Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning: Practices and Policies 9819939585, 9789819939589

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Professional and Practice-based Learning

Stephen Billett Henning Salling Olesen Laurent Filliettaz   Editors

Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning Practices and Policies

Professional and Practice-based Learning Volume 35

Series Editors Stephen Billett , Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia Christian Harteis, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany Hans Gruber, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

Professional and practice-based learning brings together international research on the individual development of professionals and the organisation of professional life and educational experiences. It complements the Springer journal Vocations and Learning: Studies in vocational and professional education. Professional learning, and the practice-based processes that often support it, are the subject of increased interest and attention in the fields of educational, psychological, sociological, and business management research, and also by governments, employer organisations and unions. This professional learning goes beyond, what is often termed professional education, as it includes learning processes and experiences outside of educational institutions in both the initial and ongoing learning for the professional practice. Changes in these workplaces requirements usually manifest themselves in the everyday work tasks, professional development provisions in educational institution decrease in their salience, and learning and development during professional activities increase in their salience. There are a range of scientific challenges and important focuses within the field of professional learning. These include: • understanding and making explicit the complex and massive knowledge that is required for professional practice and identifying ways in which this knowledge can best be initially learnt and developed further throughout professional life. • analytical explications of those processes that support learning at an individual and an organisational level. • understanding how learning experiences and educational processes might best be aligned or integrated to support professional learning. The series integrates research from different disciplines: education, sociology, psychology, amongst others. The series is comprehensive in scope as it not only focuses on professional learning of teachers and those in schools, colleges and universities, but all professional development within organisations. Please contact Grace Ma at [email protected] if you wish to discuss a book proposal.

Stephen Billett  •  Henning Salling Olesen Laurent Filliettaz Editors

Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning Practices and Policies

Editors Stephen Billett Faculty of Education Griffith University Mount Gravatt, QLD, Australia

Henning Salling Olesen Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark

Laurent Filliettaz Faculty of Psychology & Educational Science University of Geneva Corsier, Switzerland

ISSN 2210-5549     ISSN 2210-5557 (electronic) Professional and Practice-based Learning ISBN 978-981-99-3958-9    ISBN 978-981-99-3959-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Series Editor’s Foreword

A principal concern and focus for the Professional and Practice-based Learning book series is to understand and support the learning and development of working age adults. That is, to illuminate, elaborate and inform conceptual development as well as policy and practice about how the learning of those adults can be supported in ways that assist them to remain competent in their professional practice and work settings, and able to respond effectively to the inevitable challenges and new requirements that emerge across working life. Central here is the role that practice – the engagement in activities associated with those occupations and the learning and development that arises from it – place in that project. All this builds on assumptions that adults continue to learn across their working lives and, often, much of that arises through their engagement in occupational practices as they respond to everyday activities and emerging challenges. However, it is not possible to proceed with any certainty in our understandings or practices to support, guide and promote working age adults learning without clear understandings about the kinds of learning that is required for them to secure, how they are able to secure that learning and how others or institutions can best support that learning and development. Certainly, orthodox proposals such as engaging entire working age populations in structured educational programs seem unrealistic ways forward as they are beyond the resources of most countries and interests of those adults. Consequently, it is important to identify how that learning and development can be best supported for these adults on their own terms and the kinds of circumstances that are amenable to and they can access and engage with what are likely to be most effective educative experiences. All of that is premised upon having informing concepts and empirical data so that conclusions drawn, actions proposed and understandings deepened progress on the basis of evidence. The fundamental here is a more informed set of understandings about adults learning and development across the work lifespan. Ordinarily, such accounts would find themselves within the broad discipline of adult learning and education. However, by tradition, much of what is proposed within that discipline is premised upon speculation rather than evidence-­ informed concepts and premises. So, there is an urgent need for accounts, findings and conclusions borne out of the working age adults’ experiences and that are used v

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to advance this broad field. It follows also that specific considerations of professional and practice-based learning need to be informed by such contributions. It follows that this volume  – Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning: Practices and Policies  – makes an important contribution to this book series, and more broadly the fields of professional and practice-based learning and adult learning and development more generally. Its principal focus appears pragmatic: employability. However, that employability comprises working age adults’ ability to secure employment, retain that employment whilst workplace practices and occupational requirements are constantly transforming and the capacity to advance careers, become more multifaceted occupationally. These abilities are central to working age adults’ sense of self, and abilities to provide for themselves and their families and contribute to their communities. It is much more than paid work, although that is important. So, the initial and further development of occupational and work-related capacities are central to working age adults. Moreover, and as emphasised within this volume, it is also important to provide the goods and services that communities want and need as well as the viability of the public and private sector enterprises in which that work is undertaken. Moreover, collectively those capacities are central to nation-states’ abilities to realise their social and economic goals. Hence, beyond the personal processes and legacies associated with learning across working life are important community and societal outcomes. The empirical work and theoretical advances set out in this volume make significant contributions in that way. Beyond those contributions are also the evolution of explanatory concepts that help understand how that learning and development occurs, and can be supported, including the significant transitions that working age adults need to negotiate across their working lives. In these ways, this volume makes a significant contribution to this book series and is timely and important contribution to the broader field of adult learning and development. Griffith University Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Stephen Billett

University of Regensburg Regensburg, Germany

Hans Gruber

Paderborn University Paderborn, Germany May 2023

Christian Harteis

Preface

Even in their most pragmatic form, supporting worklife learning arrangements that promote workers’ employability is more than securing employment. It also includes developing the capacities to remain employable across working life through adapting to changing occupational and workplace work requirements, thereby resisting unemployment, broaden occupational roles and securing advancement. Added here is for individuals to find personal fulfilment and worth in and through their work (i.e., it becomes one of their vocations). This learning is, therefore, more than honing what workers already know from their initial occupational preparation. It includes learning new kinds of knowledge in response to transformations in occupational requirements and particular workplace needs, as well as responding to changes in the demand for occupations. For instance, digital technologies enabling much current work increasingly require levels of symbolic and conceptual knowledge that are quite distinct from those requiring haptic, sensory, or manual capacities that were privileged earlier (i.e., skilful craft knowledge). Those capacities were acquired through direct experiencing through sensory processes reliant on physical manipulation. They also extend to individuals adapting their working knowledge to new roles or even occupations. For instance, there is need for workers skilled in an industry that is in decline in demand (e.g., coal mining) to adapt what they know and can do to other forms of work. This learning likely extends to individuals accommodating changes to their sense of self as a particular kind of worker that is central to how adults identify themselves. Securing those outcomes is often referred to as “lifelong learning” or “learning across working life”, which is of growing interest to governments, workplaces, professional bodies and workers themselves. Governments want skilled and flexible national workforces able to respond effectively to changes in economic circumstances and sustain their workplaces’ viability and for workers to take responsibility for maintaining their employability. Public and private sector workplaces need workers able to adapt to changing of work requirements and customer/client needs. Workers of all kinds need to maintain their occupational capacities to sustain their employability, adapt to changing work requirements and secure advancement.

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For all these stakeholders, workers’ initial occupational preparation, often occurring in their early adulthood, is insufficient to sustain employability across lengthening working lives. This volume 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. The volume 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. A central goal for the inquiry was to understand the kinds of occupational, work and/or workplace transitions working age adults had encountered, how they had negotiated them and what had contributed to the learning and development that supported their employability both between and during these transitions. The three phrases of this inquiry comprised, firstly, life history interviews (Salling-Olesen, 2016) with over 60 mature age working Australians from diverse backgrounds comprising a long narrative interview and then a follow-up interaction that probed, clarified and extended the data from the first interview. During this phase, a sample of approximately 20 workers were interviewed and their worklife learning and transitions was monitored over an 18-month period. That period coincided with the impacts of COVID-19, and some of the informants were adversely affected by the outcomes of the pandemic. Secondly, a survey was conducted to engage a broader set of respondents to test, verify and extend what was found in the first phase. This included engaging with Indigenous and migrant refugee working age adults to illuminate and elaborate their specific experiences. Thirdly, a consolidation of findings was advanced, drawing out deductions and addressing procedural questions about enhancing everyday learning activities (i.e., improving practice in workplaces and tertiary education) and generating specific policy recommendations for workplace and governmental considerations. The research team comprised seven researchers with distinct conceptual, disciplinary and ontological emphases. Hence, the qualitative and quantitative data derived from the three phases of enquiry were engaged in different ways by these researchers. Consequently, 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 is those diverse perspectives, as well as common threads and considerations, that are advanced through this monograph. Part of the project for this manograph is to elaborate more fully understandings about the processes of adults’ learning and development across their lifespan of adulthood referred to as working life. Many of the explanations advanced through the contributions in this volume are about understanding the processes of learning and the learners’ development across and through working life, and what factors and contributions supported that learning. This is seen as being an important contribution to understanding what constitutes the needs for and purposes of learning for working life. Much theorising about adult learning and development is prone to be based on generalised and abstract agendas, mostly from an outside perspective, rather than being empirically driven and guided. Yet, such a task respects and

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demands that no one perspective can fully account for these complex and multilevelled processes. Hence, diverse perspectives are presented and advanced here through engagement with the data by the contributors, and yet also attempts to integrate them in a comprehensive view about development across the work lifespan and how that can be supported by education provisions, workplaces, communities and of course by the adults themselves. This goal is exercised through the structure of this book.

Structure of Edited Monograph This edited monograph is structured into three discrete parts. Part I comprises two chapters that offer overviews and conclusions from the collective contributions to the actual project. Chapter “Adults’ Worklife Learning” – introduces and discusses the premises for seeking to understand learning across working life and consideration of adults’ learning informed by and associated with the learning, development and transitions that constitute adults’ working lives. It provides an overview of the research project undertaken, and summary of key findings, conclusions and contributions. This includes a synthesis of the contributions from worklife histories, interviews with working age adult informants and survey respondents. Chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning” – draws on the research project’s collective contributions to identify factors and processes contributing to and supporting adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability and how these inform educational and workplace policies and practices. It discusses dimensions of what constitutes employability and then drawing on the findings from both the life history interviews and survey identifies policy and practice implications for how government, educational institutions, workplace and workers might contribute to that employability. Part II comprises six chapters that are instrumental in the reporting of the findings of the practical enquiries that are captured in the next two parts. Chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review” – makes a case about learning across working life from relevant the literature about how that learning can be understood from a range of disciplinary perspectives and conceptions. It outlines and discusses sets of conceptual considerations that inform those sections and chapters reporting the outcomes of worklife history interviews and the survey. Chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures”  – describes and justifies the practical inquiries that constituted the phases of investigation. These comprise discussions and considerations about the two phases of the life history interviews of 66 working age Australians and the survey of many more used to verify and extend the findings from those interviews. The aim here in these two chapters is to provide an account of the conceptual heritage that informs the study and to save repeating the accounts of methods and procedures in each of the chapters reporting either the life history interview or survey data. Chapter “Employability and Work Life History” – provides a justification and conceptual account for the use

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of the life history method, its formulation and application in practice. It elaborates the orientation and utility of such approach and provides examples of how the author’s perspective is translated into its use in the analysis of life history narratives. In the context of societal development, it points out the significance of the life history perspective for policy and practice. Another perspective in the use of the life history method is provided in chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”. This chapter draws upon the lived experience of a sample of indigenous Australians and their worklife histories to illuminate their experiences. The following chapter offers yet another accounting characterisation of these worklife histories through capturing the transitions that they negotiated in terms of iconic concepts. Chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”  – offers a grounded account of ways of characterising these transitions in a set of distinct and sometimes interrelated trajectories. Finally, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation” – also advances and discusses transitions as key elements of worklife histories and how these are manifested across the entire sample of working age Australians. It seeks to identify the imperatives which bring about those transitions, the changes they comprise and how these are manifested in different ways amongst the working age population. Part III, comprising six chapters, elaborates the aspects of worklife learning. The first two chapters offer two explanatory bases for elaborating, understanding and supporting worklife learning. The first of these contributions focuses on reappraising what constitutes lifelong education, advancing a broader concept and position it more inclusively with the societal affordances that support and guide adults learning and development (Chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”). The second of these contributions focuses on the legacies of continuous and accumulative paths or tracks of experiences (Chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). It offers a means to understand the pathways created and then journeyed along by working age adults as these become increasingly central concerns for the development of human capacities and contributions across the working lives. Chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning” – explores the role and place of literacy in the kinds of experiences adults encounter when they negotiate worklife transitions across their life course. It contributes to appraising and reflecting on the kinds of learning and agency arising from literate practices and their contributions to the richness, diversity and heterogeneity of educational provisions encountered by adults across working life. Whilst the above-mentioned contributions in this part tend to focus on learning across working life, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education” illuminates the contributions of tertiary education and recommending about curriculum-related imperatives to support individuals’ worklife learning. The final two chapters in this part aim to understand from a larger and more inclusive samples of how working age Australians have learnt across their working lives and in what ways such learning can be supported, drawing on the survey data. The first of these focuses on learning across working life of working age Australians (Chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). It contributes to advancing further the findings from the worklife narratives (contributions of individuals,

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education and community in mediating individuals’ worklife learning), and identifying in what ways these contributions are applicable to a broader population of working age Australians. The final chapter focuses on perspectives about practices and strategies by government, workplaces, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults to support worklife learning (Chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). The rankings of proposed practices and strategies and their differences by cultural/ethnic background, age and gender provide some bases to offer recommendations about how governments, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults might come to promote employability across working lives. Brisbane, QLD, Australia Roskilde, Denmark Corsier, Switzerland June 2023

Stephen Billett Henning Salling Olesen Laurent Filliettaz

Acknowledgements

The editorial team would like to acknowledge the range of institutional, personal and professional contributions that have supported the production of this text. Principally, we wish to acknowledge the funding agency – the Australian Research Council Discovery Scheme – for providing the financial support which has made possible the reviews of literature, the practical inquiries and the support for organising and analysing the data. Also acknowledged is the support provided by Griffith University, the University of Roskilde and the University of Geneva, whose in-kind contributions have permitted the three Chief Investigators to dedicate time to this project. Also, we would like to acknowledge the engagement and contributions of our colleagues Prof Sarojni Choy, Dr Raymond Smith and Dr Debbie Bargallie. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the exemplary support of Dr Anh Hai Le who is the Research Fellow on this project and whose contributions have been essential in realising the outcomes of the project and also this volume. Moreover, we are incredibly grateful for the working age adults who allowed us to interview them and their openness in providing detailed accounts about their working lives, patiently tolerated are additional questions and follow-up interviews. Some of those interviews were enabled by members of refugee migrant support groups that were able to reach out and allow us to gather data from informants who might not otherwise have been able to contribute. In addition, the editorial team would like to thank and acknowledge the contributions provided in each of the chapters by our colleagues who have committed time and effort to undertake research and submit their chapters for this volume, and also engage in the review of other chapters and responded to requests for revisions and refinements.

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Contents

Part I Worklife Learning and Employability Adults’ Worklife Learning������������������������������������������������������������������������������    3 Stephen Billett, Laurent Filliettaz, and Henning Salling Olesen Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning����������������������������������������������������������������������������   23 Stephen Billett, Sarojni Choy, and Henning Salling Olesen Part II Elaborating and Investigating Worklife Learning  The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review��������������������������   55 Stephen Billett, Anh Hai Le, Sarojni Choy, and Raymond Smith Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   83 Anh Hai Le, Stephen Billett, Henning Salling Olesen, and Debbie Bargallie  Employability and Work Life History�����������������������������������������������������������  101 Henning Salling Olesen Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories������������������������������������������������������������������������  127 Debbie Bargallie  The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions ������������������������������������������������������  145 Raymond Smith Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation ��������������������������������������  171 Stephen Billett, Anh Hai Le, and Laurent Filliettaz

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Part III Elaborating and Investigating Worklife Learning to - An Australian Case Study  Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences������������������������������  191 Stephen Billett  Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’��������  209 Stephen Billett  Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning ����������  229 Laurent Filliettaz  Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education����������������������������  261 Sarojni Choy and Anh Hai Le  earning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia��������������������������������  285 L Anh Hai Le, Sarojni Choy, Raymond Smith, and Stephen Billett Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������  307 Stephen Billett, Anh Hai Le, and Henning Salling Olesen Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  337

Part I

Worklife Learning and Employability

All kinds and classifications of workers need to learn across working life to sustain their employability, contribute to their workplaces’ viability and, collectively, the economic and social welfare of the state in which they live. That need arises to respond to the changing requirements of occupational practice and workplace performance brought about by changes in technologies, innovations in practice, ways of working and fulfilling the need of those that the occupation serves either through the provision of goods or services. Consequently, understanding and responding to this need to continually learn across working life is an important imperative for individuals, their workplaces, communities and nation states. It is advancing ways to address these important personal and societal goals that this book seeks to contribute through its sections and chapters. This opening section comprises two chapters that offer overviews and conclusions from the collective contributions to the chapters within this volume. The first chapter “Adults’ Worklife Learning” – introduces and discusses the premises for seeking to understand learning across working life and consideration of adults’ learning informed by and associated with the learning, development and transitions that constitute adults’ working lives. It provides an overview of the research project undertaken, and summary of key findings, conclusions, and contributions. This includes a synthesis of the contributions from worklife histories, interviews with working age adult informants and survey respondents. The second chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Working Life” – draws on the research project’s collective contributions to identify factors and processes contributing to and supporting adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability and how these inform educational and workplace policies and practices. It discusses dimensions of what constitutes employability and then drawing on the findings from both the life history interviews and survey identifies general policy and practice implications for how government, educational institutions, workplace and workers might contribute to that employability.

Adults’ Worklife Learning Stephen Billett

, Laurent Filliettaz, and Henning Salling Olesen

Abstract Adults learning effectively across their lengthening working life has become a key personal and social imperative. In distinct ways, addressing governmental, workplace and worker concerns and goals are all associated with working age adults’ employability. That is, as far as they are able, to become and remain currently occupationally competent, contribute to their workplaces’ viability, furnish the goods and services that their communities want and need and, collectively, contribute to the economic and social well-being of their nation state. Achieving these outcomes requires accounting for the duality of how economic and work changes are manifested, and individuals’ engagement in, learning for and negotiating working lives progresses. This includes accounting for and negotiating changing work requirements, the organisation and processes adopted by workplaces and changes to them. These are central to individuals’ employability, as they comprise how paid work is undertaken, what and how they can learn, and their performance is judged. These changes can also challenge workers’ sense of self and impact their confidence and agency as learners. This is particularly the case when they must negotiate key transitions brought about by relocation, changes in occupations, work, or personal and family circumstances. Learning for and through such transitions is premised in individuals’ abilities and readiness to engage effectively in work activities, the support provided by workplaces, educational provisions and communities always mediated by their own agency, capacities and readiness. So, there is a need to understand further about how workers come to engage in and actively learn through and for their work life and negotiate worklife transitions. Hence, this opening chapter of this volume discusses the premises for needing to understand what S. Billett (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Filliettaz University of Geneva, Corsier, Switzerland H. Salling Olesen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_1

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constitutes learning across working life and adults’ learning and development across lengthening working lives. As a means of elaborating these issues, it also overviews the premises of a program of research that informs the contributions to this volume, before elaborating the contributions of each of the chapters to understandings about adults’ learning across working life. In sum, it seeks to both introduce, foreshadow, and summarise the key contributions about adults’ worklife learning. Keywords  Working life · Worklife learning · Learning · Development · Transitions · Lifelong learning · Lifelong education · Educative experience · Life history · Readiness · Tertiary education · Subjectivity

Understanding Worklife Learning Worklife learning, as a concept discussed and elaborated here, comprises the learning that occurs through and is required for effective participation in paid employment. More than just being learning about and for their occupations, there are broader capacities that need to be learnt for effective engagement in working life and individuals’ sense of self and achieving their personal goals. Certainly, much of that learning is associated with being able to perform a particular occupation, whose purposes have arisen through history, culture and can have situationally specific forms and requirements in workplaces. These occupations exist because they address particular human or societal needs, but their enactment is often shaped by the particular circumstances (i.e., workplaces) in which they are employed. There are also transformed as those societal situational requirements change. Preparation for occupations is often the major focus of tertiary education (i.e., vocational and higher), and in the transition between schooling and participation in working life. That preparation focuses on what novices need to know (i.e., conceptual knowledge), do (i.e., procedural knowledge) and value (i.e., dispositional knowledge) associated with the specific occupational practice. This might also include developing the domain specific canonical knowledge of the occupation. That is, the knowledge that any practitioner would be required to know about, achieve goals and in ways that are commensurate with the effective practice of that occupation. A key challenge for that initial occupational preparation is how students come to translate and negotiate the canonical occupational knowledge they have learnt in educational institutions to the specific circumstances in which they come to employ them in work settings beyond graduation. That is, for many, an initial transition must be negotiated to effectively enter paid working life. Yet, that initial preparation is insufficient for a lifetime of practising an occupation because the requirements for its enactment and performance constantly change as the technologies that are used, the procedures adopted and practices enacted, and the needs of those who engage with or consume the goods and services they generate all evolve. It follows then that remain employable and contribute to the enterprise in which individuals are employed requires adults to continue to learn across

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their working lives to maintain their occupational competence and extend it when responding to emerging challenges brought about by technological change, workplace practices and the wants and needs of those whom the occupation serve. However, occupational knowledge alone is not sufficient for an effective working life. In addition, there are attributes associated with being able to engage in work situations through personal practices associated with responsibility (i.e., punctual, reliable diligence), problem-solving, working effectively with others, being goaldirected and having both initiative and an interest in innovation. This listing is not to be taken as those always directed by the individual to the workplace (i.e., meeting workplace imperatives). Primarily perhaps, it is about how they view themselves as a worker and an occupational practitioner. That is, their sense of self or subjectivity as working age adult who wants to be seen as being competent, respected by others and worthy of the occupation by which they describe themselves. Of course, these qualities also, when directed towards their enterprise, are important for its viability and progress. But central here is individuals’ subjectivity because it is this that often drives their conscious engagement in their work and learning and is central to their sense of self as working age adults. Consequently, even in their most pragmatic form, supporting work-life learning arrangements that promote workers’ employability is more than securing employment. It also includes developing the capacities to remain employable across working life through adapting to changing occupational and workplace requirements, thereby resisting unemployment, broadening occupational roles, and securing advancement. Added here, is for individuals to find personal fulfilment and worth in and through their work (i.e., it becomes one of their vocations) dispositioning. This learning is more than honing what workers already know from their initial occupational preparation. It includes learning new kinds of knowledge in response to transformations in occupational requirements and particular workplace needs, as well as responding to changes in the demand for occupations (Billett, 2006). For instance, digital technologies enabling much current work increasingly require levels of symbolic and conceptual knowledge that are quite distinct from those requiring haptic, sensory, or manual capacities that were privileged earlier (i.e., skilful craft knowledge). Those capacities were acquired through direct experiencing through sensory processes reliant on physical manipulation. They also extend to individuals adapting their working knowledge to new roles or even occupations. For instance, there is need for workers skilled in an industry that is in decline in demand (e.g., coal mining) to adapt what they know and can do to perform other kinds of work. Yet, this kind of transition can often be highly confronting as it challenges much of the working age adults’ sense of self as being competent work in one field and becoming a novice in another. The transfer of workers from mining or manufacturing into service work may bring with it significant challenges to these workers sense of self and therefore, beyond occupational preparation considerations of the consequences for their subjectivity need to be centre stage.

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Lifelong and Worklife Learning Securing these kinds of outcomes is often referred to being realised through “lifelong learning” or “learning across working life”, which is of growing interest to governments, workplaces, professional bodies and workers themselves. Governments want skilled and flexible national workforces able to respond effectively to changes in economic circumstances and sustain their workplaces’ viability (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006) and for workers to take responsibility for maintaining their employability (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Public and private sector workplaces need workers able to adapt to changing of work requirements and customer/client needs. As noted, workers of all kinds need to maintain their occupational capacities to sustain their employability (Noon et al., 2013), adapt to changing work requirements, and secure advancement (Billett, 2006), because their initial occupational preparation, often occurring in their early adulthood, is insufficient to sustain employability across lengthening working lives. The factors shaping adults’ worklife learning are distributed across their readiness (i.e., what they know, can do, and value) and ways of mediating experiences (i.e., their engagement, intentionality, and effort), on the one hand, and the contributions and affordances of a range of social institutions with which they interact (e.g., workplaces, educational provisions, community settings), on the other. That is, the duality between what is afforded or provided by workplaces, education institutions and communities and how individuals come to engage with what are afforded them. Together, these dualities are exercised in the activities and interactions through which what is needed/wanted to be learnt is made accessible and support is provided for its learning. Such affordances are invitations that, by degree, can be positive or negative (i.e., supporting or inhibiting access and learning). Yet, even then, what is afforded educatively by the social institutions, such as workplaces, education institutions and communities, is ultimately mediated by individuals themselves premised on their readiness, interest, and agency (Billett, 2009). It is they who decide intentionally with what suggestions and affordances being projected by the social world they engage, and with what degree of effort. All these processes are shaped by these adults’ interests and intentions. Importantly, it is these working age adults who must also initiate and navigate transitions in their working lives as they confront challenges associated with new forms of work, significant changes in occupations and issues such as relocations, and negotiating matters of health and maturation. Central to many, but by all means not universal is to changing demand for occupations which require adults to learn either entirely new occupations or generate capacities that extend what they know can do and value to other work and occupational activities. So, these transitions can be seeking out another job, engaging in a new occupation or form of employment, and deciding what worklife goals that they want to achieve and how. They also include their consideration of balances between worklife and other activities and commitments (e.g., family, community). Consequently, the challenges faced by working

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age adults can be highly differentiated depending upon their worklife history trajectory. Some will remain in the same location, practising the same occupation and coping with changes in workplace practices and incremental in formations of their occupational requirements. Yet for others these transitions can comprise moving to a new country, learning and new language and being able to communicate it effectively, learning and entirely new occupation because the one that you know is not in demand, the constant churning through jobs in a dynamic economic environment and unforeseeable events such as the changes to work, working life and occupational practices brought about by the recent pandemic. Worklife Learning Yet, given the demands and complexity of navigating these transitions, often the mediation of more informed others (e.g., teachers, more experienced workers) (Billett et al., 2023) and specific kinds of educative experiences are required. These experiences are not restricted to those provided through programs from educational institutions (i.e., lifelong education) but also are often organized and structured through individuals’ workplaces and work practices. The growing realization of the importance of workplace learning experiences is now seeing a greater consideration of these settings as sites for the ongoing learning of working age adults. So, emphases on practice-based approaches to professional development and continuing education and training are growing (Billett, 2010; Frost et al., 2010). However, beyond individuals’ lifelong learning efforts and contributions of educative experiences provided by tertiary education and their workplaces, it is important not to overlook the contributions of the communities they inhabit, and in which engage (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”). It is these communities that afford opportunities, guidance and support of experiences that are sometimes intentional, and often unintentional by degree, and that can happen by chance. It is these contributions that, whilst not as obvious and as privileged as lifelong learning and lifelong education, continue to play powerful roles in working age adults’ learning and development. Approaches to understanding what contributes to working age adults’ learning need to go beyond the orthodoxy of governmental discourse that adults’ learning across working life can be realized through lifelong education (i.e., those of educational institutions and practices). Whilst at times essential, this premise distorts and limits considerations of what comprises and contributes to effective lifelong learning experiences. This can potentially exclude or downplay learning that is supported and that arises outside of intentional educational programs and experiences (Billett, 2009; Choy & Le, 2023). Therefore, the processes of learning across working life need to be premised upon the totality of what is afforded to adults and how they come to engage and mediate. Four such premises are now advanced.

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Worklife Learning Premises First, humans learn continually through their everyday thinking and acting (Lave, 1993; Rogoff & Lave, 1984). Learning is not reserved for or reliant on intentional educational experiences. Instead, the kinds and quality of experiences they encounter and their responses to them shape their learning (Shuell, 1990). When engaging in new or novel tasks or activities, individuals are offered the prospect of extending and transforming what they know, can do, and value. If effortfully engaged with and adequately supported, these experiences can develop further and extend individuals’ occupational capacities. Yet, activities outside of their existing capacities or readiness can lead to limited or negative outcomes (e.g., dissonance, confusion; Billett, 2001). Engaging in routine or familiar activities can lead to honing and refining of what individuals know, can do, and value. This incremental learning can arise without conscious awareness and may be difficult to recall as it arises momentarily. So, individuals’ learning is ongoing across working lives and not dependent on educational programs or teachers’ interventions. The Program of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) found that working age adults in all classes of occupations and levels of work solved problems and learnt through that work more frequently by their own efforts and engagement than when supported by others (OECD, 2013). Consequently, the premises for and effectiveness of worklife learning are not wholly based on educational programs or other educative experiences (i.e., lifelong education). Instead, they are realised through a diverse set of experiences that individuals encounter and negotiate across their working life. Those experiences, particularly in and through work, should not be dismissed as being merely about the reproduction or concrete learning, but the development and engendering of higher order thinking and acting through engagement in nonroutine problem-solving activities that are common feature of working life for all kinds and classifications of workers (OECD, 2013). Second, as workers engage in workplace and occupational activities, they also engage in the active process of remaking (Donald, 1993) and potentially transform them (Lave, 1990). In conducting their work at specific moments in time and in specific circumstances, directed towards specific problems and goals, workers actively remake those occupations, thereby incrementally adapting and, when novel challenges arise, transforming them. This is how occupational knowledge has been developed and transformed across human history and largely through the activities of practitioners responding to challenges that arise and seeking solutions within the scope of their practice and as directed towards their occupational goals (Epstein, 2008). It is through that day-to-day engagement in work activities that bring about change in what constitutes the workplace and occupational practice. Consider the recent response by workers to the constraints of operating within socially isolation during the pandemic. Healthcare practitioners needed to develop, almost spontaneously, new ways of working to protect themselves from infection whilst caring for patients and managing potentially overwhelming patient loads. Hospitality workers had to find new ways of providing their services and often being from guest accommodation to organising isolation facilities within hotels. Much of these changes

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were organised, enacted and evaluated and refined by workers themselves as they responded to challenges that confronted their occupational practice. Therefore, beyond changes arising in individuals (i.e., learning), occupational practices are also changed through those actions. That learning assists in sustaining competence and helps individuals to navigate worklife transitions (Vaughan et al., 2015). So, societal changes arise concurrently through individuals’ learning and development. Third, occupational knowledge is socio-genetic  - a product of history, culture (Scribner, 1985), and situations (Billett, 2001). Working age adults need to access and engage with the knowledge that has been generated over time and through practice. Workplaces provide ready access to many aspects of that knowledge through activities and interactions comprising authentic instances of occupational practice (Rogoff & Lave, 1984). However, individuals’ active engagement with these environments and tasks is also required to validate, instantiate and advance it, which includes their appraisals of the worth of what is experienced. This engagement emphasizes that individuals’ learning and development are personally mediated, but shaped by the contributions and suggestions of the social world about what understandings, procedures and dispositions they need to appropriate. Fourth, adults’ learning and development are two distinct but interdependent processes. Moment-by-moment learning continually occurs as individuals engage in activities (Scribner, 1985). Yet, that learning is premised on what they already know, can do, and value, that are legacies of earlier experiences and learning (i.e., their ontogenetic development; Scribner, 1985). So, individuals may learn differently from the “same” experience (Billett, 2009; Teunissen & Wilkinson, 2010). Hence, associations between learning and development are person dependent. All this suggests that individuals as meaning-makers and constructors of knowledge are central to promoting how learning through practice might best progress and be supported. From these premises, worklife learning is the ordinary outcome of everyday thinking and acting at work. Yet, individuals also engage with and encounter experiences that are educative in supporting and guiding their learning. Beyond their own learning efforts, the totality of the experiences afforded to learners and how they engage with them are central to the type and extent of learning across working life. It is for these premises that this volume aims 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.

Project Informing This Monograph The volume is founded on the processes and findings of a three-phase practical inquiry into worklife learning and its implications for workplace, educational and working age Australians’ practice over a three-year period commencing in 2019. A central goal for the inquiry is to understand the kinds of occupational, work and/or

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workplace transitions working age adults have encountered, how they have negotiated them, and what have contributed to the learning and development that support their employability both between and during these transitions. The three phrases of this inquiry comprise, firstly, life history interviews (Salling-Olesen, 2016) with over 60 mature age working Australians from diverse backgrounds comprising a long narrative interview and then a follow-up interaction that probed, clarified and extended the data from the first interviews of 30 (out of 66) informants. Secondly, also in Phase 1, the worklife learning and transitions of approximately interviewed 20 workers was monitored over 18-month periods. That period coincided with the impacts of COVID-19 and some of the informants were adversely affected by the outcomes of the pandemic. Thirdly, in Phase 2, a survey was conducted to engage a broader set of respondents to test, verify and extend what was found in the first two stages of Phase 1. This included engaging with Indigenous and migrant refugee working age adults to illuminate and elaborate their specific experiences. Phase 3 comprised a consolidation of findings, drawing out deductions and advancing how worklife learning promotes employability. The research team comprised eight researchers with distinct conceptual, disciplinary, and ontological emphases. Hence, the qualitative and quantitative data derived from the three phases of enquiry were engaged in different ways by these researchers. Consequently, diverse perspectives and orientations were utilised in approaches to data analysis and renderings from the data thereby opening the analysis of these complex phenomena to different lines of interrogation, questions and analytical approaches. It is those diverse perspectives, as well as common threads and considerations, that are advanced through this monograph. Part of the purpose for this monograph is to elaborate more fully understandings about the processes of adults’ learning and development across their lifespan of adulthood referred to as working life. Many of the explanations advanced through the contributions in this volume comprise understanding processes of learning and development across and through working life, and what factors and contributions supported that learning. This is an important contribution to understanding what constitutes the needs for and purposes of learning for working life. It also because much theorising about adult learning and development is prone to be premised on speculation, rather than being empirically driven and guided. Yet, such a task respects and demands that no one perspective can fully account for these complex and multi-levelled processes. Hence, diverse perspectives are presented and advanced here through engagement with the data by the contributors. Yet it also attempts to advance a set of coherent accounts about development across the work lifespan and how that can be supported by education provisions, workplaces, communities, and of course by the adults themselves. This goal is exercised through the structure of this book discussed in the next section.

