Abstract
The topicality of informal learning The keyword “lifelong learning” has been widely discussed for about 3 decades (Kaufmann, 2016, p. 66) and since the end of the 1990s this concept dominated the structure of European education policy. As a central aspect of lifelong learning, informal learning also became the focus of education policy research efforts, especially with regards to a holistic analysis of educational processes (Lewalter, Neubauer, 2019, p. 228). This trend was reinforced by the economic, technical and structural change as well as by the acknowledgment that extracurricular acquisition of knowledge and skills plays a central role as far as the development of vocational skills is concerned (Overwien, 2001, p. 359). In addition to formally organised learning in schools and at universities, attention is drawn to those learning fields enabling extracurricular acquisition of skills, abilities and knowledge. Examples include learning at the workplace, in social contexts such as the family and circle of friends, in the area of new media, and in the leisure sector as a whole. Social media and mobile learning are increasingly leading to an “informalisation” of learning in all contexts of life (Rohs, 2016, p. 30). “This possibility that competences acquired throughout life, regardless of attendance in the formal education and training system, are given value has generated huge interest in many countries” (Werquin, 2016, p. 40). The matter of importance is the learning outcome, regardless of the learning context. This added value and the emphasis on informal educational processes are topics that should not be missing in this Festschrift: thanks to Prof. Liliana Dozza, the concept of lifelong learning, continues to occupy a central position as a research focus at the Faculty of Education of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Up until her retirement in 2021, Prof. Dozza strongly emphasised the importance of lifelong learning among other concepts in relation to the topics of learning in an intergenerational perspective, education and sustainable development (Dozza, 2016; Dozza, Gall, 2018).