LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Editorial - Lifelong Learning and employability

Lifelong learning and employability in the Low Countries

In recent decades, Western Europe has been characterized by labour market related developments that influence lifelong learning: fast innovations, demand for more highly skilled workforce, continuous job mobility within and between organisations, and an increasing individual scope in paid labour.

An apt description of this transition from an industrial to a post-industrial society is the shift from public caretaking with relatively low-qualified jobs in the secondary sector to a more individualized self-managing culture with quite a lot of knowledge-intensive labour in the third sector. This phenomenon is also referred to as the transition from ‘brawn’ to ‘brains’ industries. The knowledge economy is emerging more strongly than ever. Manufacturing physical products is gradually being replaced by knowledge-intensive services. Knowledge is the cork on which the economy floats.

Due to these influences, the nature of lifelong learning, which can be seen as an ill-defined construct, has undergone some rather important changes (Hake & Van der Kamp 2001; Nijhof 2004; Van Damme 1996).

The views on permanent education and continuous learning that arose in the sixties and seventies (Faure et al., 1972; Schouten 1975) are reviving. Nevertheless, recent considerations show some obvious shifts in accent that can indicate the direction in which reflection on employees as education-users develops. These notions are confirmed in different studies from the OECD and UNESCO (e.g. Bassanini & Scarpetta 2001; Behringer & Coles 2002; Delors 1996). Two important shifts are the strong emphasis on social-economic aspects and the increased attention towards informal learning activities.

Emphasizing social-economic aspects
Lifelong learning and permanent education include both social-cultural and social-economic aspects. Nonetheless, the emphasis lies more and more on social-economic aspects, with the educational consumption also moving in that direction. The education-user is increasingly considered as a ‘homo economicus’, an individual working for pay, able to do so in various changing conditions. People are seen as human capital, some rationally worth further investment but the remainder redundant (Jarvis 2002,24).

Employability has become an important notion, a diffuse concept which can be defined as the employees’ ability to survive on the labour market in spite of the turbulence (Forrier & Sels 2003; Hall 1996; Hyatt 1995; Waterman, Waterman & Collard 1994). Work competences which guarantee transferability are considered to be very important, while self-directedness and the ability to manage on one’s own during working life are highly appreciated (Nijhof 2004; Baert et al., 2000; Glastra et al., 2004). Although lifelong learning is not the employees’ exclusive right, there is at least a strong focus on working life. The perceivable economic effects of education upon labour draw much attention, suggesting that the notions about ‘training for impact’ (e.g. Robinson & Robinson 1989) and ‘human performance’ (e.g. Stolovitch & Keeps 1992) have become widely accepted in society.

The focus of attention is on the relationship between education and labour productivity, i.e. on returns on investments, and on the relationship between education and labour participation, i.e. on employment effects. The understanding of such matters, however, has so far not been satisfying at all. Research has not provided results of the economic effects education has on labour for policymakers to have a solid foundation for legitimizing far-reaching policy decisions. It is not unthinkable that the relationship between education on the one hand, and labour productivity and labour participation on the other, is of a more indirect and interactive nature than is often presumed. (see also Van der Kamp 1995)

Much attention for the 'homo economicus' has a reverse side too. Inevitably, the increasing focus on social-economic aspects is at the cost of social-cultural ones. Nowadays, aspects of modern citizenship (Bellamy & Warleigh 2001; Boggs 1991; Olesen 2004), aimed at adequate functioning in a broader sense and at participating in society, draw proportionally much less attention in discussions on social-cultural permanent education than before. The underlying reason could be that labour, in particular paid labour, is nowadays an important entry to every form of societal participation and functioning. It is obvious that such approach may have various unwanted consequences.
Today, a full participation in society requires a fair amount of intellectual, social-emotional and technological competences that are susceptible for obsolescence. These citizenship competencies will be maintained in case of sufficient participation in the labour market. They often belong to the absolute minimum requirements for getting a job, even at a relatively low level.

Citizenship obsolescence, which can easily arise when people are unemployed for a longer period, could become an extra problem in case one attempts to return to the labour market. Therefore, prevention of citizenship obsolescence may have important trade-off effects, which might easily be overlooked when one fixates too strongly on social-economic educational aspects. A closer examination of this is, however, not within the scope of this argumentation.