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 rientation of and Perspectives on Elaborating Worklife O Histories and Worklife Learning The contributions in this book focus on different explanations of the processes of adults’ learning and development across their working lives as provided by the authors in each of the chapters. These orientations include qualitative accounts of aspects of work, learning and development derived from interviews and take to survey data, as well as quantitative analysis from surveys. Yet, the perspectives are also derived from distinct fields and domains of knowledge that have been used by the contributors to elaborate specific aspects of the data, draw out findings and make deductions based upon their perspectives. It is elaborated below. The book comprises of three sections. Table  1 presents summaries of the sections and their chapters.

Part I Contributions Part I comprises two chapters that offer overviews, focuses and key findings from the collective contributions to the project. The first chapter discusses the premises for seeking to understand learning across working life and consideration of adults’ learning and development informed by and associated with the learning, development and transitions that have been negotiated across working lives. It provides an overview of focuses and procedures to understand these phenomena through describing the research project undertaken, and summary of key findings, conclusions, and contributions. It also offers a synthesis of the contributions from worklife histories, interviews with working age adult informants and survey respondents. So, this first chapter presents some overall findings and summaries of the contributions of the individual chapters. The second chapter draws on the research project’s collective contributions to identify factors and processes contributing to and supporting adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability and how these inform educational and workplace policies and practices. In this way, it focuses, in particular, on the kinds of policy and practice implications arising from the contributions of the chapters within the volume.

Part II Contributions Part II presents the orientations of and perspectives on elaborating worklife histories, interrogating and drawing meaning from the data from their specific conceptual and ontological standpoints, comprising six chapters. The first two chapters

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Table 1  Summary of content: Section 1 # Title Focus Part I: Worklife learning and employability 1 Adults’ worklife learning Overview and synthesis of collective contributions 2 Policies and practices for Policy and practice implications sustaining employability through worklife learning Part II: Orientations of and perspectives on elaborating worklife histories 3 The imperatives of and for A review of literature worklife learning 4 Employability and work life Worklife history approach history 5 Investigating learning for Method and procedures employability: Method and procedures 6 Indigenous Australian peoples Indigenous Australian workers and work: Examining worklife histories 7 The trajectories of worklife Worklife transitions and the kinds of transformation they transitions generate through socio-personal negotiations 8 Worklife transitions: An Worklife transitions, their impacts and factors supporting Australian investigation the transitions Part III: Elaborating worklife learning 9 Learning across working life: Advancing a broader concept and position lifelong Educative experiences education more inclusively with the societal affordances that support and guide adults learning and development 10 Learning across working life: a Legacies of continuous and accumulative paths or tracks product of ‘personal curriculum’ of experiences 11 Literate practices in worklife Language and literacy – the kind of learning required to histories, transitions and navigate worklife transitions learning 12 Contributions of tertiary Contributions of tertiary education in supporting education individuals’ learning across working life 13 Learning across working life: A Kinds of learning, processes of learning and support case from Australia needed to navigate worklife transitions 14 Practices and strategies to Perspectives about practices and strategies by support worklife learning: The government, workplaces, educational institutions, Australian context workplaces and working age adults to support worklife learning

describe and justify the approach adopted to understanding these phenomena through the program of research. The first chapter in this part  – chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning” (i.e., Billett et al., this volume-c) provides an account of the need for a more comprehensive and empirically informed understanding about adult learning and development. It does this by drawing upon perspectives from a range of disciplinary fields through a critical review of the literature informing the project. Reasons for and processes of embedding the investigation into working life reflect

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not only important societal perspectives, but also those that are important to working age adults, such as sense of self associated with their occupations and work. Also, here is exercised brute facts of maturity and ageing, that bring with them centre stage with changing societal roles and obligations. These considerations exemplify the intertwining of personal, brute and societal contributions. The second chapter  – chapter “Employability and Work Life History”  – (i.e., Salling Olesen, this volume) supports the arguments in preceding chapters about the actual research strategy and offers a background of life history approach to learning through work life. It includes a conceptual discussion about the ways of understanding the concrete dynamics in individual learning processes, referring to qualitative interpretations of individual cases form the worklife histories. In relation to the societal request for lifelong learning and competence development, this contribution argues that lifelong learning must build on the learning of individuals for sustaining their employability and emphasises the importance of workers’ life experience for competence development. The necessary adaptivity of adult workers under the condition of ongoing change is a quality of their subjectivity that can only be developed on the basis of their life experiences. The next chapter, chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures” (i.e., Le et al., this volume-a) describes and justifies the procedures adopted, and demographic data about the participants who provided worklife histories, and were interviewed across phases of their worklife and those responding to the survey. This chapter also describes and elaborates the procedures adopted in the chapters reporting different perspectives of the data drawn upon in the processes and conclusions. This includes a description and justification of the worklife history approach adopted, the interviews and progressive data gathering undertaken in the first phase and then the selection and development of items and their administration through an online survey, in the second. It also describes the process of advancing findings, refining practice and policy implications in in the third. The later chapters in Part II provide a series of perspectives on worklife histories drawing on both interview and survey data. Bargallie’s chapter titled “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories” focuses on worklife histories of the Indigenous Australian workers (i.e., Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples). It draws on worklife histories data from Indigenous informants through ‘yarning’ sessions (i.e., Indigenous research method of storytelling) with Indigenous informants. It contributes by providing insights into worklife experiences of Indigenous people, centring racism as a category for analysis. It illustrates the nuance and variety of the transitions Indigenous people encounter across their working lives, including socio-economic disadvantage, racialised experiences and structures, and the ambition to contribute to their community (i.e., mob). Common to the transitions across adults’ working lives is the negotiation processes and the kinds of transformations they generate, which is the focus of Smith’s contribution titled chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”. Utilising the research project’s worklife interview data (i.e., a selection of worklife narratives), the chapter outlines and illustrates a set of five transition trajectories or transition forms, descriptively named: (1) incremental steps, (2) spinning plates, (3) project

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management, (4) carousel and (5) full renovation. It contributes to illuminate two key perspectives on value of worklife transitions: (i) value claiming and (ii) value creation, to suggest policy and provision initiatives that could support worklife transition process and outcome. Further understanding of worklife transitions of a larger population of working age Australians, Billett et  al.’s chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation” provides views from working age Australians of different kinds (cultural/ethnic background, gender and age) on worklife transitions, their impacts and factors supporting the transitions. Drawing on the survey data, this chapter reports on and discusses the kinds of changes that necessitated worklife transitions, their impacts and support required to navigate these transitions. It contributes to verifying, validating and further elaborating the complexity of the categories of change identified from the interview data used to categorise individuals’ worklife transitions. The kinds and extent of these changes, and the concomitant requirements for learning and development associated with transitions stand at the heart of what constitutes worklife learning. Thus, this provides a basis for understanding the goals for policy and practice interventions to assist realising employability outcomes.

Part III Contributions Part III comprises of another six chapters, elaborating aspects of worklife learning. Billett’s contributions elaborating learning across working life offer two explanatory bases for elaborating, understanding and supporting worklife learning. The first of these contributions titled chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences” focuses on reappraising what constitutes lifelong education, advancing a broader concept and position it more inclusively with the societal affordances that support and guide adults learning and development. Drawing on worklife histories data, it identifies, quantifies, illustrates and discusses the range of experiences that are educative as they afford opportunities, support participation, and guide and augment learning across working life. The educative experiences have been categorised as being of five kinds associated that would not otherwise be available: (i) providing guidance and opportunities, (ii) invitations to engage in activities, (iii) support for learning and access to participation, (iv) guidance in learning and (v) the acknowledgement and certification of what has been learnt as being central to the project of worklife learning. The second of these contributions, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”, focuses on the legacies of continuous and accumulative paths or tracks of experiences. Drawing on worklife histories data, it elaborates the intentions and enactment of personal curriculum (i.e., pathways of experiences). The concept of personal curriculum offers a view of curriculum from the individual’s perspective, alternatively to that enacted through institutions. It offers a means to understand the pathways created and then journeyed along by

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working age adults as these become increasingly central concerns for the development of human capacities and contributions across the working lives. To successfully navigate through transitions across working life, certain kinds of learning are required. Filliettaz’s chapter titled “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning” explores the role and place of literacy in the kinds of experiences adults encounter when they negotiate worklife transitions across their life course. Drawing on worklife histories data through a selection of narratives, it identifies, quantifies and describes the forms and functions of literacy practices experienced by individuals when negotiating worklife transitions. It contributes to appraising and reflecting on the kinds of learning and agency arising from literate practices and their contributions to the richness, diversity and heterogeneity of educational provisions encountered by adults across working life. Whilst the above-mentioned contributions tend to focus on learning across working life, Choy and Le’s chapter offers a discussion of “Contributions of Tertiary Education in Supporting Individuals’ Learning Across Working Life”. Drawing on a selection of worklife histories and survey data, it identifies and discusses the role of tertiary education to support worklife and lifelong learning. It illuminates the contributions of tertiary education and recommending about curriculum related imperatives to support individuals’ worklife learning. The final two chapters in this part aim to understand from a larger and more inclusive samples of how working age Australians have learnt across their working lives and in what ways such learning can be supported, drawing on the survey data. The chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia” (Le et al., this volume-b) focuses on learning across working life of working age Australians. It reports on and discusses the kinds of learning, processes of learning and support needed to navigate worklife transitions, comparing views of Australians of different kinds (i.e., cultural/ethnic background, gender and age). It contributes to advancing further the findings from the worklife narratives (contributions of individuals, education and community in mediating individuals’ worklife learning), and identifying in what ways these contributions are applicable to a broader population of working age Australians. The final chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context” (Billett et  al., this volume-b) focuses on perspectives about practices and strategies by government, workplaces, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults to support worklife learning. The importance of the proposed practices and strategies is ranked and compared among Australians of different kinds. The rankings of proposed practices and strategies and their differences by cultural/ethnic background, age and gender provide some bases to offer recommendations about how governments, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults might come to promote employability across working lives.

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Key Findings From various contributions discussed above, it has found that there is a complex of societal, personal, educational and workplace factors that support and sustain the learning required for employability across the participants’ working lives. These factors comprise: • The initiation and negotiating key transitions • Kinds of learning to be negotiated • Provisions of support and guidance These findings are now presented in more detail.

Negotiating Transitions It is possible to identify factors that initiate key transitions in these adults’ lives, the kinds and scope of changes they encounter, domains of knowledge to be learnt, how they learn to attempt to accomplish the outcomes they want through negotiating those changes and the support they access in doing so. Explanations of the worklife learning process can be found in three sets of facts: (i) institutional (i.e., societal), (ii) brute (i.e., natural) and (iii) personal (i.e., lifespan development or ontogeny), and the relations amongst them. In particular, the significant worklife transitions the Australian working age adults reported were initiated and shaped by changes of different kinds and scope. These transitions comprise, variously: (a) Changes in life stages, (b) Employment status, (c) Occupations, (d) Location, (e) Health/wellbeing, and (f) Personal preference or trajectories, mainly subjectivity (i.e., sense of self). Importantly, these factors arose in different ways and combination through the informants’ work lives (Billett et  al., 2021, this volume-d, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”). Substantial worklife transitions are far more than the struggle and experience of individual workers seeking to re-establish themselves in the labour market and so build a livelihood for themselves. They are better seen as occupational practices that identify instances of the socio-personal nature of the many negotiations that comprise work, learning and employability (Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). Such negotiations are not separate activities. They are interrelated and implicate numerous stakeholders as partners in the processes by which they are built and the outcomes they generate.

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Kinds of Learning to Be Negotiated The kinds of learning required for developing the capacities to successfully negotiate these changes were identified as being variously about: (i) language and literacy; (ii) cultural practices; (iii) worklife engagements; (iv) world of work and (v) occupational skills (Billett et al., 2020). The capacities are learnt through individuals’ agency, intentionality and mediation of experiences and engagement with forms of learning support. For instance, literate practices often emerge as guided experiences that are afforded in formal and informal settings (Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). These experiences also constitute means for continuity and coherence across working lives, and not only as obstacles or causes for disruptions and discontinuity. Much incremental learning arises through personal agency and engagement, but external support can be minimal or unnecessary. For instance, worklife experiences of Indigenous people are often characterised by the exercise of Indigenous Australian workers’ agency, resourcefulness, determination, adaptability to locate new forms of work and to sustain employment and secure advancement (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”). However, significant learning required for a domain of socially generated knowledge (e.g., language, occupation) require effortful engagement as well as support from outside the person (education, family, co-­workers).

Provisions of Support and Guidance The relationships between individuals’ ongoing learning and the need for specific kinds of support for that learning (i.e., mediation provided by educative experiences) are most accentuated by the requirements for negotiating transitions that these individuals had initiated or that are initiated for them across their adult working lives (Billett et al. 2021). Securing transitions to achieve the desired significant learning and developmental outcomes prompted by and required to secure those transitions is premised on three mediating factors: (a) person (e.g., capacities, personal needs, ambitions, trajectories), (b) educative support (e.g., experiences intentionally supporting that learning), and (c) “community” (i.e., affordances outside of the person such as family and familiars, ethnic/cultural affiliates, workplaces, opportunity, societal sentiment, or happenstance) (Billett et al., this volume).

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Those kinds and combinations of experiences and support vary across different individuals as they came to engage in those experiences and utilise the available supports to realise their learning. For example, beyond completion of high school studies, individuals require substantial provisions from tertiary education institutions to assist with lifelong learning that enabled them to navigate between employment, unemployment and retirement (Choy & Le, 2023). Tertiary education institutions provide an important source of individuals’ lifelong learning to enable navigation for the key transitions that require access to and mediation of the knowledge and certification required for new occupations or other key transitions across working life. However, it was claimed that the array of educative experiences that support individuals’ employability are far more efficient than programs variously entitled continuing education and training, professional development and recurrent training (Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”). Beyond what is defined through the educational or schooling discourse are the pathways of learning that individuals take across their lives that are outside of educational experiences provided in schools, colleges and universities (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). These include the experiences and interactions in which individuals engage, including the intentional and unintentional engagement in societal practices in education, and increasingly work, community and family life across adulthood. Whilst there are overall patterns about the effectiveness of specific kinds and forms of experiences, support and guidance, their levels of perceived efficacy in supporting employability goals are not uniform across this population of working age Australians cohorts (Le et al., this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). There are three important differences in views among working age Australians of diverse cultural/ethnic and age groups about practices and strategies enacted by government, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults themselves to promote lifelong learning across working life (Billett et al., this volume-b, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). Those associated with differences across gender are less outstanding. First, the gap in perceptions among cultural/ethnic groups, including the Australian born, the Indigenous, the English and non-English background migrants could mean that expectations about strategies or practices enacted by government, workplaces, institutions and individuals themselves might be misleading. The expression of personal preference of these groups is seemingly predominant, which challenges all-size-fit-all policies. Second, the gender differences might result from different family commitments thus different expectations. This has important implications for institutions when designing courses and programs to meet the varied needs of learners. Third, the age (i.e., early and middle working life) differences emphasise the changing educational needs and priorities at different stages of life (i.e., intergenerational differences) thus requiring different kinds of support. With an increasing generational diversity workforce, it is important for government, workplaces and

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institutions to reckon with this fact and rely on felicitous strategies that benefit people of all generations.

Promoting Worklife Learning Addressing governmental, workplace and worker concerns and goals associated with employability requires accounting for the duality of how economic and work changes are manifested, and individuals’ engagement in, learning for and negotiating working lives progresses. This includes accounting for factors shaping work requirements, the organisation and processes adopted by workplaces and changes to them. Changes in these requirements transform what workers need to know, do and value to perform effectively. Addressing these changes are central to individuals’ employability, as they comprise how paid work is undertaken, what and how they can learn, and workers’ performance is judged. These changes can also challenge workers’ sense of self and impact their confidence and agency as learners. This is particularly the case when they must negotiate key transitions brought about by relocation, changes in occupations, work or personal and family circumstances. Learning for and through such transitions is premised in individuals’ abilities and readiness to engage effectively in work activities, the support provided by workplaces, educational provisions and communities, not always mediated by their own agency, capacities and readiness. So, there is a need to understand further how workers come to engage in and actively learn through and for their work life (Organisation for Economic Co-operational and Development, 2013) and negotiate worklife transitions. Hence, this opening chapter has discussed the premises for needing to understand learning across working life and consideration of adults’ learning and development across working lives. The summary of key findings provided here, deductions and conclusions advanced through them and contributions to policy and practice advanced in Billett et al. (this volume-a, chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning”) have been derived from data secured from worklife histories, interviews with working age adult informants and survey respondents. Evident across these contributions is that key emphases of worklife learning are on workers’ learning through and across their working life, and how it can be supported through their work and educational provisions. This focus on workers’ learning opens up key considerations of workers’ readiness (their ability to engage and learn), their sense of self or subjectivity as well as occupational knowledge. Although these processes are often person-particular, the need for support and guidance (i.e., lifelong education) necessitates understanding how such educational provisions can be effective, viable, accessible and scalable for all kinds of Australian workers. More importantly, how such understanding of adults’ learning and developmental pathways can inform policy and practices at different levels (i.e., government, educational institutions, workplaces and working age individuals themselves) to promote and sustain individuals’ employability across their working lives. This is

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the focus of Chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning” (Billett et al., this volume-a) on practice and policy implications for worklife learning.

References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). 4102.0 – Australian Social Trends, 2008 Adult Learning. Bargallie, D. (this volume). Indigenous Australian peoples and work: Examining worklife histories. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (2001). Knowing in practice: Re-conceptualising vocational expertise. Learning and Instruction, 11(6), 431–452. Billett, S. (2006). Work, change and workers. Springer. Billett, S. (2009). Personal epistemologies, work and learning. Educational Research Review, 4(3), 210–219. Billett, S. (2010). The practices of learning through occupations. In S.  Billett (Ed.), Learning through practice: Models, traditions, orientations and approaches (Vol. 1, pp. 59–81). Springer. Billett, S. (this volume-a). Learning across working life: Educative experiences. In S.  Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (this volume-b). Learning across working life: A product of ‘personal curriculum’. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., Filliettaz, L., Choy, S., Smith, R., Le, A. H., & Bargallie, D. (2020). Research bulletin 1: Practices and policies for sustaining employability through work-life learning. A project funded by the Australian Research Council. Griffith University. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Smith, R., & Choy, S. (2021). The kinds and character of changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1080/02601370.2021.1989723 Billett, S., Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (2023). Lifelong learning across working lives: Personal, social and maturational factors. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education (pp.  1–21). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-­3-­030-­67930-­9_23-­1 Billett, S., Choy, S., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-a). Policies and practices for sustaining employability through worklife learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A.  H., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-b). Practices and strategies to support worklife learning: The Australian context. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Choy, S., & Smith, R. (this volume-c). The imperatives of and for worklife learning: A review. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A. H., & Filliettaz, L. (this volume-d). Worklife transitions: An Australian investigation. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Donald, M. (1993). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press. Epstein, S. R. (2008). Craft guilds in the pre-modern economy: A discussion. Economic History Review, 61(1), 155–174.

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Filliettaz, L. (this volume). Literate practices in worklife histories, transitions and learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Frost, N., Zukas, M., Bradbury, H., & Kilminster, S. (Eds.). (2010). Beyond reflective practice: New approaches to professional lifelong learning. Routledge. Lave, J. (1990). The culture of acquisition and the practice of understanding. In J. W. Stigler, R. A. Shweder, & G. Herdt (Eds.), Cultural psychology (pp. 259–286). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lave, J. (1993). The practice of learning. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 3–32). Cambridge University Press. Le, A. H., Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., & Bargallie, D. (this volume-a). Investigating learning for employability: Method and procedures. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Le, A. H., Choy, S., Smith, R., & Billett, S. (this volume-b). Learning across working life: A case from Australia. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Noon, M., Blyton, P., & Morrell, K. (2013). The realities of work: Experiencing work and employment in contemporary society. Macmillan International Higher Education. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2013). OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills. OECD. Rogoff, B. E., & Lave, J. E. (1984). Everyday cognition: Its development in social context. Harvard University Press. Salling-Olesen, H. (2016). A pyscho-societal approach to llife histories. In I.  Goodson, A. Antikainen, P. Sikes, & M. Andrews (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history. Routledge. Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume). Employability and work life history. In S. Billett, H. Salling-­ Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Scribner, S. (1985). Vygotsky’s uses of history. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 119–145). Cambridge University Press. Shuell, T.  J. (1990). Phases of meaningful learning. Review of Educational Research, 60(4), 531–547. Smith, R. (this volume). The trajectories of worklife transition. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Teunissen, P. W., & Wilkinson, T. J. (2010). Learning and teaching in workplaces. In T. Dornan, K.  Mann, A.  Scherpbier, & J.  Spencer (Eds.), Medical education: Theory and practice (pp. 193–209). Elsevier. Vaughan, K., Bonne, L., & Eyre, J. (2015). Knowing practice: Vocational thresholds for GPs, carpenters, and engineering technicians. New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Ako Aotearoa. Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Voc‑ational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has worked in vocational education, educational administration, teacher education, professional development and policy development in the Australian vocational education system and as a teacher and researcher in higher education.  

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Laurent Filliettaz is a full professor in Adult Education, Language and Work at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland. His expertise includes literacy issues in workplace contexts, multimodal interaction analysis in connection to learning and training practices in vocational education and training.  

Henning Salling Olesen is Professor Emeritus from Roskilde University, Denmark. His research area is lifelong learning and particularly work-related adult education. His specific expertise is in life history methods and the study of subjective dimensions of work identity and career.  

Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning Stephen Billett

, Sarojni Choy, and Henning Salling Olesen

Abstract  The complexities of adults’ learning through and across their working life, including the transitions they negotiate, and how these can be supported through educational and workplace provisions, and within their communities are rarely countenanced or accommodated in policies and practices of governments, workplaces, professional and industry bodies, and supra-national agencies (i.e., OECD). Instead, the mobilization of effort is often based on abstracted concepts such as “industry need”, “professional standards”, and “best practices” that privilege institutional goals. Moreover, those institutional efforts are often primarily directed and enacted through what can be delivered in taught courses (i.e., lifelong education) in tertiary education institutions, and are primarily concerned to offer (usually) government sponsors with certainty in outcomes. Accordingly, policies and practices associated with learning across working life are commonly focussed on these kinds of educational provisions and in ways that privilege educational discourses, courses and training programs. This focus downplays or ignores not only the needs, capacities and goals of those who are required to learn, but also the diverse source of support and circumstances where learning across working life mostly occurs. Thus, identifying more comprehensively the practices that support adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability and what these mean for governmental, educational, and workplace policies is the key focus of this chapter. It draws on findings from the worklife histories and survey data of working age adults. Also, the findings that are variously distributed across separate contributions are synthesised, reconciled and advanced. The chapter then discusses practices that might be adopted by governments, tertiary education institutions, workplaces, and communities in which working age adults live and work, to support adults’ learning and development associated with their employability. Quite specifically, broad statements S. Billett (*) · S. Choy Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] H. Salling Olesen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_2

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a­ ssociated with policies are advanced, focussing on practical contributions to adults’ learning and securing desired outcomes by workplaces, communities and governments. Keywords  Employability · Occupational practice · Lifelong education · Educational provisions · Occupational knowledge · Workplace requirements · Government policy · Workplace policies · Educational policies · Workplace · Community · Interventions · Guidance · Recognition of prior learning

Securing Goals of Employability Across Working Life Securing worklife employability has increasingly become a primary focus of governments, employers, educational institutions and working age adults as the requirements for occupational competence and workplace performance constantly change. The changes are brought about by everchanging economic circumstances, global competition and, more recently, threats arising from geopolitical instability. This then necessitates changes in occupational practices, enterprises being responsive to change, innovative and adaptable in response to emerging needs of and requirements for goods and services generated for dynamic national and global circumstances. The focus is on how working age adults have maintained their employability by learning, and the aim is to see how this can be sustained to fulfill personal goals as well as institutional strategic goals to maintain workplace viability. Here, and as foreshadowed, employability comprises: (i) being employable, (ii) sustaining employment, (iii) securing advancement and (iv) transitioning to other and/or new occupations. Governments are concerned with all four aspects of employability. They want skilled and flexible national workforces able to respond effectively to changes in economic circumstances and sustain their workplaces’ viability (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2006) and for workers to take responsibility for maintaining their employability (Australian Bureau Statistics, 2008). Public and private sector enterprises are similarly concerned with perhaps the first three and, sometimes, all four of those aspects. That is, they need workers who can perform their work effectively, respond to routine and non-routine challenges, and adapt to changes in work requirements and consumers’ needs (e.g., customers, clients, patients). Moreover, the communities that are served by those workers, enterprises and governments, and partially constituted by these working age adults are similarly concerned with being able to access the kinds of goods and services they require. Importantly, these concerns are not just about enterprise profitability and production of goods for-profit. They extend to the provision of services such as health and social care, education and the range of professional services necessary for advanced civil societies (i.e., law, policing, public service). So, more than economic drivers, employability is essential for realising civil and social goals. Hence, working age adults of all kinds and classifications need to maintain their occupational capacities to sustain their employability (Noon

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et al., 2013). They need to develop the capacity to adapt to changing work requirements, and secure personal and professional advancement (Billett, 2006), thus needing to embrace all four aspects of employability. So, beyond working age adults’ personal goals and processes of learning and development, developing and sustaining employability is important for the enterprises that employ them and the nation states’ social and economic well-being and for the communities in which they live and to which they make contributions. Learning intentionally across working life is also necessary because the initial occupational preparation that usually occurs in early adulthood is insufficient to sustain employability across lengthening working lives. Much of those initial skills become redundant as work practices and technologies change and there is a constant need to respond to emerging challenges mentioned above. In this way, employability is much more than securing initial employment, it is about being able to sustain employment and seek advancement. Hence, the processes of maintaining employability are in many ways founded on individuals’ learning through and across their working lives. However, this ongoing process of learning and development needs to be seen as being more than a mechanical educational process to ‘upskill’ the working age population to meet the immediate needs of circumstances and employment. It is the important need for working age adults to find personal fulfilment and worth in and through their work (i.e., becoming one of their vocations) (Dewey, 1916). This learning is, therefore, more than honing what workers already know, can do and value from their initial occupational preparation. It includes learning new kinds of knowledge in response to transformations in occupational requirements and particular workplace needs, as well as responding to changes in the demand for specific occupations (Billett, 2006). Indeed, the process of learning for employability is more than adults engaging in and learning through and from educational programs. Ultimately, working age adults are the meaning makers and constructors of the knowledge that they will subsequently deploy in their work-related activities (Billett et al., 2005). It is they who ultimately mediate what they experience, albeit in work or educational settings, and through that mediation construct what and how they learn and, not the least, the degree of effort to engage in those processes. So, central to any considerations about supporting learning across working life is placing working age adults centrally within these deliberations. These issues are discussed and elaborated in this chapter. In particular, drawing upon the findings of the life history interviews and survey that informed the project described and discussed within this monograph, this chapter aims to identify the practices in work, educational and community settings that can serve to support adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability including how adults need to engage in and with what are afforded them. The life history interviews display how working adults integrate the efforts of the key social partners, i.e. government, education institutions and workplaces in a triple helix, and it is clear that these efforts should be applauded and supported. The findings of this project are used to advance further practices that might be adopted by governments, tertiary education institutions, workplaces, communities and working age adults to support adults’ learning and development associated with their

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employability. The ‘triple helix’ these key social partners provide needs to be strengthened, their mutualities acknowledged and their interactions promoted.

Worklife Learning and Employability Given the concerns about and consensus associated with the importance of developing and sustaining working age adults’ employability, effectively harnessing the contributions of governments, employers, and educational institutions have become a central motive for identifying practices to realise employability outcomes. Consequently, it is worthwhile briefly rehearsing what constitutes employability and its implications for governmental, workplace and educational policies and practices. Not the least here is the importance of strengthening adults’ ability for advancing and responding to change, i.e., their ability to adapt what they know, can do and value to new and different circumstances, tasks and goal-directed activities. Hence, there is a need to be clear about what employability means for being adaptable and the educational means for securing adaptability. The conception of employability has four dimensions: (i) being employable (i.e., having specific work-related and occupational capacities); (ii) sustaining employment (i.e., remaining current and employable); (iii) securing advancement (i.e., gaining promotion or becoming more broadly skilled); and (iv) transitioning to new/other occupations (i.e., being able to move into new occupations) (Billett, 2022). Being Employable Being employable is securing employment in an occupation that is the focus and target of individuals’ initial occupational preparation. Often, this focuses on young people’s transitions from compulsory schooling into paid work via graduating from tertiary education programs whose educational aims are to assist them learn the capacities required to enact their selected occupation, albeit at an initial level of competence. Yet, that enactment and ability to perform occupational tasks effectively will occur within particular work setting in which they are employed, each with their own particular norms, forms and practices and work requirements (Billett et  al., 2021). So, the progressing from school and/or tertiary education to paid employment in a particular work setting constitutes transitions that require adapting to circumstances. For instance, low achieving or very young school leavers may lack the readiness to be successful in tertiary education, because of its requirements thus needing greater self-direction. Later, the transition from tertiary education into work requires adapting recently acquired occupational knowledge to work situation. This includes adapting what they know, can do and value to those circumstances, and through collaborating with others with whom they will work, the specific workplace practices and performance requirements.

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Hence, beyond initial occupational preparation is the need to adapt what they know, can do, and value to the specific requirements of the circumstances of practice (Billett, 2022). Once more, this is not a mechanical or detached process of cognition. Instead, it is premised upon how individuals come to make judgements about the worth of what they are being expected to undertake and their readiness to do so, which includes their personal confidence, interest and abilities to respond to novel circumstances. Far from being straightforward, such progressions are not necessarily from peripheral to centripetal participation as was suggested earlier (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Rather, these processes can be differentiated personally-contested (Anyon, 1980; Hodges, 1998) and resisted (Goodnow & Warton, 1991; Sennett, 2008). Indeed, Valsiner (1998) claims that through the process of engaging in the social world, individuals come to be increasingly selective about how they construe their experiences and become more competent in judging their worth and value and realising the need to resist much of what is suggested by the social world and concludes that “… most of human development takes place through active ignoring and neutralisation of most of social suggestions to which the person is subjected in everyday life” (p. 393). He continues: …, what is usually viewed as socialisation efforts (by social institutions or parents) are necessarily counteracted by the active recipients of such efforts who can neutralise or ignore a large number of such episodes, aside from single particularly dramatic ones.

Hence, the concepts, exercise and process of securing employability cannot be restricted to what is afforded through what is suggested by social institutions such as governmental edicts, programs enacted through educational institutions, workplaces or even the urging of familiars. An essential social challenge in most industrialized societies consists of failures in the transition, which is why we have sought to understand how transitions are negotiated and what factors and contributions support effective outcomes. This includes capturing what was unsuccessful for our informants as well as what supported their transitions. Sustaining Employment Once employed, younger and older working age adults alike need to be able to respond to new challenges and circumstances to sustain their employment and these coincide with the growing expectations of being more experienced workers. The findings from the Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) make this point strongly and consistently across countries through empirical data. Across the countries where the survey has been administered, workers of all kinds and classifications report engaging in routine and nonroutine problem-­ solving in their work on a regular basis, with the former almost daily and the latter often weekly (OECD, 2013, 2016). The latter, in particular, indicates the need for workers to constantly deploy and extend their knowledge to complete work tasks and, in doing so, adapt what they know, can do and value when engaging in nonroutine problem-solving (Shuell, 1990; Anderson, 1993). So, workers’ ability to adapt

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to changing circumstances of work is central to their ongoing employability as workplace and occupational requirements transform. There is reason to see this development of being able to engage in more complex problem-solving work as a main trend in development of work processes (Kern & Schumann, 1993). These occupational and work practice changes comprise contemporary working life. These include the demand for occupations, specific occupational requirements for work settings (i.e., including their size, structure, goods produced, and services provided, how work is organised and enacted, those who workers engage and need to collaborate with) and the kinds of knowledge that need to be learnt. In terms of the latter, it seems that the growth and prevalence of electronic technology is now requiring greater engagement with conceptual and symbolic knowledge that is often difficult to learn because it cannot be directly experienced through individuals’ sensory processes, as so much of learning has arisen across human history. Whereas many forms of earlier occupational knowledge could be mediated through direct engagement, this may be less so with technologically enhanced knowledge that does not offer easy access through processes such as haptic engagement. All the evidence suggests that what constitutes occupational competence and workplace requirements are going to continue to change frequently, and potentially with greater amplitude. Hence, employability needs to include the capacities to remain employed through the ability to respond to changes. Here is rehearsed the need for experiences and support for workers’ access and learning that knowledge. This implies particular practices that need to be adopted and enacted by workplaces and educational institutions. Securing Advancement Across working life, opportunities for advancement or more broadly applying skills also require adaptability. Both forms of advancement require workers to adapt what they know, can do, and value to different circumstances and tasks, and not least have the ability and self-confidence to imagine more ambitious work tasks. This kind of learning is more often mediated by individuals themselves rather than through a reliance on others (OECD, 2013, 2016) and found in this investigation reported across this volume (e.g., Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”; Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”; Salling-Olesen, this volume). However, we also found that educational programs or provisions usually serve to support or certify key transitions (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). In terms of opportunities or affordances, it would seem that both institutional and personal agency are at play here. On the one hand, workplaces and communities might advance opportunities for working age adults to extend their job roles further and embrace other kinds of activities that expand the scope of their occupational

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practice (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett et al., 2023). For instance, trades workers who become self-employed necessarily need to learn to administer their business, marketing, networking and often, manage others. Large workplaces may, by habit or preference, provide opportunities for workers for advancement and thereby afford opportunities for individuals that they might not have otherwise been able to realise. However, on the other hand, as foreshadowed is the personal agency of those who are seeking actively to secure promotion, advancement beyond their existing level and kind of work. Then there are those who want to become and remain self-employed to enjoy a level of independence and responsibility that they might not otherwise experience when they are a paid employee. Therefore, in expanding existing roles, the need to develop new capacities and take on new responsibilities and discretion are capacities that need to be learnt. However, whilst these affordances are advanced by institutional agency or, conversely, innovative by them, ultimately, it is individuals’ ability to adapt to new circumstances and tasks that is necessary for extending employability in the forms of advancement or extending the scope of occupational practices. So, securing employability is a collaborative project exercised across what social institutions (i.e., workplaces, colleges, universities, training companies) (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”) can afford, but most often initiated, enacted and realised by working age adults themselves (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”; Billett et al., 2023). Transitioning to New/Other Occupations Across working life, worklife trajectories can and often includes changing occupations. This occurs for many people as their personal needs, preferences, or work situations change or as occupations either cease to be relevant, provide employment or where the work they serve is located elsewhere. (Billett et al., 2021). This can include occupations becoming more or less in demand, or transformed in ways which render employment difficult to secure (i.e., printing work), increasing (i.e., first responders) or decreasing in status and attractiveness (i.e., some service work). Then, there are other shifts brought about by global reshaping of economic activities such as manufacturing being concentrated in countries with relatively low costs and associated supply chain of components (car production). However, and as indicated in the research reported in this volume, the motivation to transit to different occupations arises from personal preferences or needs. For instance, many forms of work are age intolerant. As such, firefighters, front-line workers of all kinds as well as military personnel often need to find new occupations in mid-worklife. That is, the brute fact of maturation makes these forms of work personally unsustainable. Hence, there are institutional, personal and brute factors that can require workers to change occupations. As indicated in Billett et  al. (2021), the key transitions that many adults encounter across working life are brought about by the need to change

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occupations for these reasons. These situations require extensive adaptability – and they usually also elicit wider learning about one’s self which can extend to individuals’ sense of self as a worker, the kind of capacities they have relied upon previously, and their standing in the community – is required when they adapt what they know, can do and value to new occupations (Salling-Olesen, this volume). Hence, to succeed in these transitions, maintain a positive sense of self, develop new capacities, and engage in different work communities all require being adaptive. Importantly, adults with diverse worklife experiences often possess a range of capacities that permit them to move across different occupations, by being adaptable. Yet, with significant changes such as engaging with a new occupation in midworklife, there is likely a need for support and guidance, and direct instruction for even the most capable working age adults (Billett et al., 2021; Billett et al., 2023).

