Blog – Texas Community Education Association

How education will change to support lifelong learning

A study by the Pew Research Center found 54 percent of working adults believe it was essential to continuously update their skills to be successful in their careers. Why? To keep up with advances in technology that are disrupting industries from automakers to retail. So what changes will support this need and how can higher education help?

Whether our young high school graduates enter a trade school, community college, or university, their degree or certificate will not be the end of their education.

Learning a lifelong process for principal

Don Pearson of Benton Harbor said being a lifelong learner is one of the most important lessons his parents taught him while he was growing up.

“As a kid, that was part of the culture in the home – learning all the time, reading all the time,” said Pearson, a 1975 Benton Harbor High School graduate. “There was literature everywhere. It’s become a hobby. My father reads constantly, even to this day. He’s 93 years old and that was one of the reasons I retired. He’s still reading. He’s still watching the news. And we still have great, stimulating conversations.”

Use Lifelong Learning to give your Association value

Associations usually focus the marketing of their education and credential programs on the individual learner. But your educational programs have two target audiences: individuals and the employers who pay for or encourage their continuing education.

Think of employers as the influencers who can help persuade members and prospects to register for educational programs or apply for certifications. They have the power of the purse. They also have the power to hire, promote, and fire. They see where existing and prospective employees are deficient. In fact, 92 percent of business leaders think Americans aren’t as skilled as they need to be, according to the Adecco State of the Economy Survey. 59 percent said the U.S. education system was to blame for gaps in workforce skills.

Associations can help bridge that gap. Become your industry’s educator of choice by partnering with member employers. Invite them to be on an advisory board that identifies skills gaps in your marketplace. Employers who help you design credential programs are more likely to send employees to them. Your association becomes an extension of corporate training.

Lifelong Learning Boosts Pay And Improves Health

Investors Business Daily says you can no longer “front load” your learning.

Lifelong Learning…

lets you earn more over the span of your career
makes you a better leader
benefits overall psychological well-being

“We achieve greater fulfillment by constantly improving ourselves,” Coleman said.

Learn more: https://www.investors.com/news/management/leaders-and-success/lifelong-learning-boosts-pay-health-improves-health/

Listening to Women

“Each week we will meet women who had the passion and determination to break barriers and overcome obstacles to become movers and shakers in their own fields,” she says. “These include women who have excelled in classical music, writing, art, film, science, entrepreneurship, media, sports, government policy, biology, and higher education.”

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Ringling College (OLLI at Ringling College) presents “Listening to Women,” a 12-session series featuring women whose innovations and accomplishments are having an impact and influencing lives locally and globally.

Be Robot-Proof

As Northeastern students continue to learn and grow throughout their lives, the university will be there to support them, President Joseph E. Aoun told Northeastern’s Student Government Association on Monday night.

“We have launched a global university system that will allow you, wherever you are, to partake in lifelong learning,” Aoun said. “The university will be with you wherever you are, whenever you need it, throughout your life.”

Read: https://news.northeastern.edu/2019/02/26/embrace-lifelong-learning-to-become-robot-proof-president-aoun-tells-students/

Passionately Curious: Habits for Lifelong Learning

I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.- Albert Einstein

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

When decorating my classroom with inspirational quotes, I came upon this doozy of a quote. And I said, “Wait, that’s me!”

For, you see, I am average. I like to learn lots of things. But I only become mediocre at most of the things that I learn. And I don’t mind really.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with being average. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being a “jack of all trades” as my assistant principal once called me.

I might lack a special talent, but I more than make up for it with my insatiable curiosity, for I am a voracious learner.

Expanding higher education to facilitate lifelong learning

This author prods universities to be more active in offering learning opportunities to older citizens.

“Around the world, the proportion of older adults is increasing day by day. These people have much to contribute to the development of society. Therefore, it is important that they have the opportunity to learn on equal terms with the young, and in age-appropriate ways. Their skills and abilities need to be recognized, valued and utilized”

Overall, this book constitutes a searching and wide-ranging exploration of how to expand and transform the role of universities in promoting life-long learning. Needless to say, the reform of higher education goes beyond mere pedagogy and didactics; it is a social process which links teaching and learning to students’ personal life patterns, their social and cultural context, and their chosen discipline.

How to continue learning after graduation

This essay addresses 6 ways pharmacists should continue learning:

I firmly believe that overall pharmacy knowledge should increase over time and that your “peak” as a professional, if you are committed to continual learning, should be your last years of practice. There is no reason why you can’t keep up with new drugs, changes in labeling, and other trends after graduation, with pharmacy school faculty members serving as good examples of this.

Being an experienced and knowledgeable professional does not happen by accident, but rather takes time, dedication, and a strategy. Here are some tips to help you in developing your strategy to not only keep up with the profession you worked so hard to enter, but also to excel in your journey of lifelong learning.

Read the 6 ways: https://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/alex-evans-pharmd-cgp/2019/01/how-to-continue-learning-after-graduation

Learn Like Kindergarteners

In 1999, on the cusp of a new millennium, MIT professor Mitchel Resnick was on a panel where everyone was asked to pick the most important invention of the last millennium. One person said the printing press, another said the steam engine, and another the computer. Resnick said kindergarten.

From its arrival in the 1830s, he said, kindergarten eschewed the ”broadcast” method of teaching by which teachers disseminated information to students. That style would never fly with five-year-olds. Friedrich Froebel, the German educationalist who invented the “garden for children,” instead offered “a radically new approach to education, fundamentally different from schools that had come before,” said Resnick, a professor of learning research who also heads up the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group.