This volume considers, rethinks and reorganizes how support for learning across working life can be best conceptualized, organized and enacted. It considers educational and learning support processes that include approaches that fit well within working lives and workplaces, and support work and learning as a co-occurrence. These are the key focuses for individual and collective contributions to this edited volume, which provide discussions about what constitutes learning across working lives and how this differs from lifelong learning and lifelong education. Accounts of learning across the working lives of social workers, doctors working in hospitals and in general practice, teaching, aviation, nursing, mining, aged care and more. These accounts advance a range of ways in which workers’ learning across working lives is being supported and how this support is also linked to other changes, such as to the occupational practice in which they engage.

Practice-based learning—the kind of education that comes from experiencing real work in real situations—has always been a prerequisite to qualification in professions such as medicine. However, there is growing interest in how practice-based models of learning can assist the initial preparation for and further development of skills for a wider range of occupations. Rather than being seen as a tool of first-time training, it is now viewed as a potentially important facet of professional development and life-long learning. This book provides perspectives on practice-based learning from a range of disciplines and fields of work. The collection here draws on a wide spectrum of perspectives to illustrate as well as to critically appraise approaches to practice-based learning. The book’s two sections first explore the conceptual foundations of learning through practice, and then provide detailed examples of its implementation. Long-standing practice-based approaches to learning have been used in many professions and trades. Indeed, admission to the trades and major professions (e.g. medicine, law, accountancy) can only be realised after completing extended periods of practice in authentic practice settings. However, the growing contemporary interest in using practice-based learning in more extensive contexts has arisen from concerns about the direct employability of graduates and the increasing focus on occupation-specific courses in both vocations and higher education. It is an especially urgent issue in an era of critical skill shortages, rapidly transforming work requirements and an aging workforce combined with a looming shortage of new workforce entrants. We must better understand how existing models of practice-based learning are enacted in order to identify how they can be applied to different kinds of employment and workplaces. The contributions to this volume explore ways in which learning through practice can be conceptualised, enacted, and appraised through an analysis of the traditions, purposes, and processes that support this learning—including curriculum models and pedagogic practices.

This book seeks to advance understandings of and approaches to supporting and sustaining working age adults’ learning across lengthening working lives and inevitable transitions they encounter and are required to negotiate. It is founded on the processes and findings of a three-phase practical inquiry into worklife learning and its implications for workplace and educations’ practice conducted in Australia over a three-year period commencing in 2019. Diverse perspectives and orientations were utilised in approaches to data analysis and renderings from the data, thereby opening up the analysis of these complex phenomena to different lines of interrogation, questions and analytical approaches. It elaborates more fully understandings about the processes of adults’ learning and development across their lifespan of adulthood referred to as working life, and what factors and contributions supported that learning. This book also attempts to reconcile a coherent view about development across the work lifespan, and how that can be supported by education provisions, workplaces, communities, and by the adults themselves.

A visionary guide for the future of learning and work Long Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs That Don’t Even Exist Yet offers readers a fascinating glimpse into a near-future where careers last 100 years, and education lasts a lifetime. The book makes the case that learners of the future are going to repeatedly seek out educational opportunities throughout the course of their working lives — which will no longer have a beginning, middle, and end. Long Life Learning focuses on the disruptive and burgeoning innovations that are laying the foundation for a new learning model that includes clear navigation, wraparound and funding supports, targeted education, and clear connections to more transparent hiring processes. Written by the former chief innovation officer of Strada Education Network’s Institute for the Future of Work, the book examines: How will a dramatically extended lifespan affect our careers? How will more time in the workforce shape our educational demands? Will a four-year degree earned at the start of a 100-year career adequately prepare us for the challenges ahead? Perfect for anyone with an interest in the future of education and Clayton Christensen’s theories of disruptive innovation, Long Life Learning provides an invaluable glimpse into a future that many of us have not even begun to imagine.

Comprising 15 chapters the book offers perspectives from Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Australia and across a range of occupations and places of work. Individually and collectively these chapters make important contributions to learning about the self and agency at work and about learning work tasks.

Learning Through Life is the definitive report into the future for lifelong learning in the UK. Essential reading for everyone with a personal or professional interest in the social and economic trends shaping tomorrow's world, it provides a comprehensive vision for the future of lifelong learning. For government, employers, civil society, the lifelong learning sector, broadcasters, researchers and the international community the report provides unique insights and recommendations guaranteed to generate debate across all areas of social policy. Sponsored by NIACE (the National institute of Adult Continuing Education) this is the main report from the independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning and presents: the first authoritative and coherent strategic framework for lifelong learning in the UK for the next 10-15 years; an overview of the current state of learning in the UK; and radical recommendations for long term change. Support for Learning Through Life: ""Learning Through Life is a wonderful contribution to the scholarly and policy literature on life-long learning. Not only does it bring together cutting edge thinking about life-long learning from a sociological and human development perspective but also it offers creative policies and programs to make life-long learning a reality. Although it's written for a UK audience, it's applicable to an American audience as well, and I recommend it highly to scholars and policymakers in both the UK and U.S. who care about the future of the capacities of citizens"" (Dr Fay Lomax Cook, Director, Institute for Policy Research, Professor of Human Development & Social Policy, Northwestern University, Illinois). "The strength of this report is the fact that it recognises all of the strands that make up lifelong learning: in the community, in educational institutions, and of course through the workplace. Crucially, it identifies the major changes taking place in our society and the challenges they bring in maintaining functioning communities, and active and effective citizens" (Rt Hon David Blunkett MP). ""Learning Through Life by Tom Schuller and David Watson is a fundamental and convincing report about the necessity to finally take the implementation of Lifelong Learning seriously. The analysis and data in the report helps the reader to understand the limits of our present learning and educational models, based on the principle of learning early on for later life, and the enormous potential in economic, social, cultural, and individual terms of learning through life. The recommendations in the report on how to move forward are based upon the UK situation but they are highly relevant for all OECD countries and many new emerging economies on the global scene. It will be very difficult for the political community during the coming decade to ignore the recommendations in this report"" (Jarl Bengtsson, former head of the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation at OECD).