Ways of Supporting Employability It is evident that employability is not restricted to being able to secure employment. Instead, it is central to effectively sustaining employability across working life in meeting the challenges in the transition to employment, responding to new challenges and expectations, securing advancement and/or broadening areas of occupational competence, and when needing or wanting to change the occupation. Moreover, employability has implications beyond individuals remaining employable. These include assisting the viability, continuity and advancement of the enterprises in which they are employed, the communities whose goods and services are dependent upon them and, collectively, national social and economic goals. Across these dimensions of employability in lengthening working lives is the salience of developing the disposition and capacities to be adaptable. Developing such capacities and dispositions and securing that learning is distributed across individuals’ (i.e., working age adults) readiness (i.e., what they know, can do, and value), their mediation (i.e., their engagement, intentionality, and effort), and the contributions and affordances of a range of social institutions with which they interact (e.g., workplaces, educational provisions, community settings). Analyses of the informants’ worklife histories indicate that the significant worklife transitions the Australian working age adults reported were initiated and shaped by changes of different kinds and scope (Billett et  al., 2021; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). These changes comprise, variously: (i) changes in life stages, (ii) employment status, (iii) occupations, (iv) location, (v) health/wellbeing, and (vi) personal preference or trajectories, mainly subjectivity (i.e., sense of self).

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Importantly, the particular combination of changes that individuals had to negotiate were in many ways person dependent. That is, premised on factors associated with where they were born, the languages they first learnt, whether or not they had migrated to Australia and from English or non-English speaking country, the kinds of work they had undertaken and family circumstances also in combinations of those changes for specific individuals (Billett et al., 2021; Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). Therefore, to navigate the transition and negotiate these changes often required transactions between individuals’ capacities, interest and agency and what is afforded by the social world – a combination of subjective initiative and external support (e.g., education, support from workplaces, family) (Billett et al., 2023; Le et al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). These contributions can be understood through relations amongst and mediation of person + education + ‘community’ (Billett et al., 2023). These findings suggest that learning through working life comprises a personal journey to sustain employability across lengthening working life and successfully negotiate occupational transitions that constitutes their personal curriculum (see Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). However, educative experiences (see Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”) comprising guidance, support and direct interventions are often required, albeit of different scopes and scales depending on individual circumstances. Hence, it is worth considering the extent to which such support can be formulated within strategies or practices enacted by key stakeholders including government, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults. Specifically, how these strategies or practices can contribute to achieving each of employability goals comprising (i) being employable, (ii) sustaining employment, (iii) securing advancement, and transitioning to new/other occupations. Drawing on the research project’s collective contributions as articulated through the separate contributions to this volume, in the following are advanced ways in which government, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults can contribute to achieving each of these employability goals through supporting individuals’ worklife learning.

 chieving Goals of Employability: Evidence A from an Australian Investigation To gauge the potential of how the four purposes of employability might be realised, the responses to the survey were categorised in terms of what government could do in terms of its promotion, educational provisions likely to affect those outcomes and how workplaces might contribute to them. From this analysis, it was possible to identify in overview the means by which these three different institutions might come to make specific contributions either individually or collectively. Table  1

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presents the potential contributions identified for each of the employability goals as identified from the survey of the research project (see Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). As presented in Table 1, to achieve the four purposes of employability (i.e., being employable, sustaining employment, securing advancement, and transition to new/ other occupations) (Billett, 2022), the government, educational institutions and workplaces can contribute through their enacted practices. To take some examples, from the government, the aspect of securing employment (i.e., being employable) might likely to be achieved through fair access to employment opportunities. Sustaining employment (i.e., remaining current and employable) might be achieved by the ease of access to continuing education and training (CET), promotion of multiple occupational pathways. Securing advancement (i.e., gaining promotion or becoming more broadly skilled) are likely be supported by promotion of multiple occupational pathways or financial support for re-training. In fact, policies such as ease of access to and financial support for re-training, and CET at different phases of working life are likely to contribute to achieving three purposes of employability apart from initial occupational preparation. Also, policies relating to RPL for all kinds of work, different educational pathways and ease of access to educational certification might be likely to achieve all four goals of employability. Educational institutions might contribute to achieving these goals through enacting provisions that characterise different features. For example, support for securing employment might likely to be achieved through employability support or job preparation programs. The other aspects (i.e., sustaining employment, securing advancement and transitioning to new/other occupations) might likely to be supported through provisions that characterise accessibility, short and low-cost courses, alignment with needs, flexible delivery mode, provide counselling about CET and re-­ training opportunities. It is important for these educational provisions to cater for all aspects of employability across lengthening working life not only initial occupational preparation. When employed, individuals will need to be able to respond to new challenges and circumstances and to the growing expectations of being more experienced workers. In this regard, workplaces can assist in mediating this process, primarily contributing to achieving two (out of four) goals of employability: (i) sustaining employment and (ii) securing advancement. For example, workplace processes that feature sensitivity to family responsibilities may achieve goals of sustaining employment as well as support for female workers, catering for gender difference. Retention policies for older workers can contribute to achieving the same goal but representing age support. Having clear and transparent processes might likely to achieve the purpose of securing advancement and/or extending existing capacities as well as supporting inclusivity and catering for differentiation (i.e., cultural, age and gender differences) (see Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). Other workplace processes or features such as mentoring, CET and development plans for individuals can obviously contribute to achieving these two goals.

Table 1  Possible contributions to achieving each of the four goals of employability Contributions from

Four goals of employability being sustaining employable employment Government promotion of Fair access to √ employment opportunities Easy access to CET √ Multiple occupational √ pathways Financial support for re-training Access to re-training √ CET at different phases √ of working life RPL for all kinds of √ √ work Different educational √ √ pathways Access to educational √ √ certification Educational provisions characterising employability support √ program Job preparation √ Re-training opportunities Engagement of learners in design Counselling about CET √ Accessibility √ √ Short and low-cost √ √ Alignment with needs √ √ Flexible delivery √ √ modes Workplace processes featuring Sensitive to family √ responsibilities Retention policies for √ older workers Clear and transparent processes Inclusive work √ environment workplace mentoring √ Structured mentoring √ development plans for √ individuals On-site CET √ Off-site CET √

securing advancement

transition to new/ other occupations

√ √

√

√ √

√ √

√

√

√

√

√

√

√

√

√

√

√ √ √ √ √

√ √ √ √ √

√ √ √ √ √ √ √

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Educational policies and practices

Working age adults

Workplace policies and practices

Community

Fig. 1  Contributions to promoting working age adults’ employability

Yet, even in circumstances where engagement in educational programs and provisions occurred, on its own it was rarely sufficient to support individuals’ progression along their working life pathways. Thus, there will be a need for individuals to adapt and translate their occupational knowledge about, procedures for, and dispositions to that work situation; that is, adapting what they know, can do, and value to the specific requirements of the circumstances of practice (Billett, 2022), maintaining occupational currency. Across working life, opportunities for advancement or more broadly applying skills require adaptability, imagination and also self-­ confidence or courage. Both forms of advancement require workers to adapt what they know, can do, and value to different circumstances and tasks. As indicated in Table 1, the contributions to achieving these outcomes are often shared across the practices of government, education institutions and workplaces. To representing how these institutional contributions might collectively contribute to working age adults’ employability, in Fig. 1 these institutional practices are depicted as a complex of interrelated factors. In the centre are the working age adults and how they dialogically engage with the practices of each of these institutions. This includes the relationships amongst these practices as well as find support through and from them. Central here also are the communities in which those individuals engage. In the following sections, drawing from the survey data, the contributions arising from each of these three institutional factors are discussed in turn.

Government The survey data as also illuminated and elaborated by the life history interviews, identified policy related practices that could assist support and sustain working age adults’ employability (Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). These are set out in Box 1 that previews a listing of how the informants suggest that governments might act to secure that outcome, which are discussed below.

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Box 1: Actions by Government Supporting Working Age Adults Learning for Employability Government For all kinds and classification of working age adults, access to:  Multiple pathways for securing occupation;  Employment opportunities to support diverse pathways;  CET for working age Australians;  Information and processes about CET for different phases of working life;  Information about different educational pathways;  Re-training through VET and HE;  Financial support for re-training;  Processes for RPL; and  Educational certification

Firstly, it was proposed that information advising about and processes supporting the development of occupational capacities might be made accessible by government. Rather than relying upon the initial occupational preparation that is designed and enacted for young people transitioning into working life, diverse pathways to securing the capacities to practice occupations might be developed. For instance, processes of mature age apprenticeships have been enacted previously that allow for the recognition of prior learning, accelerated progression and a set of arrangements that allow working age adults to participate effectively in them. Knowledge about these pathways and how working age adults might come to engage with them need to be available to and disseminated across the communities in which working age adults engage. Secondly, however and, in particular, for women and Indigenous adult respondents and those from non-English speaking backgrounds, it was suggested that fair access to employment opportunities that both support diverse workforces and also enhance equity in access to, engagement in and successful participation in working life (Billett et  al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). Here, for instance, subsidies for enterprises engaging with adults from backgrounds that sit outside of those normally employed in them might be used to promote a more diverse workforce. Thirdly, it was suggested that ease of access to CET is required for working age Australians (Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”; Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). Identifying the means by which the requirements for these courses can be made easy to access and enrol, their provisions being sensitive to the competing demands of adults need to balance work life and family commitments against opportunities for their CET (Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The

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Australian Context”). So, considerations for modes of education that are suited to adults’ needs and not being premised upon those of school leavers might assist with greater participation. Likely, combinations of face-to-face and online engagements, that feature contributions from students and opportunities for interactions and collaborations with peers and their teachers and engagement in educational activities that are aligned with what would be most helpful to promote their employability might become elements of educational mode with individual ls for these adults. Sometimes, guidance and counselling are required for working age adults to make informed choices about their educational programs and pathways, or even to become aware of their opportunities (Salling-Olesen, this volume). The evidence suggests that much of the guidance provided currently to working age adults arises through and from their communities (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett, this volumea, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”; Billett et al., 2023). Whilst this is helpful and has become an essential feature of much of the decision-­making reported by these informants and survey respondents, this suggests that a greater level of guidance than currently exists is required to ensure that the advice and counselling working age adults receive is as informed and objective as possible (Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). So, fourthly, guidance is likely to be required to inform and advise working age adults about and participating in CET programmes in ways that are directed towards their readiness and goals (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). Related here and fifthly, is advice and information about the different kinds of educational pathways that exist and in what ways those pathways might suit individual working age adults. The survey feedback indicates that despite being autonomous adults, that comprehensive advice and some customised guidance aligning the various options with individuals’ capacities will be helpful (Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). Notably, government might also engage with tertiary educational institutions (i.e., both vocational and higher education), to identify how best to provide accessible and relevant retraining schemes. An important aspect is about access. The informant Salim was able to undertake a short vocational education course that provided him with some skills, but also recognised his prior learning that enabled him to secure credentials as a licensed builder (Billett et al., 2021). That program modelled much of what is likely to be helpful for such adults. That is, it was tightly focused, respected the competence that adults had acquired through engaging occupational practices, identified gaps in the applicants’ knowledge and organised for specific training interludes that help close that gap and then lead to certification that captures and articulates adults’ competence. A regulation which secures recognition of prior learning  – i.e. informal learning for work life or from non-formal education and training - would greatly enhance the possibilities for many working adults. But it requires a shared language that can be handled by education

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institutions, and a more systematic access to competence assessment (Salling Olesen, 2014, 2022). Sixthly, and, in particular, for regulated or licensed occupations, this approach provides a platform for adults to be authorised to practice occupations either through being an employee or, as the case here, as a self-employed sole trader. The need for some kind of financial support may be necessary on an individual-­ by-­individual basis. For instance, an unemployed individual living on the fringes of a large city might need support for public transport, to participate in a program that is some distance from their home and, if they do not have private transport finding ways in which their travel and basic costs might be sponsored would be particularly helpful for some cohorts. So, rather than living costs per se, there may need to be subsidies for travel, equipment and specialised clothing required by working age adults. Consequently, the seventh contribution here is about targeted and directed financial support to achieve these outcomes. As mentioned, in both the life history interviews and survey data the importance of recognition of prior learning is central to optimising the earlier worklife experiences of working age adults and optimising their time and resources required to complete educational programs (Billett et al., 2021, this volume-a, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”). Hence, the provision of means to recognise and certify that knowledge and learnings are essential for working age adults who lack those qualifications and certifications. This is indicated by Shirley’s experiences as somebody who struggled with work inhibited by health-related issues. Certification is increasingly important in many occupational fields. Also, without certification it is difficult for adults to engage in sometimes competitive job-seeking activities. So, the eighth and ninth contributions here are the importance of access to the recognition of prior learning and the importance of working age adults being able to access educational certification.

Education Institutions The survey data has also illuminated how contributions from educational institutions can support the ongoing learning of working age adults that promote their employability (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). That data was instantiated and elaborated by the life history interviews (Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”; Billett et al., 2023). Together, these identified educational practices that could serve to guide, support and assist working age adults’ learning for employability. These practices are set out in Box 2 that presents and previews a listing of how the informants suggest ways in which educational institutions could act to realise such outcomes, discussed below.

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Box 2: Actions by Educational Institutions Supporting Working Age Adults’ Learning for Employability Educational institutions For all kinds and classification of working age adults, providing:  Courses offered in modes accessible for and to working age adults;  Short and low-cost online courses to update occupational capacities;  Job preparation programs appropriately organised;  Re-training opportunities for occupationally displaced adults;  Employability support programs;  Guidance and counselling about CET;  Education and training aligned with adults’ needs at different life stages; and  Ways to contribute to developing and enacting CET programs.

Firstly, provisions of CET provided by education institutions need to be aligned with the goals, readiness and competing demands placed upon working age adults (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). As indicated above, much, if not the vast majority, of the goals for CET are associated with further development of these adult skills to maintain employability in their current roles. Hence, the educational goals here are about advancing further what these individuals know, can do and value within the domain of occupational and workplace practices. There are, however, instances also of needs to learn new occupations that require kinds and level of initial preparation that may be distinct from those offered to younger people in terms of duration and approach in some ways. In terms of readiness, many of these working age adults will not have engaged in tertiary education recently, and for some for a very long period of time. Hence, what is broadly referred to as study skills which extends to being able to engage with written and online materials, generates text and respond to assessment tasks may represent challenges that are distinct from those of younger students. This may extend to the use of online educational provisions and comfort in engaging with others through online platforms, for instance. The simple point here is that the readiness of these adult students needs to be accommodated, which is consistent with any educational provision which seeks to understand the base from which their education should progress. Secondly, within these considerations and as foreshadowed for governmental contributions, is also identifying how best to make the course materials and experiences easy to access for adults who have competing demands from their work and family commitments. Consequently, considerations for modes of CET that are suited to adults needs and not being premised upon those of school leavers might assist with encouraging greater participation and successful outcomes. As noted, combinations of face-to-face and online engagements, that feature contributions from students and opportunities for interactions and collaborations across students and their teachers and engagement in educational activities that are aligned might well be helpful for these adult learners.

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Part of considerations for these adults is having CET provisions that are not of any longer duration than is necessary and also offered in ways that the costs are low (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). In particular, when there is no clear alignment between participation in these programs and employment outcomes, apart from being more current, there may be no great financial incentive to participate in expensive and long programs. Consequently, and thirdly the provisions that are available through accessible means and of low costs are likely to be particularly relevant to the broad cohort of working age adults. Fourthly, the data indicates that although much of the required CET provisions are about upgrading and refreshing skills that, across working lives, there will be necessity to learn new occupations (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). Consequently, models of initial occupational preparation or ‘retraining’ that are similarly suited to the needs of working age adults, can profit from recognition of prior learning, being of reasonable duration and occupational skills needing to be learnt is likely to be important for these learners. Part of that provision might extend to providing workplace experiences to promote employability through placements, practicum internships that are suited to working age adults, as a fifth consideration. Sixthly, and as indicated governmental contribution, many working age adults will benefit from guidance and counselling associated with their CET. Although there might be expectations that these adults will be able to seek out information, make informed choices and complete their courses, this is not the case for all kinds of adult students. Many will either not have engaged in tertiary education for a long time or in some cases ever before and their familiarity with the array of courses, the alignments between their capacities and readiness to be successful in these courses may be underdeveloped. Consequently, provisions of guidance and support is likely to be helpful prior to decision-making about the courses they participate in, the likely outcomes for them and their ability to be successful within them. For instance, a number of the informants indicated that they lacked the literacy to effectively engage in tertiary education programs, because they were second language learners or lacked the educational foundations required to be successful in such programs (Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). Not the least here is that there is an expectation about greater student independence in tertiary education which may be unrealistic for some of these learners. Part of that guidance is also about aligning adults’ needs with the different life stages they are negotiating and the kinds of changes that comprise to negotiate through their learning (Billett et  al., 2021, this volume-b, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). As indicated earlier, six kinds of changes that constituted transitions that adults need to engage in (Billett et al., 2021) were identified. Depending upon the individual circumstances what for one individual is a straightforward change from one job to another, for another individual might be learning a new occupation, developing language skills and trying to accommodate

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cultural practices which they are unfamiliar (Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). However, and in all, the increased emphasis on CET is going to be a major challenge to institutions of formal education (Salling Olesen, 2020). The diversity of the educational needs of the adult working population their different kinds of readiness and goals for participating in continuing education and training, and it would be helpful for efforts to engage these adults in processes associated with developing courses and programs. That is, rather than assuming that these learners would need to conform to existing program goals and requirements that some engagement with these adults to refine the educational goals, identify issues of readiness and appraise the means by which these adults might best come to engage in and be successful in their continuing education and training.

Workplaces The survey data as also illuminated how workplaces can contribute to the ongoing learning of working age adults in ways that promote their employability (Le et al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). Beyond the survey data these contributions were instantiated and elaborated by the life history interviews (Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”; Billett et al., 2023). Together, these identified workplace practices that could serve to guide, support and assist working age adults’ learning for employability. These are set out in Box 3 that indicates a listing of how the informants suggest ways in which workplaces could act to realise such outcomes, which are then discussed below.

Box 3: Actions by Workplaces Supporting Working Age Adults’ Learning for Employability Workplaces For all kinds and classification of employees having:  Clear and transparent for recruitment, promotion and retention practices;  Retention policies for older workers;  Mentoring for upskilling and career advancement;  Structured mentoring for career progression;  On and off-site continuing education and training;  Working and educational practices sensitive to family responsibilities;  Inclusive work environment and practices; and  Individual learning and development plans for workers

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Increasingly, global agencies such as the OECD and also individual governments are emphasising the importance of adults taking responsibility for the currency of their skilfulness and remaining employable through their fulfilment of work requirements and being responsive as they change. This then suggests that there has to be clear and transparent statements about recruitment, promotion and retention practices in contemporary workplaces. If the onus is increasingly on the working age adults to remain occupationally competent and workplace effective, it is important that the requirements to achieve those outcomes are understandable, fair and can guide the actions of working age adults. This seems to be an important first consideration for how workplaces can come to guide, advise and support workers’ ongoing development across working life. Secondly, and building upon this need is being clear about retention policies for older workers. There is much ambivalence about the ways in which older workers are perceived in workplaces, afforded opportunities and continue to develop their occupational competence and abilities to perform effectively in workplaces. Again, to guide the actions of these workers who are increasingly expected to take responsibility for the currency of their occupational competence, and in clear practices associated with the retention of older workers is likely to be particularly helpful in guiding their actions, focuses and expectations. Given much of the focus is on adults’ CET efforts associated with maintaining their occupational competence and workplace performance, it is quite appropriate that there should be processes in workplaces to assist with achieving those outcomes. This would seem to be well aligned with goals of retaining staff, supporting their development, maximising their contributions, and assisting their abilities to do so. Consequently, and thirdly, having workplace mentoring and support for up skilling and career advancement has been identified as contributions that workplaces could make to working age adults’ employability (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett et al., 2023). That includes structured arrangements for career progression to assist and guide learners and for them to direct their continuing education and training efforts and realise employability outcomes that will allow them to advance their careers and that includes being more broadly skilled to work in different and new ways within the workplace and their occupational practice. In different ways, depending upon the knowledge that needs to be learnt these provisions can be provided through either on or off-site CET and/or combinations of both which is the fourth consideration. Other studies have indicated that both employers and employees favour on-site provisions of CET as these promote immediate applicability and learning on the part of workers (e.g., Le et al., 2022; Smith & Kelly, 2016; Tyler et al., 2016), and are well aligned with the goals of the enterprises which are always a key priority of their employers, supervisors and owners. Also, and fifthly, having inclusive practices that are sensitive to adults’ family responsibilities and encourage participation, innovation and contributions to the workplace are likely to engage workers in activities that will extend their knowledge, in ways that are aligned with workplace goals and, hopefully, permit them to make the most of and best contributions to their workplace, its community and their

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own development (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett et  al., this volume-b, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”). Allied here is the final contribution and that is of having individual learning and development plans for employees. It is these that might bring together in a considered, formal and planned way, the alignment between their needs as learners, their goals for their working life and the requirements of the workplace both in the short and longer term. Of course, such suggestions might be dismissed as being fanciful and outside of the scope of the way that many workplaces operate. However, as workplaces become more concerned about retaining workers, having the capacities to respond to emerging challenges and maximising the full capacities of their paid workforces these practices become more realistic, essential and necessary for effective work practice and workplace viability.

Working Age Adults Beyond what social institutions such as governments, education institutions and workplaces can contribute to the employability of working age adults, are also the actions of those adults themselves. As foreshadowed, they are ultimately the meaning makers, and it is they who engage with what is afforded them and construct knowledge accordingly. The survey data illuminated how those engagements, interactions and constructive efforts can support their ongoing learning that promote their employability (Le et al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). As with the other contributions, the survey data was instantiated and elaborated by the life history interviews (see Billett et al., 2023; Billett et al., 2021; Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). Together, these identified personal practices that could serve to guide, support and assist adults’ learning for employability as overviewed in Box 4 and which are discussed below. Box 4: Actions by Working Age Adults Supporting Their Learning for Employability Working age adults All kinds and classification of working age adults engaging in:  Seeking advice from others to learn across working life;  Interacting with informed community members;  Professional/work/local associations/networks;  Identifying and optimising opportunities to learn;  Developing capacities to multi-­skill to expand work roles;  CET through educational provision, workplace and independent learning  Actively and effortfully engaging in lifelong learning

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As has been advanced within this chapter and rehearsed in many others, beyond what working age adults are afforded by social institutions such as workplaces and educational institutions and through conditions framed and supported by governmental priorities and practices, ultimately it is how these adults come to engage with what has been afforded them that is consequential for their learning. This is not to propose these adults as being wholly detached from social suggestions, quite the opposite. It is how they come to engage with, negotiate, appropriate or reject what is being suggested to them that is central to how they learn across working life and negotiate key transitions. From the data gathered in the life history narratives and subsequent interviews, and survey, it is possible to identify a series of actions that working age adults might take to promote their learning across working life (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”; Billett et al., 2021; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). Many of these actions are associated with engagement in social partners and institutions, whilst others are founded on the exercise of personal agency alone (Billett et al., 2023). Firstly, seeking advice from others who are more informed or have specific knowledge or insights stands as an important basis for informing actions, making decisions and engaging in activities and interactions across working life. This was particularly notable in identifying how to proceed during significant transitions (Billett et  al., 2021, 2023). One informant  – the refugee migrant called Salim  – when finding not only was his prospects of employment impossible but facing an immediate threat to his life, consulted with his family and from that decided to flee from Iran and seek political asylum in a nearby country. In learning and developing further his English language skills he engaged with others quite intentionally to assist that development and seek assistance from them to do so. He also sought advice from the Persian community members in Australia about securing employment, opportunities to learn and progress his worklife career. Other examples abound of the importance of engaging in seeking advice are found in the stories and interview data of other informants (e.g., Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”). Beyond merely seeking advice, it was a case of being selective about those from whom advice was secured, as a second consideration. Continuing this example, Salim engaged with a competent English speaker to seek specific advice, encouraged his employees to providing feedback on his spoken language in the work setting in developing his English competence. In developing his occupational capacities in the construction sector, he worked closely in an informal apprenticeship arrangement with an experienced builder from his Persian community who provided him with experiences to learn that occupation, with that learning augmented by his use of questions to elaborate and extend his knowledge as they worked collaboratively. Thirdly, engaging with others in the field, local associations and networks are likely to be quite central to seeking access to insights, and opportunities from such

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networks. For instance, the airline captain who was grounded and feared would never fly again as a result of the pandemic, sought a new career in law by enrolling in a law degree. Yet, he was assisted in this potential career move through engagements with law professionals who were members of the local golf club. This network provided him with sets of advice about law as an occupation, contacts and even some paid employment that allowed him to engage in this occupation to decide whether he was suited to it and would meet his needs. Then, there was the example of a teacher (i.e., Sarah) who through professional contacts outside of her actual workplace was able to secure opportunities for advancing her career through being invited to engage in a specialised form of work that was aligned with her interests and ultimate career goals. Across the data, the importance of these working age adults identifying and optimising opportunities to learn was evident (Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett et al., 2023; Le et al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). That is, the exercise of their agency in identifying opportunities, finding ways to engage in activities and interactions with others was central to how they learnt through working life and particularly, when negotiating key transitions. However, that engagement, the exercise of agency and deployment of their capacities is not open ended or conditional. It is shaped by their intentionalities and contingencies that they must reconcile (Billett, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”). For instance, Salim concluded that whilst obtaining a degree in engineering was a key personal goal and priority, the need to provide for his family through finding paid employment meant that he had to focus his efforts in building a worklife career outside of engineering to meet that need. So more than the exercise of agency, are the boundaries in which that agency can be exercised. Those boundaries include the constraints on the kinds of employment that can be secured, and occupational activities undertaken and the constraints and/or opportunities created by the needs and advice of familiars and personal and family priorities that shape and delineate the kinds of personal agency to be exercised. However, central here is the premise that working age adults need to be proactive in identifying and optimising opportunities for their learning and that increasingly across working lives these will be initiated and mediated outside of provisions of educational programs and institutions in which others (e.g., teachers, instructors, trainers) will have roles in mediating that learning. As worklife learning progresses, so does the emphasis on the adult learner. Associated with this personally mediated process of engagement in exercise of agency is the need to identify and secure the kinds of learning that will sustain employability across working life (Billett et al., 2023). The informant Beau realised that the clothing industry was in decline in countries in which he lived, and consequently sought out opportunities to work in other sectors and find relatively secure work in what was becoming potentially a precarious employment situation. That move was quite intentional as was that by the pilot (David) mentioned above. By the

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time that pilot had been grounded with the closure of international borders, he had already commenced a graduate certificate in aviation law, because David was aware that the career of a pilot had definite age limits placed upon it. So, he had already embarked on arrangements to secure a post-flying career by completing that graduate certificate which drew upon his knowledge of aviation. So, when the cessation of international flights occurred, his selection of law was not ad hoc, it was part of a previously conceived occupational transition arrangement. Similarly, work and family circumstances required Ingrid  – social and economic migrant  – to move away from her architectural work into owning a retail business associated with Scandinavian furniture and then progressing onto teaching architecture in a university. All these moves were intentional and directed towards sustaining employability as economic and personal circumstances change. Finally, etched across the findings of the life history narratives and interviews is the importance of engagement in educative experiences to negotiate key transitions (Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”). For many of the instances identified through these data, those transitions were facilitated by an educational program often leading to certification that would permit the progression into a new phase of working life (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). For instance, Salim was able to undertake a relatively short vocational educational program that provided him with the certification to be a builder. Sarah enjoyed the benefits of mature age entry into a social work degree, that she was able to build on by engaging in a postgraduate educational degree to pursue a new career in education after the one in youth justice. Ingrid enabled her transition to work in higher education by undertaking a relatively short course that provided her with educational capacities that allowed her to teach architecture. Other examples abound to make the point that engaging in educational programs is often necessary when working age adults negotiate key transitions (Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). However, not all of these educative experiences were those provided through formalised CET provisions. There were also examples of these educational programs failing to provide for effective transitions, however. For instance, despite her long journey through post-school education to gain teacher registration, Shirley found the demands of being a classroom teacher overwhelming and threatened her health. So, she left that occupation after a short period of time. Despite working towards the completion of his law degree, the pilot mentioned above, decided that he was not yet ready for such a career change and moved country to gain employment in aviation as initially a first officer and was working towards gaining his captaincy license in that country. So, whilst essential and necessary and helpful for some working age adults, for others, securing capacities and certification through participation in CET programs, on its own, does not guarantee successful transitions.

