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There are growing expectations that tertiary education graduates will be ready for working life, that is, possessing the capacities to participate effectively in an occupational practice in a specific work situation. Yet, graduates are often unprepared to fulfil this expectation. In response, tertiary education increasingly includes workplace experiences (i.e., practicums, internships, and work placements). It is necessary to understand these experiences' efficacy and their optimisation to promote work-life readiness. Drawing on students' experiences of internships, this paper discusses what constitutes the value of internships in post-secondary diploma courses in Singapore.

A quantitative analysis of interview data identified the contributions afforded through these experiences in workplaces - students' intentional engagement, and their readiness for working life. Central here is how these contributions promote the development of the adaptability required for effective participation in contemporary working life. The analysis identifies challenges including students' adapting to new work environments, navigating workplace practices, and developing occupational capacities. Workplace supervisors' and host educational institutions' support suggests interns' adaptability can be enhanced by promoting the relations between the support they received, on the one hand, and their engagement with challenges during internships, on the other. These findings offer an understanding about the experiences and outcomes of interns' learning through workplaces and offer implications for supporting and augmenting transitions into working life.

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This paper outlines the potential roles for vocational educators in developing workplace learning arrangements. The author discusses a series of activities referred to as developing the ‘learning curriculum’ which is a central task for vocational educators. These activities include: establishing a learning pathway; organising support and guidance; structuring access to authentic activities; and recognition of skills acquired in the workplace. Show less

This article proposes lifelong learning as a socio-personal process and a personal fact. As such, it is conceptually distinct from an educational provision, which constitutes one kind of institutional fact. In making this distinction, this article seeks to elaborate a major flaw in the precepts for conceptualisation and enactment of the report 'Learning through life', thereby proposing it as being ill-informed, partial, of limited use and dangerous as it could lead to the misrepresentation, marginalisation and undermining of a broadly premised provision of adult learning. The emphasis on educational provisions rather than individuals' learning and the diversity of settings in which individuals learn stand as major flaws that seemingly arise from the authors' perspectives and stakeholder interests. Largely neglected throughout is the scholarship on adult learning and development across individuals' life courses. Instead, miscellaneous and unhelpful sources inform the report. The overall recommendations reflect a view of human development that was abandoned decades ago as being unhelpful, and whose rejection is now more pertinent than ever. Moreover, it largely rehearses in educational discourse and unquestioningly the value of taught courses, ignoring the importance and ubiquity of learning experiences outside of courses. Across the report's discussion, and shaping its recommendations, lifelong learning is presented as an institutional rather than a personal process. It is erroneously claimed to be something that social institutions do rather than individuals. In doing so, a misinformed and inaccurate account of lifelong learning emerges and a narrow conception of how learning might best be promoted and supported is advanced. The great threat within this document is to promote a form of learning support that lends itself to regulation and control. The peril here is that other circumstances and settings in which learning occurs will be ignored or marginalised. In all, not only is this report an opportunity lost, but it also represents a significant threat to an important and viable field of human and societal development.

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There is a growing global concern about providing effective continuing education and training (CET) to support and sustain the employability of working-age populations. More than enhancing workplace viability and employability, CET also assists in achieving governments' economic and social goals. Educational institutions organise CET provisions based on intended goals, resources, capacities, and institutional imperatives. However, working-age adults' effective engagement and worthwhile outcomes are likely to be strongest when what is afforded them is aligned with their goals, needs and readiness to participate. Thus, what constitutes effective CET provisions can be best understood by appraising them through how they secure individuals' engagement and meet their needs.

Drawing on an investigation of CET provisions in Singapore, this paper seeks to illuminate and appraise what constitutes qualities of effective CET provisions in relation to addressing issues of relevance, accessibility and quality of engagement with educational experiences. Through analyses of interview and survey data, the motivations for informants' CET participation, their preferences and requirements for effective engagement in CET including desirable qualities of teachers were identified and delineated. Given that adults elect to participate in CET to achieve personal and professional outcomes, the findings provide bases for designing, enacting and evaluating effective CET programmes.

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Global concerns about the growing impact of ageing populations on workplace productivity and on welfare budgets have led to a range of government-supported measures intended to retain and upskill older workers. Yet, a consistent theme in the research literature is that older workers are reluctant and harder to train than younger workers, and that, regardless, employers are ambivalent about supporting such training. However, a survey of over 250 mature-age workers in mainly professional and administrative (i.e. 'white collar') roles identified strong interest and belief in their capacity to engage in learning required to maintain their employability, and that their employers are often supportive of their ongoing education and training. The data also indicate that these workers found personal worth in their work, felt respected and acknowledged by co-workers, and wanted to contribute more fully to their workplaces. These findings not only contradict what is consistently reported elsewhere, but suggest that age per se may not be the factor that shapes perceptions of older workers' employability, but the kinds of employment and level of education held by older workers. Therefore, extending the working lives of these valued 'white collar' workers might need to be realised through continuing to provide them with opportunities for rich work and further development to sustain their capacities and interest in contributing to their work and workplaces.