Emphasizing informal learning activities
In the conceptualization of lifelong learning and permanent education, one can perceive another important shift in accent. Both lifelong learning and permanent education imply formal as well as informal learning activities: lessons at school, post-academic education, self-education, on-the-job training, study circles, and educational programmes on radio and television. None of these opportunities is to be neglected. It would be a misunderstanding to assume that permanent education is limited to lessons at school and that lifelong learning is limited to extra-curricular activities. In the past, at the time when lifelong learning was emerging in Europe, such restrictions were never a point of discussion (see among Faure 1972; Schouten 1975). Yet, in recent years, one can detect a shift in accent in the sense that there is increasing attention for informal learning activities, both among employees that enjoy retraining, and potential employees that attend regular education. The time when education-use was reduced to participation in training and development programmes lies far behind us.

In the societal and scientific agenda, informal learning cannot be set aside any longer. The attention is justified because of the extra possibilities that it brings about to survive in a changing working environment. Yet, theorizing and empirical studies are in their infancy. The latter is, among other things, illustrated by the large variety of concepts and by the strong fragmentation of available research. Scientific research cannot yet support suggestions that informal learning activities are of greater importance than formal ones, or that they are interchangeable.

For the time being, it seems to be important that education-users and policy makers focus upon ‘and/and’ options instead of ‘or/or’ options (see Baert 2002). As regards regular education before entering the labour market, results indicate that a combination of informal learning paths and rather specific vocationally oriented contents seem to lead to diplomas that offer less advantageous employment opportunities and that give less perspective upon retraining chances aimed at surviving at the labour market (see Borghans & Heijke 1997).

Reflection on these shifts
The shifts in accent, as described above, indicate how strongly the conceptualization about lifelong learning is intertwined with and focused on working life. This is not only true for adult education, i.e. the post-initial phase, but also for the youth education, i.e. the initial phase.
On the one hand, this is not without importance for the upcoming knowledge economy in which employees have to operate as knowledge workers that are able to manage themselves. On the other hand, a further narrowing view about permanent education is definitely not without danger. Herein lies the rationale for a further reflection upon the responsibility of the government. An important focus of attention for the government is to ensure that this strong emphasis on work competences is not at the cost of citizenship competences.

A second focus of attention concerns the work competences which are acquired in an informal way: formal learning activities generally lead to certificates and diplomas which are recognized elsewhere in case of mobility beyond the organisation. Promoting initiatives to regulate the recognition of informally learned competences is of less importance for individual organisations than it is for the changing society as a whole: in view of the external effects, this constitutes an important task for the government.

A third focus of attention is related to the acquisition of employability skills, in particular of learning competences and career competences. If they becomes essential for survival on the labour market, it is up to the government to make sure that these competences are part of the objectives of educational programs that precede entering the labour market.

Nevertheless, it should be mentioned that as yet, for certain categories of employees self-management of an individual that operates as a private strategist and lifelong learner on the changing labour market is more a desire than a reality. First of all, one should think of the lower-qualified workers, who often drop out of the educational system. We cannot expect of them a high degree of self-directedness in learning and career. For their lifelong learning, one can rather expect that they need adaptive learning situations which take into account the shortcomings that already appeared during initial education (Raemdonck, Thijssen & Valcke 2004; Thijssen 1992). Informal interactions in learning situations, clear structure of the content and positive feedback will be of major interest for low-qualified workers (Raemdonck & Van Damme 2000).

A second category of workers that will probably require extra attention, consists of the older workers that have been selected for quite different qualities, and who have performed the same kind of labour within the same organisation for a long time, without having enjoyed much broadening education. They have a more than average danger for obsolescence (Kaufman 1996; Pazy 2004; Thijssen & Van der Heijden 2003). If the extent of obsolescence is not too high, a lengthy and careful transition trajectory might lead to up-to-date skills and to an increased self-management, but this cannot be taken for granted. After all, the current generation of older workers has followed initial education in a period in which absorption and docility at school were expected, rather than self-management and self-directedness in learning situations.
It is clear that the initial phase in regular education has to have an adequate plan and design as an essential preparation for the changing labour market with continuous learning demands. The relationship between the initial and the post-initial phase seems to increase in importance. It therefore seems to be risky if governments in many countries, for example from the viewpoint of costs, emphasize the division between initial and post-initial education. Especially in an individualized polity, as a result of such a division the present differences in participating in education will grow, and even cause similar differences in working conditions. This phenomenon is also indicated as the Matthew effect: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (Cantillon 1995; Deleeck et al, 1983; DeKlerk 1992; Walberg & Tsai 1983; Bollens & Vanhoren 2003).

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Isabel Raemdonck Ghent University, Belgium, Paul Kirschner, Open University of the Netherlands and Jo Thijssen Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Guest Editors of this issue