Developing and Assessing Students' Capacity for Lifelong Learning* DONNA RILEY and LIONEL CLARIS Smith College, Picker Engineering Program, 51 College Lane, Northampton, MA 01063, USA. E-mail: driley@email.smith.edu lclaris@email.smith.edu Many modes and definitions of learning ensure that learning will not be lifelong, cultivating a dependence on the expertise of a faculty member who `downloads' knowledge to students without much interaction or negotiation in the learning process. By fundamentally altering the way we understand learning from something that is to be remembered to something that is to be engaged with, empowering students to be responsible, self-directed and intentional learners and creating a new, question-centered process, we can open up new possibilities for lifelong learning in which assessment becomes integrated as an inherent part of the learning process and not simply something that comes at the end to measure learning. Keywords: lifelong learning; blogs; reflection; relational learning; self and integrated assess- ment; liberative pedagogies. INTRODUCTION MANY TRADITIONAL MODES and defini- tions of learning ensure that learning will not be lifelong, cultivating a dependence on the expertise of a faculty member who `downloads' knowledge to students. Freire's [1] critique of the `banking system' of education describes exactly this phenomenon: `knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing'. Clearly such an approach to learning requires that students be dependent upon a teacher, and indeed an institution of learning, for the acquisition of knowledge. To build capacities for lifelong learn- ing is to build independence in students and the ability to learn on their own. By fundamentally altering the way we under- stand learning, empowering students to be respon- sible, self-directed and intentional learners, and creating a new, question-centered process, we can open up new possibilities for lifelong learning. WHAT IS LIFELONG LEARNING? The conventional wisdom among engineering educators is that lifelong learning is a fuzzy concept, difficult to define and even more difficult to measure. On one level, as Knapper and Cropley [2] suggest, the concept is quite easy to articulate and simple to grasp: `Deliberate learning can and should occur throughout each person's lifetime'. Yet there are significant debates in the education literature about what lifelong learning is and how to approach it. Here we review some key discus- sions about lifelong learning in the literature, and develop our own approach grounded in liberative pedagogies [3±5]. Lifelong learning as a neoliberal tool for social control In the United Kingdom, lifelong learning has a meaning strongly associated with building a competitive labor market in a globalized context. In a UK government research brief, Raggatt et al. [6] identify lifelong learning as a way to help employees stay competitive in labor markets that are uncertain due to economic, technical, and social changes. They note that some question such a market-based, individualized approach, because it will lead to unequal access to education and may not meet national needs for education and training, especially considering the increase in demand for unskilled labor. Moreover, such an individualized approach in the context of a global labor market amounts to neoliberalism [7], a political trend that underlies globalization, oppos- ing any restrictions on industry and trade, union organizing, government provision of social services or public goods, relying on `trickle down' eco- nomic theories to lift up the poor. Coffield [8] articulates how this approach is a means of social control. Lifelong learning becomes a site of conflict among employers, unions, and the state, wherein `empowerment' is used to encourage employees to take on greater workloads in times of downsizing, `employability' masks a retreat from government commitment to combat unemploy- ment or support those who are temporarily unem- ployed, and `flexibility' masks cost-reduction strategies that ultimately put more jobs at risk. A critical approach to lifelong learning must keep these larger economic trends in perspective and * Accepted 19 January 2008. IJEE 2062 1 Int. J. Engng Ed. Vol. 00, No. 0, pp. 1±11, 2008 0949-149X/91 $3.00+0.00 Printed in Great Britain. # 2008 TEMPUS Publications.