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Situating These Contributions Finally, and in summary, the contributions to working age adults’ learning and development to maintain their employability set out above suggest that policy and practices enacted by government, educational institutions, workplaces, and adults themselves often require to be in unison. These sets of institutional and personal factors (as depicted in Fig. 1 and then presented and elaborated in Boxes 2–4) may need to be applied in specific ways in particular regional, industry, and individual circumstances. They stand to be a set of principles drawn from fact that become manifest in particular circumstances of regionality (in terms of the existing kinds of work, workplaces and educational institutions); the particular nature and requirements of industry sectors (i.e., size and scale of enterprises, specific occupational focuses); and the working age adult population and their wanting, needing and capacities to engage with what is provided and afforded by educational institutions, workplaces and their communities. So, the deductions from the data will have different kinds and levels of applicability across these kinds of circumstances within the country of their residence and may have a reach beyond that national context. Yet, certainly, these findings offer the prospect of being platforms for others to consider policy and practices for workplaces, educational institutions, governmental action, and also how working age adults might come to position themselves to promote their employability. If a request was made by either government, educational institutions or workplaces or even by working age adults themselves, about the four key issues for promoting working age adults’ employability, the following would likely be the means for them. Guidance and Support Firstly, although earlier theories and accounts of adults indicated that they are distinct from children in so far as they are self-directed (Knowles, 1975), this premise is only applied and may limit considerations of how working age adults might come to secure employability across working life. Whilst working within a domain of activity with which they are familiar, self-directedness may be sufficient. However, in circumstances of confronting changes in occupations, ways of working, ways of knowing or even navigating employment and educational decisions, the evidence suggests this ability to be self-directed is less likely to be true. Instead, guidance and support are required for adults making decisions about both work and educational trajectories and their most efficacious ways for individual adults. The desirable qualities of that guidance should be objective, informed, and impartial. But, it is also important for those actors to have relevant knowledge to provide guidance with these qualities. There is always the risk that tertiary education institutions may privilege securing financial outcomes over providing impartial advice to adults (Leow

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et al., 2023). One solution is to have this advice provided by agencies that are separated from those who provide these educational provisions. In some case it can be organized by their communities like migrant communities or indigenous communities, who are already supportive, yet able to inform competently and impartially. In other cases, trade unions may be sufficiently organized depending on region and industry to take care of such a task. For realizing a lifelong learning system, which can support individual transitions are negotiated successfully, and that working adults receive not only independent source of information but also an encouraging, proactive advice. As such, it might be necessary to establish independent agencies (Salling Olesen, 2022). Moreover, support is likely to be required for adults to learn knowledge that they will not secure through discovery alone. Self-direction is likely to be a poor tool when the task is to access and comprehend knowledge and learn procedures that sit beyond what is accessible to the learner. Therefore, as the findings have emphasised repeatedly, when working age adults are negotiating key transitions, they require educative experiences that come to support their learning and experiences that are commensurate with their readiness to learn and aligned with the goals that they seek to achieve. These can only be understood and enacted locally, indicating that it will be local educational institutions and workplaces, as well as the communities in which they exist that are best able to provide that kind of support. And having provisions of both guidance and support at the local level is important for securing working age adults’ employability. Government Subsidies and Incentives Secondly, the provision of subsidies and incentives is always controversial. The great risk is a dependence upon incentives and subsidies to engage working age adults and enterprises in supporting CET efforts. However, there will be circumstances in which such initiatives will be required. Whether it is the provision of living costs, transport and support over time for working age adults to transit from unemployment to employment, or engaging in new occupations that offer the prospects of employment, there will be circumstances in which subsidies will be helpful, albeit with conditions applied. Simply, subsidies to workplaces for providing quality support for working age adults’ learning and development are worthy of consideration, but largely to encourage that practice so that these enterprises come to value and want to direct their resources to developing their workforces’ capacities. Perhaps more importantly, for many working age adults, there is little incentive to develop further their educational achievements when securing those outcomes often with no tangible benefit or reward, except perhaps the prospect of greater employability or advancement. For workers in the occupations that are not regulated through certification, it is only personally motivated individuals who might invest both financially and their time and effort in educational activities. Therefore,

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incentives in the form of either reduced cost of CET provisions or partial or refunds of costs for completion might be ways of securing greater engagement in structured and certified CET provisions. Government could enact mechanisms to offset those costs directly and through partial tax offsets for enterprises who would reimburse their employees’ costs associated with their ongoing development.  ngagement in Occupational and Workplace Related Learning E in Work Settings Thirdly, work settings and work practices are perhaps the key circumstances in which, across human history, workers have developed and sustained their employability through day-to-day work activities in responding to both routine and nonroutine tasks, resolving problems and addressing emerging challenges in terms of the goods and services they produce, changing client, customer or patient profile, and through collaborative efforts within work settings. These stand to be accessible and effective environments for learning the knowledge required for securing occupational competence and meeting the specific requirements of the workplace or work practice. Consequently, as the need grows for the entire working age population to sustain their employability, the sites of utilisation and further development of occupational capacities and work requirements need to become a central element of an approach to maintain working age population’s employability. Whilst much of that learning arises through day-to-day work activities in workplace settings, there is significant potential to augment, strengthen, extend and capitalise on them through interventions that can largely occur as part of everyday work activity. So, a key finding is to privilege, support and utilise fully the circumstances in which working age adults engage as key sites for their learning and development, thereby also generating workplace innovations.  ngagement in Occupational and Workplace Related Learning Within E Educational Settings Fourthly, the findings from this project clearly indicate that there are essential roles that participating in programs within educational settings play across adults’ working life in sustaining their employability. Specifically, when adults are negotiating key transitions that require multiple domains of learning to be secured, specific, targeted and effective educational provisions are necessary. Even when those provisions focus on one element of the required learning (e.g., occupational knowledge), accommodation of other kinds are often needed (e.g., language, work familiarity, learner readiness). Hence, an essential contribution of educational provisions is providing educational experiences in ways that would not otherwise be available. Yet, to secure these outcomes, the educational provision needs to be one that is centred on learner engagement, readiness and relevance, in alignment with the needs, requests and conveniences of industry, enterprises and government. Thus, the voice

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of adults should always be present, informing the design for and enactment of such educational provisions. In addition, the certification of the knowledge that has been learnt either through the program or through individuals working life (e.g., recognition of prior learning) is often an essential feature of what tertiary education institutions can provide for working age adults. Together, engagement in the organisation, enactment and recognition of CET programs by adults would seem to be an important quality by which tertiary education institutional practices might be judged.

 olicy and Practice Implications for Sustaining Employability P Through Worklife Learning In conclusion, understanding and promoting workers’ learning through and across their working life, including the transitions they negotiate, and how they can be supported through educational and workplace provisions and support within their communities are complex undertakings. They are rarely countenanced or accommodated in policies and practices of governments, workplaces and professional and industry bodies, and supra-national agencies (e.g., OECD). Instead, the direction of and mobilization of effort is often based on abstracted concepts such as “industry need”, “professional standards”, and “best practices”. Yet, these tend to privilege institutional rather than the goals of those who are to learn: working age adults. That effort is also often enacted through what can be delivered in taught courses (i.e., lifelong education) (Schuller & Watson, 2009) in tertiary education institutions and are usually subject to administrative or bureaucratic control. They are also enacted through experiences distinct from the circumstances of actual practice, and primarily concerned to offer sponsors with certainty in outcomes (Billett et al., 2016). Accordingly, policies and practices associated with learning across working life are focussed on educational provisions and in ways that privilege educational discourses, courses and training programs, and tend to overlook learners’ personal dependent goals, needs and readiness. It follows then that to redress this issue, identifying policies and practices that supports adults’ worklife learning in ways that promote their employability has been the key focus of this chapter. It has drawn upon the findings from the worklife histories and survey data of working age adults. So synthesised, reconciled and advanced here are findings that have been variously distributed across separate contributions. In particular, advanced here are practices that might be adopted by governments, tertiary education institutions, workplaces and communities in which adults live and work and by workers to support their learning and development associated with their employability. Quite specifically, practices to be adopted by governments, educational institutions, workplaces, communities and workers themselves are advanced as focused and practical contributions to learning

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and securing the kinds of outcomes that workplaces, communities and governments desire. Importantly, efforts by any of the four key social partners, i.e. government, education institutions, communities and workplaces, that seeks to integrate or share resources for the betterment of working adults should be applauded and supported. The ‘triple helix’ these key social partners comprise needs to be strengthened, their mutuality acknowledged, and their interactions promoted.

References Anderson, J. R. (1993). Problem solving and learning. American Psychologist, 48(1), 35–44. Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 162(1), 67–92. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). Statistics ABo. 4102.0  – Australian social trends, 2008 Adult learning. Bargallie, D. (this volume). Indigenous Australian peoples and work: Examining worklife learning histories of indigenous Australian workers. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (Ed.). (2006). Work, change and workers. Springer. Billett, S. (2022). Promoting graduate employability: Key goals, and curriculum and pedagogic practices for higher education. In B. Ng Ling (Ed.), Graduate employability and workplace-­ based learning development: Insights from sociocultural perspectives. Springer. Billett, S. (this volume-a). Learning across working life: Educative experiences. In S.  Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (this volume-b). Learning across working life: A product of ‘personal curriculum’. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Smith, R., & Barker, M. (2005). Understanding work, learning and the remaking of cultural practices. Studies in Continuing Education, 27(3), 219–237. Billett, S., Dymock, D., & Choy, S. (2016). Supporting learning across working life. Springer. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Smith, R., & Choy, S. (2021). The kinds and character of changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 40, 1–15. Billett, S., Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (2023). Lifelong learning across working lives: Personal, social and maturational factors. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education (pp.  1–21). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/978-­3-­030-­67930-­9_23-­1 Billett, S., Le, A.  H., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-a). Practices and strategies to support worklife learning: The Australian context. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A. H., & Filliettaz, L. (this volume-b). Worklife transitions: An Australian investigation. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (2023). Worklife learning: Personal, educational, and community contributions. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education. Springer (pp. 421–442). 3-031-19592-1 (eBook) Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (this volume). Contributions of tertiary education. In S. Billett, H. Salling-­ Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. The Free Press.

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Filliettaz, L. (this volume). Literate practices in worklife histories, transitions and learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Goodnow, J. J., & Warton, P. M. (1991). The social bases of social cognition: Interactions about work and their implications. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 37(1), 27–58. Hodges, D. C. (1998). Participation as dis-identification with/in a community of practice. Mind, Culture and Activity, 5(4), 272–290. Kern, H., & Schumann, M. (1993). Rationalization and work in German industry. In B. Kogut (Ed.), Country competitiveness. Technology and the organizing of work. Oxford University Press. Knowles, M. (1975). Self-directed learning. Association Press. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning - legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Le, A.  H., Billett, S., Choy, S., & Dymock, D. (2022). Supporting worklife learning at work to sustain employability. International Journal of Training and Development. https://doi. org/10.1111/ijtd.12288 Le, A. H., Choy, S., Smith, R., & Billett, S. (this volume). Learning across working life: A case from Australia. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Leow, A., Billett, S., & Le, A. H. (2023) Towards a continuing education and training eco system: A case study of Singapore. International Journal of Training Research. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14480220.2023.2203944 Noon, M., Blyton, P., & Morrell, K. (2013). The realities of work: Experiencing work and employment in contemporary society. Macmillan International Higher Education. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2016). Skills matter: Further results from the survey of adult skills. OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2013). OECD skills outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills. OECD. Salling Olesen, H. (2014). The invention of a new language of competence – A necessary tool for a lifelong learning policy. In R. Duvekot, D. J. Kang, & J. Murray (Eds.), Linkages of VPL: Validation of prior learning as a multi-targeted approach for maximising learning opportunities for all (pp. 37–44). EC-VPL. Salling Olesen, H. (2020). The challenge of competence development. Problematizing institutional regimes – Proclaiming a paradigm shift? In F. Finnegan & B. Grummell (Eds.), Power and possibility (pp. 75–84). Brill/Sense. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004413320_007 Salling Olesen, H. (2022). Changing concepts and tools for realizing lifelong learning strategies. In K. Evans & E. Al (Eds.), The third international handbook of lifelong learning. Springer. Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume). Employability and work life history. In S. Billett, H. Salling-­ Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through worklife learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Schuller, T., & Watson, D. (2009). Learning through life: Inquiry into the future of lifelong learning. Niace. Sennett, R. (2008). The craftsman. Yale University Press. Shuell, T.  J. (1990). Phases of meaningful learning. Review of Educational Research, 60(4), 531–547. Smith, R. (this volume). The trajectories of worklife transitions. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Smith, R., & Kelly, A. (2016). Workers’ perspectives and preferences for learning across working life. In S. Billett, D. Dymock, & S. Choy (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life (pp. 231–247). Springer.

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Tyler, M., Dymock, D., & Henderson, A. (2016). The critical role of workplace managers in continuing education and training. In S. Billett, D. Dymock, & S. Choy (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life (pp. 249–265). Springer. Valsiner, J. (1998). The guided mind: A sociogenetic approach to personality. Harvard University Press. Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has worked in vocational education, educational administration, teacher education, professional development and policy development in the Australian vocational education system and as a teacher and researcher in higher education.  

Sarojni Choy is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland Australia. Her teaching and research expertise are in workplace learning, adult education, vocational education and training, lifelong learning, connecting learning in different settings, continuing education and training, professional development and workforce capacity building.  

Henning Salling Olesen is Professor Emeritus from Roskilde University, Denmark. His research area is lifelong learning and particularly work-related adult education. His specific expertise is in life history methods and the study of subjective dimensions of work identity and career.  

Part II

Elaborating and Investigating Worklife Learning

This section comprises six chapters that are instrumental in the reporting of the findings of the practical enquiries that are captured in the next two sections. The first chapter comprise (chapter “Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning”), makes a case about learning across working life from relevant the literature about how that learning can be understood from a range of disciplinary perspectives and conceptions. It outlines and discusses sets of conceptual considerations that inform those sections and chapters reporting the outcomes of worklife history interviews and the survey. The second chapter (chapter “Methods and Procedures”) describes and justifies the practical inquiries that constituted the phases of investigation. These comprise discussions and considerations about the two phases of the life history interviews of 66 working age Australians and the survey of many more used to verify and extend the findings from those interviews. The aim here in these two chapters is to provide an account of the conceptual heritage that informs the study and to save repeating the accounts of methods and procedures in each of the chapters reporting either the life history interview or survey data. The next chapter (chapter “Employability and Work Life History”) provides a justification and conceptual account for the use of the life history method, its formulation and application in practice. It elaborates the justification, orientation and utility of such approach and provides examples of how the author’s perspective is translated into its use in the analysis of life history narratives and broad imputations for policy and practice. Another perspective in the use of the life history method is provided in chapter “Indigenous Australian People and Work: Examining Worklife Histories” of indigenous Australian workers. This chapter draws upon the lived experience of a sample of indigenous Australians and their worklife histories to illuminate their experiences. The following chapter offers yet another accounting characterisation of these worklife histories through capturing the transitions that they negotiated in terms of iconic concepts. This chapter (chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”) offers a grounded account of ways of characterising these transitions is a set of distinct and sometimes interrelated trajectories. Finally, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”, also advances and discusses transitions as key elements of worklife histories and how these are manifested across the entire sample

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of working age Australians. It seeks to identify the imperatives which bring about those transitions, the changes they comprise and how these are manifested in different ways amongst the working age population.

The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review Stephen Billett

, Anh Hai Le, Sarojni Choy, and Raymond Smith

Abstract  To explain the processes of learning across working life that support the employability of workers in times of change and uncertainty, it is necessary to account for the complex of factors that shape that learning. Conceptually, these constitute factors comprising those sourced in, suggested and projected by the social world (e.g., opportunities, barriers, invitations, engagements, projections, participation, close distance support et cetera), on the one hand. On the other, are how these are engaged with by working age adults as shaped by their subjectivities (i.e., sense of self, relations to others), capacities (i.e., what they know, can do and value) and personal epistemologies (i.e., how they make sense of the world and respond to it drawing upon their subjectivities and capacities). They, in turn, are also shaped by the brute fact of maturation (e.g., ageing, physical strength and health). From a review of literature whose disciplinary focuses transcend sociological, anthropological, linguistic, linguistic, cognitive, developmental and educational fields, this chapter sets out something about what is known and understood about the imperatives for adults to learn across working life, and the personal, brute and societal contributions to that learning. It seeks to provide a comprehensive, albeit inevitably incomplete, platform for a program of informed inquiry, including perspectives on how these phenomena might be understood from diverse fields. Far from offering singularity of focus and orientation, it outlines some of the perspectives that are exercised through an Australian project about learning across working life and that inform the collective and distinct contributions of the authored chapters within this volume. Keywords  Learning · Working life · Employability · Transitions · Occupations · Workplace practices · Government policies · Developmental · Brute facts · Institutional facts · Subjectivity · Sense of self · Occupational capacities · Sociological · Anthropological · Linguistic · Cognitive · Educational practices · Societal contributions · Personal facts · Professional development · Philosophic · Educative experiences · Work integrated learning S. Billett (*) · A. H. Le · S. Choy · R. Smith Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_3

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Learning Across Working Life to Sustain Employability Employability is more than securing employment. It includes developing the capacities to remain employable through adapting to changing occupational and workplace work requirements, thereby resisting unemployment, and broadening occupational roles and, potentially, securing advancement (Billett, 2022). Added here is for individuals to find personal fulfilment and worth in and through their work (i.e., their vocations). Learning for, through and across working life is, therefore, more than updating what workers already know, can do and value from their initial occupational preparation. It also includes learning new kinds of knowledge in response to transformations in occupational requirements and particular workplace needs, as well as responding to changes in the demand for particular occupations (Billett, 2006). For instance, digital technologies enabling much current work increasingly require levels of symbolic and conceptual knowledge that are quite distinct from those requiring haptic, sensory, or manual capacities that were privileged earlier (i.e., skilful craft knowledge) (Barley et  al., 2017; Billett et  al., 2018; Martin & Scribner, 1991). Those capacities were previously acquired through direct experiencing through sensory processes reliant on physical manipulation. They also extend to individuals adapting their working knowledge to new roles and in many cases new occupations. For instance, there has been need for workers skilled in production of motor vehicles, clothes and other manufactured products to learn and adapt what they know and can do to other forms of work when that work shifted to other countries. This learning likely extends to individuals accommodating changes to their sense of self (Fenwick, 1998) or subjectivity as a particular kind of worker that is central to how adults identify themselves (Abrahamsson, 2007; Barley et al., 2017). Securing those outcomes is often referred to as “lifelong learning” or “learning across working life”, which is of interest to governments, workplaces, professional bodies and, of course, workers themselves. Governments want skilled and flexible national workforces able to respond effectively to changes in economic circumstances and to sustain their workplaces’ viability (OECD, 2006) and for workers to take responsibility for maintaining their employability (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008). Public and private sector enterprises want workers to adapt to changing work requirements and customer/client needs. Workers of all kinds need to maintain their occupational capacities to sustain employability (Noon et  al., 2013), adapt to changing work requirements, and secure advancement (Billett, 2006). For all stakeholders, workers’ initial occupational preparation, often occurring in their early adulthood, is likely to be insufficient to sustain employability across lengthening working lives. The review of literature reported and discussed here aims to understand further how learning can most effectively be enhanced through work and educational activities. The aim of the review is to generate informed, collaboratively generated and validated accounts of learning through and across working life and how it can be augmented by intentional educative provisions: i.e., lifelong education provisions and other kinds of educative experiences. These accounts will inform practices in

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workplaces and tertiary education institutions, and policy goals about promoting learning to sustain employability across working lives. The review is guided by the question: What personal, educational and workplace practices can best sustain employability across working life?

This question seeks to address current governmental, workplace and worker imperatives. It requires accounting for how changes manifest in individuals’ working lives. This includes the factors that shape specific work requirements, the organisation and processes adopted by workplaces and changes to them. Changes in requirements can transform what workers need to know, do and value to perform effectively, which is central to individuals’ employability, as they comprise how paid work is undertaken, and workers’ performance is judged. Transformations can also challenge workers’ sense of self and impact their confidence and agency as learners (Abrahamsson, 2007; Barley et  al., 2017; Fenwick, 2002; Smith, 2005; Smith & Kelly, 2016). Learning for and through such changes is usually viewed as being premised on a duality comprising, on the one hand, individuals’ abilities and readiness to engage effectively in work activities, and the other, the support or affordances accessed through workplaces and educational provisions to secure the kinds of knowledge required for work performance. Currently, much attention is given by government and supra-government agencies (i.e., OECD) to educational programs (i.e., professional development [PD], continuing education and training [CET]). Yet, there is also a need to understand much more about how workers come to engage in and actively learn through, across and for their worklife (OECD, 2013). This includes their processes of constructing knowledge they require, moment-by-­ moment learning that arises as they engage in their work and for addressing new work challenges (Billett, 2001; Eraut, 2004; Fuller & Unwin, 2004; Tynjälä, 2008, 2013). In responding to the research question, the review is organised around what literature informs about: (i) learning and development across lifespan and life course; (ii) adult learning across working life; and (iii) practices to best sustain employability through learning across working lives. These themes are also informed by issues emerging from analyses of transitions across working life and the learning associated with working age adults seeking to secure continuity or even quest for continuity, premised on intentions that are variously short-term and pragmatic or long term and strategic, but also influenced by unexpected events and ‘happen chances’, that shape their learning and development across working lives (Billett et  al., 2021). Of course, across diverse individuals, approaches for continuity are exercised in different ways, and directed towards quite different goals. This then leads to questions about (i) how we can conceptualise the personal orientation, disposition and intentionality that drive what comprises both individual continuity and direction of adaptability; and (ii) what personally drives and guides ontogenetic development. There are several explanations, and these come from a range of disciplines. These perspectives are discussed in the following section on learning and development across lifespan and life course.

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Learning and Development Across Lifespan and Life Course Perspectives on development across lifespan have emerged as important theoretical foundations for empirical investigations of a wide range of phenomena relevant to the study of ontogenesis (i.e., learning and development across the lifespan) including working life. Such studies have increased in volume, with some of it in response to the maturing workforce (Hedge et al., 2006). There are explanations of ontogenetic development from a range of disciplines. Unsurprisingly, given their starting points, distinct conceptions are provided in fields of sociology (e.g., Emirbayer & Mische, 1998), philosophy (e.g., Biesta & Tedder, 2006; Harre, 1995), social psychology (e.g., Gergen, 1994), and cultural psychology (e.g., Billett, 2009b; Valsiner, 1998). Common to these accounts although privileged in greater or lesser ways are the kinds of intentionality and agency that drives and guides individuals’ ontogenetic development albeit arising through engagement and interaction with the social world in different ways through different kinds of experiences. Less often, reference to the brute fact (Searle, 1995) of maturation is also interjected (Baltes, 1987). From a sociological perspective, Emirbayer and Mische (1998) conceptualise agency as a temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past (in its “iterational” or habitual aspect) but also oriented toward the future (as a “projective” capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a “practical-evaluative” capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects within the contingencies of the moment). The iterational dimension represents the habituated past experiences and resources to think and act in any given social context. The practical-evaluative dimension is the capacity to make practical and normative judgments among possible trajectories of action, in response to evolving situations; meaning the capacity, resources or affordances in the current situation that mediate past understanding and actions into future understanding and actions (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998, p. 971). The projective element is the imaginative level of possible future trajectories of action where we can see options, challenge alternative ways of thinking and new possibilities for acting (Emirbayer & Mische, 1998). They conclude that we can either keep the iterational unchanged or we can think and act in new ways. Of course, not all of this is able to be exercised by individuals alone as circumstances outside of their locus of control, such as changes in occupations, and workplace requirements demands that they are pressed to make changes. So, these kinds of processes are not always wholly dependent upon individual agency, but agentic responses to changing circumstances remains important (Smith & Kelly, 2016; Tyler et al., 2014). Philosophically, Harre (1995) proposes that personality becomes socially guided and individually constructed in the course of human life. People are born as potential persons, and the process of becoming actual persons takes place through individual transformations of social experience (Harre, 1995), which is relevant to the kinds of transitions that occur across working life. Supporting Harre’s (1995) stance, Valsiner (1998) notes that personality is often considered from a de-­contextualised

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viewpoint, rather than being shaped by bi-directional processes of inter-dependence: something negotiated by individuals through engagement with the social world. Since society participates in the process of individuals’ construction of themselves, they are meaning makers in this process, albeit shaped by factors and influences beyond the skin (i.e., from the social world), so to speak (Wertsch & Tulviste, 1992). In other words, personality emerges through ontogeny. That is, the formation of personality is simultaneously socially and individually interdependent. Moreover, personal psychological (i.e., personological) and social cultural perspectives have been habitually viewed as opposites, which proves unhelpful. In one case, the focus is on the ontology of the person as the unique autonomous individual. In the other case, it is the social origin of such autonomy that are emphasised. Valsiner (1998) states the person simultaneously is and maintains his or her autonomy relative to the given social context and has become the way he or she is to the history of such relations (p. 2).

The personal and social are thus complementary, yet distinct. There are strong associations between engaging in thinking and acting social contexts such as workplaces (Billett, 2003a), educational institutions (Collins et  al., 1989) and communities (Lave, 1988) and the legacies arising from those activities. Therefore, accounting for the kinds of social and cultural circumstances that individuals engage in across working life is central to understanding their learning and development. Indeed, the distinction between learning arising through everyday interaction and development (which is an accumulation of learning that both shapes and is shaped by that learning) indicates that understanding individuals’ learning trajectory and the kind of experience they have had becomes important. From a cultural psychological viewpoint, Billett (2009b) appraises the concept of personal epistemology, that is, the embodiment and carriage of how individuals’ think and act that shape what they know, can do and value. These personal epistemologies arise from past experiences and individuals’ negotiation and reconciliation of them. The lifespan perspective on human development emerged along with empirical findings that questioned the validity of staged models of development (e.g., Lerner, 1998). Lifespan theorists treat aging and psychological development as continuous and lifelong (i.e., ontogenetic) process, recognising the possibilities of different trajectories of development (i.e., individual differences in developmental pathways) (Rudolph, 2016). Lifespan thinking requires the adoption of overlapping theoretically and empirically supported points of view. P.  Baltes (1987) conceptualises lifespan development as: (i) being a lifelong process, (ii) being multidirectional, (iii) implying gains and losses, being (iv) modifiable, (v) historically embedded, (vi) contextualised, and (vii) multidisciplinary. First and foremost, lifespan development must be understood from an interdisciplinary lens (Baltes & Staudinger, 1996). Any understanding of psychological development is incomplete without recognising myriad social and cultural factors that influence learning and facilitate development. From this perspective, no particular age period or stage is privileged in regulating the kind and nature of development. In addition, both

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continuous and discontinuous activities constitute the continuum of the development process, which reflects trajectories and transitions across working life. Development is multidirectional, suggesting pluralism in trajectories of developmental change, even within a single functional domain. That is, some systems may demonstrate gains whereas others may show losses within the same sphere of functioning. According to Baltes (1987), development is marked by the co-occurrence of gains/growth and declines/losses, and successful development can be defined as a positive ratio of gains to losses. It is defined by intraindividual plasticity (i.e., dynamic, within-person and over time modifiability). As such, multiple developmental courses are possible, however the core function of development is the search for and realization of such plasticity and an acknowledgement of its constraints. So, developmental theorists such as Baltes (1987) and Baltes & Staudinger (1996) propose individual developmental courses as differing substantially given the situational, historical, cultural and environmental conditions of their engagement with the social world. Such a view suggests that a range of sociocultural conditions emerge over the life course of individuals and these influence the experiences of a given individual (e.g., working age adult). Finally, development is personally contextualized, and results from the co-occurrence of three systems of developmental influences (i.e., age-graded, history-graded, and non-normative). Explanations of the processes and outcomes of human development across the lifespan variously emphasise stages of development associated with individuals’ age and their biological, societally-derived or sociopsychological progress (B. Baltes et al., 2019). Quite commonly, some form of linearity (i.e., age, physical and cognitive maturation, societal roles) or sequential and lock-step transitions across these stages act as key explanatory premises. This is exemplified by ontogenetic development in which premediate experiences shape how the subsequent experiences are mediated. These accounts (i.e., theories) emphasise biological maturation (usually of children and adolescents), characterising the physical and cognitive capacities possessed at certain maturation stages as determined by biological changes that permit or signal the transition to the next stage (e.g., Piaget & Inhelder, 1973). Theories privileging sociopsychological development (e.g., Erikson, 1958) extend these considerations into adulthood and emphasise alignments between developmental stages and particular societally derived roles and expectations upon which developmental processes and outcomes are judged in terms of successful transitions (e.g., adults becoming good providers, parents, employees). Erikson’s theory of ego development is obvious in this account. Others offer explanations of adult development broadly encompassing combinations of maturation and societal roles (e.g., Baltes & Staudinger, 1996), whilst others focus on specific aspects of worklife history from psychosocial (e.g., Salling-Olesen, 2007) or ontogenetic (i.e., development across personal life history; Billett et al., 2005) positions. The former of these emphasise the social and societal suggestions as comprising and constituting transitions individuals encounter across their working lives, whilst others privilege individuals’ experiencing of them, as shaped by earlier personal experiences and maturation  – their ontogenetic development (Billett, 2003a).

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These latter accounts of development across the adult lifespan are helpful for understanding what directs and supports learning across working lives. Not the least is the suggestion that this learning can be illuminated and elaborated through transitions in activities and roles in which working-age adults engage. In this regard, Billett et al. (2021) proposed that understanding worklife transitions is ultimately founded on the changes that they represent to individuals and are mediated by them personally. That is, the collection of changes that comprise the transitions individuals have to negotiate across their lives, how they come to learn and develop through them, are ultimately personal specific. Consequently, rather than transitions being set stages or fixed societally determined roles, they are inherently personally constructed through individuals’ socially derived experiences and the impacts and legacies of maturation. Hence, identifying key transitions in people’s worklife learning and illuminating the processes and outcomes of those changes are means through which these can be realised and supported.

Adult Learning Across Working Life Across most of human history and across cultures, it seems adults’ learning across their working lives has progressed largely and necessarily based on their own constructive efforts and guidance from those with whom they work closely (Barbieri-­Low, 2007; Gimpel, 1961; Menon & Varma, 2010; Turnbull, 1993). When required to generate responses to occupational challenges (i.e., innovations), similar processes were enacted (Epstein, 2005). That is, innovations arose through active efforts to address and overcome specific problems and new challenges, that Epstein referred to as the time honoured process of craft workers responding to new challenges (Epstein, 1998, 2005). Since industrialization, there have been educational efforts directed at working age adults for both social and economic purposes. These have been enacted and implemented by the various social institutions, and sometimes by individuals (e.g., Birkbeck). Initially, state intervention in the provisions of education largely and primarily focused on children, and then a focus on occasional education of adolescents and young adults, preparing them for working life (Bennett, 1938; Deissinger, 1994; Gonon, 2009). However, both for the development of basic skills (e.g., language, literacy and numeracy) and ongoing education of adults, this was often initiated and enacted at the local level. Indeed, across Western nations, the origins of adult education and its provisions are often associated with the term “movement” (Nesbit, 2011), particularly when addressing disadvantage of the adult, often male, population. Whether referring to adult education enacted through religious institutions, mechanics’ institutes, working men’s clubs, university extra-­mural programs, or local government in Britain (Kelly, 1952), or Scandinavian folk universities, or the Chautauqua Institution in the United States (Houle, 1992), these were largely initiated and enacted locally (Billett & Dymock, 2020).

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Recent Interest in Lifelong Learning However, in recent times, the interest of government and supra-government agencies in adult education has increased and has shifted the focus to promote further development of adults’ occupational capacities (Frost et  al., 2010). This governmental, professional, and industry interest in “lifelong learning” is largely premised on responding to economic imperatives, associated with enterprise viability and national competitiveness in increasingly globalised circumstances as nation states seek to either elevate or sustain their economic performance and standards of living. This global movement responds to the constantly evolving requirements of occupational competence and workplace performance and is directed towards the workplaces’ viability and the social and economic goals of nation states. The resultant educational activities are variously labelled as “professional development”, “continuing professional education”, or “continuing education and training”, often under the broader rubric of “lifelong education” and focused on and often subject to policy mandates associated with developing further working age adults’ occupational capacities (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2006). As these goals become more closely aligned with governmental priorities and imperatives, the orthodox approach to provisions of lifelong education has come to comprise taught experiences within educational institutions and as managed and mandated administratively by government sponsors. Much of this seems to be to do with governmental concern about managing and controlling these educational provisions. Often lost overlooked here is a consideration of the learning of working age adults across and through their working lives. The sources of learning and support for it are, however, distributed across individuals’ (i.e., working age adults) readiness (i.e., what they know, can do, and value), their mediation (i.e., their engagement, intentionality, and effort), and the contributions and affordances of a range of social institutions with which they interact (e.g., workplaces, educational provisions, community settings) (Billett, 2001, 2009b). Together, these comprise the activities and interactions through which what is needed/wanted to be learnt is made accessible and support is provided for its learning. Such affordances are invitations that, by degree, can be positive or negative (i.e., supporting or inhibiting access and learning). Yet, even then, what is afforded educatively by the social institutions (e.g., education provisions or workplaces) is ultimately mediated by individuals themselves premised on their readiness, interest, and agency (Billett, 2009b; Smith, 2005). It is individuals who decide intentionally with what suggestions and affordances being projected by the social world they engage, and with what degree of effort. All of which are shaped by working age adults’ interest and intentions. Importantly, it is these adult learners who must also initiate and navigate transitions in their working lives (Smith, 2004, 2005). Those transitions can be seeking out another job, engaging in a new occupation or form of employment, and deciding what worklife goals they want to achieve and how (Billett et  al., 2021). This includes these individuals’ consideration of balances between worklife and other activities and commitments (e.g., family, community).

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Yet, given the demands and complexity of navigating these transitions, often the mediation of more informed others (e.g., teachers, more experienced workers) and specific kinds of educative experiences are required (Billett et al., 2022). Such experiences are not restricted to those provided through programs from providing educational institutions (i.e., lifelong education) but also are often organized and structured through individuals’ workplaces and work practices. The growing realization of the potency and importance of workplace learning experiences is now seeing a greater consideration of these settings as sites for the ongoing learning of working age adults (Dornan, 2012). So, emphases on practice-based approaches to professional development and continuing education and training are growing (Billett, 2010; Frost et al., 2010). However, beyond individuals’ lifelong learning efforts and contributions of educative experiences provided by tertiary education and their workplaces, it is important not to overlook the contributions of the communities they inhabit and engage in. These communities afford opportunities, guidance and support of experiences that are sometimes intentional, and often unintentional by degree, and can happen by chance (Billett et  al., 2022; Fenwick, 2002; Fenwick et al., 2013). It is these contributions that, whilst not as visible or privileged as provisions of lifelong education, continue to play powerful roles in working age adults’ learning and development.

