BURCA TEKİN - 11535024 -

Session 2
Road Map for Opportunities in Lifelong Learning
Members: Cihan Çankaya, Ebru Alarslan, Gökçe Dervişoğlu
Okandan, Harun Ekinoğlu
DG: The Actions group is very much reflective of the
Competences group. It does have a timeframe, but is little
bit different. What we tried to do is to make a road-map
based on the earlier session, to recognise the whole range
of opportunities that permit people to learn. The road-map
has many routes. There is not one route for lifelong
learning. There are a lot of opportunities, because every
individual is confined to a different way of hitting different
points to learn. If someone makes no effort to learn anything
over his professional career, there is a good chance
that he won’t be a very good professional. Because, he is
stopping and not trying to expand. Although our model is
on a two-dimensional paper, the solutions require three-dimensional
problem solving. There can be roughly four or
more tracks, including for Academics, Professional Communities,
Personal Professionals, and Governments. These
tracks are never isolated, but also overlapping each other.
For example, when someone is on his Personal Professional
track, he is also part of a professional community; or,
someone on the Academic track is also influenced by the
Governments track, and vice versus. Then, we have the
time tracks influencing and defining the areas such as
‘Before Studies’, ‘Formal Studies’, ‘Post Studies’, ‘Early
Work’, ‘Mid-Level Work’, ‘Advanced Work’, and so on.
The underlying statements or titles of this model are that;
first of all, there is a self-awareness that you have to learn
and what you have to learn (that is a competence planted
when you were young by your family or own habitat);
secondly, all of these activities have to do with expanding
your perspectives, challenging your limits, and expanding
your experiences, and that is the title for everything that
other people added as further activities like reading, listening,
networking, etc.
If we get into the particulars; there are the Formal Studies,
which is an important part in proving for professional
framework. The Formal Studies should also include the
seeds for the later lifelong learning, which normally doesn’t
happen in the current framework of the academic studies.
Also, the academic framework is not stand alone and
there should be some interactions between the academic
framework and the professional community in terms of
initial learning and lifelong learning. that you are enriching
yourself as part of lifelong learning. associated with your
profession, but you automatically expand your consciousness
when you do that or the things that take place throughout
your entire life.
On the personal level, any work that you do, for example,
that is trans-disciplinary work, pro bono work, or any general
or personal development courses that you take that may not
even be directly associated with your profession, but you
automatically expand your consciousness when you do that or
the things that take place throughout your entire life. On the
government level, there are sometimes certification processes
for advanced academic and professional standing, which
is another framework for lifelong learning. For example, it
seems that in Turkey, though there are such processes and
programs, there is no design track. So, the absence of design
track in the government programs influences that situation
and the possibilities for designers to learn lifelong. That would
be the situation where we would say that the professional
community should be influencing the government to make
sure that designers have also a track for certification at the
government level.
I also found interesting that the road map we suggest in our
group does reflect what has been discussed in the Competences
group. So, it is a question of a person realising that
certain competences are important and finding his track of
which ones he does on a process.
Q&A
EA: I think this workshop is very interactive for all of us, at
least for me. The information society and the technological
advances like online education provide us with many opportunities
as well. So, they enable some people who start
their career with vocational activities or trainings to have
their formal education at a later stage. Therefore, I think that
something like a four-dimensional approach, including time,
personal dynamics, formal and informal training systems
would be better.
AS: I think the term ‘road-map’ you used at the very beginning
could be a nice pattern to take up. It might also
respond a little bit to Ebru’s comment. In fact, the linearity
that the diagram implies maybe is not there anymore. And,
the road-map can be much freer. If it is a road-map, we can
go long-ways, we can make short-cuts, and there can be
fast-roads. I think it has a nice content. But, I also felt and
maybe Ebru also felt that this is pretty much ordered. At least,
the visual shows like that, because of a spread sheet. It is just
a suggestion. If we have a visual of something which is like
a rhizomatic road-map, it might be much more reflective of
what you wanted to convey with this.
HN: I guess we will take up the rhizomatic part in our presentation.