Roskilde International Summer Seminar
for PhD students
Methodological Challenges
in Researching Lifelong Learning
13th to 16th August 2013
The Graduate School in Lifelong Learning at Roskilde University invites postgraduate students to its annual summer seminar. This year’s theme is Methodological Challenges in Researching Lifelong Learning . The seminar encompasses research into education as well as learning in everyday life settings – for example work life and community life.
This year’s Roskilde PhD summer seminar will focus on methodological issues. The ambition is to promote research approaches that help us to reframe education research around issues of subjectivity, learning and societal context. It will also address basic questions of theory and epistemology and stimulate discussion of the role of researchers and their engagement in issues of societal importance.
Lifelong Learning is an international political agenda, increasingly influencing national and local discussions about education and training. But it is also a critical framework for understanding and researching learning. It reminds us that learning relates in a complex way to individuals’ lives and everyday life social contexts. Researching learning processes in all aspects of everyday life requires a wide horizon of interdisciplinary theorizing and methodological inspirations. The host institution - The Graduate School of Lifelong Learning - is particularly committed to the discussion of basic issues of theory and methodology that arise from problem and practice-oriented research. The Graduate School comprises a wide range of specific research projects – rooted in local as well as in international contexts - at the same time as connecting to cutting edge discussions of critical social and human sciences. The Graduate School encompasses such diverse fields as education, health promotion and social entrepreneurship.
Students’ own research projects will determine the detailed shape of the seminar and these will be framed by a number of key note presentations focusing on central themes from the Roskilde Graduate School such as:
- understanding the learning subject in his/her social context
- the relation between research, intervention, social entrepreneurship and critique
- researching practices in caring and human services work
- researching education policy in a globalizing context