Learning Across Working Life All of what has been discussed suggests that considerations of and approaches to understanding what contributes to working age adults’ learning need to go beyond the orthodoxy of governmental discourse that adults’ learning across working life can be realized through lifelong education (i.e., those of educational institutions and taught practices). Whilst at times essential, this premise distorts and limits considerations of what comprises and contributes to effective lifelong learning experiences and outcomes. This privileging can potentially exclude or downplay learning that is supported and that arises outside of intentional educational programs and experiences (Billett, 2009b). Fundamentally, learning across working life needs to be premised upon the totality of what is afforded to adults and how they come to engage and mediate. Four such premises are now advanced: (i) learning continually occurs through every day thinking and acting; (ii) the remaking and potential transformation of work activities co-occurs with that learning; (iii) occupational knowledge arises through history, culture and situation; and (iv) learning and development are two distinct processes. First, humans learn continually through their everyday thinking and acting (Lave, 1993; Rogoff & Lave, 1984). Learning is not reserved for or reliant on solely intentional educational experiences. Instead, the kinds and quality of experiences they encounter, and their responses shape their learning (Shuell, 1990). Through engaging in new or novel tasks or activities, individuals are offered the prospect of

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extending and transforming what they know, can do, and value. If effortfully engaged with and adequately supported, these experiences can extend individuals’ occupational capacities (Ausubel & Novak, 1978). Yet, activities outside of their existing capacities or lack of readiness can lead to limited or negative outcomes (e.g., dissonance, confusion; Billett, 2001). Engaging in routine or familiar activities can lead to honing and refining of what individuals know, can do, and value. Associated incremental learning can arise without conscious awareness of it and may be difficult to recall as it arises momentarily. Arguably, much individuals’ learning is ongoing across working lives and not dependent on educational programs or teachers’ interventions, but by the qualities of interactions and activities and their engagement in them. The Program of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) found that working age adults in all classes of occupations and levels of work solved problems and learnt through that work more frequently by their own efforts and engagement than when supported by others (OECD, 2013). This suggests that the premises for and effectiveness of worklife learning are not wholly based on educational programs or other educative experiences (i.e., lifelong education). Second, as workers engage in work activities, they also remake them (Donald, 1993) and potentially transform those activities (Lave, 1990). In conducting their work at specific moments in time and in specific circumstances, directed towards specific problems and goals, workers actively remake those occupations, thereby incrementally adapting and, when novel challenges arise, transforming them (Billett et al., 2005). Therefore, beyond changes arising in individuals (i.e., learning), occupational practices are also changed through those actions. Learning assists in sustaining competence and helps individuals to navigate worklife transitions (Vaughan et al., 2015). So, societal changes arise concurrently through individuals’ learning and development. Third, occupational knowledge is a product of history, culture (Scribner, 1985), and situations (Billett, 2001), and working age adults need to access and engage in it. Workplaces provide ready access to that knowledge through activities and interactions comprising authentic instances of occupational practice (Rogoff & Lave, 1984). However, individuals’ active engagement with these environments and tasks is also necessary, including their appraisals of the worth of what is experienced. This emphasizes that individuals’ learning and development are personally mediated. Fourth, adults’ learning and development are two distinct, but interdependent processes. Moment-by-moment learning, referred to as micro-genetic development, continually occurs as individuals engage in activities (Scribner, 1985). This arises as individuals engage in their thinking and acting and can be explained through the processes of observation, imitation and practice referred to as mimetic learning (Billett, 2014). Yet, that ongoing learning is both shaped by what they already know, can do, and value, that are legacies of earlier or premediate experiences (Valsiner, 1998) and subsequent learning (i.e., their ontogenetic development; (Scribner, 1985) but which itself is progressively shaped by that moment by moment learning. In this way, individuals learning is necessarily person-specific to some degree

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because it is shaped upon their previous experiences which are likely to be unique in some ways. Consequently, individuals may learn differently from the “same” experience (Billett, 2009b; Teunissen & Wilkinson, 2010). Hence, associations between learning and development are interdependent, but also person dependent. All this suggests considering individuals as meaning-makers and constructors of knowledge is central to promoting how learning through practice might best progress and be supported. From these premises, worklife learning is an ordinary outcome of everyday thinking and acting at work (Dornan, 2012). In this way, working age adults also engage with and encounter experiences that are educative in supporting and guiding their learning in and through work. Beyond their own learning efforts, the totality of the experiences afforded to these adults and how they engage with them are central to the type and extent of learning across working life. Hence, it is timely to consider practices that best sustain employability across individuals’ working life. Such practices are meant to provide individuals with educative experiences and mediation of their learning and development across working life.

Educative Experience Educative experiences are those afforded to working age adults, supporting their learning in ways that they might not accomplish through discovery alone (see Billett, this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”). They comprise activities and interactions that are either intentionally educational or are unintended, but effective, and can arise in educational, community, or work settings. Effective educative experiences can be critical to developing capacities to adapt to the changing requirements for goods and/or services (Harteis, 2018). Governments and supra-governmental agencies have long been concerned for national workforces to be competent to sustain their employment and contribute to what goods and services nation states require, thereby contributing to, rather than drawing on, national social welfare provisions (Coffield, 2000; Edwards, 2002). Hence, knowing what constitutes effective educative provisions and how they can be designed and enacted is important for working age adults. Central to the efficacy of educative experiences, albeit in educational programs or workplaces, is attracting participation by, engagement in, and securing of the kinds of learning outcomes that working age adults’ desire. So, these experiences need to be considered alongside those provided through intentional educative provisions referred to variously as educational, professional development, continuing education and training, and continuing professional development programs etc. When considering learning across working life, it is important to be open to what constitutes educative experiences and where these might be encountered. As noted, beyond what is afforded through these experiences is how individuals come to engage in and mediate them in terms of their learning. That learning also is not a cold or mechanistic process. It is shaped by individuals’ intentionalities across

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working life, as well as their energies and other brute factors. Moreover, the process is not always singularly focused, long-term strategic, or coherent, but when goal-­ directed (i.e., purposeful), it can be a response to immediate challenges and imperatives. That intentionality is also driven by personal beliefs, and learning efforts are mediated by personal factors such as interest, energy, and directedness, albeit shaped by the experiences afforded and the support and guidance of others (Filliettaz, 2010; Filliettaz et al., 2015). These learning processes are subject to human frailties, exhaustion, interest, and prejudice (Billett, 2009a). Hence, it is important to consider personal mediation in both its socio genetic form and also accommodate the brute facts of human energy, fatigue, ability to project conscious and careful consideration, patience or impatience, as well as that projected by social institutions. There are two forms of mediation enacted here. The first is that enacted by individuals; the second is that afforded by the social world (e.g., educational provisions, workplaces, and community). Engagement and mediation are founded on individuals’ capacities, interests, and intentionalities (Malle et al., 2001), albeit shaped by what is afforded them by the circumstances in which they think and act. This mediation guides the nature and direction of that thinking and acting and includes learners’ readiness (i.e., their capacities to engage effectively and their interest in active learning. Individuals need a desire to engage actively, and, including in the context of working life, deliberately seeking opportunities to improve performance (Ericsson, 2006). All this is premised on personal epistemologies (i.e., what they know, can do, and value) and epistemological practices comprising strategies through which individuals realize their learning across working lives (Billett, 2009b). Much incremental and ongoing learning that occurs between major worklife transitions (e.g., new jobs, transiting occupations, new locations) arises through everyday thinking and acting as mediated by individuals’ agency and engagement in goal-directed activities through their work (Smith, 2005). These activities offer different kinds and levels of demand for and opportunities to learn. The PIAAC survey indicates that all classifications and kinds of workers engage in both routine and nonroutine problem-solving very regularly in their working lives (OECD, 2013). As noted, routine problem-solving reinforces, refines, and hones what they already know, can do, and value. However, nonroutine problem-solving demands higher cognitive requirements, and extends and transforms what they know, can do, and value. The PIAAC data also indicate that much of the learning occurring in and through work is mediated by workers, and to a lesser extent through engagement with more informed co-workers (OECD, 2013).

Mediating Working Life Yet, as noted, sometimes the need to access and construct knowledge (i.e., learn) is not easily secured through personal “discovery” activities alone. Individuals may lack the requisite knowledge and understanding to mediate those experiences effectively. In these circumstances, they need to engage with experiences and seek others

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who can provide access to that knowledge(Fuller & Unwin, 2002): in other words, socially mediated means. In these circumstances, mediation comprises: (i) assistance in accessing and being guided in the learning of knowledge sourced in the social world (e.g., language, occupation), (ii) effortful engagement by the learner within the context of socially meaningful activities, and (iii) support from outside the person (i.e., education, family, co-workers) who can guide, support, provide opportunities, and give meaning to the activities they enact. In this way, adults’ “life education” across working life is a personally shaped, enacted, and mediated process, where outcomes can only be understood and judged individually. The ambitions, interests, desires, and motivations that drive intentionality (Malle et al., 2001) are not uniform, nor are they premised on common goals (e.g., accumulation of wealth, securing prestigious occupations, notoriety). So, to understand and promote learning and to organise educational experiences appropriately requires considering both the learning that is mediated through everyday thinking and acting, and that which is mediated by others and through educational interventions, and the relationships between them, albeit relationally.

 ractices and Strategies to Best Sustain Employability Across P Working Life Employability is a concept that has grown in currency and urgency with key stakeholders over the past 15–20 years. Employability is not an outcome, but a process, with career development principles facilitating the individual to employ their abilities in lifelong and life-wide contexts for private and public good (Smith et  al., 2018). The conception of employability adopted here has four dimensions: (a) being employable (i.e., having specific work-related and occupational capacities); (b) sustaining employment (i.e., remaining current and employable); (c) securing advancement (i.e., gaining promotion or becoming more broadly skilled); and (d) transitioning to new/other occupations (i.e., being able to move into new occupations) (Billett, 2022). These four aspects of employability are likely aligned to particular kinds of learning (i.e., occupational, workplace-specific, or supra-occupational capacities) (Billett et al., 2018). Together, they offer bases from which to appraise how the kinds of worklife learning outcomes desired by governments, workplaces and workers can be realised in ways that are accessible and scalable for the working population. Thus, there is a complex of societal, personal, educational and workplace factors that support and sustain the learning required for employability across individuals’ working lives. These are practices and strategies enacted by governments (supra-national and national/local levels), educational institutions, workplaces and individuals themselves to mediate and support sustaining employability across individuals’ working life. Generating informed understandings and

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identifying effective practices and policies about these phenomena necessitates securing a comprehensive account of the kinds of required worklife learning and how they can best be realised by workers.

Adult and Lifelong Education Policies Across countries with both developed and developing modern industrial economies, the purposes and implementation of adult and lifelong education has been increasingly shaped by two imperatives: (i) neoliberal reforms and (ii) focus on employability and economic outcomes (Coffield, 2000; Edwards, 2002). This has led to purposes for and processes of adult and lifelong education taking similar pathways across many countries. Moreover, the origins and distinctiveness of the adult education sector as being that derived from and for members of the adult community premised on their social and economic needs has been eroded as its purposes. That is, moving away from a process on personal and cultural betterment, to one associated with promoting individual employability (Billett & Dymock, 2020). Globally, since the European Year of Lifelong Learning in 1996, and the subsequent two education reports commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Learning to be, known as the Faure report (1972) and Learning: The Treasure Within, known as the Delors report (1996), there has been a global push for the purposes of adult education to be primarily aligned with promoting employability. It emphasised the need for ongoing educational engagement across individuals’ working lives for them to remain currently competent and employable (Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development [OECD], 1996), with expectations that working age adults would need to actively contribute through their learning to national economic well-being and be prepared to partially sponsor ongoing development themselves. This expectation is usually associated with the development of work-related or occupational specific skills to respond to changing occupational requirements and with workplace competence (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006). This imperative led to significant changes in how governments across the world came to view and fund adult education, and for what purposes. This change of emphasis and the associated policy initiatives have long transformed views about adults’ ongoing learning and educational provisions (Edwards, 2002), and educational provisions primarily about personal enrichment and cultural betterment (Coffield, 2000). These imperatives continue to be exercised across nation states. In many countries, this change has seen its purposes shift towards an employability focus albeit including general educational outcomes associated with enhanced literacy and numeracy. Singapore, with its third most aged population globally and an economy largely based upon its citizens’ skills, made the ongoing work-related learning of its adult population the first priority for sustaining its economic performance (Economic Strategies Committee, 2010). This has led to a series of national initiatives and incentives promoting ongoing development. Elsewhere, countries established and/or built more systematic

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approaches to continuing education and training (e.g., Germany) (Nuissl & Pehl, 2004), whereas others linked educational programs with occupational and workplace innovation (e.g., Switzerland (Hoffman & Schwartz, 2015), Scandinavian countries). In the United Kingdom, for instance, centres and programs in higher education institutions offering non-credit bearing lifelong education were closed (Naidoo & Williams, 2015). In Australia, adult education courses offered through the technical and further education colleges were abolished with those institutions’ operational mandate to only offer programs leading directly to employable outcomes (Abbott-Chapman, 2006). That is, the focus was mostly on entry level preparations. In responses to governmental policies on promoting employability across working life, educational provisions at different levels were designed to assist individuals in securing and sustaining employability. As noted, effective provisions need to account for the four aspects of employability, including securing employment in the occupations in which the individuals were trained, maintaining occupational currency, securing advancement and/or extending those capacities, and adapting and transferring them to other workplaces or occupations (Billett, 2022). Documented here are some practices and strategies provided by workplaces, and the provision of support for learning provided through educational institutions and other organisations in sustaining and extending individuals’ capacities, starting when they are being trained for specific occupations.

Educational Institutions’ Practices The origins for employability are evident in vocational and higher education curriculum, albeit learning aimed more towards entry level rather than ongoing lifelong learning. Securing employment in their preferred occupations are often the focuses of students’ studies in vocational and higher education. Hence, concerns about their smooth transition from education into that employment means that graduates will need the capacities required to enact occupations, albeit at an initial level of competence. Yet, this transition requires being able to do so in the particular workplace circumstances in which they are employed and meeting the requirements of that employment. Despite many students having work experience, it is quite likely that the workplaces where they will find employment upon graduation will be different from those where they gained work experience during studies. So, there will be a need to adapt and translate their occupational knowledge about, procedures for, and dispositions to that work situation; that is, adapting what they know, can do, and value to the specific requirements of the circumstances of practice (Billett, 2022). Within the higher education (HE) context, there has been a continuous emphasis and greater focus on the enhancement of graduates’ outcomes in employment-­related skills and competences (Alves & Tomlinson, 2021). Employability is far from new to HE as it has been part of universities’ aims and concerns since the medieval origins of these institutions in Europe (Alves, 2015). Nevertheless, in the last decades it has

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assumed a much more visible role within political narratives and general policy orientations at national and institutional levels, but also in what concerns the general appraisal of the value of its degrees (Tomlinson, 2017). There is a global urge for institutions to be more responsive to the language of skills demanded by employers and most are prone to reproducing such discourse, both in relation to institutional strategies and specific pedagogic initiatives (Arora, 2015). The competition amongst HE institutions (HIEs) is also related to the ways in which they respond to the employability agenda by reframing their internal organization and their teaching and learning strategies and even the curricula. Yet doubts remain concerning how this rationale is embedded at the individual level by students, graduates and academics. To respond to expectations of different stakeholders about increasing employment of graduates, from the mid twentieth century on, a wide range of initiatives have been implemented in universities worldwide. Although universities have, to some extent, learned from each other (for example, those in developing countries tend to learn from those in developed countries), these initiatives are often influenced and determined by the economic conditions of local labour markets and the expectations of local employers, parents, and students (Pham & Jackson, 2020). For example, in Asian labour markets, qualifications, social networks, an understanding of conventions in running local businesses, and flexibility and adaptation skills have been evidenced as crucially important factors for employment outcomes and career progression (Li, 2013; Pham & Saito, 2019a). In Western countries such as Australia and the UK, employers place considerable emphasis on graduates’ professional capabilities during recruitment (Australian Association of Graduate Employment, 2018). The most common professional skills are communication, teamwork, planning and organising, problem-solving, self-management, critical thinking, industry knowledge, flexibility, and initiative (Pham & Saito, 2019b). The differences in industry speak and expectations have driven universities in different countries to implement different agendas to prepare their students for employment. Australia initiated the idea of matching knowledge and skills produced in universities to those required by employers during the mid-1990s because they believe that equipping students with employability skills like communication, teamwork, organisational, problem-solving, self-management, and critical thinking enables graduates to cope with future challenges of graduate-level work (Barrie, 2007). Australian universities show their strong support to this agenda by establishing the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), which explicitly requires universities to embed graduate attributes in curriculum and show evidence of industry engagement in course development. TEQSA mandates that Australian HEIs can only maintain their accreditation if they comply with TEQSA’s Higher Education Standards Framework, which explicitly includes teaching and assessing graduates on employability skills (Pham & Saito, 2019b). However, this initiative has been widely criticised because of its many flaws, including confusion in interpreting the employability skills of various stakeholders (Jackson, 2017), complexity in transferring employability skills taught in universities to the labour market (Jackson & Hancock, 2010), and the mismatches between the skills emphasised in universities and the skills labour markets expect (Bridgstock & Tippett, 2019).

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Work-Integrated Education (WIE) Work-integrated education (WIE) is one of the common educational provisions intended to enhance graduate employability in Australian universities. It aims to benefit graduates by increasing their career management competence (Elijido-Ten & Kloot, 2015; Jackson & Wilton, 2016), preparing them for future employment (Jackson & Collings, 2018), and exposing them to the nexus between academic disciplines and professional practices (Jorre de St Jorre & Oliver, 2018; Morita, 2018). By participating in WIE, graduates are likely to increase accurate self-­ assessment of work-related skills, realistic views towards profession, experiences of mentoring and supervisions, and professional confidence (Jackson & Wilton, 2016). However, WIE has various limitations including insufficient time for students to develop skills at the satisfactory level (Pham et al., 2018), limited job opportunities especially in regional areas (Patrick et al., 2008), inconsistent and ineffective supervision for students prior to and during WIE (Henderson & Trede, 2017), and limited guidance in terms of the connection between WIE experiences and graduates’ career paths (Jackson & Wilton, 2016). Further, employers tend to have limited understanding of what benefits WIL can actually offer, despite their general belief that WIE is helpful. Additionally, WIE requires employers to organise programmes for graduates, including preparation of suitable projects and tasks, and assigning them mentors or supervisors (Jackson et al., 2017). Moreover, some students complain about insufficient provision of mentoring and also about poor placement design, which limits professional exposure (Jackson & Wilton, 2016). Interactions with Alumni In Australia, alumni involvement in mentoring programmes has expanded. Many university career and employment services use alumni to provide current students with valuable insights into the job seeking process. Students are more receptive to advice from successful alumni than from university staff, according to Jorre de St Jorre and Oliver (2018). Despite universities’ efforts to connect students to alumni, there are questions as to how many students actually go beyond receiving advice and utilise all the networking opportunities offered – some students only attend such sessions for credits needed to meet syllabus requirements (Lin-Stephens et  al., 2019). Nevertheless, there is a need for students to be able to source accurate information. University Career Centres (UCCs) In recent years, many Australian universities have established centres for graduate career support (McKeown & Lindorff, 2011). Researchers have identified three types of collaboration between UCCs and faculties: (1) ad hoc coordination by the project, (2) collaboration by defined coordinators, and (3) career centre for

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particular faculty (Morita, 2018). Through the centre, graduates tend to learn what skills they need for the labour market and how UCCs can support them in filling skills gaps during the job-hunting process (McKeown & Lindorff, 2011). UCCs provide a range of programmes, including career education, events, and mentoring programmes (Brown et al., 2019). Some UCCs provide job matching services that offer graduates advice on how to seek suitable employers (McIlveen & Pensiero, 2008). Although fewer graduates utilise UCC services compared with other job seeking approaches, such as responding to advertisements, directly contacting employers, and relying on personal networks (Carroll & Tani, 2015; McKeown & Lindorff, 2011). Carroll and Tani (2015) report that job matching through UCCs has been found more effective than other forms of job search (Carroll & Tani, 2015). Job seeking skills and career advice have been identified as areas where more support is needed, as these have not yet received sufficient attention in UCCs (Cameron et al., 2019). Graduate Employment and Universities: Potential Maximisation Mode Despite the efforts discussed above, graduates in Australia continue to face severe struggles in finding employment (Graduate Outcomes Survey, 2018). Because of highly competitive labour markets, fresh graduates must compete with more experienced workers who seek transition into new workplaces or roles (Saito & Pham, 2019). Although educational institutions have been placing strong emphasis on effectively preparing graduates for the professional world (Jackson & Bridgstock, 2018), competitive labour markets have made it extremely challenging for any university to guarantee full employment of graduates right after graduation. The approach taken by Australian universities to enhance graduates’ employment is described as ‘potential maximisation mode’ by Saito and Pham (2021). That is, for the universities, the aim is to boost their graduates’ employability as much as possible, but not necessarily ensure actual outcomes. Much of that employability is found in work settings.

Workplace Practices and Worklife Learning When employed and to remain employable, working age adults will need to be responsive to new occupational and workplace challenges and circumstances, and to fulfil the growing expectations of being more experienced workers. Hence, workers’ ability to adapt what they know, can do, and value to changing circumstances of work is central to their ongoing employability as workplace and occupational requirements change. In this regard, workplaces can assist in mediating this process. The findings from the PIAAC survey indicate that across the countries where the survey has been administered, workers of all kinds and classifications are engaging in routine and nonroutine problem-solving in their work on a regular basis, with the

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former almost daily and the latter often weekly (OECD, 2013). This means that workers are needing to constantly deploy and extend their knowledge to complete their day-to-day work tasks and, in doing so, transform their knowledge when engaging in problem-solving (Anderson, 1993; Shuell, 1990), such as the kinds referred to in the PIAAC data. There is evidence of which workplace practices are best placed to secure and sustain workers’ employability. Also, within certain professions, some work or professional activities are held to maintain and advance workers’ professional development. For example, handovers (e.g., Drachsler et  al., 2012; Smith et  al., 2008), mortality and morbidity rounds (MMR) (e.g., Benassi et  al., 2017; Kieffer & Mueller, 2018) have been considered traditional work-based methods in health professions. And these are not limited to health professions are job rotation (e.g., Allwood & Lee, 2004; Bennett, 2003; Earney & Martins, 2009; Eriksson & Ortega, 2006; Ortega, 2001), mentoring (e.g., Billett, 2003b) or guided learning or shadowing (e.g., Buzzeo & Cifci, 2017; Heitkamp et  al., 2018) to be effective learning activities in the workplace. Ortega (2001) proposes that job rotation should be considered as a practice that promotes learning because it positions workers to learn about activities that can promote productivities and the profitability of different jobs or activities. Bennett (2003) also supports job rotation in promoting learning in enterprises, suggesting that through engagement in new tasks, deeper understandings arise about work requirements and also practices associated with their completion. This suggests that some workplace practices have inherent learning potential built into them and these stand to benefit both the organisations and their workers, which includes achieving economic outcomes and employees maintaining their employability. In an investigation that examined the efficacy of guided learning strategies in five workplaces, Billett found there was correlation between the frequency of guided learning interactions and their efficacy in resolving novel workplace tasks and, therefore, learning the kinds of practices that were important for those work settings. The guided learning through the guidance of experts or more experienced co-workers assists in the mediation of and construction of workers knowledge. This kind of practice has the capacity to both complement and extend the opportunities arising through everyday work activities by providing guided and focused engagement on specific tasks, including those that the workers alone might not be able to realise (Filliettaz, 2010; Filliettaz et al., 2015). Again, the outcomes here are about remaining workplace competent and retaining occupational currency, which are central to working age adults’ employability (Billett, 2022). The efficacy of such workplace practice acknowledges the contributions of a more “experienced other” (e.g., experts, experienced co-workers, supervisors) in assisting learners’ development (Rogoff, 1995; Vygotsky, 1978). However, management support for those workers as mentors is necessary for guided learning to be effective (Billett, 2003b). A year-long trial of guided learning in workplaces illuminated the demands upon and benefits for workplace mentors, concluding that making time for the mentoring role coupled with low levels of support by management made these mentors’ work intense not sustainable in the long term (Billett, 2003b). This finding has important

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implications for not taking for granted and failing to support workers who have designated roles associated with the further learning and development of employees. So, often enterprises report favouring in-house forms of ongoing skill development, part of which is that it is viewed as being relatively inexpensive, but this can also fail to take into account the demands made upon those workers who are nominated as mentors or guides for the learning of other workers in the enterprise.

Working Age Adults’ Practices Across working life, opportunities for advancement or more broadly applying skills also require adaptability on the part of working age adults. Both forms of advancement require workers to adapt what they know, can do, and value to different circumstances and tasks (Tolentino et al., 2014). It seems that this kind of learning is more often mediated by individuals themselves than through a reliance on other workers (OECD, 2013) or on educational programs or provisions that may serve some purpose here (ref). However, ultimately, it is working age adults’ ability to adapt to new circumstances and tasks that is necessary for extending their employability in the forms of advancement or extending the scope of occupational practices. The point here is that the provision of support, guidance or even direct instruction will not be wholly sufficient unless these adults engage in those tasks effortfully and in ways that can intentionally learn and support the development. Across working life, the further development of occupational knowledge can also include that associated with changing occupations. This occurs for many people as their personal needs, preferences, or work situations change (Billett et al., 2021). It is in these situations of work transition that adaptability, resilience and courage become personal occupational and employability skills (i.e., not just dispositional qualities). Workers necessarily change when work changes – that extends to individuals’ sense of self as workers (Fenwick, 1998). Subjectivities are challenged, previous knowledge is tested, the value of learning can be reassessed, goals and priorities can become more fluid, less certain, and the many support resources that workers’ use to sustain their employability (e.g., family, friends, community, colleagues, etc.) can become less reliable when work transition is experienced – especially, sudden or unwelcome transition. So, when moving away from the kind of capacities they have relied upon previously to practice on existing occupation and which is associated with their perceived competence as a working age adult, there can be real challenges when they are required to adapt what they know, can do and value to a new occupation. Hence, to succeed in these transitions, maintain a positive sense of self (Fenwick, 2002), develop new capacities, and engage in different work communities all require being adaptive, not just in the sense of having the occupational capacities, but also in translation of self in negotiating a fresh occupational identity or subjectivity. Importantly, adults with worklife experiences often possess a range of capacities that can assist them to move across different occupations, to be open and adaptable to the new learning that will be required. However,

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it is worth considering how each and any of these capacities could be more specifically applied in a given context, especially for working age adults. So, this leads to considerations about the importance of not just the development of occupational capacities, but associated with that the ability to be successful, deemed competent and thereby maintaining the sense of self of working age adults as competent, effective and productive individuals.

 romoting Lifelong Learning to Sustain Employability Across P Working Life In this review, the aim has been to understand something of the complex of imperatives and practices fundamental to securing and maintaining employability across lengthening working lives and how they are captured in the literature. Such understanding will inform policies and strategies translated into intentional educational provisions to promote employability across working lives. Securing employability outcomes for individuals across their working lives has increasingly become a focus of governments, educational institutions, workplaces and workers. So, employability is more than initial transition to work, it is about the ability to retain employment through developing occupational capacities that respond effectively to emerging challenges and advancement across working life. Seemingly, adults’ learning and navigating through different changes across their working lives has progressed largely and necessarily premised on their own constructive efforts, albeit with assistance from those who worked closely with them throughout their working lives. Then, when required to negotiate significant worklife transitions, often some form of educational intervention is necessary because the kinds and extent of learning required is beyond that which can be learnt through these adults’ discovery efforts alone. Yet, the evidence suggests that it is not possible to explain the processes of learning that support and sustain employability in times of change and uncertainty without accounting for the complex of factors that comprise what is suggested by the social world from more expert others, educational programs and community, on the one hand, and how these are engaged with by individuals as shaped by their subjectivities, capacities and personal epistemologies, on the other. From this review of literature across diverse disciplinaries, this chapter has set out some of what is known and understood about the imperatives for adults to learn across working life, and the personal, brute and societal contributions to that learning. It provides a comprehensive, albeit incomplete, platform for a program of informed inquiry, including perspectives on how these phenomena might be understood from these diverse fields. Far from offering singularity of focus and orientation, it has also provided an overview of the practices to best sustain employability across working life, those enacted by educational institutions, workplaces and suggested for individuals themselves. These practices and strategies are deemed to inform governmental, workplace and worker imperatives on lifelong learning and employability.

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Valsiner, J. (1998). The guided mind: A sociogenetic approach to personality. Harvard University Press. Vaughan, K., Bonne, L., & Eyre, J. (2015). Knowing practice: Vocational thresholds for GPs, carpenters, and engineering technicians. New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Ako Aotearoa. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Socio-cultural theory. Mind in Society, 6(3), 23–43. Wertsch, J., & Tulviste, P. (1992). L. S. Vygotsky and contemporary developmental psychology. Developmental Psychology, 28(4), 548–557. Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has worked in vocational education, educational administration, teacher education, professional development and policy development in the Australian vocational education system and as a teacher and researcher in higher education.  

Anh Hai Le is a research fellow at Griffith University. Her research interest focuses on workplace learning and curriculum development in tertiary education, with a specific emphasis on the process of building knowledge through scholarly engagement with industry and tertiary institutions. Much of her recent research has focused on lifelong and adult education.  

Sarojni Choy is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland Australia. Her teaching and research expertise are in workplace learning, adult education, vocational education and training, lifelong learning, connecting learning in different settings, continuing education and training, professional development and workforce capacity building.  

Raymond Smith is an educator and learning theorist who works in the fields of adult learning, organisational learning and vocational education. His research focuses primarily on the personal nature of adults’ learning as it is generated by and emerges from their needs and contributions in the social context of work.  

Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures Anh Hai Le, Stephen Billett

, Henning Salling Olesen, and Debbie Bargallie

Abstract  This chapter sets out means by which learning across working life might be understood. It draws upon on a 3-year project addressing the research goals associated with (a) what needs to be learnt across working lives, (b) processes that support and realise that learning, and (c) the practice implications and policy focuses to assist in achieving those outcomes. This chapter describes, elaborates and justifies the overall method and procedures adopted in each of the three phases of data gathering and analysis. Given the complexity of “practice” informing policy and policy being shaped by evidence, it was necessary to intertwine these three concerns in the research design. They are addressed through triangulations amongst observational, grounded interview data, and quantitative survey used to identify what workers need to learn and how it can best be learnt through workplace experiences and educational provisions, thereby informing workplace and education practice and policies. The chapter sets out not only the procedures adopted, but also demographic information about those who provided worklife histories, were interviewed about phases of their worklife and others who responded to the survey. This chapter also then introduces the procedures adopted in other chapters reporting different perspectives of the data analyses. This includes a description and justification of the worklife history approach adopted in the first phase, including interviews and progressive data gathering; the selection and development of items and their administration through an online survey in the second phase; and then workshops and seminar to advance how worklife learning promotes employability in the third. Keywords  Worklife history · Interviews · Survey · Worklife learning · Employability · Worklife transitions · Australia

A. H. Le (*) · S. Billett · D. Bargallie Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] H. Salling Olesen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_4

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Learning Across Working Life to Sustain Employability Securing employability outcomes, which are often referred to as lifelong learning or learning across working life, has been imperatives of government, workplaces, professional bodies, and workers themselves. Governments want skilled and flexible national workforces able to respond effectively to changes in economic circumstances and to sustain workplaces’ viability (OECD, 2006) and for workers to take responsibility for maintaining their employability (Australian Bureau Statistics [ABS], 2008). Public and private sector workplaces need workers able to adapt to changing of work requirements and customer/client needs. Workers of all kinds need to maintain their occupational capacities to sustain their employability (Noon et al., 2013), adapt to changing work requirements, and secure advancement (Billett, 2006). For all these stakeholders, workers’ initial occupational preparation, often occurring in their early adulthood, is insufficient to sustain employability across lengthening working lives (see Billett et al., this volume-d, chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review”). Addressing these imperatives requires accounting for how such changes are manifested in individuals’ working lives. This includes the factors that shape specific work requirements, the organisation and processes adopted by particular workplaces and changes to them (Billett, 2001). Changes in these requirements can transform what workers need to know, do and value to perform effectively, which is central to individuals’ employability, as they comprise how paid work is undertaken and workers’ performance is judged. These transformations can also challenge workers’ sense of self and impact their confidence and agency as learners (Abrahamsson, 2007). Learning for and through such changes is premised on individuals’ abilities and readiness to engage effectively in work activities, the support provided by workplaces and also in educational provisions to secure the kinds of knowledge required for work performance. Currently, much attention is given by government and supra-government agencies (i.e., OECD) to educational programs (i.e., professional development [PD], continuing education and training [CET]). Yet, there is also a need to understand much more about how workers come to engage in and actively learn through and for their work life (OECD, 2013). This includes their processes of constructing the knowledge they require moment-by-­moment learning that arises as they engage in their work and addressing new work challenges (Billett, 2001). Hence, the key emphases of the project reported here are on workers’ learning for their engagement through and across their working life, and how it can be supported through their work and educational provisions (e.g., PD, CET). This focus on workers’ learning opens up key considerations of workers’ readiness (their ability to engage and learn), their sense of self or subjectivity as well as occupational knowledge. Although these processes are often person-particular (Billett, 2017), the need for support and guidance (i.e., lifelong education) necessitates understanding how such educational provisions can be effective, viable, accessible and scalable for all kinds of Australian workers. Such complexities are rarely countenanced or accommodated in policies and practices of governments, workplaces, and professional and industry bodies, and supra-national agencies (i.e., OECD). Instead, the mobilization of effort is often

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based on abstract concepts (Edwards, 2002) such as “industry need”, “professional standards”, and “best practices”. That effort is often enacted through what can be delivered in taught courses (i.e., lifelong education) (Schuller & Watson, 2009) in tertiary education institutions and enacted through experiences that are distinct from the circumstances of actual practice, and seemingly concerned to offer sponsors with certainty in outcomes (Billett et  al., 2016). These grounded studies (Billett et  al., 2016) and Programme of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) data suggest these measures are not well aligned with Australian workers’ work life learning needs and goals, or workplace imperatives. Indeed, learning in and across working life is rarely systematically embraced as a process of individuals’ ongoing development (Poell & Van Der Krogt, 2016) shaped by experiences across their work life (Salling-Olesen, 2007). Accordingly, policies and practices associated with learning across working life are focussed on educational provisions and in ways that privilege educational discourses, courses and training programs (Schuller & Watson, 2009). This focus also downplays or even ignores the needs, capacities and goals of those who are required to learn and circumstances of work practice where that learning, mostly, needs to occur. The evidence also suggests that much, although not all, of that learning does and can arise within work settings and through working lives (ABS, 2013; Billett et al., 2016). Utilizing workplace activities and interactions is consistently reported by workers as being efficacious and the preferred means for promoting much learning required for working life, albeit augmented by educational provisions when warranted (Billett et al., 2016). Certainly, and consistent with earlier findings (Billett, 2001), it has been found that workplace experiences alone are insufficient for (a) learning some forms of knowledge, (b) assisting workers to move from one occupation or work setting to another, and (c) occupational advancement. Instead, mediation by others is required (e.g., access to experts, mentoring, collegiate working, and educational programs). So, whilst worklife experiences are accessible for all workers, they may need to be supported and augmented to meet individuals’ learning and development needs, and those of their workplaces. Yet, to achieve these kinds of outcomes, more needs to be known about aligning experiences afforded by workplaces, other forms of support for learning and through educational provisions. This was the overall aim of the project: elaborating the processes and effective means of support for workers’ learning across working life, informing how this can be supported for their employability through work and educational provisions.

 ecuring and Sustaining Employability Through Worklife S Learning: An Australian Investigation The investigation reported and discussed here sought to generate evidence-based premises and understandings about supporting worklife learning arrangements that can promote workers’ employability. It aimed to understand how their learning arises across and through working life and how it can be supported more effectively

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through work activities, educational provisions, and other forms of mediation and guidance. Thus, retrospective accounts were used initially to identify earlier, recent and current worklife learning processes and outcomes. These findings were elaborated and extended through an online survey that elaborated the issues of employability and processes of worklife learning and sources of support for that learning. The aim was to generate an informed, collaboratively generated and validated accounts of that learning through and across working life and how it can be augmented by intentional educational provisions: i.e., lifelong education. These accounts were to inform practices in workplaces and tertiary education institutions, and policy goals about promoting employability across working lives. The key research question guiding this project was: What social, personal, educational and workplace practices can best sustain employability across working life?

