowledge itself. It is the concept of openness and the all-inclusiveness of its potential that lifelong learning and ecology share most universally as more people begin to look at the underlying concepts and their promises for the future.

Thinking about ecology as a simple pond of living entities has grown to the point of understanding that it is feasible to Think Like a Tree. In Resnick's (2003) work by that title, he uses an example of a Costa Rican tree that literally walks from one location to another. It sends out roots, tests the soil, and moves slowly but surely to the better location. The plant executes its own TREE behaviors: Testing Randomly (TR) the grounds, Evaluating (E) which is the best way to go, and then Executing (E) the best alternative. It learns through a real interaction with nature, not just in accordance with a way that someone has defined what plant growth is all about. It is a natural algorithm of sorts — the heart of ecological thinking and acting. To Resnick (2003), it is a perfect representation of being responsive to local conditions and reacting to changing ones. In Thinking Like a Tree, one can be said to be accepting one's own justification for what makes sense within a highly fluid sense of scientific viability.

In a similar way, lifelong learning has evolved since it was first conceived by testing the waters and moving to where its best potentials were being offered. It has sent out feelers for its core parts and found the most fertile grounds. Today as in the past, lifelong learning is different in African, Asian, and Arabic countries because the experiences and understandings of the people there necessitate figuring out what it means in practice (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001). From its early conceptual beginnings, lifelong knowledge obtainment was just education; now it is the reach across the wide scope of one's lifespan to learning at all levels.

Young and Old School Awareness

There is no dispute today that not all people learn in the same ways. Younger students require more foundation building than older adults, and all people learn based on the context in which they live, their personal and social maturity, and even in response to a variety of socioeconomic indicators and restrictions. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that young people need a foundation for basic understanding before they can progress to more comprehensive formulations that enable them to visualize and debate more complex questions. Learning on many fronts is hierarchical — one level needs to come before another to allow for the building toward comprehension (Mezirow, 1997).

This is exactly why we justify having the formal education system that we have. But time has demonstrated that it alone is not sufficient. It comes up short on many fronts and ends up moving too many young people in the wrong direction toward the wrong opportunities. Still, this is the logic we have built into our school systems and thus instill into young students in the name of giving them the chance to grow into something better. As students get older, the assumption is that they will be able to fend for themselves and move more efficiently in whatever direction they want.

The problem comes when change is needed. If students learn only within certain parameters, their ability to adapt is constrained. If they are armed from the start with racial, ethnic, gender, or socioeconomic delimiters, they may not be able to reach beyond certain expectations at all — and thus their ability to move freely through the world of learning is almost worthless.

Lifelong learning theories assume from the start that it is necessary to understand the full abilities of people before determining their strengths and weaknesses, and then seek to help that person figure out which places of learning fit best. This is why the distinctions between formal, informal, and nonformal learning entities exist (Bostrom, 2003). The experiences of life shape how one learns and what one learns. Aspin and Chapman (2001) offer models of learning that would enable a better spectrum of possibilities from birth to death. In their view, there can be models that entice and compensate young people, provide direct vocational preparation, feature transitional or democratic engagement features, or focus on leisure — either for fun or as a closing down of other life obligations (Dirkx, 1998; Bostrom, 2003).

In their more recent works, Aspin and Chapman (2007) directly critique the use of problem-solving skills in traditional educational settings because these skills may not apply as technologies and world problems arise faster than their ability to move with the times. This is in large part why they believe education needs to be more values-oriented.

In a very consistent way, the logic of ecological thinking is also ageless, or at least should be. In an idealistic conceptualization of this element, "Instead of being siloed into age groups, the daily life of children will be filled with experiences across the generations" (O'Connell, 2011). This kind of "child first" perspective on integrated ecological learning presupposes far different age and classroom experiences, often with environmental sensitivities as the key guiding factors. Resnick (2003) sees ecological learning environments as being more of the key to understanding his TREE than considerations of more structured educational environments based on age. As he puts it, "Just as students too often adopt centralized strategies in trying to solve problems, educators too often adopt centralized strategies in designing learning environments." (p. 56)

