Preliminary Reflections

Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) is an important new resource for UNESCO. The Director-General has instructed the LWF Coordination Unit to create an Advisory Task Force on LWF. The preliminary reflections presented in this document are based on the deliberations of the Task Force during its first meeting, held on 25 and 26 November 1996. They seek to stimulate thinking about how best this new resource can be used both in and outside UNESCO and encourage rethinking of strategies and actions.

Introduction

The Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) Advisory Task Force was put together by the LWF Coordination Unit at the request of the Director-General to do the following:

• Critically reflect on the conception of LWF and its strategies for action
• Provide inputs and advice for the further development of LWF and its specific actions
• Be a launching pad for partnership building
• Engage in learning.

The Task Force is currently composed of 25 members from different parts of the world. In view of the eclectic nature of LWF, they represent both individually and as a group in the first place diversity and trans-disciplinarity. They also represent openness. The group is very much an alliance which may be joined by others. The group also represents commitment. The large majority of the task force members joined on a self-financing basis. The first meeting of the Task Force, held on 25 and 26 November 1996 at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, was a mere beginning. The debate generated during the meeting, which was attended by 18 of the Task Force members, will continue by other means, particularly making use of electronic mail and the LWF Web site. The current short document with 'preliminary reflections', prepared by the LWF Coordination Unit following the above meeting, seeks to stimulate continued debate both in and outside UNESCO.

It is believed that the discussion generated by the output of the meeting reported on here will, by virtue of its own dynamics, bring out those voices currently still unheard. This should then lead to broadening and further diversifying the composition of the Task Force, making it more representative in terms of a broad range of criteria. The LWF Coordination Unit will be zealous to stimulate such debate.

UNESCO is currently discussing strategies and programme options for the 1998/1999 biennium. These preliminary reflections are intended to provide an input for those discussions. The Task Force recommends that LWF should not be seen as "just one more UNESCO programme". In fact, it sees - and this was highlighted also by the ADG/ED when he addressed the Task Force at the conclusion of the meeting - the institutional environment in which LWF functions, including UNESCO itself, as one of the barriers that is in need of being confronted. In the light of this advice, some of the reflections presented here are thus 'constructively challenging.'

Diversity

The diversity of views and background represented in the Task Force produced a rich debate. Any attempt to represent that richness in a linearly conceived document is bound to fail. We have thus sacrificed linearity to richness. This short report brings out a multidimensional spectrum of, at times seemingly contradictory, statements that provide food for thought and action rather than please the linear mind.

Partners in Action

The meeting was a significant show of partnership. The Task Force encouraged UNESCO to take on a leadership role in the area of Learning Without Frontiers and to refrain from focusing narrowly on implementation of projects. This is better left to others. It is thus of interest that many Task Force members represent or relate to efforts to implement LWF activities. Many of them offered to establish collaborative relationships with LWF that will allow UNESCO to concentrate on its leadership role, placing the responsibility of implementation on others. Such partnership would plant the LWF flag on projects around the globe, such as the "Einstein project: New Learning in the Basque Country"; TERC's Global Lab; 'Application of Science and Technology for Rural Development' (ASTRUD); 'Rural Inter-active Learning' (RINTAL) in Zimbabwe; Community Schools in Egypt and Interactive Radio Instruction in South Africa. Other forms of partnership emerging from the meeting are possible collaboration with the World Bank's Economic Development Institute on the development of materials for the Multi-Media Kit on Open Learning and collaboration with the Radio Netherlands Training Centre in the areas of capacity building and the development of learning materials, such as basic skills packages, for use around the globe.

Prompts to Act

Unmet learning needs and unreached learners, both now and in the future, fuel the drive to act. Learning is increasingly a necessity in a world in which individuals and communities are in constant need of adaptation to accelerating change. However, and despite great advances made over time, the solutions developed in the past fall short of the needs of today, whereas today's solutions become increasingly inadequate for the problems of tomorrow. In addition, they fail to recognize and benefit from both existing and emerging opportunities. A learning environment mainly based on the premise that the conditions of lifelong and life-wide learning can be satisfied through the school-teacher-textbook model and alternatives, such as traditional distance education systems, derived from that model, is in urgent need to be rethought. Ways need to be found to open up existing systems and to go beyond them.

