9631396 Fischer Lifelong learning integrates and mutually enriches the cultures of work and education. This integration should not be interpreted as "adult education," nor as giving children "jobs;" rather, it frames a vision in which people learn continually in the course of authentic, self-directed, and creative activities. Central to this vision is the notion of design activity, a model of work that is open-ended and long-term in nature, incorporates personalized and collaborative aspects, and combines technical and aesthetic elements. The communality that crucially binds design activities together is that they are centered around the production of new, publicly accessible artifacts. Our proposal is focused around a vision of how education and work may be seen as interwoven elements of creative design activity. We offer six specific hypotheses as vehicles to attain and sustain this vision, and we present a framework for computational domain-oriented design environment that reflect these hypotheses and offer a means to assess them. The research will develop theories about lifelong learning, will create computational environments necessary to support lifelong learners, will contribute to the restructuring of our national educational infrastructure, and will provide a unique opportunity for extending not only technological developments but also the societal networks of working, learning and collaborating. ***
