Seminar by Dr. Maria Gravani, Open University of Cyprus.

The flyer for Dr. Gravani's seminar - giving details of the seminar and a biography of Dr. Gravani - is attached as a pdf below. Unfortunately, no recordings are available of this seminar but Dr. Gravani's presentation is attached as a downloadable file at the foot of this entry.

In recent years, several studies have shown that the creation of learning cities has become an effective instrument in promoting lifelong learning in the international community, despite various challenges. A nation aspiring to build a learning society or develop a lifelong learning system may use the names ‘learning cities’, ‘learning regions’ or ‘learning communities’ to mobilise or encourage their local authorities. To facilitate the development of learning cities in the international community, a truly global network of learning cities is needed. UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), in collaboration with interested national, regional and international organisations and agencies as well as private sector corporations, proposes the establishment of the UNESCO Global Learning Cities Network (UNESCO-GLCN) to enhance and accelerate the practice of lifelong learning in the world’s urban communities.

The overall aim of the establishment of the UNESCO-GLCN is to create a global platform to mobilise cities and demonstrate how to use effectively their resources in every sector to develop and enrich all their human potential to foster lifelong personal growth, the development of equality and social justice, the maintenance of harmonious social cohesion, and the creation of sustainable prosperity.

One of the objectives of the UNESCO-GLCN is to develop a Global Learning City Index. To be reliable and instrumental, the development of the index needs to reflect – inter alia - a variety of principles, policies and approaches in building learning cities in the international community, including political will and commitment, partnership and networking, increasing learning opportunities, combating exclusion and enhancing social cohesion, promoting wealth creation and employability, as well as recognising and rewarding all forms of learning.

Cities almost everywhere are challenged by a raft of big issues resulting from on-going urbanisation, environment protection issues, public safety concerns, and demographic change in a context of growing inequality in many countries, social fragmentation and decline in social capital, high unemployment, and overall more individualistic societies.

These challenges provide the context for the PASCAL International Exchanges (PIE), initiated by the PASCAL International Observatory (which has its European base at the University of Glasgow) to provide for online exchanges of ideas and experience between cities around the world. At present 16 cities across 5 continents participate in PIE. These include Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Cork, Bielefeld and a number of African cities (Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Dakar, Gaborone, Addis Ababa). Summary stimulus papers for all cities may be read on the PIE web site.

Although PIE was initiated with a traditional view of a learning city, the need for cross-sectoral integration soon became evident from the situation in some African and East Asian cities such as Taipei.

The PIE ‘EcCoWell’ paper notes the common interests shared by sectoral initiatives such as Green Cities, Healthy Cities, Learning Cities, and Safe Cities and poses the question of how such sectoral initiatives can best be integrated in more holistic approaches to good city development.

Questions for brainstorming:

1. In what ways can cross-sectoral perspectives and research be brought to bear on the development of sustainable opportunity cities?
    
2. How can initiatives in local communities benefit from insights from crosssectoral research?
    
3. What are the priority issues for research in addressing the big issues confronting cities?
    
4. In what ways might insights from cross-sectoral research contribute to the themes of the PASCAL Hong Kong conference?

The question of professionalisation of adult education in Germany was first raised in the years immediately after the Second World War when the Volkshochschulen (adult education centres) were being reopened and developed. By the 1970s and 1980s a Volkshochschule system was growing,becoming the fourth sector of the German educational system, and the need for qualified adult educators was raised.

The first stage in the professionalisation of adult education was the production of self-study materials and weekly courses for practitioners. At the same time, academic programmes at German universities were also being designed to give their young students a fundamental and broad qualification in adult education. In the 1980s, in the Pädagogische Arbeitsstelle des Volkshochschulverbands (Pedagogical Institute of German Adult Education Association), theoretical and empirical research on the question of professionalization was started. Tietgens and Giesecke(1988) worked on an interpretitive approach which they argued should form the core of professionalism in adult education.

This was supported by further research in the late 1990s. The core of professionalism is, according to Tietgens (1988, p. 38), a ‘situative competence’ which means ‘the ability to use broad, scientifically deepened and diverse abstract knowledge adequate in concrete situations’. Or contrariwise:‘to acknowledge in just these situations which parts of the knowledge could be relevant.’ Gieseke (2010) defines professionalism as ‘differentiated handling with research results of the discipline, together with interdisciplinary knowledge for the interpretation of an actor’s situations in a specific practical field.’ This approach can be supported by the argument that adult educators have to deal with paradoxical and contradictory situations (Dewe, 1988; Nittel, 2000). They have to act professionally in situations where no concrete, applicable professional knowledge is available.

In contrast, there is currently developing a pan-European competence-oriented approach towards professionalism in adult education, as represented by the Key competence study for adult learning professionals (Research voor Beleid 2010). This approach focuses on naming lists of competences for students to acquire. At the same time, several validation instruments for application in the pan-European context (e.g. VALIDPAC) are being developed so that adult educators’ competences can be validated one at a time but confined to their own institutional context. The competence approach conflicts with the interdependent, holistic and hermeneutic elements which are central to the German interpretative approach to adult professionalism, which is based on the skills of the individual as distinct from the needs of the institution. The principle behind this is that professionalism in adult education has to encompass the ability to adapt to different learning settings. The presentation will outline the differences between these two approaches and explores the possibility of a bridge between them.