LWF: A Framework to Rethink the World of Learning

Over the course of the two days of the Task Force Meeting, there was a steady tension underlying many of the discussions. This tension derived its energy from the conflict between trying to answer the question of "what is Learning Without Frontiers?" and the resistance to providing any simple or reductionist answers to this question.

UNESCO's Director-General, in his opening message, made several key introductory statements to help set the stage for deliberations by the Task Force. These include:

• The world today is confronted with the challenge of exclusion. The roots of conflict are based in people who have been excluded from society.
• Many people are excluded from the mainstream of education. There are many reasons for this exclusion, related e.g. to economical, geographical, political, religious, cultural, linguistic and gender issues. Formal education itself has been a reason of exclusion.
• Learning is a critical activity for building peace and avoiding conflict.
• Education is needed for all - throughout life. Achieving this is not only a technical problem but also a political one. We have many tools to facilitate learning, e.g. distance education, computers, virtuality, but we must remember that they are not ends but means.
• We should also be concerned with the content of education - what messages are being given? It is critical that we focus on "disarming the curriculum."
• We have a clear mandate from the Constitution of UNESCO. What we need to think about is the policy and strategies for achieving it.

During the meeting, several ideas emerged in relation to the future development of LWF. These are discussed under the following three categories:

LWF is more than simply expanding delivery mechanisms to reach the unreached

• There is a serious crisis of discourse and practice in the field of education. Thinking and action today are still grounded in many 19th century notions of education i.e. the "expert" teacher transmitting information to the "empty" student, compartmentalization of disciplines, linearity of approaches and hierarchy of structures, centralized perspectives based on the deficit model (from the eyes of the industrialized countries), top-down prescriptions, factory model production processes, closed systems, etc.
• Education should not be considered in isolation but as part of a development process; this might involve questioning and redefining currently accepted power structures and relationships as many of the frontiers to learning stand within educational institutions themselves.
• Despite the crisis, there is also a significant basis of current practice to learn from and to take as a valuable starting point for development and change.
• LWF is driven by fundamental notions about learning, such as learning to learn, quality of learning, diversity of learning, respect for differences among and in learners, the ephemeral nature of learning and its fundamental unpredictability, etc. LWF is focused on learning rather than education. Education/training are done to you. Learning is something you do yourself and with other people. Underlying this is a shift from supply-driven approaches to demand-oriented ones and a desire to break through the barriers separating formal, non-formal and informal learning.
• LWF seeks to challenge existing models and to construct new frameworks, roles, relationships, processes, time frames, measurements. Underlying LWF is a fundamental tension around knowledge, knowledge systems, language and power at local and global level.
• LWF must involve the creation of spaces that provide for the voices of different communities to be heard.
• LWF must concern itself with the opportunities provided and challenges created by different technologies. Focus should be on dialogue supported by technology (and not wholly on technology as the medium of education).
• LWF is a pro-active initiative rather than a re-active one.

LWF as a non-proprietary concept

• LWF involves more than the experiences and accomplishments of UNESCO. The concept of LWF should validate itself in terms of its partnerships and the actions of its partners. The metaphor of a "flotilla" was used to describe LWF. The ADG/ED thus referred to LWF as an "alliance" to express this idea.
• LWF is an evolving concept. For it to have real meaning, it must not only be conceptualized by the "experts" in ivory towers around the world, but rather, must involve a process of on-going participatory conceptualization by a diverse group of actors and peoples around the world. This implies that each learning community must struggle to give their own meaning to LWF.
• UNESCO, and by implication the LWF Coordination Unit, should place less emphasis on implementing its own projects but rather serve as an intellectual forum for reflection, a mobilizer, a framer of vision and experiences, action-researcher, communicator, etc. The metaphors of "catalyst" and "lighthouse" emerged from the discussion.

UNESCO must practise what it preaches

• How is UNESCO going to do things differently? Or, is LWF simply a repositioning of 'business as usual' under a more eloquent name?
• If LWF is to be successful, UNESCO must change the way it does business. It must become less bureaucratic in its procedures, it must move away from an ivory tower model of leadership and antiquated notions of experts, and, most importantly, it should become a "role model leader" which involves that it become a "role model learner." UNESCO was encouraged to follow the eloquent example of the Rover company, presented during the meeting, and become a learning organization.
• LWF must attune itself to a crisis of legitimacy facing UNESCO: the essence of this crisis stems from the question of who today really cares what UNESCO thinks?

