Lifelong learning/education throughout life

behavior are shaped by men and determine the life reality of society in general and of women in particular (Cohen, 2006).

The educational activities are manifested at two levels:

1. Through the development of tracks in the formal academic realm –

"Women's Studies" has become "Women and Gender Studies" or, over the years, just "Gender Studies". This niche uses informal tools and approaches within the formal system and creates a new path.

2 Through developing empowerment courses for women in the informal arena, and within the institutional (formal) and informal institutional establishment arena.

These two planes rely on another pedagogy the ' feminist pedagogy' to be detailed later.

This approach was defined in the Hamburg Declaration (UNESCO 1997), the work of the International Committee on Education for the 21^st century. Paragraph 13 entitled women's integration and empowerment, states that the aim is to

"develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, and improve their technical or professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction to meet their own needs and those of their society. Adult learning encompasses both formal and continuing education, non-formal learning and the spectrum of innon-formal and incidental learning available …

Women have a right to equal opportunities; society, in turn, depends on their full contribution in all fields of work and aspects of life.

..adult learning policies should be responsive to local cultures and give priority to expanding educational opportunities for all women, while respecting their diversity and eliminating prejudices and stereotypes that both limit their access to …adult education and restrict the benefits they derive from them. Any attempts to restrict women’s right to literacy, education and training must be considered unacceptable."

Adult education, as a domain, has four stages, partially reminiscent of the empowerment process.

• Acquiring knowledge, or learning the way of knowing – a partially passive stage;

• Doing – learning to do i.e. the ability to switch to an active stage of creating change;

• The certain identity - recognizing strength and ability that will facilitate entry to areas and foci of decision-making;

• The egalitarian age – studying in order to be (Cohen, 2004, 2006).

The world of adult education does not deal with academic education but with the weakened population as main target (Tokatli, 2007). In Israel adult education includes four domains (Shpiegel, 2000; Vardi, 2000):

1. Teaching immigrants Hebrew

2. Teaching basic and general education (most of the learning population was mainly women)

3. Vocational training courses and in-service training

4. Enrichment courses and the use of leisure time as an educational area that developed alongside the social changes in Israeli society as it did in the rest of the western world

Israel currently lacks strategic thinking regarding the phenomenon of adult interest in learning. The Israelis do not see the value of a learning

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model, as it existed in the Jewish heritage that was partially lost with the mass immigration to Israel, and therefore this is one of the important tasks that must be revived, as was expressed in a conference on the subject, at the Beit Berl College of Education in 2005.

Two main areas are recognized in the educational arena throughout life:

- Academic education: Universities and colleges, wherein two tracks were developed based on two contradictory ideologies:

a. Education based on elitist ideology – a remainder of the patriarchal approach that defines those suitable to study according to criteria of excellence. According to this approach, not everyone can follow academic studies, or not of every track.

The students must adapt themselves to the material and to the high demands in order to attain a degree (Shadmi, 2006).

b. Education based on the ideology of 'education for all' which opposed to this elitist approach and created two changes:

• Change within the existing university array, by creating new tools and programs/ units with other learning content including "Women's Studies"

• Change outside the existing system through the establishment of new institutions (diverse colleges) that create learning competition and alternatives, through change in the conditions of acceptance, teacher-student relationships etc. This level also finds a manifestation of women's studies through courses that are combined with the other learning content or tracks, as well as faculties and even institutions that specialize in the area.

One of the main emphases on change on both tracks is the perception of accessibility and expanding the opportunities. This is closely connected to the feminist approach and manifested in 90% of the learners being females, as transpires from the data accumulated in the department of adult education in the Ministry of Education as mentioned at the Conference in 2005.

Academic education was developed alongside adult education, which is defined as non-academic education, pertaining to non-formal, academic and the less important or marginal categories.¹¹⁴ One of the reasons may stem from the voluntary trend that characterized it, since this type of education is based on the students' motivation, while maintaining symmetrical relationships between the learners and those acquiring the

114 Most of the social consideration focused on formal school education until the age of 18 and on academic education as its continuation.

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knowledge, considering the age aspect that defines belonging, life experience and responsibility or social commitment (all considered adult).

The age aspect of adult education also has implications on the existing tools held by the learner, the needs, timetable and degree of availability.

All this necessitates adopting unique learning techniques and adaptation that demand flexibility and modularity - tools known in the world of content of non-formal education.

This approach to breaching the age barrier helped to shatter the barrier of physical place and of the knowledge or education barrier preceding the start of learning. Adapting learning to the work hours of the adult learners, developing suitable learning content for completing and closing knowledge gaps or skills etc. underlay the establishment of the university without walls (the Open University) and helped to expand the definition of academic learning (Shadmi, 2006).

Adult education answers the needs and expectations of society and is thus extremely important. Society was forced to recognize the importance, professionalism and contribution to the domain even without the academic halo.

Learning and acquiring knowledge, accompanied by a feeling of self-confidence, that affects the positive self–image as seen by the individual of himself and by the society, enable participation in circles of employment and social and economic mobility. All these are, in fact, the result of empowerment.

Thus learning and acquiring knowledge = empowerment. And therefore the place of empowerment courses for women falls into this category of informal education, of wide life adult education.

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2.6.4.3 Feminist pedagogy as an ideological basis for a different education