The informing sub-questions were: What kinds of learning are required to sustain employability across working life? What kinds and combinations of workplace experiences and educational provisions can support and guide that learning? What societal, workplace, educational and personal practices will most likely secure that learning across working life?

The processes derived from the three phases of the project, including (i) interviews with Australian working-age adults about their worklife histories in Phase 1, (ii) descriptive analyses and interpretation of the survey in Phase 2, and (iii) consolidations of findings to draw out deductions, followed by dialogue forums and discussions with invited stakeholders comprising informants, workplace representatives, and state and federal government representatives to advance policy recommendations. Figure  1 summarises the methods associated with the sequence of the exploration. The research was conducted sequentially across 2019 and 2021, including sampling, data collection, and data analysis. The research procedures are discussed under these phases in the following sections.

Phase 1: Accounts of Worklife Learning Phase 1 informants (n = 66) provided retrospective accounts of their work life learning in response to earlier changes. Criteria sampling was used to identify participants well positioned to provide detailed and substantial retrospective accounts of worklife learning processes and outcomes. Thus, individuals selected were those who had to confront changes and transitions in their work and have experienced negotiating those within their working lives. Collectively, across the entire cohort, they (i) are fairly equal number of men and women; (ii) represent a range of different kinds of work or occupations; (iii) reflect the culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) nature of the Australian adult population; and (iii) have had experience in

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Phase 1 - Qualitative Data Collection and Analysis - Retrospective accounts of worklife learning - Worklife history interviews (n=66)

Phase 2 - Quantitative Data Collection and Analysis Perpectives from a broader population of informants Survey (n=678)

Phase 3 - Interpretation - Generating specific policy recommendations for workplace and governmental considerations - Dialogue forum and discussions

Fig. 1  Research design across the three phases

the ‘old economy’ and also ‘emerging economy’. Individually, they (i) were well presented by different age groups; (ii) had career transitions across their working life, albeit in changing the kind of work they have done (e.g. different occupations,) or circumstances in which they had come to work (i.e., immigration, refugee status, decline or rise of the industry in which they had worked), or disruptions associated with health or family issues; and (iii) have sufficient English to be able to articulate their experiences, and were reasonably accessible. The background demographics of the informants are summarised in Table 1. As noted, the practical inquiry began with capturing retrospective accounts of the informants’ worklife learning through interviews. Retrospective accounts permit access to accounts of change that have occurred earlier in their working life. Detailed retrospective interviews were conducted with the 66 workers, adopting procedures trialled and tested in earlier studies (Billett et al., 2005; Billett & Pavlova, 2005). Whilst all 66 informants engaged in worklife history interviews, that is, an orientation and initial retrospective data-gathering interview, 30 of them were also engaged in three more follow-up interviews  – each approximately 16  weeks apart over a period of 18 months with the aim of identifying changes to the informant’s work and how they managed to adapt to those changes. These follow-up interviews were also to verify, deepen, and strengthen the data analysis. The worklife history approach (Salling-Olesen, 2016) uses initial prompts about how informants’ working life commenced; they are then encouraged to provide a narrative or story of their worklife history. The interviewer’s role is to encourage and support the unfolding narrative, but not to intervene to make judgements or seek justifications. Such considerations are engaged with in a second interview once the life history narrative has been tentatively analysed. To initiate the conversation in the first interviews, an open-ended question was asked giving participants the freedom

88 Table 1 Background demographics of 66 informants

A. H. Le et al. Variable Gender

Value Female Male Age 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60+ Identified as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Australian born (non-Indigenous) English background migrant Non-English background migrant

N 30 36 4 13 13 15 21 10 37 8 10

to provide opinions thus encouraging them to tell their stories. The options of such open statement include “Could you please tell me about how you came to commence your first paid employment, what it was and how your working life evolved from there until the present?” or “Could you please tell me about where you grew up, what was your first employment and your experiences of work and working life from there to the present?”. The first interviews took approximately an hour each. In the second interviews, a qualitative semi-structured interview approach was considered most suited for exploring views and reflections on specific issues of research, i.e., verifying and providing more profound understanding of the changes and transitions identified in the first interviews. This flexible approach is used for the purpose of “obtaining description of the [professional] life world of the interviewee with respect to interpreting the meaning of the described phenomena” (Kvale, 2007, p. 11). It enables researchers to further explore issues as they arise (as in unstructured interviews), whilst providing a framework for discussion of issues (as in structured interviews). In this study, the semi-structured interview protocol (see Table  2) was developed to understand the learning processes and outcomes achieved in some significant transitions across participants’ working lives. To facilitate an open discussion with participants regarding their learning through work and educational activities during those transitions, the questions used in the protocol were aimed at four focus areas: (i) experiences of the transitions, (ii) lifelong education, (iii) learning through working life, and (iv) everyday learning. The protocol of other follow-up interviews (i.e., interviews 3 and 4) focussed on (i) recent changes/ challenges in their work, (ii) the impacts of those changes/challenges, and (iii) the forms of support required to adapt to those changes and confront those challenges. The subsequent interviews took up to 40 minutes each. The interviews were mainly conducted face-to-face; however, social distancing requirements (i.e., COVID-19) meant some subsequent interviews (i.e., second, third and fourth) were conducted via electronic means (e.g., Zoom, Skype, or Teams). From detailed work history interviews (i.e., first interviews), it was possible to identify of changes that initiate, shape and represent transitions that working age adults needed to negotiate across their working lives. Through a process of thematic

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Table 2  Semi-structured interview protocol Transitions 1 How did you manage the transition? 2 What assisted/helped you in this transition? 3 What inhibited/hindered you in this transition? Lifelong education 4 What, if any, ‘formal’ education and training did you access and how effective was it? 5 How could it have been more effective? Learning through working life 6 What did you need to learn during this transition? How did you learn it? 7 What more could you have done or done differently? 8 What stands out as key (or enabling learning) experiences for you from that experience? Everyday learning 9 Can you describe instances of you exercising discretion at work and the kinds of thinking and acting this entails? 10 Can you describe instances of you engaging in problem-solving at work and the kinds of thinking and acting this entails? 11 Can you identify learning in and through work that has been shaped by yourself and others’ support?

review and analysis, the transitions informants reported were categorised as comprising six kinds of distinct and delineated changes (i.e., in life stages; employment status, occupations, location, physical and psychological well-being, and lifestyle) (see Billett et  al., 2021). Taking a different approach, these transitions were also categorised using Smith’s (2018) five kinds of worklife trajectory  – incremental steps, spinning pates, project management, carousal and full innovation (see Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). Analyses of Phase 1 interview data also illuminated the requirements for work, how they had transformed, and kinds of learning needed for employability and how these had arisen through: (a) everyday workplace activities and interactions, and (b) processes of guidance and support, including educational interventions. In regard to the kinds of learning, five domains of knowing required to be learnt were delineated, each of which has personal and societal dimensions. The five interdependent, overlapping, but categorically distinct domains of potential learning comprise: (i) language and literacy, (ii) cultural practices, (iii) the world of work, (iv) occupational skills, and (v) worklife engagement. With a particular interest in literacy practices, Filliettaz (this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”) explored the forms and functions of literacy in the experiences adults make when they negotiate worklife transitions. This reflects on the learning and agency that may arise from such literate practices and their contributions to the richness, diversity and heterogeneity of educational provisions encountered by adult workers across their life course. The extent and scope of learning within each of these domains, across them and their relationship, is person dependent. However, it is helpful to consider these domains as a starting point in the analysis, as they provide a means of understanding the complex of factors that

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constitute individuals’ worklife learning project. Depending on their circumstances and goals, there are different kinds and combinations of workplace experiences and educational provisions that support and guide that learning. Those kinds and combinations of experiences and support varied across different informants as they came to engage in those experiences and utilise the available supports to realise their learning. In addition to experiences in workplaces and learning of different kinds, the informants reflected on a range of societal, workplace, educational and personal practices that have assisted them to secure learning across their working life to sustain their employability. These practices varied across different work settings and are person-dependant, and somehow reflected transactions between individuals’ capacities, interest and agency and what is afforded by the social world. Hence, it is concluded that securing transitions to achieve the desired significant learning and developmental outcomes prompted by and required to secure those transitions is premised on three mediating factors: (a) person (e.g., capacities, personal needs, ambitions, trajectories), (b) educative support (e.g., experiences intentionally supporting that learning), and (c) “community” (i.e., affordances outside of the person such as family and familiars, ethnic/cultural affiliates, workplaces, opportunity, societal sentiment, or happenstance) as shown in Fig. 2 (see Billett et al., 2022b). However, relations amongst and mediation of person, education, and community were complex and varied, depending on the different forms of work and industry sectors in which individuals engaged. In all, these findings assisted drawing alignments between particular kinds of learning with specific kinds of experiences (i.e., personally mediated and mediated by others, e.g., experienced workers, teachers, occupational experts). The analysis led to the development of a matrix aligning particular kinds of experiences (i.e., activities and interactions) with specific kinds of learning. This included aligning “difficult to learn” knowledge with approaches to support its learning. The Phase 1 finding identified through the above process made specific practical and conceptual contributions. They also informed and guided the second phase of data gathering that sought to further elaborate and augment these outcomes, forming the basis for workplace and educational policy implications.

Fig. 2 Securing transitions: Person + educative support + community

Person

Educative support

'Community'

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Phase 2: Verifying and Elaborating Findings Through Survey The findings from Phase 1 interviews were used to develop, pilot and administer an online survey to verify and elaborate the findings, and further explore issues of employability and lifelong learning with a larger sample of working age Australians and identify patterns using quantitative approaches. The survey comprised four sections gathering data and responses about: (i) demographic background, (ii) occupational transition, (iii) learning through working life, and (iv) strategies to promote lifelong learning. It provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The survey items consisted of a series of multiple-choice, Likert-scaled and open-ended questions. Five-point Likert scales were used to measure, for example, the impact of occupational transitions, the effectiveness of different learning processes and the importance of different strategies to promote lifelong learning. Table 3 provides a summary of the items. The items in the survey sought demographic information in the first section about the identity (i.e., Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, non-Indigenous Australian born, English-background or non-English background migrants), age, gender, highest qualification, and employment status. The next two sections invited responses to a set of items arising from interview data with regard to (i) the impact of individuals’ occupational transitions and their learning processes during those transitions, and (ii) the kinds of learning experienced, and support obtained across working life. Then, in the last section of the survey, responses were invited to propositions arising from the first phase findings regarding strategies enacted by government, workplaces, educational institutions, and working-age adults themselves to promote lifelong learning to secure and sustain employability across working life. The administration and distribution of the survey was facilitated through social media platforms and engagement with agencies who were able to circulate the information/links to potential informants. For instance, we contacted unions, associations and professional bodies for various occupations across Australia. We also engaged with different communities, including Indigenous Australians and refugee migrants. Equally, we approached agencies such as Lifelong Learning Australia, and their State and Territory affiliates to circulate the links/correspondence. Incentives in the form of prizes were included and described in the information about the survey. Over 800 responses were received, and 678 useable surveys were analysed. Table 4 summarises the demographic characteristics of these respondents. Complete survey data were obtained from four CALD groups of the Australian population, identified as Australian born non-Indigenous (n  =  276 or 40.9%), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (n = 106 or 15.7%), migrants from English-speaking background (n = 177 or 26.2%) and migrants from non-English-­ speaking background (n  =  116 or 17.2%). The respondents were predominantly female (65%), mostly in their 30 s or above (88%). Descriptive and inferential (i.e., Chi-square test) analyses were conducted with the survey data, identifying patterns of responses between different respondent groups. Also, comparative weightings using mean scores (i.e., averaged responses) within each cohort are represented

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Table 3  Details of Likert-scaled questions Survey section Occupational transition

Details Impact on – e.g.,  identity as a working adult  financial needs  ability to remain employed  etc. Learning processes – e.g.,  learning through work  learning through training  learning through online support  etc. Learning through Initiatives from working life  own skills and abilities  educational programs  friends, contacts, colleagues, workplace support Strategies to promote Strategies/support from lifelong learning  government  workplaces  educational institutions  working-age adults

Type of Likert scale Extent of impact

Measurement units 1 = Not at all 2 = Slightly 3 = Moderately 4 = Very 5 = Extremely

Levels of effectiveness

1 = Not at all effective 2 = Slightly effective 3 = Moderately effective 4 = Very effective 5 = Extremely effective

Levels of importance

1 = Not at all important 2 = Slightly important 3 = Moderately important 4 = Very important 5 = Extremely important

Levels of importance

1 = Not at all important 2 = Slightly important 3 = Moderately important 4 = Very important 5 = Extremely important

through rankings of (i) the effectiveness of learning processes, (ii) the extent of the kinds of learning required to sustain employability, and (iii) the importance of practices and strategies for government, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults to promote lifelong learning across working life. These rankings were assessed through perspectives of different cultural, gender and age groups (see Billett et al., this volume-c, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”, this volume-e, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”; Le et  al., this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”).

 hase 3: Advancing How Worklife Learning P Promotes Employability This phase comprised a consolidation of findings, drawing out deductions and addressing procedural questions about enhancing everyday learning activities (i.e., improving practice in workplaces and tertiary education) and generating specific policy recommendations for workplace and governmental considerations. These

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Table 4  Characteristics of 678 respondents Variable Identified as

Gender

Age

Highest qualification

Current employment status

Workplace size

Values Australian born (non-Indigenous) Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Migrant from English-speaking background Migrant from non-English-speaking background Female Male Not specified 19 and below 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60+ Junior secondary school Senior secondary school (i.e., year 11 and 12) Vocational certificate Diploma/Advanced Diploma Bachelor Degree Postgraduate Qualification Fixed-term/Contract Casual/Self-employed Permanent Seeking (other) employment Unemployed Retired Less than 20 20–199 200+ Not applicable

N 276 106 177 116 438 234 4 13 67 159 146 182 108 27 53 82 100 172 241 170 127 324 33 35 32 125 174 285 91

% 40.9 15.7 26.2 17.2 64.8 34.6 .6 1.9 9.9 23.6 21.6 27.0 16.0 4.0 7.9 12.1 14.8 25.5 35.7 25.1 18.7 47.8 4.9 5.2 4.7 18.5 25.8 42.2 13.5

tasks were initially undertaken by each member of the research team over a 3-month period using collations of the Phase 1 and 2 data. Each team member generated a paper on aspects of the project’s focus (e.g., actions by workplaces, tertiary education, workers). A 3-day dialogue forum was then held to systematically review findings and deductions, formulate policy and practice responses, and identify conceptual contributions. These outcomes comprised advancing findings, refining practice and policy implications about how workers might best need to learn to sustain their employability, and the workplace and personal processes likely to support learning. The activities were enacted during a 3-day dialogue forum amongst the researchers, a day-long interaction with stakeholders and a meeting of the researchers to consolidate the findings on the final day.

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The event included a seminar including a set of brief presentations, followed by participants engaging in focus group activities responding to key elements of the findings. The seminar firstly offered an overview of the investigation, and its study and then had a series of short presentations on specific aspects of that learning and development, comprising (i) employability and worklife history, (ii) literate practices in worklife histories, transitions and learning, (iii) learning and development across worklife through two explanatory bases of educative experiences and personal curriculum, (iv) examining worklife learning histories of Indigenous Australian workers, (v) negotiation and worklife transitions, and (vi) contributions of tertiary education. Matrices aligning learning with particular experiences across working life were bench-tested through these processes. Feedback from this event was used to refine the matrix and policy and practice recommendations.

Ethics and Dissemination The project was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of Griffith University (GU No: 2019/816) and was carried out in accordance with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research. The data gathering was subject to informed consent and managed in ways to ensure usability and, in particular, triangulated analyses, yet securely stored at Griffith but in ways permitting triangulation. Data management included de-identification soon after being gathered and labelled in ways that informants were anonymised in their workplace. Interview informants were given a pseudonym to maintain their confidentiality. The survey was administered online using the LimeSurvey tool. The informed consent information was presented in the introduction page of the survey. This information assured participants that the survey responses were anonymous and confidential, and participants could decide whether to participate in the research. Participants were advised to print the informed consent page for their future reference. Incentives in the form of prizes were included in the information about the survey. The use of incentives was considered a token of appreciation and acknowledgment of participants’ contribution to the project, not for inducing the expected responses to the survey. The findings have been communicated progressively across its three phases and in distinct ways to diverse audiences  – locally, nationally and internationally. Combinations of seminars, conference presentations (e.g., Bargallie & Billett, 2021; Billett, 2021, 2022; Choy, 2022; Filliettaz et  al., 2022); research bulletin (Billett et  al., 2020, 2022b), and academic papers and book chapters (e.g., Billett et  al., 2021, 2022a; Salling-Olesen, 2022) have been used to articulate practical and theoretical findings. Dissemination of findings from the three phases of the projects, presenting orientations and perspectives of understanding and elaborating worklife learning, was presented in ten book chapters (Bargallie, this volume, chapter

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“Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”; Billett, this volume-a, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: Educative Experiences”, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”; Billett et al., this volume-a, chapter “Adults’ Worklife Learning”, this volume-b, chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning”, this volume-c, chapter “Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context”, this volume-d, chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review”, this volume-e, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”; Choy & Le, this volume, chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”; Filliettaz, this volume, chapter “Literate Practices in Worklife Histories, Transitions and Learning”; Le et al., this volume-a, chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures”, this volume-b, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”; Salling-Olesen, this volume, chapter “Employability and Work Life History”; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). The procedural and policy findings about how worklife learning can sustain employability across lengthening working lives were prepared for government, professional, and industry bodies through plainly written summaries. These findings were directed towards how educational provisions and workplace experiences can be organised and ordered to support learning. Engagement with nominees of federal and state government and employer and employee representatives in Phase 3 provided leverage for these findings to advance public policy as well as workplace discussions and practice.

Limitations Efforts have been made to warrant voices from CALD groups (i.e., Australian born non-Indigenous, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, migrants from English-speaking and non-English-speaking backgrounds), as well as different age groups, thus being representative of the Australian population. Yet, there is a bias in the sample favouring females as well as towards those with higher education levels. However, the latter is unlikely to be an impediment because it is these kinds of informants who are most likely to engage in structured educational experiences, permitting an analysis of a cohort of workers who experience a combination of both lifelong education and work life learning experiences. Another limitation is the sample of interviewed informants was predominantly obtained in the state of Queensland, may not be generalisable to other states and territories. However, the findings are suggestive of possible patterns in Queensland and other regions across Australia. This research project was also limited by the use of web-based survey that restricted the length and types of questions that could be asked, in addition to making assumptions about the technological confidence of participants.

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Summary Securing continuous employability outcomes for individuals across their working lives have increasingly become a primary focus of governments, educational institutions, workplaces and workers. However, employability is more than initial transition to work, it is about the ability to retain employment through developing occupational capacities that respond effectively to emerging challenges, subsequently seek advancement across working life. Yet, evidence suggests that it is not possible to explain the processes of learning that support sustained employability in times of change and uncertainty without accounting for the complex of factors that comprise what is suggested by the social world and how these are engaged with by individuals as shaped by their subjectivities, capacities and personal epistemologies. Understanding the complex of imperatives and practices securing and maintaining employability across lengthening working lives will inform policies and strategies translated into intentional educational provisions to promote employability across working lives. This chapter has set out the rationale for and approaches adopted in an investigation that sought to generate evidence-based policies and informed practices supporting worklife learning arrangements promoting Australian workers’ employability. The project had three phases. The first comprised worklife history interviews with 66 working-age Australians to capture the retrospective accounts of their worklife learning to understand the learning processes and outcomes achieved in some significant transitions across these individuals’ working lives. Following these worklife history accounts were a series of semi-structured interviews to identify changes to the individuals’ work and their responses to those changes. The second phase comprised developing, piloting and administering a survey to reach broader population of working-age adults to verify and elaborate interview findings and explore further the issues of employability and lifelong learning. The third phase engaged with different stakeholders comprising informants, workplace representatives, and state and federal government representatives to advance policy recommendations to promote and sustain employability through worklife learning.

References Abrahamsson, L. (2007). Exploring construction of gendered identities at work. In Work, subjectivity and learning (pp. 105–121). Springer. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2008). Australian Social Trends – Adult Learning. Statistics ABo. 4102.0. Canberra. Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). (2013). Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (Australia 2011–2012). Cat 422800. Canberra. Billett, S. (2001). Knowing in practice: Re-conceptualising vocational expertise. Learning and Instruction, 11(6), 431–452. Billett, S. (Ed.). (2006). Work, change and workers. Springer.

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Billett, S. (2017). Developing domains of occupational competence: Workplaces and learner agency. In Competence-based vocational and professional education (pp. 47–66). Springer. Billett, S., & Pavlova, M. (2005). Learning through working life: Self and individuals’ agentic action. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 24(3), 195–211. Billett, S., Smith, R., & Barker, M. (2005). Understanding work, learning and the remaking of cultural practices. Studies in Continuing Education, 27(3), 219–237. Billett, S., Dymock, D., & Choy, S. (2016). Supporting learning across working life. Springer. Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., Filliettaz, L., Choy, S., Smith, R., Le, A. H., & Bargallie, D. (2020). Practices and policies for sustaining employability through worklife learning: Worklife learning (Research Bulletin 1). Griffith University. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Smith, R., & Choy, S. (2021). The kinds and character of changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 40, 1–15. Billett, S., Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (2022a). Lifelong learning across working lives: Personal, social and maturational factors. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education (pp. 421–441). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/ 978-­3-­030-­67930-­9_23-­1 Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., Filliettaz, L., Choy, S., Smith, R., Le, A. H., & Bargallie, D. (2022b). Practices and policies for sustaining employability through worklife learning: Educative experiences and personal pathways (Research Bulletin 2). Griffith University. Edwards, R. (2002). Mobilizing lifelong learning: Governmentality in educational practices. Journal of Educational Policy, 17(3), 353–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680930210127603 Kvale, S. (2007). Analyzing interviews. In Doing interviews (pp. 102–120). Sage. Noon, M., Blyton, P., & Morrell, K. (2013). The realities of work: Experiencing work and employment in contemporary society. Macmillan International Higher Education. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2013). OECD Skills Outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills. OECD. Poell, R. F., & Krogt, F. J. (2016). Employee strategies in organising professional development. In Supporting learning across working life (pp. 29–46). Springer. Salling-Olesen, H. (2007). Theorising learning in life history: A psycho-societal approach. Studies in the Education of Adults, 39(1), 38–53. Salling-Olesen, H. (2016). A psycho-societal approach to life histories. In A. A. Goodson, P. Sikes, & M.  Andrews (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history. Routledge. Salling-Olesen, H. (2022). Changing concepts and tools for realising lifelong learning strategies. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education (pp. 465–484). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­031-­19592-­1_19 Schuller, T., & Watson, D. (2009). Learning through life. Niace. Smith, R. (2018) Learning in Work: A negotiation model of socio-personal learning. Dordrecht: Springer.

Seminars and Conferences Bargallie, D., & Billett, S. (2021, November 18). Indigenous Australian peoples and work: Examining worklife learning histories of indigenous Australian workers. In The education research conference: [Re]imagining education research: Innovation and moving forward. Griffith University. Billett, S. (2021). Seminar/conference.

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Billett, S. (2022, July). Keynote – Learning across working life: RWL12. Toronto, Ontario, Canada (on-line). Choy, S. (2022, July 6–8). Bridging life transitions: Role of VET in supporting lifelong learning. In No Frills conference – VET’s role in transforming the future: Positioning VET as the key to workforce transformation for shaping the future. Australia (on-line). Filliettaz, L. et al. (2022, August). Role and place of literate practices in worklife histories, transitions and learning: some examples from the Australian context. In EARLI SIG 14 conference. Paderborn, Germany.

Chapters in This Book Bargallie, D. (this volume). Indigenous Australian peoples and work: Examining worklife histories. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (this volume-a). Learning across working life: Educative experiences. In S.  Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (this volume-b). Learning across working life: A product of ‘personal curriculum’. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Filliettaz, L., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-a). Adults’ worklife learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Choy, S., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-b). Policies and practices for sustaining employability through worklife learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A.  H., & Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume-c). Practices and strategies to support worklife learning: The Australian context. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Choy, S., & Smith, R. (this volume-d). The imperatives of and for worklife learning: A review. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S., Le, A. H., & Filliettaz, L. (this volume-e). Worklife transitions: An Australian investigation. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Choy, S., & Le, A.  H. (this volume). Worklife learning: Contributions of tertiary education. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Filliettaz, L. (this volume). Literate practices in worklife histories, transitions and learning. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Le, A. H., Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., & Bargallie, D. (this volume-a). Investigating learning for employability: Method and procedures. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Le, A. H., Choy, S., Smith, R., & Billett, S. (this volume-b). Learning across working life: A case from Australia. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Salling-Olesen, H. (this volume). Employability and work life history. In S. Billett, H. Salling-­ Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature.

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Smith, R. (this volume). The trajectories of worklife transitions. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Anh Hai Le is a research fellow at Griffith University. Her research interest focuses on workplace learning and curriculum development in tertiary education, with a specific emphasis on the process of building knowledge through scholarly engagement with industry and tertiary institutions. Much of her recent research has focused on lifelong and adult education.  

Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has worked in vocational education, educational administration, teacher education, professional development and policy development in the Australian vocational education system and as a teacher and researcher in higher education.  

Henning Salling Olesen is Professor Emeritus from Roskilde University, Denmark. His research area is lifelong learning and particularly work-related adult education. His specific expertise is in life history methods and the study of subjective dimensions of work identity and career.  

Debbie Bargallie is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales, Australia. She is Associate Professor (Principal Research Fellow) at Griffith University, Queensland. Debbie is a critical race scholar. Her book Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service (2020) was published by AIATSIS Aboriginal Studies Press in June 2020.  

Employability and Work Life History Henning Salling Olesen

Abstract  Elaborating the notion of employability, this chapter presents reasons for applying life history interviews to the data collection and its analysis. It initially advances a concept of learning that is based in adult learners’ lifelong continuous experience in everyday life. Within this framework is progressed an account of how work life history interviews enable a longitudinal elaboration and understanding of individuals’ learning histories that complements the cross-case focus on specific forms of transitions adults have to negotiate across their working lives. Following this, the presentation and discussion of three examples of (work) life histories. The next section elaborates the particular contribution of individual work life histories to the analysis of employability: They give a holistic picture of real people and they make visible how learning is integrated in an identity process. The final section addresses the societal effects of learning under the concept of competence development. It is pointed out that dominant concepts of competence tend to fail in recognizing the subjective aspect of competence development which is based in life experience and can be illuminated in life histories. Finally, some consequences for practice and policy of the life history analysis are briefly outlined. Keywords  Employability · Life history · Life history interviews · Learning · Subjectivity · Experience · Identity · Competence · Adaptability · Psychosocial approach · Acceleration · Interviewing · Transitions · Learning arenas

H. Salling Olesen (*) Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_5

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Employability as Understood Through Work Life History The point of departure for the project discussed in this chapter is the concept of employability. The aim is to identify how best to support working age adults maintain their employability through learning in and through work, community interactions and educational provisions. The project examines how a selection of working age of adults have, in fact, been able (more or less) to sustain their employability during changing careers. The goal is here to gain knowledge that can support policies, education and training provisions and, hopefully, also other individuals in their career planning. The concept of employability can too often carry the assumption that the demands of the labor market are independent determinants for the learning processes needed for workers to be employable. However, the focus of this study is not on the development of work as such and its requirements to the labor force, but a study of which learning it takes for working people to be able to keep up with them – or in the more specific words of the project proposal: … how promoting that employability can be realized by identifying and verifying the types of experiences that most effectively and viably support learning through informants' everyday work activities and educational provisions.

By examining these workers’ experiences and recognizing the active involvement of working age adults, this project avoids the widespread tendency in social engineering research to not fully capture the real complexity of the task, and conceptually reducing people to objects, and, thereby, also ignoring or avoiding these individuals’ diversity and creativity. Critical research approaches should seek to clarify common ground, i.e., explore the conditions for conformity between individual desires and societal needs, but also provide a realistic independent and sensitive view of individuals’ actual behavior and subjective orientations. This approach requires theorizing appropriately the focus of the investigation (i.e., learning), and selecting a methodology and procedures able to capture this tension empirically. The epistemic object of the investigation is not these people as individuals, but their societal status as working age adults and bearers of the attribute “employability”. The term “employability” situates the individual in a dependent position in the labor market. In fact, the term employability is a bit too narrow, referring to wage labor. Not everyone is a paid worker, and especially not all the time. Our observations show very abundantly that working careers pass through all types of socio-­ economic states within individuals’ lives, although work as wage labor is the most extensive. A more exhaustive concept would be an ability to maintain a livelihood which emphasizes economic reproduction. Or, perhaps, an even broader concept of work that also includes necessary, social work that is unpaid and not mediated through the labor market – primarily domestic work, maintenance of family relationships and participation in local communities. However, this project focuses on paid employment which is usually important to working age adults’ subjectivity, as well as social and economic needs. Our research question focuses on which learning and what sources and suggestions enable individuals to maintain a livelihood and live and function in a

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community. The more careful justification for the focus on employability is that although not everyone is working, and although work it is not the whole life for anyone, work is a dominant dimension of societal life. Work is at the same time a societal objective, an environment for learning, and a broader life condition. In this sense, employability is, on the one hand, a matter of socialization in its broadest sense. On the other hand, it is submitted to societal structures, divisions of labor and social changes as they appear in the form of the labor market, but not in unambiguous and determined way. The project proposal puts it in this way: Employability “includes having the ability to remain competent, thereby resisting unemployment (i.e., sustain employment), and being able to secure advancement, broadening occupational roles, or adapt to new circumstances and practices (i.e., developing a career)“often driven by what has become their profession (Salling Olesen, 2000, 2007a) or vocation (Billett, 2018). This phrasing indicates the relational interdependence (Billett, 2006) between the development of work and the competence building of workers which appear on the individual level as possibility for the individual worker to create employment opportunities and shape jobs by means of learning. In designing the project, this dialectical relation between the individual subjectivity and its societal nature was addressed by adopting inspirations from research traditions comprised by the term Life History Approach. In conjunction with research in a multitude of cultural and social science areas, this approach has also developed holistic and inclusive ways of studying learning as a social process, covering not only learning in educational settings but also in all contexts of everyday life (Salling Olesen, 2016; Salling Olesen & Leithäuser, 2018). The approach provides theoretical concepts for a preliminary structuration of the research object, and guidelines for a variety of methods for empirical investigation and analysis of data. The term “approach” is an indication that the Life History Approach is not a theory for deduction or generalized model building. Instead, both theory and methodology are judged by their relevance and viability in relation to provide the insights that the research questions address. In this sense, the approach is problem-oriented and practice-driven. But it takes the point of departure in the informants’ life histories (Salling Olesen, 2016). The approach comprises different traditions that have two common elements: (i) using life history material in the form of text or agency as an empirical basis and (ii) seeking to understand this material in the subjective context of lived life. There is no strong logical connection between the two elements, the connection is perceived differently depending on the reader’s epistemic interest. There is a sociological study of biography that considers the biographical material as a mirror of social conditions and historical developments, and which finds the subjective meaningfulness less interesting or even systematically limited. The French sociologist Bertaux (1981) expresses it with a dramatic metaphor as a distinction between the flame and the flares used in wartime to illuminate the battlefield. The biography can either be seen as an interesting flame in itself, or it can be seen as light over the landscape that illuminates this landscape (Bertaux, 1981), although some aspects will always remain in the shadows. But, in connection with learning and adult education research, the opposite may be the case: The subjective meaning is in focus. The most commonly used empirical

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materials are (auto)biographical life history narratives in which interviewees are invited to present their (retrospective) understanding of their life course (Alheit, 1994; Alheit & Dausien, 1985; Salling Olesen, 2007b). Of course, these data can also be treated differently. In the first place, it suggests that the analysis does justice to this narrative as a unique subjective reality. That is, it can be seen as an authentic reproduction of the interviewees’ learning process through life, and the biographical self-narrative therefore, as a learning process in itself (Alheit & Dausien, 2002). This “respectful” analysis can be contested. The sociologist Bourdieu has, with a slightly different epistemological perspective from that of Bertaux’s view, criticized this approach for accepting the subjects’ self-understanding and, therefore, revealing learning with a systematically limited insight into the social context of the subjects’ practical lives (Bourdieu, 1977). This critique is anchored in his theory of practice, where the subjective self-understanding is seen as the immediate horizon for action, “illussio” – cf. (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986). It can be said that these two traditions represent different, indeed, diametrically opposed concepts of the subject. On the one hand, a culturalist one that has since been shown to have an affinity with constructivism in psychology and social science, and, on the other hand, an understanding of subjects through their material practice, in interplay with objective social conditions. British researchers in the Learning Lives project tried to embrace and harmonize biography research and practice research without really resolving this underlying contradiction (Biesta et al., 2008). However, it seems possible to develop the concept of material practice further by adopting a psychosocial dimension in the theorizing of subjectivity. While Bourdieu criticized the lack of objective social realism in biography research, his own concept of subjectivity has been subject to criticism ((Aarseth, 2016), and he himself is aware of the gap that is left open in the theories of practice, paying (distant) respect to psychoanalysis (Bourdieu, 2000; Reay, 2015). The psychosocial research that has been developed at Roskilde University and elsewhere is indebted to these discussions (Salling Olesen, 2018; Salling Olesen & Weber, 2012), but also to a Marxist emphasis on the historical change of work and the external dynamics it imposes on subjective learning processes. On the one hand, it theorizes the inner dynamics of subjectivity as a lifelong process of socialization: The intertwining of the lifelong psychic process and societal dynamics. But equally important, it works with a hermeneutic method applying psycho-analytical interpretation methods on social interaction and cultural data (Lorenzer & König, 1986; Salling Olesen, 2020b). This chapter addresses and elaborates these issues, initially advancing a concept of learning that is based in learners’ lifelong continuous experience in everyday life. Within this framework, the work life history interviews enable a longitudinal elaboration and understanding of individuals’ learning histories that complements the cross-case focus on specific forms of transitions adults must negotiate across their working lives. Firstly, it exemplifies with the learning processes in three individual (work) life histories. The next section elaborates the particular ways in which individual cases illuminate the learning of adult workers, by means of a holistic view and by making visible how their learning is integrated with an identity formation process. Changing the perspective, the next section addresses the societal effects of

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learning under the concepts of adaptivity and competence development. And finally some consequences for practice and policy of the life history analysis are briefly outlined, referring to further elaboration in chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning” of the volume (Billett et al., this volume).