The 'Value-Added': Key Strategies for LWF

The Task Force raised several issues and caveats which are relevant to the future development of Learning Without Frontiers by UNESCO:

• UNESCO's LWF should be the 'network of networks' to create spaces for the excluded to share information between them and learn from them. UNESCO should try to create an environment of a "soft organization" - a minimum number of rules and a plurality of voices. In order to do this effectively, UNESCO and the LWF Coordination Unit should strive to become learning communities.
• LWF should particularly take on an intellectual leadership role and serve to generate action as opposed to an emphasis on implementation of projects. In doing so, it should seek to work with those who are already implementing projects around the world. Many positive experiences have taken place around the world, good materials have been produced and many lessons have been learned from not-so-positive experiences. We should avoid re-inventing the wheel; however, we should seek to help others to take ownership and re-invent their wheels in purposeful ways so that they have meaning for them. This notion of LWF as a mobilizing force should also apply to aligning UNESCO's own activities in relation to LWF.
• However, in seeking to take on these roles, UNESCO would have to consider dramatically altering some of its current "realities" such as:
• emphasizing products over processes
• approaches biased towards short-term objectives
• traditional project development cycles and methodologies
• the notion of UNESCO as being the "expert" providing top-down prescriptions.
• The specific strategies for the LWF Coordination Unit to pursue that were proposed by the Task Force include:
• LWF should play a critical role in developing and promulgating new methodologies and approaches, using its UNESCO linkages and the UN system at large, in addition to the Task Force and in general as a "network of networks". This might start by more clearly elaborating what is meant by the concept of learning and its various linkages to different institutions and activities in life. Defining the "barriers to learning" is another crucial exercise i.e., what are the frontiers of learning?
• LWF should play a critical role in facilitating the sharing of information. LWF must have access to different streams of information from around the world, i.e. research, methodologies, theories, experiences, etc. It should particularly seek to creatively package and direct critical information at educational decision makers.
• LWF should strive to continuously create new alliances to benefit from the power of collective creativity. This strategy should start with finding the "open doors" for LWF. There should be a strong effort to link activities to various communities. But efforts must also be made to focus on the "closed doors" and open them up.
• Partners should be encouraged to develop their own policies and action plans in relation to LWF. These more participatory and interactive localized processes could be facilitated, for example, through the Policy Paper, if it were to be developed in a way different from how such papers are traditionally generated by UNESCO.
• Several references were made in relation to the challenges of finding appropriate and innovative applications of various technologies to support learning. This is both a conceptual challenge and one of practical applications. It may also involve LWF taking a more active role in opposing some of the inappropriate uses of media such as violent images, child pornography, etc.
• UNESCO should engage in an information and promotion campaign about LWF. This might start by taking stock of current perceptions among those who have so far come into contact with LWF. UNESCO could consider several in-house workshops on LWF.

LWF is a Dynamic, Evolving Concept: Tremendous Flexibility is Needed

Following are some conclusions derived from the debate of the Task Force thought to be relevant in the context of current and on-going planning and strategy development exercises. An underlying theme for these conclusions that transpired from the deliberations was the need for tremendous flexibility to be able to develop the concept. This flexibility should be translated into various interventions, including:

• Change funding mechanisms. One possibility (which has precedence in the House), for example, could be lump sum funding. New methodologies could be developed for monitoring the use of the these funds. The relationship with funds for LWF decentralized to the field offices should also be closely reviewed.
• Extend ability to interact with various partners in the world. There is a need to be in closer and more frequent contact with the field as well as to participate in key opportunities for debate, such as conferences, to provide intellectual inputs related to LWF and stimulate the involvement and thinking of others. This would also involve being able to participate in a catalytic way in action undertaken by others and in generating such action. It equally involves enhancing the ability to conduct action research activities with a view towards building new methodological approaches.
• Build greater opportunities for trans-disciplinarity. This would involve establishing stronger links to the Delors Commission, the Culture of Peace Program, the Sectors for Communication, Information and Informatics; Culture; Social and Human Sciences; and Science.
• Create a base of funding for the development of UNESCO as a learning community.