An entertaining representation of how people and institutions teach can be seen through discussions of homeschooling in the context of greening educational approaches. As one ecological educator framed it:

"If you're a homeschooling parent who has merely moved the school curriculum to the kitchen table, greening homeschooling might not be of interest to you. But if you understand that schools were invented about the same time as prisons and factories … not all the literacies can be taught indoors (think ecological literacy); children of all ages need, want and deserve unstructured play time outdoors; primary-aged children need lots of opportunities to connect and bond with the rest of Nature; kids are extremely curious about how life works on our planet; pre-adolescents and young teens like working together to solve problems by creating solutions; and older teens need to have a firm grasp of and practice in important concepts like sustainable development before they 'graduate.'"

Presenting this viewpoint enables the thought about age-based education to bleed over to other ecological assumptions about adult education. If schools need to change away from job and vocational perceptions and limitations, so too do the pieces of adult education need to change — pieces that presume their learning is fundamentally different than earlier life learning. Perhaps adult learning as a concept needs to be less about self-actualizing and more about other-actualizing, in order to overcome the sense of selfishness and lack of charitable values otherwise tied to continuing education. This would be a step toward adding more recognized value across the full board of life learning, from schools through advanced community engagement.

Common Assumptions and Presumptions

It is not difficult to see the commonality between lifelong learning and ecological awareness on many fronts. But it is most relevant that each shares some very core assumptions that guide what they are trying to do. The specifics of these foundational assumptions have been presented in many formats across many pieces (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001). Over time these components have been tested and redefined in various formats, though the majority of what they offer seems to have been philosophically aligned to enticing older adults to be interested in the concept. Very little, if anything, is written on teaching young people about lifelong learning. Even the transformative perspective is highly oriented toward adult learners and why they want to continue their involvement. But even this seems to forget the advice offered by Søren Kierkegaard, as he is quoted in Revisiting Lifelong Learning for the 21st Century: "Life can only be understood backwards. In the meantime, it has to be lived forwards."

This is starting to change now that information access is becoming more readily available online. I now turn attention to the framework offered by the Center for Ecoliteracy, which, on a page entitled "Teach: A Systems Perspective," offers six key propositions associated with a solid ecological understanding and thought process (accessed November 2011). I reproduce each of the six propositions below and then comment on them from both an ecological and a lifelong learning viewpoint.

The six points being reviewed include: (1) From Parts to the Whole; (2) From Objects to Relationships; (3) From Objective Knowledge to Contextual Knowledge; (4) From Quantity to Quality; (5) From Structure to Process; and (6) From Contents to Patterns.

From Parts to the Whole

Old-school environmental understandings often took their guidance from the beauty and personal empowerment ideas associated with understanding nature. While a large step at the time, these early views mostly saw the environment and its ecology as fairly limited to small and specific elements. An ecological mindset might now see this variability as an important singular link in representing the whole of understanding and the bigger picture of possible solutions.

Lifetime learning doesn't just acknowledge that learning is comprehensive across periods and subjects, but that it is omnipresent — something that we do all the time and cannot get away from (Medel-Anonuevo, 2001; Dirkx, 1998). Shifting the focus from singular elements to larger visions changes the scope of comprehension. As noted on the Ecoliteracy site, "Similarly, the nature and quality of what students learn is strongly affected by the culture of the whole school, not just the individual classroom. This shift can also mean moving from single-subject curricula to integrated curricula."

From Objects to Relationships

Systematic perspectives of all types assume that the relationship between individual parts is much more valuable to understand than even the essences of the parts themselves. The whole is bigger than the sum of the parts because as the objects come together they create relationships that direct the purposefulness of the whole. The study of living and nonliving "species" parts is important because it gives clues to understanding what relationships might or should develop.

The implications of this can be very profound when it comes to formal education. Knowledge in schools and even in the workplace can be taught in isolation to achieve a particular — often profitable — end. Within a systems perspective, the objects of study become the networks and relationships. Schools or learning environments that appreciate this emphasize cooperation and consensus regarding which objects they view as important and how they contribute to the teaching and learning processes that naturally follow.

