The Author presents a shortened version of the report »The Social and Personal Benefits of Learning: A Summary of Key Research Findings« by the »Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (WBL)«. The wider benefits of early childhood education as well as school, university and adult education are examined. The wide range of positive educational benefits contains crime prevention as well as a reduced nicotine consumption or increased tolerance.
The report includes a slightly revised version of a lecture held during the opening ceremony of the German Continuing Education Day in Berlin in 2012. The author focuses on the day’s central idea: surplus value of continuing education and pleads for the use of the benefit concept, which includes the individual’s perspective, as well as the concept of profit with regard to the social and organizational perspective.
Jyri Manninen presents empirical data on the »wider benefits of lifelong learning« collected in Finish adult education institutions (adult education centres, folk high schools, university summer schools, study and sport centres) in 2007. To present the results, a model concept on the wider benefits of learning was developed, which includes a quintuple classification of the term »benefits«: 1. »relevant benefits for the learning process «, 2. »direct benefits«, 3. »skills and competences«, 4. »a…