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Understanding what constitutes learning across working life and how negotiating worklife transitions can be best supported has never been more important for working age adults, their workplaces and communities. The kinds and frequencies of changes in occupational and workplace requirements have consequences for personal goals, workplace viability and communities' economic and social wellbeing. Hence, for both individual and societal purposes we need to elaborate the goals for and processes of that learning and what constitutes educative worklife experiences. Drawing on a three-phase investigation of adults' worklife learning the kinds and qualities of the educative experiences directly or indirectly guiding, supporting and extending individuals' learning and development are elaborated. This includes pathways of experiences across working life: personal curriculums. The paper reports and discusses the data from: (i) worklife narratives and follow-up interviews, and (ii) 18-month monitoring of work and learning of a cohort of workers. It furthers the case for viewing lifelong learning and lifelong education as being distinct and seperate phenomena, the interdependence among the contributions of adults, their educational experiences and those provided by their communities, leading to the explanatory concepts of personal curriculum and educative experiences to illuminate and elaborate learning and development across working life.

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Forthcoming article first published online 15 June 2023 by Taylor and Francis. Show less

This article examines how social sources influence individuals’ thinking, acting and construction of knowledge. Recognising both cognitive and sociocultural constructivist perspectives, it proposes that the particular situations in which individuals engage in vocational activities should be included in frameworks which seek to explain the social genesis of knowledge and its construction by individuals. Engagement in these activities is held to lead to the transformation of individuals’ knowledge through an active and reciprocal process of knowledge construction and reinforcement. This engagement furnishes access to knowledge which is shaped by social sources comprising situational factors and sociocultural and historical levels of development. Learning is viewed as the outcome of participation in activities within particular situations. Individuals’ existing knowledge interacts with that sourced in history, culture and community during engagement in goal-directed activity. Therefore, views about relationships among social sources, thinking and learning need extending to incorporate more fully the roles that particular social circumstances play in the construction of individuals’ knowledge. Consequently, the Vygotskian levels of development need to be augmented by the inclusion of the unique complexes of situational factors of communities of practice where individuals engage in goal-directed activities. However, despite this it is claimed that cognition is not situated, rather being the product of interpretative engagement with social sources which are manifested in particular situations. This view has consequences for the planning of curriculum for vocational education associated with views about curriculum goals, instruction and approach to assessment.

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The competency-based approach to vocational education is premised on narrow and dated conceptions of human functioning, performance and development. Its adoption is more driven by administrative concerns about measurable outcomes than educational processes and outcomes. Informed by educational science and earlier debates, this article discusses the goals for and approaches to realising the outcomes that governments and supra-governmental agencies want. It emphasises the centrality of (1) experiences promoting students' learning, (2) understanding the goals to be achieved by vocational education, and (3) aligning these with educational processes. Common to individuals, their communities, workplaces, professional associations and government needs are the development of applicable and adaptable occupational capacities. Yet these cannot be secured or assessed through competency-based education. The capacities required for current and emerging occupational practice necessitate a focus upon processes, not measurable outcomes. Hence, there is need to focus on learners' personal practices and educational processes.

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In this article, the author proposes bases for a workplace pedagogy. Workplaces afford opportunities for vocational learning through engagement in everyday work tasks, direct guidance, e.g. interactions with work colleagues, and indirect guidance, e.g. observing and listening in the workplace. However, the quality of learning through these activities ultimately relies on the workplace’s participatory practices. These practices determine the shape and distribution of the activities and support the workplace affordances available to workers from which they learn. These workplace affordances are underpinned by situational and political processes. Participatory practices are reciprocally constructed because individuals make their own decisions about how to engage in and learn from what workplaces afford them. The author proposes that a workplace pedagogy is instituted in these coparticipatory practices and needs to consider how workplaces encourage access to activities and guidance and how the workers themselves choose to participate in what the workplace affords them. Show less

Recently the meaning of lifelong learning has been transformed by economic imperatives from a focus on securing personal development to individuals’ maintenance of their vocational practice throughout their working lives. This paper proposes an account of learning at work as a component of individuals’ development across their lifespan. It argues that learning throughout working life is an inevitable product of everyday thinking and acting, shaped by the work practices in which individuals participate. However, the quality of learning is contingent on the kinds of activities individuals engage in and the guidance they can access. These contributions are referred to as the activities and interdependencies afforded by the workplace. Continuities and discontinuities in development through working life can be understood in part by patterns of participation in these social practices. Yet there is tension between individuals’ interest in participation and the affordance of the work practices in which they act. It is proposed that, although able to regulate their participation, ultimately individuals’ ability to maintain their vocational practice is constrained by the way workplaces afford opportunities for engagement and interactions.

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