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PRESIDENTIAL SESSION
ON

IN SEARCH OF THE MEANING OF LEARNING

AT THE
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE AECT, DENVER, CO, OCTOBER 25-28, 2000

 

Today's turbulent world calls for new visions of learning and the re-examination of the conditions that promote and facilitate it. The Presidential Session on In Search of the Meaning of Learning explores human learning as a multifaceted phenomenon, unrestricted by the parameters of the instructional context to which traditional thinking tends to confine it. Learning is seen as essentially linked to the ability of humans and humanity to interact constructively with change along and across the lifespan.


The session comes in the wake of the more than six-year long effort of UNESCO's Learning Without Frontiers program and its successor the Learning Development Institute to promote new visions and develop new practices. Among the various people who have contributed to that transdisciplinary effort is Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman.


Seeking to raise critical questions regarding current discourse, practice, research agendas and policy, the session will be conducted interactively, assuming the energetic participation of the audience. Papers to nourish the debate are being contributed by the following authors:


These papers will be available at http://www.learndev.org, the web site of the Learning Development Institute, well in advance of the session. During the first half of the session, the international team of panelists will highlight the main arguments presented in their papers. The second half of the session will be dedicated to discussion. Facilitation of the session is in the hands of the Institute's president and former UNESCO director for Learning Without Frontiers, Jan Visser.

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