From Objective Knowledge to Contextual Knowledge

It is difficult to do better in describing this point than the Ecoliteracy site does. Here is their definitional language: "Shifting focus from the parts to the whole implies shifting from analytical thinking to contextual thinking. This shift may result in schools focusing on project-based learning instead of prescriptive curricula. It also encourages teachers to be facilitators and fellow learners alongside students, rather than experts dispensing knowledge."

Contextual learning is used in traditional schools; this becomes less likely and less profound, however, when more rigid and demanding forms of learning are mandated. The movement toward teaching for particular standardized tests may be hampering many instructors' desire to utilize contextual appreciation opportunities. The very system of continuing education for adults that prevails now tends to be highly contextually confining — most of the time class learning in these settings is extensively tied to acquiring new skills for advancement or career change. The hunt for meaning in why adults wanted to continue learning after work reflects the existence of this bias and a philosophical drive for more and better.

From Quantity to Quality

So-called "hard" sciences have a preference for finding answers by way of using measured and quantified data. The scientific perspective uses empirical approaches to seeing and measuring observable phenomena under the assumption that this makes findings more reliable and replicable. Standardized tests are directly linked to this and use only other scientific measures — such as weighting and probabilities — to adjust what are otherwise seen as objective data points. Not surprisingly, everything from formal schooling to current government policies regarding innovation has a preference for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).

Metaphysical concepts, as the so-called softer sciences of sociology, anthropology, and philosophy are called, are thought to be less precise kinds of measurements. But even with methodological adjustments, some ecological factors and relationships cannot be so easily quantified. Ecoliteracy refers to the fact that food webs must often be mapped to highlight their relationships, not just documented using other data. It could well be these types of scientific advancements that may allow for the flexibility thought to be needed to fully grasp what lifelong learning and ecological theories have to offer.

From Structure to Process

"Living systems develop and evolve." That is how Ecoliteracy opens the definition of this point. In the same way, learning patterns cross time and cross generations. Structures tend to limit this kind of growth to predetermined parameters. Processes, on the other hand, are concerned more with the interactivity and exchanges of influences — basically, the relationships that keep the action happening within a unit that is working together.

Focusing on this process is thus more advanced than just knowing the structure or its confines. One cannot always tell what a structure looks like if one is inside of the structure. Getting to the point of appreciating the process makes it more reliable when it comes to judging how something might act within its reality (Walls, 2009).

Thinking Like a Tree (Resnick, 2003) ends with this overview: "An important research challenge for the future is the development of a more systematic framework of how, when, and why ecological strategies are useful. The goal should not be to ignore or replace traditional strategies, but to expand the repertoire of strategies that people have at their disposal — and to help people learn which strategies (or which mixtures of strategies) are best suited to which situations. Indeed, one of the most important benefits of introducing ecological thinking in classrooms is to help students learn that there are, in fact, multiple ways of thinking about problems."

From Contents to Patterns

Taken together, what the above suggests is that the contents of the ecosystem we exist in interact and, as such, develop and establish patterns. These patterns can be mapped and uncovered, adding clarification to the nature of their existence as part of complex systems — from which we can also learn about what we can expect through other patterns. "Understanding how a pattern works in one natural or social system," notes the Ecoliteracy page, "helps us to understand other systems that manifest the same pattern." This becomes very important in comprehending larger visions of the world and how we thrive on it.

Pattern learning is very much what underlies lifelong learning. Since people learn for different reasons and seek to use or gain more knowledge for different reasons, it is challenging to quantify which is right or best. Having an appreciation for the patterns that undergird the impacts is more humbling but also likely to be a more honest reflection about why something occurred. School and formal settings presume more about the details than the patterns — which is why informal and even nonformal elements of learning are weighted just as equally within lifelong learning assumptions.

It is for reasons like this that some, such as Puk (2002), believe that ecoliteracy is the first imperative in laying the groundwork for productive lives for all. As he put it in his look forward from 2002 to 2012:

"The ecologically literate person of the 21st century will have a positive view of life, grounded in the faith that each person has within himself/herself some elements which connect them with a universal and timeless energy, and has the capacity to competently perform significant life work, and its related tasks and responsibilities. Such a view will enable this person to look upon the human experience positively, and all living things compassionately."

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