LLinE Lifelong Learning in Europe

Orientation

In this special issue, a number of studies on the developments in the field are analysed by renowned scholars in the Low Countries. The scope of the articles ranges from lifelong learning and employment to local learning centres and learning partnerships, with examples.
Kirschner and Thijssen focus on various conceptual aspects. They show that recent definitions of employability and lifelong learning are strongly related. Acquiring, maintaining, and using qualifications are essential components. They demonstrate that for employability as well as for lifelong learning the so-called employability competencies of two kinds play an important role: career competencies and learning competencies. A categorization is given for the two types. Both illustrate the importance of self-management in the present time.

Raemdonck, Thijssen and Valcke highlight the concept of self-management as one of the most important key competencies for employability and lifelong learning. However, the authors conclude that it is a rather elitist idea. Until now, research and practice have focused mainly on higher-qualified workers and managers. In the reported research, the concept is studied in both lower- and higher-qualified employees. Self-directedness in learning and career processes is compared in both lower- and higher-qualified employees. They studied also the influence of individual and contextual conditions on self-directedness in learning and career processes.

The described developments have their consequences for policy at different levels and they provoke changes in the way responsibilities are conceived. This is shown by Baert (the case of Flanders – Belgium) and van Dyck (the Netherlands) while the articles of Nieuwenhuis et al. and Baert et al. illustrate the impact of those shifts on practices of adult education itself.

Baert highlights the role of the Flemish and Belgian government in keeping up competencies of the workforce. In the contribution, he presents and discusses traditional as well as more recent policy measures such as paid educational leave, training vouchers, sector based training funds, competence assessment, career consultation, learning at the workplace and learning opportunities for older/ senior workers.

Van Dyck outlines, parallel to the contribution of Baert, the Dutch policy with regard to lifelong learning. She points out how budgetary restrictions, in combination with the need to raise the qualification levels presently attained through initial education and training, force governments to look for new ways of stimulating learning beyond the transition from school to work. International orientation shows potentially useful possibilities in this respect. Van Dyck examines to what extent the Dutch approach is actually imbedded in the Dutch policy concerning lifelong learning.

Nieuwenhuis, Jager and Mittendorff advocate a redesign of the relation between training and work as a result of the increased innovation and knowledge character of jobs at all levels. The challenge for VET and especially the VET colleges will be to recognise, to optimise, and to facilitate work-related learning. The question is how the Dutch VET can react effectively on these challenges of lifelong learning. To answer this question, work-related learning and new roles and routines for VET colleges are investigated by connecting case studies of learning processes in enterprises to delivery strategies of training professionals. The article presents results of the enterprise cases in the form of support demand characteristics. They can be used as input for co-configuration of work-related learning between VET college and enterprise.

Baert and De Rick in Flanders and Jager, Mittendorff and Nieuwenhuis in the Netherlands outline systems of apprenticeship. These different systems are expected to provide the learners with work-related, experience-based and just-in-time learning opportunities and to integrate workers in a community of practice and in a job career. The authors wonder if these expectations are really met in practice and under what conditions learning processes are stimulated or hindered. Furthermore, they ask about the different kinds of learning that can occur and the outcomes that are realized. Finally, critical success factors are examined in order to improve the quality of the learning component of an apprenticeship system. In order to answer these questions, the authors have developed a framework to analyze learning experiences.

Finally, Scheeren and Hake place employability and lifelong learning into a European perspective. They focus on the development of local learning centres and learning partnerships which is seen as one of the most important European goals to promote lifelong learning in all of the member countries. They define the concepts of learning centre and learning partnership and explore the relation between them. The article also deals with the importance of extending such learning centres and learning partnerships in widening the access to learning opportunities and employability. It provides the first descriptions of practices in the Netherlands and Flanders.

By focusing on some essential conceptual problems and key competencies for employability and lifelong learning and the consequences of recent developments for national and European government and practice, this issue offers some new outcomes at different levels from studies which emanate from the two countries.

Isabel Raemdonck and Jo Thijssen, Guest Editors