Succeeding in LLL

Succeeding in LLL
Lifelong Learning (LLL) has been proclaimed a Europe-wide strategy as societies are faced with numerous changes making continuous development indispensable. Currently, LLL is often seen primarily as a topic for continuing education. However, schools play an essential role in laying the cornerstone for successful LLL: There is robust knowledge that persistent motivation to learn as well as corresponding learning skills are essential for LLL and that both could be influenced best during childhood and adolescence. Therefore, facilitating LLL is an important aspect of schools’ success. However, results from international studies show deficits for many students in LLL competencies. Consequently, a need for more systematic promotion of LLL in schools was identified. Based on this, the aim of this paper is to give an overview on the theoretical basis for promoting LLL in schools from the perspective of educational psychology. Derived from this, the necessity of enhancing LLL competencies in school is made obvious and present promotion programs are described. As an example, goals, structure, and evaluation results of the TALK training program, which aims to provide teachers with the competencies to systematically implement the enhancement of LLL into their regular educational responsibilities, are reported. Finally, general recommendations for realizing a systematic facilitation of LLL in school are illustrated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved). There is a strong urge to foster lifelong learning (LLL) competencies with its key components – motivation and self-regulated learning – from early on in the education system. School in general is presently not considered to be successful in systematically imparting motivation and self-regulated learning strategies. There is strong evidence that decisive motivational determinants decrease the longer students stay in school. At present, the central sources of information about the situation in Austria are international monitoring studies, which only examine selected aspects of specific target groups, and their interpretability concerning mean values is constricted due to cultural differences. Thus, it is important to conduct additional and more differentiated national surveys of the actual state. This is why this study aimed at answering the following questions: (1) how well are Austrian students equipped for the future, in terms of their lifelong learning competencies, (2) can perceived classroom structure predict students’ LLL, and (3) is there a correlation of students’ LLL with their achievement in the school subjects math and German language. 5366 students (52.1% female) from 36 Austrian schools took part in the online-questionnaire (mean age 15.35 years, SD = 2.45), which measured their perceived LLL competencies in the subjects math and German language, their perceived classroom structure and their achievement. Results showed that the great majority of Austrian students – independent from domain and sex – know and are able to apply cognitive as well as metacognitive learning strategies. With regard to motivation the picture is less satisfactory: whilst students’ self-efficacy is not the problem, there is a lack of interest in the school subjects and they often report to follow performance approach goals. Classroom structure positively predicted students’ goals, interest, self-efficacy and learning strategies. Self-efficacy, performance approach goals, meta-cognitive and deep learning strategies in turn predicted achievement positively, and performance avoidance goals negatively.
Introduction
This study aimed at gaining insight into Austrian students’ lifelong learning (LLL) competencies. What are they, and why are they of importance? In a work environment characterized by increasingly rapid change, a higher degree of flexibility and motivation to learn will be demanded of future employees. In recent decades, the European Union has rapidly begun shifting from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Therefore, at the beginning of the millennium, the European Commission launched an official strategy for fostering lifelong learning (Commission of the European Communities, 2000). In their early days, discussions on lifelong learning were predominantly focused on the business context (Cendon et al., 2007). However, there is also a strong push to start fostering lifelong learning competencies earlier on in the education system (Zimmerman and Schunk, 1989). Large-scale assessment studies like TIMSS and PISA show that students still have deficits with regard to lifelong learning competencies, which could pose a problem for the future labor market (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2004). Thus, it is strategically critical to promote lifelong learning in the school setting and raise teachers’ awareness of the benefits of these competencies (Wayne and Youngs, 2003; Lipowsky, 2006).
Lifelong Learning
What are the key components of lifelong learning? Motivation (or the will to learn) and strategies for turning this drive into action are the two key factors for learning (Weinstein and Hume, 1998; Artelt et al., 2003; Schober et al., 2013). With this research project, we wanted to answer the following questions: how well are students in Austria prepared for LLL in terms of motivation and self-regulated learning strategies in two different subjects? Does the perceived classroom structure, meaning what the teacher does in the classroom in terms of promoting autonomy, designing tasks and giving feedback, have an impact on students’ LLL? And finally, how relevant are LLL competencies for school achievement measured by grades in the last school report and a mathematical and German language achievement test?