Learning throughout working life: Interdependencies at work.

Abstract

Understanding how individuals learn at work throughout their working life is salient to discussions about life long learning, particularly as it is represented in recent governmental policy edicts. These propose that individuals need to play a central role in maintaining the continuity of their employment through maintaining the currency of their vocational knowledge (European Commission 1994). Accompanying this is a shift in the traditional relations between employers and workers that increasingly emphasise employees' responsibilities for their vocational currency (Carnoy 1999, Kempnich et al. 1999). Such changes make unreasonable and unfair demands upon individuals. Further, they simplify salient issues associated with learning throughout a working life. Therefore, a more considered view of adult learning and development is now required to counter the idea that adults can somehow be held responsible for the maintenance and currency of their vocational practice throughout their working lives. It needs to be more broadly acknowledged that the process of learning throughout life has social as well as personal dimensions. This is particularly true of learning for and in workplace, the site of most of the ongoing vocational development throughout working lives.