Interviewing: Producing Empirical Data Subjective learning processes are important for adult workers’ relationship to work in its concrete form, how they can remain employable and also can contribute to developing a better working life. For the first phase in the project, a narrative autobiographical interview was selected as one means of gathering data, followed by a more structured interview. The first interview explored, retrospectively, the learning careers that have enabled interviewees to maintain employability in a changing environment– either triggered by structural changes in labor market, by specific developments of work processes and occupational structure, and/or by their own decisions (Billett, 2018, p. 1; Billett et al., 2021). The autobiographical interview was selected for two reasons. First, as we want to give voice to the informants themselves, we needed to secure insider perspectives on the subject-matter. Interviewees were encouraged to tell their entire life story, with just a minimal indication of our particular interest in learning and career shifts. Second, an autobiographical interview has specific qualities as a told story and in text resulting from its transcription as the narration obeys cultural rules or standards of interaction that may or may not be conscious for the narrator. A narrative account is more than a just transmission of information about what has happened and what has been. It is also not a purely intention-driven agency (illocutionary speech acts). Indeed, our two reasons for selecting this method converge in the sense that a narrative as a specific form of language invites, but also presupposes a subjective engagement and a legitimate focus on the narrator as a subject irrespective of the circumstances and the research project. The precondition for this is that the research interviewer succeeds in defining and facilitating a compliance about the narrative communication. This succeeded to different degrees, (cf. Chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures”). An effective autobiographic interview requires certain relational and technical precautions: The research interviewer must, of course, be genuinely interested in the interview person as a subject (Becker-Schmidt, 1994; Weber, 2020), not as a token and not as a “source” for information about history or the societal whole (Bertaux, 1981). The interviewer must create a confident atmosphere and maintain it by supportive encouraging and by discretely pushing the narration ahead. The qualities of the narrative as a specific form of text can be related to cultural standards or rules that are in some ways recognizable as aspects of literary tools although they are of course released from aesthetic evaluation. Storytelling should aim to be concrete and detailed – it must have a point or morale, but it must also expand, complicate

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and provide details which enables imagination and possibly suspense. The point of the story must be motivated, have relevance and must condense a wider meaning and perspective. Having adopted the narrative compliance this also means that the story must saturate and complete the line of incidents and the logic of the situation. Although the fulfillment of these requirements can be more or less consequent, in each case we gain rich empirical data, that can be analyzed to secure a deep understanding of the informants’ life experiences (Salling Olesen, 2007b). The outcome of the first interview round is more or less detailed narrative accounts of the informants’ life courses. In some cases, rather narrowly concentrated on work career, others more generously including their whole life course, or at least highlighting significant life experiences or events.

Learning, Experience, and Subjectivity Learning is a dynamic aspect of an ongoing object-subject-object-interaction of everyday life (Salling Olesen, 2018, 2021). It takes place in any social and physical space in which we as humans engage practically and interact with the world. That includes the social as well as the natural and in different contexts of life, such as the family, the workplace, local communities, cultural communities, sports clubs, political organizations, academic/professional communities and, of course, schools and formal education. These socially defined spaces do not in themselves ensure any particular kinds of learning. They only become learning spaces to the extent and in the way that people individually and collectively define the spaces as their life world (Salling Olesen, 1989, 2007b; Volmerg et al., 1986). When informants engage emotionally and cognitively in this life world they produce “Experience” (coming from German critical social science and Phenomenology (“Erfahrung”). “Experience” is a dynamic concept comprising process and product and the relation between them – a term for the dialectical relationship between immediate experiences and impressions in the ongoing interaction and the more or less synthesized “life experiences“(in the plural) that inform the general orientation in the world (Negt, 1999; Salling Olesen, 1989, p. 8). This synthesis is generated in a symbolic medium that is social (cultural), to a great deal in the medium of language (Weber, 2012). This dialectical relationship implies that in the true sense there is hardly any completely immediate and personal experience. Conversely, there is little knowledge that is not situated and practically embedded, i.e., mediated through concrete individuals’ life experiences, and therefore in process (Wittgenstein & Anscombe, 1953). Learning is a potential outcome of this dialectic (Ted Fleming, 2018). In every social interaction of day-to-day life, concrete experience is incorporated into and becoming part of individuals’ life experience, mediated by cultural and partly linguistic forms of pre-understanding, while this immediate experience is, in turn, a contribution of a social and cultural accounting of the world as experienced. Individuals here are constituted as social subjects through this formation of

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experience, i.e., through their emotional and reflexive relationship to their own life worlds and by participating in the reproduction and transformation of cultural insight and practice (Salling Olesen, 2007b; Weber, 2020). Work is a central part of adults’ life process in a biological and anthropological sense (Negt & Kluge, 2014). This overall stance of the individuals as subjects who exist in an interaction with both the natural and social environment forms the framework for the central aspect of our social existence as constituted by paid work. Hence, reference to Work Life History, it is the unity of the objective work career and adults’ subjective work life experience. Yet, this work life experience includes immediate, individual and situated experiences in everyday work and an entire collective and cultural world view of workers (Fenwick et al., 2011; Hall, 2006; Negt & Kluge, 1972). Seen from the subjective perspective, as mentioned above, it is too narrow to consider exclusively paid wage work, even if the concept of employability suggests that. As pointed out above, that societal work includes different forms of work for a livelihood, but also other forms of socially-necessary work, and all these forms of work are part of the individual experience, in different ways. In the individual subjective perspective, the forms of work relations are not so distinct as the societal structures, experiences may cross over. To identify how learning processes have contributed to the lifelong maintenance of employability – now understood as sustaining life in the broader sense of a livelihood and a general social function- and to understand the connections in learning processes, we must adopt this broad horizon for the investigation of individual relationships with work. The life history interviews which were conducted as a first step in the empirical study intended to embrace this wider horizon including work experiences and interviewees’ understandings of their background and visions of the future. They were followed by structured interviews checking up details. So, the interviews provide a context for understanding which learning processes, where and how, have been important in maintaining not only the ability to work and sustaining employability in their life as a whole. It is important to note that not all learning is intended or just conscious for the individual subject Much learning during life is not counted in as learning per se (Becker-Schmidt, 1993; Weber, 2020). That learning is only recognized in retrospect as actual learning, and this recognition may be a result of an intentional learning process. Often, the opportunity to articulate a life history becomes an occasion for personal reflection and attempts to reimagine what were the background and projects for the future at the time of previous agency. Intentional efforts to learn are of course important. But motives for learning are also changing over time and may be quite complex. So, there are several archeological layers of past-present-future in the retrospective account of their learning. In the data analysis undertaken through the project reported here it is needed to be aware of this distinction, also recognizing that we as researchers, by just defining the interview situation, participate in a coproduction of the past and invest our own experience in the interpretation of the account given in the situation.

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Transitions The first observation of the interview material revealed that narratives seemed to be structured around major or significant changes in the interview persons’ career – transitions (Billett et al., 2021). This finding may partly be a consequence of the fact that the sampling has been inviting interviewees, some of whom had experiences of substantially changing work careers and interview persons may have responded to this. However, none of the initial interviewees were selected on this basis, but rather on having had at least two decades of working life. But more important is probably the fact that working lives are increasingly influenced by frequent shifts, hence the need to capture life histories that reflect these kinds of shifts. In premodern societies, many generations just passed on work practices and technology and in classical industrial society it was still possible to work in the same business and in the same way across individuals’ working lives (Salling Olesen et al., 2022). However, in late modern era, this is becoming infrequent. Certainly, contemporary work life is usually characterized by transitions. The majority of transitions identified were the result of more or less objective social imperatives or are subject to institutional (e.g. forced migration, changes in demand for occupations or work), or brute facts (e.g. age, illness) (Collin, 2002; Searle, 1995). In these cases, learning is result of the change or a response to those imperatives driving these transitions. In the narratives, some transitions are obvious, marked by major social external events or conditions, and generally also confirmed by interviewees, and are in the narration identified as moments of significant turns in the direction of their lives. Others are seen as driven by subjective motives (e.g. personal preferences, desire for change), either by explicit decisions at the time of change, or retrospectively seen as subjectively motivated. In the second interview, the informants were asked to affirm or reject those transitions that had been identified in the analysis of the life history interview. In narrative social research, one approach is to distinguish structural types of narratives (Schütze, 1983) but for learning research, the point is that these subjective dimensions are situated in the informants’ life courses and the context of transition as it appears at the time for the interviewer. Similar structure has a variable meaning. On the other hand, the intention is not a personality profiling. It might be possible in some cases to reduce an individual life history to an invariable display of a personality, not least because individuals may tend to bring their story to have coherent personal formula. These individual attributes, and the projection of self can be observed. But here, we are more interested in their significance in relation to life phases and to the transitions they respond to. In the individual life history contexts, the intention is to identify which forms of learning have occurred and relate it to the subjective relation to the transition, as it is expressed in the interview. We seek learning experiences, learning in context, to identify how it could be optimally supported by these individuals themselves or by other format and sources. The decisive premise for the life history interviews and life history approach overall is that it enables a longitudinal perspective. That is, to

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see each interviewee’s life history as a sequential and cumulative experience related to the entire life course and its objective conditions. In that context, it also enables us to identify not only an individual sequence of transitions but also processes in between that build up to a transition or display consequences and follow up.

Three Examples Before elaborating further, for illustration purposes described here are three examples from the interview sample. The examples are selected as they are rich on interesting aspects and, generally, illuminate the perspective of capturing informants’ experienced shifts and changes in a coherent sequence.

Salim’s Journey A case that has been a reference for the initial data analysis is Salim’s life history. Salim is a refugee migrant from Iran and has had many worklife transitions up until the time of his interviews, when he is 60+ years old. He belonged to a religious minority that was persecuted and his life was threatened in Iran. Despite an engineering education but not being able to be granted his degree certificate, he had to make a living as a driver – learned to drive a bus from his father, who was a bus driver himself – but eventually fled with his wife from Iran. His first big transition, to flee to another country through the services of people smugglers, implies extremely compelling imperatives. On being granted refugee status and arrival, in Australia he had to continue looking for marginal jobs – factory work, − but he was very focused on integration. He immediately commences language course and emphasizes the need to adapt to local culture in Australia: “…and I said to my wife, this is the country I chose to come, we love, let’s get to know them, let’s get to work with them”. He tried to become an engineer by retaking the course, took extra English classes, but was advised to give up as he would have to complete the degree again, when he needed to provide for his family. After working in various odd jobs, and affected by a company closure, the whole family moves from Adelaide to Brisbane on the support and advice of his Persian community. That community found him work in the construction sector and he engaged in an unofficial apprenticeship system to build houses. He secured a Certificate after a short course that recognized what he had learnt through that process, and qualified him as a registered builder. Then, he worked as a builder for many years before he injures his back. This became the trigger for a major transition. He becomes a coffee shop franchisee and learns what it takes to manage such a business. We see a person with a strong will to make a living in Australia – but also a wise and flexible take on the situation. Becoming a construction worker was based on contacts with other members of the Persian community and an industry with an affordable entry threshold. He then

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establishes himself as self-employed first in the construction industry and then as a coffee shop franchisee. However, Salim wants to go back to building and becomes a project manager in construction business. He, uses the management skills he had to learn to run a cafe, he gets to use them in a new way by completing a more formal education as a construction technician, which gives him the opportunity to use his skills from the construction industry in a job that he physically conducted. In these ways, Salim presents as a competent person who is determined to learn new things but also to apply his skills purposefully so that he realizes his own interests. He tries to use his Iranian engineering education but must realize that he cannot get credit for his actual qualifications in degree programs. In the meantime, he works through a range of jobs including taxi and bus driving and then construction work, where he, ultimately, can find self-employment. And when he is hit by health problems – a completely different imperative (brute fact, Searle, 1995), he finds a way to remain self-employed. His story seems to show that the Australian labor market can accommodate migrants if they themselves act strategically. Salim manages both to take the informal jobs and at the same time seeks formal and informal education. Therefore, this case also became a kind of reference in the project – a welcome example that you can not only maintain your employability but also increase your opportunities. It seems reasonable to interpret his resilience and humility towards employment opportunities having origins in his cultural background that emphasizes self-­ sufficiency. Also, perhaps his experience of discrimination in Iran, but he also displays ambition for undertaking work in which has interest and finds fulfillment. and independence. Throughout his worklife history interview, he refers to needing to find employment to provide for his family and then increasing and intermingled with changing jobs to find work that is personally fulfilling.

Carson’s Journey For Carson, who did not enjoy school and left early, his initial working years were unsettled and punctuated with casual laboring jobs. He states in interview, ‘I wasn’t out really hunting; I sort of bummed about for a few years really just doing bits and pieces and not really doing much.’ He did not actively seek jobs, but other elders thought he needs to do something and offered him jobs. This seems to have come from his community pressure. The most common early theme across the interviews is that Carson floats from job to job, relying on networks and family contacts for employment that he takes on ‘as needs basis’. He does not make plans and does not think about additional learning for employment – but relies on opportunities that arise. He never speaks about ‘learning’ per se, apart from being an avid reader, so it is assumed that he learned most of the work tasks by being shown or guided by more experienced persons. He doesn’t sound as if he had a particular career choice or plan. He took advantage of opportunities, tried new short-term jobs. Over time, he developed work ethics and experiences in different types of work, mostly

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construction laboring. This generates a CV which he can use to be considered for new opportunities. He briefly went to vocational college but does not say if he completed his course. The skills he developed in the construction industry could be used for the building industry more broadly and any labor work. This type of work made him physically fit. He was able to then work as a storeman/packer in a number of warehouses, engage in fruit picking, electrical cable rigging, and continue as a construction laborer that enabled a move into scaffolding work on major construction sites and his becoming a union member in this industry. His building union membership and associations with other union organizations became significant influences later in his working life. Most of his casual jobs were difficult and often with not very favorable working conditions, some lasting 3–4  years at a time, scaffolding lasting 7  years. Throughout, there was little sense of any need to engage in formalized learning through education and training programs, beyond getting numerous but significant operation tickets for heavy and height equipment, or securing a long-­ term job, until he decided to join the marine industry as a merchant seafarer – something he had wanted to do since he was 19 years of age and recounts as a childhood fantasy born from his reading. In this planned transition, supported by trade union and family contacts, he accepted the need for a qualification to be eligible. Now 30 years of age and with a family of his own, his first vessel employer (Teekay) sponsored a Certificate III course through the Australian Maritime College which he completed in about a year. This was to meet workplace compliance requirements. He now identified himself as a professional seafarer in work that he then engaged in for about 15 years. This was the longest he held a particular job and earned regular wages. He said he was well paid in this job. He learned different skills to work on and under deck. Carson’s work as a merchant seafarer takes him further and further away from his young family as his career progresses – both in terms of distance and time apart. This leads to a separation from his first family but he enters into another relationship and continues to support his new growing family through seafaring. After 15 years at sea he gets out of the merchant marine and takes up related work on the wharves of the city in which his family lives, enabling him to assist with the raising of three children, including twins, and caring for his wife who became seriously ill. Work on the wharves was casual and irregular despite his many heavy machinery, logistical and ship based skills and experience. He took other casual work to supplement this income, including disability support work, assisting in childcare centers and some construction laboring. His wife, when recovered, worked in an administrative role at one of the city universities where she is undertaking PhD higher degree studies. Her successful completion of the PhD and subsequent acceptance of an academic position at a university in another state see Carson and his family of three children move thousands of kilometers across the country to another major city where he anticipates returning to the merchant marine industry due to the high reliance of that state on the shipping industry to move the many mining ores it produces. Although he returns to a precarious work career when he goes ashore it seems that Carson has gained some stronger autonomy and self-assertiveness in relation to

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his work. His tolerance for poor work conditions seems to be reduced – in a job as a cook in a childcare institution he seems to find some indirect satisfaction despite his acknowledgement that the childcare industry is generally exploitive of its teaching and support work force.

Ingrid’s Journey Ingrid is another migrant albeit, a voluntary one, seeking new opportunities and lifestyle change. She has a cosmopolitan background: Parents are European upper middle class international couple. Ingrid first visits Australia in a sabbatical, then takes her education in Europe (architecture like the father)  – but then returns to Australia and settles without being able to work in her profession. From early on, Ingrid seems to live a life for a child from a cosmopolitan educated middle class Family (father architect, Austrian-Slovenian; mother German). She travels to learn language and gets so attracted by her internship that she makes a big shift in her study plans (the first transition), which makes her father excited (professional reproduction). He also supports her in going to live in Australia for good – on a single ticket. But we do not hear more about the family after that. There seem to have been no further roles as grandparents when she had children. During the study she is determined and hard-working, it seems, studying in Slovenia in a for her foreign language. Continuing in Stockholm she seems happy to work in students’ jobs, without engaging very much, but she earns for her study expenses. After graduation she works with the father (as an architect we must assume). But she misses Australia badly, we do not learn why – may be the good experience of workplace, culture, nature in her first stay when very young? Back in Australia, she describes it as coincidental that she gets a job in a building company in a small city, in which she meets her husband-to-be. But the luck is she can make use of her professional skills – not as an architect (she is not qualified to be an architect for Australian conditions and regulations) but drawing for a building company. Her next move is less obvious: Moving to a larger state capital city starting her own business (the second transition). She describes it motivated by boredom with the small city after her first childbirth and parental leave. And that may well be true, but it mainly accounts for the geographical move and divorce. Why also a professional shift? She needed a job (being a single mother) and did not have a professional license as an architect. But could she have worked like before? In fact, she founded a furniture retail-shop. Her decision may be seen as a combination of an entrepreneurial motive and the breadwinner necessity, but it was also a bold one (single parent) – and when taking the details in consideration (up to 11 employees) she must have made a very steep career progress. She had to learn all aspects of running a business. But she also tried to nurture some architectural ambitions by designing and selling Scandinavian-style furniture. The fact that she carried this project through reaffirms the determination and willingness to hard work which she displayed in the study time. Maybe this workload is enough to explain her next

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transition: Closing the business as soon as she was free of an expensive rental agreement? But it seems strange that she did not in some way try to rearrange her business and rental interests. In the next few years, it seems Ingrid has had a hard time, going through two short careers as salesperson/real estate agent and travel agent. She leaves both for qualitative reasons and keeps her income by running a small guest house with international visitors – which she likes very much. She applied for a job as a substitute teacher in a design college and got it. Later, the Dean seemed to act as a protector, getting her employed in a permanent part time, later full-time position, teaching interior design. So, her third transition seems to grow out of the need to provide for a living – but the topics also have a connection to her original profession. She continues until now and is considering completing a PHD. She begins to study law (at the same time she is teaching interior design) and at the time of the interview she is considering becoming a barrister. Again, it seems she can work very hard when pursuing a goal, although she has yet to fulfil any of her worklife plans to date.

Holistic Intersectionality These three individual cases are, of course, not claimed to be representative of the informants. But they offer selected individual cases that may bring exemplary insights from within the sample. Each of these three stories present a specific life course and work career – holistic, simple, and complex at the same time. Listening to their stories makes visible how both very straightforward and more profound learning processes may be the cause and/or consequence of extensive transitions in work life and need to be understood in the light of their wider life experiences. The selection of two migrant careers is exemplary both in the sense that a high frequency of migrants seems to reflect structures of Australian society, but also in the sense that migrants’ life stories offer a special opportunity to gain an insight into the embedding of learning processes in life histories comprising many and fundamental transitions. Each of the three cases seem to reflect class and gender relations in specific ways, but they are not just one or the other. The life history interview shows the holistic intersectionality of each of them. Salim is a typical provider, but his masculinity also seems manifested in his passion for construction work and his pride with the product which makes the handing over to the customer an emotional male bonding. His learning activities are pragmatic – he learns what is needed to make a living but also forms a long- term plan based on his identification with construction work. At the same time, we may see Salim’s humble and pragmatic approach to the host country because of a quite dramatic necessity being a refugee. Ingrid is a middle-­ class free spirit who changes her life direction radically several times, and as it seems also rather suddenly. At least in some of the transitions, we can see that she is also a provider, being a single mother who must establish a living which is compatible with this situation, yet she is very autonomous and insisting on pursuing her

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wishes. Her move of location as well as her quest for an academic career seem a bit opaque and invite interpretations of her private life influencing her work career – and in that case again it seems understandable in the context of a middle-class self-­ assertive personal profile. Whereas these two individuals are very proactive in their life course and career the opposite seem to be the case with Carson. He appears to represent many school leavers who have little directions for post school education, vocational training or career plans. Carson is in a way just a working-class man who relies on opportunities that arise, somehow kept afloat by local community. The overall impression is that he is reactive and accepts the work opportunities that are offered him – until he realizes what he himself denotes as a childhood dream, being a seafarer. When this employment is interrupted by family circumstances, he returns to precarious employment, however with a more engaged attitude to work. Each of these individual life histories display holistic characters. As such they expose the intersectional entanglement of class and gender that reflects previous life and has lifelong effects for their way of relating to work and life changes.

Continuity and Identity Developments The transitions discussed above have been analyzed across cases, distinguishing factors that triggered the transition, type of learning it activated, and outcome of that learning. In most transitions, the learning is a reaction to some kind of discontinuity. Only a minority of (major) changes have been actively decided or desired by the interviewee at the time of the transition. In the interview format, they are by the narrator deemed important as a structural discontinuity in their working life. However, life consists, even in late modern times, mainly of relative continuity, or small developments which are not seen as transitions (Becker-Schmidt, 1994; Fleming & Finnegan, 2014). Looking at these periods “between” noticeable transitions may contribute to understand the longer lines in the life history and sometimes also help us trace micro-developments and ambiguities that are not prominent enough to be seen as transitions. Yet, they may nevertheless influence on learning in connection with transitions. For instance, when we examine the entire life history of Salim there seems to be a continuous thread from his precarious employment in the construction industry to his intentional career change that combines social ascent with a real identification with construction work. He says, for example, about the handover of a finished house that he has built: That’s my concern, it’s always something that I’ve been always saying to my clients, look mate, this is your house, I’ve built if for you last seven, eight months, six months, whatever, and I'm leaving it to you, and I go. It's you every day get up in this house. ….when I was having the coffee shop, sometimes I'd leave it to my manager, and I applied to the Brisbane City Council, I applied for driving buses, to see what's happening here, how the buses are here. I started driving as a casual bus driver for the Brisbane City Council for a while, but then I said, no, I think building is my passion (p 5).

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Ingrid exposes a similar professional continuity in her transition to become a furniture retailer, including Scandinavian furniture, designed by herself, in the business. There is a continuity through most of her working life related to architecture and design, from her basic education over a construction company in a small town, to her life as a businesswoman in Brisbane. It seems that these engagements in the content of their work represents a core element of their subjectivity that is more personally specific than their general individual gendered and class related identity (Becker-Schmidt, 2002). Recognizing these long threads inform our understanding of the learning that Salim and Ingrid are undertaking in each of the transitions in their working life. This subjectivity is not necessarily a stable element. Instead, it is an ongoing negotiation of the social factors that influence transitions. They also learn about themselves, and the exercise of subjectivity leads to learning. When people tell their life history structured around transitional phases, they likely include the legacies from earlier processes in their account of learning in the transition (Billett, this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Product of ‘Personal Curriculum’”; Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). For instance, acknowledging that certain circumstances have informed them and practical consequences they have drawn and/or anticipate their decision-­ making. This recalling may be very simple things – changing an everyday habit or being aware of a fact. But it may also be more comprehensive like realizing that you have a new life situation and reflecting what it means for your “self”. The subjects are not only meeting social conditions, but they are also persons who discover and seek (new) social opportunities. They also learn about themselves, and this learning is an identity formation activity. Carson, who in the first part of his working life does not indicate a strong subjective engagement with his work, instead the indifference of a precarious unskilled worker. When he latterly declares that the job as a seafarer is the realization of a childhood dream, this can be seen as a learning process enabling him to engage in a new way in working life as his vocation. Whether dealing with minimal changes or condensing them into naming a transition, it can be seen as an identity change process. The understanding of the self and its relation to society can either comprise an identity shift or consolidate a self-­ understanding under changing external conditions. The identity process is not necessarily harmonious and continuous (Hall & Jefferson, 1975; Honneth, 1995). On the contrary, it is mostly an ongoing dynamic process in which the subject seeks to mediate challenges from the outside world with personal development “from inside” and integrate into an experience-based identity. Learning may take place on many levels  – cognitive, emotional and practical (corporeal) (Salling Olesen & Weber, 2012). And beside understanding the dynamics involved in the life history the narrative account may give a clue to trace potentials for future learning and agency. There can be many stories in a life history. The stories our interviewees tell us are theirs. The full life history includes both the life course, with its objective events and developments, and their subjective ways of understanding and negotiating it. Researchers seek to understand the life history in all its aspects by listening to and interpreting the representation given in the interviewees’ narratives.

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The examples are already part of an interpretation. Ingrid makes sudden and pre-­ emptive decisions in her career, a discontinuity which is sometimes difficult to understand as an outsider. We may, for this reason, see her as impatient and impetuous, escaping from any engagement after a few years, looking for new pathways. She is very mobile, if not volatile. But she is also persistent. When she identifies with the choice, she can realize her intentions by a strong will and big work capacity. However, in two short careers she opts out for reasons of ethics or discomfort, respectively. It is obvious to see these patterns in the light of her family background. Even though we do not hear more about her parents she brings resources of determination and self-confidence which most likely are remnants of her upbringing in an educated middleclass family. But you can also trace a line of relating to gendered conditions having to mature as a single mother, finding ways of combining the responsibility for providing with a work life that she can identify with. Her private life may also hide part of the driving forces in the disruptions in her career. Her late interest in studying law is not exactly a disruption – she continues her teaching career – but also not aligned with the continuities so far. The reason given for this (potential) transition is not immediately trustworthy (a bet with her (then) husband) that she could carry the plan through). But, if so, it is in a psychosocial framework obvious to consider her relation to men as competitive one, beginning with the father. Another line of reflection is that she reports a significant engagement in domestic violence. We might associate with her mentioning these difficult periods together with a rather blurred account of the relation to the second partner, the divorce, and her betting with him about the law education. Epistemologically, the point of a deep interpretation of individual cases attempted here is an attempt to empathize (more) holistically with the learner subject. It is a hermeneutic analysis, in which researchers as interpreters seek to understand individuals as subject in their life as a whole. Learning processes are subjective handling of existential situations and relate to all possible feelings and assumptions about the world around and about the future. We want to get the best possible insight in this whole context (Salling Olesen, 2020a). Of course, our opportunities for empathy are limited by the fact that we are fundamentally not in this situation and do not have the same insights and premises as interviewees. The interview form and an active interpretation of the resulting materials is our opportunity to understand the subjective side of all the processes and incidents which we can also illuminate with greater breadth in the cross-case analyses. Not all interviewees go equally deep into their life story, but some of them provide evidence for a more in-depth interpretation of the personal development story and the interaction between career changes in working life and other aspects of life. But in cases where they do enable a deeper interpretation it brings evidence that learning for work life and that even in work life is not detached from the rest of personal life, but deeply entangled with it (see also (Salling Olesen, 2004; Salling Olesen & Weber, 2012; Weber & Salling Olesen, 2002)).

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Life-Long Learning and Competence Development Our investigation is not ending here, it has eventually a wider societal aim. The picture that emerges when you examine the individual work life stories is, first and foremost, diversity. Even with the limited number of life history cases, exemplary differences are identifiable, with individual traces of basic social and cultural socialization patterns characterized by class, gender and ethnicity. Naturally, the diversity also appears in the relationships with learning  – both in relation to institutional learning in the form of formal education, and in the way that people personally exploit learning opportunities at work or in other contexts. But the common feature is that most people are involved several times in transitions across their working lives and, in connection with this, learning processes of one kind or another. What is observed on the individual level are substantial changes, ruptures and new directions in adults’ working life which necessitate and inspire learning processes driven by quite diverse, but personally specific imperatives. Reactions are different depending on the imperative enforcing it, they are different from one person to another, and they depend on subjective factors that are easier to understand ex post than to predict ex ante. The frequency and the nature of many of these changes are manifestations of a historical transformation of the relation between individuals’ life cycle and the rhythm of societal transformations, both in work and technology, and in societal division of labor. This acceleration in societal change has been captured with the concept acceleration (Rosa, 2010, 2013) as a basic trait of modernity. It is a consequence of this acceleration that the learning pattern of a normal biography, in which most learning is expected to take place in childhood and youth and last for the rest of life is generally crumbling. The challenge to orthodoxy is also confirmed when examining this sample from longitudinal perspectives. In the political agenda of lifelong education or learning, the observation of acceleration is converted into a systemic challenge requiring every individual to keep learning through life. What is often disregarded in this policy agenda is the fact that people are already learning and  that learning is a lifelong process going on even if “nothing happens” (see Billett, 2010) but especially whenever “something happens”. However, the lifelong learning agenda has primarily been advanced by economists and business managers (Commission, 2001; OECD, n.d.; Rubenson, 1996). Employability has in their economical perspective a more narrow but double meaning: on the societal or business level, it is important for competitiveness, on the individual level, it means the relevance and productivity of workers. Consequently, the interesting point form this perspective is how the rapidly changing requirements can be met by the work force. Instead of just relying on the capacity of adult workers to adapt their knowledge and skills, at best with even better qualifications, great efforts here have been put into analyzing the interrelations between learning processes and learning outcomes, and especially in identifying certain key competences that could maximize the flexibility in the competences of the work force. Leading in

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this process has been the OECD and other international agencies within the advanced capitalist world (Mulder, 2017). The new descriptor for human capability is competence. This notion of competence was intended to serve as a guideline for national policies for long term competence development, while also serving as a general equivalent (European Guidelines for Validation, n.d.; Salling Olesen, 2014) enabling some kind of calibration for comparing (national) workforces. But it has increasingly also structured the discussion of not only adult learning but also educational policy in general (Nicoll & Salling Olesen, 2013). Originally the concept of competence had a legal meaning related to legitimacy. The meaning that gained ground from the 1990s combines functionalism and psychology, where the emphasis varies a little and has been applied in different ways (Gnahs, 2007; Illeris, 2009; Salling Olesen, 2013). Nevertheless, there is in practice today a core meaning: competence refers to the abilities of an acting subject to translate knowledge into appropriate action for practical situations, above all in work processes. The use of this concept has taken over the arena from school curricula defined in knowledge and skills – causing concern among educational professionals (Nicoll & Salling Olesen, 2013; Salling Olesen, 2013), concentrated around aspects of educational goals – the tension between work related adaptivity and what is usually called “Bildung”, i.e. general education, personal maturity, and autonomy of the individual. This political dispute reflects a real contradiction set by the general condition of the societal acceleration. The search for key competences is in a way an attempt to resolve this general political contradiction. The question is if it is a new alchemism? Will it just enable individuals to follow the life stream or could it be a repertoire that enables subjective autonomy? Empirical studies in adult workers learning might provide an answer. Key competences can for example be specified in the following attributes according to Rychen and Salganik (2001) summarized here as: (i) the ability to act successfully (ii) in a complex context (iii) through mobilizing psycho-social prerequisites (cognitive and non-cognitive) (iv) with results that correspond with the requirements of a professional role or in a personal project. In this interpretation, that is representative of the political-economic use of the term, “competence” is functional, performance-oriented and pragmatic, and defined in terms of changing social demands that need to be mastered. Additionally, it also involves a questioning of traditional conceptions of knowledge, where knowledge is something one can have and rational practice can be based on general abstract knowledge. “Competence” is addressing practices that are not fixed and known beforehand, and in competent practice knowledge must be mobilized and transformed to be applied successfully. Competence is a conception well aligned with the investigation of learning in transitions in which individuals adapt their knowledge to new settings in workplaces and everyday life. Competence is linked to a

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potentially acting subject who can mobilize various prerequisites in a manner relevant to the situation at hand, e.g. a work function. However, the fact that the conceptual framework is developed by economists and has been used for bureaucratic purposes has compromised the concept – to a degree that the rest of our research team has avoided the concept. Their concern that I fully share may be seen that it fails in one important aspect: it does not take the subjective nature of competences seriously, or rather it remains abstract. In the above summary definition of competence, the 3rd item is about mobilizing “cognitive and non-­ cognitive” prerequisites. This attempt for a psychological delineation revolves around the relationship between cognitive factors, which are well defined, and a great many other things that were in OECDs DeSeCo-project (OECD, 2003; Rychen & Salganik, 2001) only defined negatively, as non-cognitive, but seem to include motivational and other emotional factors. In his psychological contribution to the DeSeCo project’s conceptual process, the social psychologist Weinert emphasized that competence implies and presupposes, in the fulfilment of a task, a combination of ‘cognitive and (in many cases) motivational, ethical, volitional, and/or social components’ (Weinert, 1998). Despite assuming that the nature of practice is unpredictable and will require more and other than cognitive prerequisites, which add to the complexity of the specific tasks on which the competent agent can act successfully, the competence framework does not recognize the specific agents’ subjectivity and their relation to the practices in question. Competent actions are basically subjective processes: identification of task, understanding of practical context, impulse for practice, mobilization and adaptation of knowledge and practising skills in new contexts. These subjective or “non-cognitive prerequisites” are a product of life experiences and previous learning. The life history approach to learning is exactly focussing on the real learners and those dimensions of learning. In relation to the fourth dimension of competence this is even more essential: The dimension of acceptance and engagement in practice. Looking at the learning of adult workers in the context of their life experience and their own understanding of where they are going by this learning is a temporary, situated answer to the contradiction involved in lifelong learning. This is not only a theoretical or conceptual problem. If lifelong learning policies can succeed, it must first mobilize the flexibility and creativity of the individual workers who are developing competences by negotiating practices under the imperative of change. At worst, individuals react defensively, stay with secure practices and competences. At best, the enforced situation leads to learning connected with negotiations of new practices (Salling Olesen, 2016, 2021). In that case, they “recycle” as much as possible of their knowledge and skill, but also reconfigures and reconsiders it in a new context. I deliberately avoid the notion “transfer” in this context because it corresponds with the notion of knowledge as something that can be possessed and displaced without being influenced by the practical situation (Salling Olesen et al., 2022). A psychosocial dimension of this alternative in individual handling of practical challenges is a necessary theoretical complement to the concept, and life histories can provide an exemplary practical insight (Salling Olesen, 2020b).

