The 12th Shanghai Symposium on Lifelong Education Successfully Held

On September 20, the 12th Shanghai Forum on Lifelong Education was held at East China Normal University. The forum included 2 keynote reports from the Ministry of Education and the Municipal Education Commission, 12 overseas experts, 6 domestic first-line principals, university scholars contributed to the theme report, attracting nearly 200 people from major universities, government departments and other related units to participate in this forum on site.

At the opening ceremony, speeches were delivered by Meng Zhongjie, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of East China Normal University (ECNU) and President of ShanghaMunicipal Institute for Lifelong Education, and Yuan Zhenguo, Director of the Department of Education of ECNU. Li Yingli, Deputy Director of the Department of Vocational and Adult Education of the Ministry of Education, and Yan Pengtao, Director of the Lifelong Education Division of the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, attended the ceremony and delivered keynote speeches. Li Jiacheng, Executive Vice Presidentof Shanghai Municipal Institute of Lifelong Education, presided over the opening ceremony.

The conference entered into the special report session, in which well-known scholars in the field of senior education from many foreign countries, such as the United States, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Thailand and France, as well as domestic experts and practitioners, respectively, made in-depth reports on the global situation and local situation of lifelong education.

Professor Wan Gaofang, a renowned scholar from Loyola University Chicago in the United States, has long been concerned about the trends and challenges of lifelong learning for the elderly globally, pointing out that the irreversible trend of global aging will have a wide-ranging impact on the development of societies in the coming decades, and showing successful paradigms of gerontological education in different cultures through the analysis of cases from 11 countries.

Professor Stuart McNaughton, Professor of the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and Chief Education Advisor to the New Zealand Government, emphasized that reading takes place throughout a child's entire life course, and that family practices are constantly evolving as children's lives develop. His presentation provided insights into how to optimize reading practices at home and at school.

Hajisuke Kubota, Professor of the Faculty of Letters at Waseda University, pointed out that Japan is facing the most serious aging problem in the world, and in particular, he introduced the concept of "meaningful employment", which encourages older people to find the meaning of life in age-appropriate work that not only reduces the burden of social security, but also promotes individual independent learning and social and economic development. Economic development.

Prof. Kang Dae-jung from the Department of Education, Seoul National University, Korea, presented a paper entitled "Lifelong Learning and Lifelong Education Research in East Asia". In particular, Prof. Kang emphasized the importance of the concept of "Cité éducatif", suggesting that education should not be limited to traditional time and space, but should be a holistic system encompassing all possibilities and potentials.

Then, Li Jiacheng, Zhang Yong, Zhu Min and Ma Lihua, on behalf of the Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education, made a grand release of their achievements. In the area of education for sustainable development, the Institute officially released the "Shanghai Education for Sustainable Development Community Action Plan (2024-2026)" this year, and promoted Shanghai to become an important coordinator of the Global Learning Cities Network. The Institute launched the "Laboratory of Elderly Education", which integrates multidisciplinary efforts to improve the physical and mental health, social participation and cultural adaptation of the elderly. At present, the Institute has been carrying out climate change education projects, and the typical cases of Shanghai Nanhui New Town Senior University, Jing'an District Senior University and Qibao Mingqiang Primary School, which were organized and submitted by the Institute, have been selected to be included in the database of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), and have been included in the database of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) as the 12 typical cases of climate change education carried out by international cities.

In the afternoon sub-forum, experts from home and abroad jointly presented an academic feast on lifelong education through online and offline participation.

Taking the Korean discourse of "village education" as a starting point, Prof. Byung-Jan Yang of Gongju University, Korea, discussed the rooting of lifelong learning in local communities and emphasized educational responses to theories of the extinction of place and spiritual hollowing out.

Prof. Wu Feng of Peking University's School of Education, on the other hand, focused on the combination of digital intelligence technology and lifelong education, analyzing the identification and educational intervention of online learning on depressed mood in the elderly.

Professor Yasuhito Tama of the University of Tsukuba, Japan, discussed the central role of community learning centers (also known as "civic halls") in social education in Japan, focusing on the continuing changes in community-based lifelong education facilities in the context of Japan's aging population.

Prof. Witiya Pittungnapoo from Naresuan University, Thailand, analyzed the role of higher education institutions in Thailand's Sukhothai region in building a learning society, and put forward the idea of promoting sustainable development through culture and creativity.

President Li Jiacheng of the Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education, together with Dr. Li Shuhan, introduced the research results of the Institute's recent study on the global trends of lifelong education reforms in 2024, and emphasized the importance of upgrading the quality of the entire population and advancing the education of the elderly to cope with global aging.

As the outstanding representative of the conference paper authors, Prof. Gao Liping from Shandong University of Architecture proposed that lifelong learning is a key means to achieve healthy aging, and provided an in-depth analysis of the advantages and challenges of promoting lifelong learning for the elderly in China.

Li Jiacheng, Executive Vice President of the Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education, summed up the conference by saying that in the context of globalization and sustainable development, topics such as green transformation and digitization are not only major issues in China, but also common challenges being tackled by countries all over the world, and emphasized that researchers in lifelong education need to both deeply understand and explain the educational environment and policy direction in which they are working, and also actively promote change in practice, so as to truly make contributions to the development of lifelong education. emphasized that lifelong education researchers should not only deeply understand and explain the educational environment and policy direction, but also actively promote changes in practice so as to truly contribute to the development of lifelong education.

The 12th Shanghai Forum on Lifelong Education, adhering to the concepts of "China's Questions, the World's Answers" and "The World's Questions, China's Answers", is committed to building a high ground for dialogue between the world and China in the field of lifelong education, and to promoting the learning for all and international cooperation towards a broader future. The future. The Shanghai Municipal Institute for Lifelong Education will continue to play a leading role in the field of lifelong education, and promote dialogue and cooperation between China and the world in the field of lifelong education.