Authors
Sarojni Choy, Raymond Smith
Description
Throughout this book, learning beyond post compulsory schooling to maintain individuals’ capacities for productive work, licensing and on-going employability is described in various terms–professional development, continuing professional development, on-going development, ongoing occupational development, workplace training, etc. For simplicity, in this chapter we use the term continuing education and training to interpret learning beyond contemporary post compulsory schooling as described by the terms mentioned above. Regardless of the terminologies to describe post compulsory education and training or how learning is organised, engagement in ongoing learning is now a necessity to sustain productivity, innovation, employability within and across occupations, and societal well-being in a highly competitive global environment. Learning through these arrangements commonly follows the orthodoxies of schooling (Schuller & Watson, 2009) where the curriculum is designed to teach and assess individuals. Yet, the case studies in this book illustrate several models extending from learning that takes place wholly in educational institutions across educational institutions, to those based wholly in the workplace and provided by in-house trainers, product suppliers and trainers from registered training organisations. These cases challenge the prevailing models of ongoing work-learning provisions based on initial occupational preparation, suggesting that such provisions alone are inappropriate for the effective ongoing development of workers’ capacities and that other, more work-and worker-directed models offer greater opportunities for …