It’s not a Learning Gap - It’s a Recognition Gap

People are actually very good at lifelong learning. They always have been.

They take short courses out of interest, necessity and curiosity. They teach themselves to cook, code, lead, fix things, manage their health, or navigate new technologies and new places. They learn from books, YouTube, from podcasts, from Google searches, from their peers, friends and their kids. I love that when I visit my GP, they’ll often check the internet to refresh their knowledge in real time - because they can’t be expected to remember everything, and nor should they.

AI is amplifying this even further. We’re no longer just consuming content, we’re engaging with knowledge dynamically, in dialogue. We’re navigating information, applying judgement, and making connections. That’s learning. But we rarely call it that. We rarely recognise it as learning, even the people doing it!

As an experiment, ask someone what they learnt last week and most people, if they didn’t attend a course or do something formal, will say “didn’t learn anything” but if you ask them, did you look up a new recipe, try something new at work, do a google search to figure out how to use a new app, or look up a new way to plait your daughters hair, they will probably say yes. Learning, but not as we recognise it.

Lifelong learning is not a new concept. People have always been lifelong learners. One of my favourite quotes captures this beautifully:

“Those people who develop the ability to continuously acquire new and better forms of knowledge that they can apply to their work and to their lives will be the movers and shakers in our society for the indefinite future.”
- Confucius

That’s not a call to enter formal education. It’s a call to keep growing, and to value that growth wherever it happens.

When I started A Lifelong Learning Practice, my focus was, unsurprisingly, on the learning. How could we build better systems to help people keep learning across their lives? How could we embed short courses, microcredentials, and other formats into more fluid, flexible pathways?

But over the past couple of years, through projects, conversations, and events like the recent Australasian Microcredential Network (AMCN) workshop, my thinking has shifted. Because I’m starting to realise that the issue isn’t a lack of learning. It’s a lack of meaningful recognition.

That theme came through powerfully at AMCN. Some of the most impactful case studies weren’t focused solely on delivering learning - they were focused on recognising it. Whether it was cultural knowledge from Indigenous Ranger programs, just-in-time digital skills in rural communities, or new roles emerging in places like Bradfield’s advanced manufacturing precinct, what stood out wasn’t just the content. It was how the learning was made visible, portable, and valuable to the learner in their own context.

This is the real sweet spot: lifelong learning happens where short courses, digital credentials and recognition intersect. We need all three:

• flexible access to learning

• ways to recognise what’s been learned

• systems that allow people to carry that evidence with them.

And recognition has to be a two-way street. Learners need access to their own learning data, in formats that are meaningful, useful, and owned by them. They need to be able to say: “This is what I know. This is what I can do. Here’s the evidence.” And educators and institutions need to move beyond the idea that a certificate with a name and a date is enough. We should be asking: What was learned? What can be demonstrated? How does this connect to something larger? (And it’s also why digital and AI literacy are vital and we need to get better at teaching them.)

There’s a campaign in the US called Tear the Paper Ceiling that highlights how hiring practices often exclude skilled people simply because they don’t hold a degree (over 70 million in the US alone). They use the term STARs, Skilled Through Alternative Routes, to describe people who’ve gained valuable experience outside traditional higher education. STARs aren’t new. The campaign didn’t invent the idea, but they are helping spotlight the barriers these individuals face and the urgent need for more inclusive recognition.

So as I prepare to speak later this week at the Warsaw Microcredentials Summit, in sessions focused on policy and labour markets, this is the thread I’ll be weaving in: how we move beyond building more learning, and start building better ways to recognise the learning that’s already happening.

Lifelong learning is here. We don’t need to invent it.
We just need to start seeing it.

Next week I’ll be sharing insights from the Warsaw Microcredential Summit and the amazing array of global perspectives they have bought together. It’s sold out in person but you can also attend online.