Adult Learning in the Digital Age: Information Technology and the Learning Society

Learning with technology is viewed globally as crucial to establishing a skilled workforce and empowering citizens by offering opportunities to those who would be otherwise excluded. Governments around the world have therefore set targets and developed policies to help all adults learn, work and live with the support of information and communications technologies (ICTs). This illuminating and engaging book sheds light on the ways in which adults in the 21st century interact with ICTs for learning at home, work and within the wider community. Based on one of the first large-scale academic research projects in this area, the authors present their rich and detailed findings to generate practical recommendations for the use of new technology in a learning society, inviting debate on: * why ICTs are believed to be capable of affecting positive change in adult learning; * the drawbacks and limits of ICT in adult education; * what makes a lifelong learner; * what people use ICT for in the home, workand community; * the wider social, economic, cultural and political realities of the information age and the learning society. Adult Learning in the Digital Age addresses key questions and provides a sound empirical foundation to the existing debate, highlighting the 'messy' realities of the learning society and 'e-learning' rhetoric, and telling the story of those who are excluded from the learning society, and offering a set of powerful and stark recommendations for practitioners, policy-makers, and politicians, as well as researchers and students.

Neil Selwyn is Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Sciences, University of Cardiff Stephen Gorard is Research Professor at the Department of Educational Studies, University of York John Furlong is the Director of the Department of Educational Studies, University of Oxford