Staffordshire University, United Kingdom

PASCAL Co-Director Professor Mike Osborne will be a Keynote Speaker at the FACE annual conference on 'Towards a New Agenda for Lifelong Learning: Access, Diversity and Participation'

Conference Themes

This conference will bring together the sometimes disparate and often closely integrated themes of access, diversity and participation in a bid to explore how these elements contribute to or possibly detract from a new agenda for lifelong learning.

The theme for each day will loosely focus on one aspect of a new agenda for lifelong learning. Keynotes and roundtable discussions will spotlight how either the access, diversity or the participation agendas can assist or hinder the lifelong learning agenda and how these interrelate within the current policy context.

Access

The first day of the conference will be broadly themed around issues of access. How can we widen access to higher education? What innovative practices are we employing to ensure that under-represented groups gain access? How do national policy environments contribute to widening access? And more importantly is simply widening access to existing HE structures enough?

Diversity

The second day will focus on issues of diversity. How can higher education become more diverse? How can we engage with and support ever more diverse students? How can we develop and sustain inclusive curricula? How can higher education become more diverse in respect of its offer, modes of delivery and partnerships? What are the drivers behind diversification and the possible pit falls?

Participation

The third day will focus on issues of participation. What does participation mean? How can higher education widen and deepen participation? How do the key themes of relevance, flexibility and access interrelate? How can HEIs successfully interact with communities and partners to sustain widened participation? What are the roles of employers, Lifelong Learning networks and other groups in sustaining participation? And what can work based learning contribute?

Keynote Speakers

• Professor Mike Osborne
• Professor Christine King
• Professor Stephen Gorard
• Dr Cheron Byfield
• Ms Barbara Waters

Call for Papers

Papers and workshop presentations are sought on any or all of the conference themes. Papers and workshops should address the over-arching theme of a new agenda for lifelong learning. Given the inter-relation of the access, diversity and participation some papers will inevitably cover aspects of more than one of these and often other agendas as well. Papers and workshops that attempt to place the lifelong learning agenda within theoretical and policy contexts are particularly welcome as to are practitioner and case study based submissions.

Further details of the conference content, timetable and packages available can be found at
http://www.f-a-c-e.org.uk/conference2009.html