title: Lifelong learning: Established concepts and evolving values.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To summarise the concepts critical for understanding the content and value of lifelong learning (LL).
  
  
  METHODS
  Ideas generated by personal experience were combined with those of philosophers, social scientists, educational institutions, governments and UNESCO, to facilitate an understanding of the importance of the basic concepts of LL.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Autopoietic, continuous, self-determined, informal, vicarious, biographical, lifelong reflexive learning, from and for society, when supported by self-chosen formal courses, can build capacities and portable skills that allow useful responses to challenges and society's new structures of governance. The need for LL is driven by challenges. LL flows continuously in pursuit of one agenda, which could either be citizenship, as is conventional, or as this article proposes, health. LL cannot be wholly centred on vocation. Continuous medical education and continuous professional development, important in their own right, cannot supply all that is needed. LL aids society with its learning, and it requires an awareness of the environment and structures of society. It is heavily vicarious, draws on formal learning and relies for effectiveness on reflection, self-assessment and personal shaping of views of the world from different perspectives.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Health is critical to rational thought and peace, and determines society's capacity to govern itself, and improve its health. LL should be reshaped to focus on health not citizenship. Therefore, embedding learning in society and environment is critical. Each urologist must develop an understanding of the numerous concepts in LL, of which 'biographicisation' is the seed that will promote innovative strategies.
authors.affiliation: Aga Khan University, Stadium Road, Karachi 74899, Pakistan.
authors.forename: Jamsheer Jehangir
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Talati
keywords: Autopoietic; Biographicity; CME, continuing medical education; CPD, continuing professional development; Exigencies of life; LAL, learning across the lifespan; LL, lifelong learning; Lifelong learning; Society; Vicarious