Since a concept of lifelong education appeared, researches on lifelong education have been done in both theory and practice. However, the term 'lifelong education' is an ambiguous term, because lifelong education is used variously in different sociocu...
Since a concept of lifelong education appeared, researches on lifelong education have been done in both theory and practice. However, the term 'lifelong education' is an ambiguous term, because lifelong education is used variously in different sociocultural context and has a characteristic of diversity. Though research on concept of lifelong education is a crucial problem in study of lifelong education because of ambiguousness, most researchers dealt with matters on curriculums, systems, policies, institutions and practices and a few researchers carried out studies on concept of lifelong education. Thus, a study on concept is positively necessary.
The purpose of this study is to analyze definitions of lifelong education in literatures and to find characteristics of definitions. To analyze definitions of lifelong education, researcher of this study collected definitions of lifelong education in related both Korean and foreign literatures and searched studies on lifelong education through RISS, ERIC, Google scholar. Then, this study analyzed collected definitions of lifelong education through criterions such as targets, contents, results, positions, concept types, and definition types.
This research findings are as follows:
First, lifelong education researchers defined lifelong education in theory, whereas many states defined lifelong education practically to institutionalize lifelong education system.
Second, Korean lifelong education researchers have been influenced by UNESCO, because characteristics within definitions of Korean researchers are similar to characteristics within definitions of UNESCO.
Third, legal definition of lifelong education in Korea is equal to definition of social education. And European countries define lifelong education as vocational training, continuing education, further education, etc.