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Yet, despite these theoretical ambiguities, the concept of competence provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the relationship between subjective processes of learning as a response to the transitions occurring on the individual level in relation to changing societal worklife environment. By pointing out that competent agency is based in learners’ life experience the concept indicate the subjective nature of practical capacity. It is a decisive advantage that competence as a concept includes the results of all types of learning – in formal education, in the workplace, in community and elsewhere as a whole and that it is a notion of a practical capability. The theoretical ambiguity is a result of real friction and contradictions in the societal development between individual motives of real living people and the societal tendency to commodify human labor. This friction is by nature political and is about societal participation of working people (Negt & Kluge, 2014). The development of policy and practices must create a transparent space in which compromises and possible convergence can be negotiated.

Learning Arenas Across the worklife history interviews, many variations of complicated changes and transitions in which extensive and profound learning processes are enacted, either as a cause and/or a consequence. Individual cases show some possible combinations of learning formats and learning motives. The three cited here – and many other cases as well – show that learning takes place in different settings during each individual working life. Salim seems able to combine different resources for learning – community, workplace, self-study, formal education. Only in the situation where he seeks to revive his engineering degree from Iran he has to give up. In the attempt to renew it in an Australian, he also hires private assistance for English language. He learned to drive from his father – and after migration, he learns most of his occupational competence in the workplace, but gradually adds formal training (business management) and a full education to the competences he learned informally. Added here are the learning experience of immigrant discrimination in everyday life which seems to form an attitude of patience and devotion to actual needs. With Carson, we do not know much about his learning – but we may infer that he learns what is necessary for a seafarer in the workplace. Whereas he only engages in formal training at Technical and Further Education to be eligible for unemployment benefits. We may wonder whether his recent engagement in the job as a cook for a daycare center would have made him qualify further for this job, had he been offered a relevant course and employment. Cooking is often perceived as natural or homegrown competences  – but there would be several directions of competence development  – nutrition, organic cooking  – beside more creative ideas of making a pedagogical practice of cooking, inviting the children into the kitchen. Ingrid appears to be a surfer in terms of learning in formal as well as informal educational formats, and it seems she is mostly integrating learning – even formal education – into a project of

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self-expression. She leaves an academic qualification, acquired by hard work, behind, but manages to convert its outcome into informal competences. Beside preparation for working life, it seems that learning within work and during employment plays a dominant role, and that the role of formal education or training is limited during employment periods. The cases cited have shown that much learning does happen within each work situation (see other chapters). But we may also assume that learning during employment is most likely under-represented in narratives that are structured around transitions. This is because, as mentioned above, these forms of incremental learning are not recognized as such. In many cases, this learning probably prevents or postpones work transitions that might have happened due to lack of qualification, elicited by technological developments or business restructuration. From the individual perspective learning in the work situation may be quite satisfying – in Carson’s case he seems very satisfied with his seafarer period in which he learns what is needed (and probably nothing more) on the job. In these transitions learning in workplace or in community settings is also very important, but periodically and strategically formal education and training can be decisive. Importantly, education and training programs must be available when the learner subject needs it, either due to the imperatives that lead to transitions or because also subjectively decided transitions have their moments. For some workers, the very existence of a training or education opportunities become the concretization of a dream of job developments or for a new career ambition. And, conversely, for a large groups of workers availability of training is not enough – they simple do not aspire to anything more than to remain employed, or pass into a new employment, and they do not see the need to be proactive in learning (Kondrup, 2013).

 uidance and Competence Assessment (Recognition G of Different Forms of Learning) In conclusion, questions raised here include which measures can be developed to bridge the gap between the learning adult workers conduct in their individual working life and the societal needs for competence development? How can individual learning motives become productive forces in societal competence development? It seems clear that learning in and for work is the decisive driver in adults learning. A great deal of this learning occurs in the workplace and can only be assumed from its outcome, but it is well documented elsewhere (Billett, 2014). Consequently, implementing a lifelong learning agenda means developing policies and tools that support those existing types of learning processes that have until now enabled workers to maintain their employability, but also additional measures that may challenge and open new imaginations (Billett, this volume, chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning”). During their worklife, when adults react to changes that are forced upon them by institutional changes or

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brute facts (Searle, 1995), or when they develop new perspectives for their work life, they are not considering the nation’s gross national product. Yet, they most likely consider employability as an essential aim for learning or as a necessary consideration. They may also consider how their skills and experiences can be utilized, and regret that they will not always be able to use it. It is evident that formal education and training (i.e.. lifelong education) can play an important role in some individual careers and at particular points in their working life, such as when they are negotiating transitions. But all of this depends on two factors: They must be available at the right time – i.e. with a relatively frequent entry time – and must be aligned with adult workers’ lives in practical matters – location, part time or with funding available. A common denominator for policies and practices that facilitate competence development is recognition of prior learning (competence assessment), which enables “translation” of skills and knowledge between formal and informal learning, and in categories which align with labor market. Optimally, such competence assessment can be turned into a tool for encouragement and guidance if it is made available to people immediately when they get redundant or organized for all within workplaces, especially at those times when personal employability is challenged.

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Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories Debbie Bargallie

Abstract Australia’s racial-colonial narrative has long depicted Indigenous Australian workers as lazy, deceitful, incapable, and unproductive or unwilling to work. Such racist stereotypes about Indigenous peoples still flourish today and in ways that often exclude us from discussions about worklife and lifelong learning and education. This leads to governmental and workplace policies and practices being formulated without accounting for the needs, aspirations, and cultural inclusiveness of Indigenous peoples. These exclusive practices therefore result in reinforcing pre-existing and problematic racist stereotypes about Indigenous Australian peoples and work. Against such a backdrop, this chapter draws on worklife history narratives from Indigenous workers to examine their contemporary experiences of worklife and associated learning. Detailed accounts of their experiences expose the diversity of work performed and learning undertaken by Indigenous workers across their lifespans. This analysis engaged an Indigenist Research Methodology (Rigney LI.  Wicazo Sa Review, 14:109–121, 1999). Indigenist research is that led by Indigenous Australian researchers whose informants are primarily Indigenous Australian peoples. The research combines worklife history narrative interview method outlined by Salling-Olesen (A pyscho-societal approach to life histories. In: Goodson I, Antikainen A, Sikes P, Andrews M (eds) The Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history. Routledge, London, 2016) that is introduced and employed in this volume, and the Indigenous research method of Yarning as detailed by Bessarab and Ng’andu (Int J Crit Indig Stud 3(1):37–50, 2010). Data were analysed and themes identified through thematical analysis (Braun & Clarke. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2):77–101, 2006). The accounts from Indigenous Australian workers draw attention to their exercise of agency, resourcefulness, determination, adaptability to locate new forms of work and to sustain employment and secure advancement. This chapter proposes that the Indigenous Australian workers informing this project actively resist unemployment D. Bargallie (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_6

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and counter the colonial narrative about Indigenous Australian peoples and work. Instances of career mobility; and lifelong education supporting their ability to pursue careers and achieve first in family goals are evident. In all, this chapter provides the foundations for a reimagining of what the workplace could look like for Indigenous Australian workers when long-held stereotypes are confronted and transformative practices, such as authentic mentoring, are structurally embedded, embraced and promoted. Keywords  Worklife learning · Worklife histories · Racism · Indigenist research · Yarning · Indigenous workers · Indigenous peoples · Mentoring · Workplace support · Employability · Australia

Introduction In their 1995 edited volume, McGrath and Saunders set out to dismantle the racist stereotyping of Aboriginal people as “lazy, non-productive or unwilling to work” in historical research (McGrath & Saunders, 1995, vii). The volume was a first collection of historical accounts that challenges deep rooted preconceptions about Aboriginal work and workers (McGrath & Saunders, 1995). Some thirty years later, these cultural preconceptions continue to inform racist assumptions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are reluctant to work or need significant support to secure and sustain employment (Bargallie, 2020). Supported by Ward’s 1988 article ‘Aboriginal Communism’, these assumptions are grounded in the idea Aboriginal workers adhere to a divergent set of work ethics, standards and practices (McGrath & Saunders, 1995; Norris, 2010). Rather than comprehending the meaning and productive value of Indigenous systems of labour, they became the reason for “racist condemnation” (McGrath & Saunders, 1995, p.  3). In turn, socio-­ economic gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people were linked to cultural divergences rather than practices and structures of exploitation, oppression, and un/under-employment. This link remains evident in current times, with the Australian Human Rights Commission (2020, p. 534) noting: There is a link between this history and the contemporary gaps between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous people in terms of wealth, income, employment, educational attainment and wellbeing.

Thus, contemporary differences in worklife experiences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are deeply rooted in historical accounts and realities of Indigenous work and workers. The term ‘Indigenous Australian’ is used in this chapter to encompass both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. The term ‘Indigenous’ is used interchangeably with ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. Note that ‘Indigenous’ is often a contested term. Some Indigenous Australian peoples choose to use the term First Nation Peoples. Others identify themselves through their greater regions, language, or traditional country groups.

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Indigenous Australian people face additional specific occupational challenges to non-Indigenous people, and their worklife processes and experiences are often unique in comparison. However, it is important these challenges are contextualised and not perceived through an individualised, nor a cultural lens that upholds the continuity of erroneous beliefs that Indigenous workers are lacking agency, determination, and resourcefulness. Reflecting on the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) legislation of 2007–2012, Norris (2010) proposes that beliefs of ‘Indigenous irresponsibility, incapacity, and need for white intervention’ remain prevalent in policy and governance. Different to common perceptions, Indigenous workers have historically shown adaptability to locate new forms of work under precarious conditions specific to Indigenous workers (McGrath & Saunders, 1995). However, resilience, adaptability, and flexibility does not translate into the same employment and financial outcomes from which Indigenous workers benefit. This is particularly shown in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women whose socioeconomic disadvantage is the result of ongoing effects of colonisation, exposure to racism, and social exclusion and intersectional discrimination (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2020). In other words, their socioeconomic disadvantage is not the result of a lack of agency, but rather the outcome of a complex historicity of Aboriginal labour that remains prevalent today. Billett (2009) proposes, elsewhere, that lifelong learning is mediated by individuals themselves based on their readiness, interest, and agency (also see chapter “Worklife Learning: Contributions of Tertiary Education”). The firm belief that Indigenous peoples are “less capable, lazy and irresponsible, and in need of ‘improvement’” (Norris, 2010, p.  59) can explain modern interventions in the unemployment of Indigenous people. This chapter aims to offer an Indigenous perspective about the specific worklife experiences of some Indigenous Australian people. What may distinguish an Indigenous perspective from others in the context of worklife learning is its focus on the collective conditions and experiences for obtaining worklife goals rather than what prompts and informs individual worklife learning processes and outcomes. Questions of individual choices and pathways explored in the worklife history interviews conducted for this research form the basis of a broad and deep analysis of the structural opportunities that facilitate worklife learning and the barriers that prevent it.

Approach to the Research In Australia, research has historically most often been conducted ‘on Aboriginal people...without the permission, consultation, or involvement of Aboriginal people’ (Martin, 2003, p. 203). Controversy, mismanagement, and disrespect have characterised research concerning Indigenous peoples in Australia and throughout the world (Bargallie, 2020). Māori scholar Tuhiwai Smith (1999, p. 1) states, ‘The word itself, “research”, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary’. To address these concerns, the Indigenous qualitative research

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component of the wider worklife learning research project reported throughout this book engaged an Indigenist Research Methodology (Rigney, 1999). Educationalist and academic, Rigney from the Narungga, Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri nations in South Australia explains that in the Australian context: Indigenist research is research by Indigenous Australians whose primary informants are Indigenous Australians and whose goals are to serve and inform the Indigenous struggle for self-determination. (Rigney, 1999, p. 118).

As an Indigenous Australian woman from the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua nations in New South Wales and being a critical race scholar, the orientation adopted here is critical Indigenist research. My methodology is informed by Rigney’s (1999, p. 116) three interrelated core principles for Indigenist research: (1) Resistance as the emancipatory imperative in Indigenist research; (2) Political integrity and (3) Privileging Indigenous voices. I operationalise Australian Indigenous Women’s Standpoint Theory offered by Indigenous scholar Moreton-Robinson (2013), a Goenpul woman of the Quandamooka nation in Queensland. This standpoint guides my ways of knowing (epistemologies), ways of being (ontologies) and ways of doing (axiologies, the values we apply in how we do things) (Martin, 2008; Moreton-Robinson, 2013). Collins contends standpoint methodology to be a group perspective, where historically shared, group-based experiences gain ‘a degree of permanence over time’ (1997, p. 371). While the Indigenous Australian informants in this research share a historical common collective experience of colonisation and legacy of dispossession, it is recognised that not all experience the predominant culture in the same way. Each informant brings their own standpoint to the research that collectively tells a story of the contemporary lived experience of Indigenous Australian peoples and worklife. The findings of this chapter are derived from Yarning sessions with ten Indigenous Australian people in varying stages of their working life. As an Indigenous research method, Yarning is considered a culturally accepted and beneficial method of data collection through the tradition of storytelling (Bargallie, 2020; Bessarab & Ng’andu, 2010). As a cultural practice of relating and connecting, Yarning as a research method facilitates “Aboriginal ways of thinking, being and knowledge sharing” (Murrup-Stewart et al., 2022, p. 778). Yarning was selected to harness the value of storytelling through a narrative style of interviewing that gives voice of participants (Murrup-Stewart et  al., 2022). A type of yarning that Bessarab and Ng’andu (2010, p. 40) call “Research Topic Yarning” is employed that takes form of a semi-structured interview with a designated start (beginning of working life) and end (current working life). The questioning of the interviewer is such that a narrative style and form is maintained, and one’s working life is presented in a chronological historical manner. Moreover, Yarning is chosen because, in the context of worklife learning, it is proven compatible with the methods of worklife learning narratives as presented in chapter “Employability and Work Life History”. As Henning Salling Olesen (2016, p. 215) argues, “narrative-life historical interviews” are a useful method to explore autobiographies from an “inside perspective” that includes both the interviewee’s lived experience, and their interpretation of it. Both

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approaches are consistent with the research principles of Indigenist Research Methodology in their use of storytelling to focus on understanding the complexity of worklife histories and privilege the voices of Indigenous informants. Yarning sessions were conducted and recorded virtually using online videoconferencing platforms throughout 2021–2022. I spoke to five women and five men individually to elicit worklife history narratives with each yarning session taking an approximate one hour. After the worklife narratives were ascertained following verbatim transcription, some were randomly selected to be returned to the informant to check that their story was adequately captured. This contributed to the rigor of the research process. Subsequently, the worklife narratives were analysed according to themes, such as agency, determination, and resourcefulness, that were identified from existing scholarship on Australian Indigenous labour and workers (see for example, Norris, 2010). Through a focus on transitions as per the research objectives, other themes were identified from the transcripts that are less established in the scholarship. These included authentic mentoring and working towards making a difference for Indigenous people and communities (‘mob’). The identified themes are discussed here through the provision of vignettes; an approach that aligns with Indigenist research methods as it maintains the participant life’s narration. The vignettes were selected once the themes were identified from the total of interviews based on their alignment with the identified themes. The vignettes were developed following the participants’ narration of their worklife experiences, keeping the participant’s “storying ways” to reflect their worklife histories (Murrup-Stewart et al., 2022). Following an Indigenist-specific narrative research method, the findings are presented in this chapter using these vignettes. Inspired by Wellman’s 1977 book Portraits of White Racism, the application of vignettes is considered relevant and useful in the context of presenting findings through an Indigenous lens that respects the linear narrative of worklife learning. In agreement with the words of Wellman (1993, p. 64); “the linear, narrative way in which research is presented is very rarely matched by the research act itself”, the findings presented here are represented in the way they were in the act of research. As a key focus for understanding working age adults’ worklife learning is how they negotiated worklife transitions (Le et al. this volume), it seems pertinent to represent what has been encountered in the interviews through the participants’ linear narratives and voices. And, taking an Indigenist approach to inquiry, these transitions inform the parameters of the yarning sessions and their subsequent thematic analyses. A point of clarity around terminology is necessary before the vignettes are presented. The reader will note that the term ‘mob’ is commonly used by participants. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word mob as “A disorderly or riotous crowd, a rabble” (Oxford English Dictionary 2023). In Australia, early white colonialists used the term ‘mob’ when referring to convicts and Aboriginal people. It was then adopted by ex-convicts working as stockmen to refer to any collective group including animals such as sheep and cattle and groups of Indigenous animals, such as kangaroos and emus. However, as Aboriginal scholar Carlson (2014, p. 68) states, ‘language can be reappropriated, and some Indigenous Australians have

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taken possession of various derogatory labels and have renegotiated the meaning of the words and through reappropriation imbued the terms with positive connotations’. The word ‘mob’ is one example, Aboriginal people now use the term widely in a non-pejorative sense in reference to Aboriginal people collectively (our people). Their conceptualisation of ‘mob’ is one of relationality: its relativeness to them. For instance, it is commonly used by Indigenous people to refer to Aboriginality and Aboriginal (and Torres Strait Islander) peoples. Different to the predominant individualist approach to understanding people’s worklife histories, the voices of participants presented in this chapter confirm that Indigenous people epitomise a more collectivist thinking in how they understand their place in the world. ‘Mob’ in this chapter is therefore a core theme as it represents Indigenous people’s (dis)connection with their Aboriginality and Aboriginal peoples and communities, Indigenous modes of being and doing, and the determination to work towards the betterment of Indigenous peoples.

Research Findings The following vignettes are organised around six the key ideas: 1. Working to make a difference for mob 2. Readiness 3. Agency 4. Resourcefulness 5. Authentic mentoring and advocacy and 6. Racism at work: the underlying theme. The vignettes below use pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of the participants.

Working to Make a Difference for Mob Whatever skills you acquire, you eventually bring it back to your people (Maree)

Maree is a woman in her early 60s who was raised in a small regional town in Queensland. She wanted to become a photojournalist, but her father warned her that a position as an artist would not bring food on the table. So, she commenced her studies and career in early childhood education. At the time, there was a recruitment drive to encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to work in the public sector, and Maree transitioned, via the Department of Employment and Industrial Relations, into the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES). For the nine years with CES, Maree worked towards the employment of Indigenous people until the Department was closed. It was then when Maree experienced what she described as

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a “hankering to come back to community” on a grassroots level, taking her experiences working at CES with her to “cross fertilize ideas and practices”. In hindsight, some 40 years later, she considers her ongoing labour with one foot in the institutional space and one foot in the grassroots sector as the reason for her exhaustion. Her passion to empower, work towards self-determination and facilitate opportunities for Indigenous people allowed her to work across sectors, from health to employment to education. It is this drive that determined Maree’s worklife transitions and, due to the commitment it required, such as further education alongside full-time employment and parenting, undermined her worklife balance to some degree. In Maree’s words: “I just feel sometimes my whole life, and working life particularly, has always been around compromise”. Later in her working life, Maree exercised her agency to gain more freedom and became a freelance consultant. The internal and external politicking that she had experienced in her preceding roles had worn her down and becoming a freelance consultant meant more ownership over her working environment. At the age of 59, Maree has a strong commitment to expand her knowledge and apply her experience to other spaces, such as social enterprise, to meet the needs of the mob. Throughout her career, she has always felt she had to work harder and achieve more outcomes to see tangible change in the lives of Indigenous people. There has got to be more to this, so I started applying for apprenticeships (Migay)

Migay is a woman her mid-50s from a large regional industrial town in New South Wales. She began her employment as a “Bowser girl” serving petrol “just to bring money in”. At the age of seventeen, she felt dissatisfied with the nature of her work and took the initiative to apply for apprenticeships, but only secured a short-term position under an Indigenous targeted community employment scheme with a local council as a labourer constructing local parks and amenities. Migay’s contract was extended numerous times, which she contributed to her parents’ education that taught her “there are different levels in society, and we are the working bee level”. Her parents “drummed” into her a strong work ethic. However, when, after 12 months, she applied for a skilled (horticulturist) apprenticeship within the same council, she was “absolutely devastated” not to receive an invitation for an interview. Because Migay considered it a gender-based decision – the council was male dominated at the time – she decided she “never wanted to have that happen to her again”, and she responded by enrolling in further training. Partly because of the funding schemes available, Migay undertook several apprenticeships and subsequent casual positions that did not follow straight from the apprenticeships but were the result of Migay’s readiness to work. She decided to go back and complete her Higher School Certificate (HSC) at the age of 26. Migay’s first employment after HSC involved working in community to help inform and encourage Aboriginal children and adults to engage in sports programs, which was an opportunity to connect to and learn from mob. Becoming a parent around the same time, Migay negotiated ways to connect to mob in their setting (rather than working from an office) and take her child along when going to community. In this position, Migay developed and advocated for different programs to support mob. As a result of the success of the

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programs, her employment mentor at the time encouraged her to enrol in university, which resulted in a transition into Aboriginal education. When the Department of Education relocated Migay from her hometown, she became disillusioned with the outcomes of university education and preferred career pathways. In the subsequent years, that dissatisfaction grew as she had been reliant on government scholarships that required her to commit to work within the respective departments. Migay challenged the conditions at the highest level of the state government department and, as a result, transitioned into TAFE teaching where she stayed for 14 years. Migay’s worklife transitions were negotiated through a combination of readiness to work, a commitment to service her mob and community and, in later positions, an appreciation of on-the-job learning. The latter is evident in her practical work developing and implementing programs and apprenticeships for Aboriginal peoples, and the business she started alongside her PhD studies that aims to align Aboriginal culture to curriculum. In her position as PhD candidate and business owner, Migay felt she has come “full circle”. In her words, it took “18 years to get my head around that I had a commitment to my Elders and community for education and employment”. She has since completed her PhD and is now a postdoctoral research fellow and continuing to educate young people in her community. Throughout her worklife experiences, Migay’s readiness for work, combined with workplace mentorship and support, engendered her transitions into meaningful labour. A strong theme across these participants is their commitment to making a difference to the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. In fact, all participants speak of their relatedness and commitment to mob. This commitment is evident in the choices to leave and remain in certain jobs, as is evident in Migay’s worklife transitions that are informed by a determination and drive to work with and for her mob. Even when remuneration is significantly lower, participants make choices that privilege their commitment to Indigenous communities. Moreover, it is evident in the decisions to commit to studies that will support the transition into forms of labour that are considered more valuable and meaningful, such as social work or education. One of the main drawbacks of the commitment to mob is that it often correlates with precarious employment and lower income. In the words of Maree, remaining employed in community work “is always a funding issue”. Noteworthy, participants exercise their agency to remain employed in the Indigenous community space by seeking other employment opportunities through upskilling, developing programs, seeking alternative funding, relocating, and diversifying their skills-set. So, there is an enduring precariousness around working in the Indigenous community, which indicates the neoliberal paradigm that has never aligned with Indigenous labour. Historically, Indigenous people have had to adjust to forms and structures of labour that take them away from rather than bring them closer to their mob. Where institutions and workplaces do not take control and responsibility in caring for Indigenous people and communities – either individually or collectively – Indigenous people themselves engage in labour that enables empowerment and positive change, despite the precariousness that comes with such a commitment.

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Readiness I didn’t take up career progression opportunities because I just wanted to work (Peter)

Peter is a 50-year-old man from Queensland who began his working life through an apprenticeship with Telstra as an alternative to his initial desire to join the armed forces. Due to family pressure, he took the interview with Telstra upon completion of Year 12, who offered him full-time training for 8 months interstate with a pool of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander apprentices. It was not until Peter was made redundant 13 years later that he was forced to leave his position at a major telecommunications and technology company. In response to his time with this company, Peter refers to the collective in saying: “we all really enjoyed it”. Despite offering only “sideways” career progression opportunities developing skills and expertise, Peter found satisfaction in the position because he “just wanted to work”. In his description, there was a sense of comradery with fellow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers. Once made redundant, Peter engaged in short casual employment with government services before entering a long-term position with the Queensland State Government in an entry level position. For seven years, Peter did not receive opportunities for progression and remained employed on his entry level salary. Due to another forced redundancy, Peter entered more short employment positions before he ended up at an Aboriginal community organisation. Here, Peter oversaw restructuring the organisation, working under limited conditions forcing him to commit to volunteer hours at a time when he was the single employee. Being with mob in his first long-term position and continuing working for and with mob is likely to have influenced Peter’s worklife transitions. In his retrospective comments, it is evident Peter wants to be of service to the mob in an environment that is collective and supportive, rather than solitary, which was the case in the position at the Aboriginal community organisation, which marks the “eight worst years of [Peter’s] entire life”. Although transitioning into formal tertiary education was “the farthest from [Peter’s] mind when [he] was 18”, at the age of 50 now, Peter is keen to enrol in a social work degree so he can commit towards the betterment of the mob. For Peter, alternative pathways into employment were characterised by the desire to work, to earn an income and be an involved and contributing member of his community and wider society. I don’t want to go through the politics of work; I just want to put my head down and work (Bob)

Bob is a man approaching retirement age from Queensland who began his working life at the age of 12, loading an eight-tonne truck with firewood for the slaughter yards. Throughout his early teenage years, Bob engaged in hard labour for little renumeration. He was at the gasp of being pulled out of school at the age of 15 to be a slaughterman when he negotiated commencing an apprenticeship in ‘boiler making’ (i.e. metal fabrication). He was employed immediately after his four-year apprenticeship and continued to work long hours under tough conditions. In those early years of professional work, Bob took several TAFE (Technical and Further

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Education) courses to further his trade and broaden his skillset. His readiness to work is exemplified in Bob’s spatial mobility; he moved to different places, both internationally and domestically, to work on metal fabrication projects, all within the same company. Whether the expectation was to relocate within Australia or overseas or decline a promotion due to fear of losing his employment (because he would not receive the same protections), Bob demonstrated a readiness to work for the thirty years he committed to a single employer and in the same type of job. Bob’s case is testimony to the benefits of alternative pathways into employment such as vocational education rather than the narrow focus on obtaining higher education. Bob did not enter tertiary education and worked his entire life using the welding skill set that he had advanced from the time he completed his metal fabrication apprenticeship through until retirement. In fact, it is his intention to continue to use these skills in retirement planning to pass on his welding skills through community training programs. Such an alternative pathway is common across participants and is demonstrating a readiness to secure and sustain employment at a relatively young age (i.e., Peter, Migay, Nathaniel, Maree). In various stages of their working life, participants exercise agency to improve their employability in accordance with the expectations and demands of their professional environment. They each referred to a readiness to accept expectations around skill sets, working conditions, education, and relocation to either sustain employed or create other employment opportunities. Contrary to the racist stereotypical assumptions that Indigenous people are lazy or unwilling to work and “incapable of managing their own affairs” (Bargallie, 2020, p.  102), actively responding to expectations is testimony of the participants’ willingness to work, even when this includes sacrifices, such as relocation or accepting lower renumeration. In their readiness to work, participants are rejecting the historical negative narrative that Indigenous employees are deficient, unreliable, unintelligent and unresourceful. Instead, participants’ voices reflect a common-sense that being flexible and capable to adjust is imperative to remain employed, and something that is almost taken for granted in their decision-making.

Agency I had to pay bills, so I ended up driving a Smoko van (Leah)

Leah is a woman in her early 40s from New South Wales who began her working life by enrolling into university to study a degree of Aboriginal land management. Because her HSC score was not high enough, she had to opt out and took up work at a sandwich shop before she enrolled herself into a university module that led to a pathway into university. She enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts in resource management and soon felt the intellectual overload disconnected her from her heart and her aspirations to contribute to Aboriginal communities. Being in a white, male dominated space, Leah felt culturally unsafe and decided to seek mentor support from those familiar in the space to get her enrolled in a university in Darwin, where she

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supported herself by working multiple casual jobs. When she secured her first position in community where she could use the skills obtained in her degree, Leah had to train herself to perform the responsibilities of the job. In her subsequent positions, Leah continued to self-initiate on the job learning. For personal reasons, she relocated inter-state numerous times and had to seek employment in other sectors and enrol in further education. Leah was adaptable and resourceful in seeking employment in different sectors, new locations, and under challenging personal circumstances. Despite her skills and experience in project management, Leah was only able to engage in short term contract work throughout her working life, most of them within the Aboriginal space. Leah made sure that she was able to secure employment each time, from working within her sector of expertise to other casual employment options, such as driving a food truck that sells food to employees on worksites (Smoko van) for some months. There were also several occasions when Leah enacted agency to leave her employment due to an unsafe racist environment, knowing that, despite financial pressure, she would secure another employment option to meet her financial needs. From her experience meeting Indigenous people who were undertaking a PhD, Leah learned she might likewise be able to complete a PhD and transitioned to university in the role of a student once again to enable her career prospects of wanting to be a university level teacher. Leah endured numerous setbacks during her PhD journey due to starting a family and mothering but sought mentors to help her stay on track. Leah sought out casual university lecturing to keep her motivated and to build up her teaching experience to pursue her goal to become a university lecturer. Just get through the day and work until the next day (Nathaniel)

Nathaniel is a man in his early 30s from Victoria whose agency was limited in the early stages of his working life, particularly due to a lack of career progression opportunities following government-funded traineeships and forced redundancies. Wanting to work and finding satisfaction in the act of labour, Nathaniel relied on personal support and professional mentoring to help negotiate his personal circumstances and his ambition to make himself employable. Other challenges to Nathaniel’s agency were induced by white privilege and the reluctance for companies to employ “black fellas”, meaning he relied further on authentic mentoring, support, and advocacy to be deemed “qualified” for certain positions. Not receiving the kind of workplace support that Nathaniel required at times, such as when injured, pushed him to enrol in further training. So, rather than relying on workplace cover, Nathaniel took ownership of his worklife experience by finding ways to make his employment more sustainable and effective in meeting his personal and financial needs. He transitioned into disability support work, committing to 7 months of processes and procedures to complete the checks required for the position. In Nathaniel’s words: “Just tell me what I need to get, and I will get it done”. In response to the unsupportive workplace conditions, Nathaniel exercised his agency and chose to make himself employable in another sector. It is testimony to Nathaniel’s work ethic that he achieved this. It also speaks to a resistance to negative and often racist workplace practices that hindered positive and productive worklife experiences.

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From the total of interviews conducted, what facilitates agency is often ascribed to the barriers that Aboriginal workers are confronted with. Rather than being passive about employment barriers, racist workplace environments, and lack of career progression opportunities, Aboriginal workers confront and reject their worklife realities by actively pursuing alternative pathways. This counters historically embedded perceptions and assumptions that continue to penetrate employment programs and policies that consider Aboriginal workers to need additional support and guidance to secure and sustain employment. Although there are indeed additional barriers that make employability for Indigenous people more difficult than for non-­ Indigenous people, they exercise significant agency to become and remain employable, evident in statements such as “I’ve never had trouble with work, just head down, ass up and work” from a participant (Bob) who began his working life at the age of 12. The decision whether to stay or leave in a particular position is a form of selective agency; where the workplace conditions are such that it undermines the individual, leaving represents an act of power. In the same way, staying can represent an act of power when it rejects and resists the individualised  – neoliberal  – expectation to progress into higher (i.e. vertical) and other (horizontal) forms of employment. Thus, the relatively high number of transitions in the case of both Leah and Nathaniel are indicative of their commitment to fairness, security, and mob, rather than being evidence of a lack of capability, reliability, and dedication. For example, experiences of racism are a reason for transitions in both vignettes, which can easily be masked under other forms of transitions, such as personal preferences or life changes.

Resourcefulness These hands aren’t made for building stuff, so I am going to see what happens at university (Tony)

Tony is a man in his late 40s from Queensland who began his worklife experience by enrolling into university to become a social worker, drawing inspiration from his elder sister who was able to graduate from university. During that time, Tony relied on financial support from the government (ABSTUDY1) and the personal support and mentoring from Indigenous elders. When he completed his degree and returned to his maternal home, he had to secure employment immediately due to cultural and familial expectations. His mother made it clear she did not want her children “to ever claim unemployment benefits or anything like that. You get off your backside and you work.” Tony applied for the Australian Public Service and received a placement interstate in remote NSW where he spent 12 months working in Social

 ABSTUDY is a group of payments for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students or apprentices. Depending on a student’s circumstances, ABSTUDY can help with school or boarding fees, living and travel costs, buying school materials. 1

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Security. As Tony wanted to return to Queensland, he took up a transfer position in Sydney that he considered would be one step closer to making his way back home. It took him more than three years and several transitions between government departments to relocate back to Queensland. After one month, he walked into an employment office to secure his next position. As an outcome of his exercise of resourcefulness, he landed the position of Indigenous employment coordinator in the same office. Despite a substantial drop in remuneration, the position provided the opportunity to “help mob” secure employment, which was a prime motivation for Tony to accept the position. A full-time creative career is not accessible to everyone (Marli)

Marli is a woman in her early 30s from Western Australia. From her teenage years, she identified as an artist and a creative person. Upon completion of Year 12, Marli enrolled in a creative arts degree, a time in which she was becoming aware of the precariousness of the industry. The prospect of not receiving an income for a significant amount of time frightened her, So, she eventually enrolled in a degree in urban planning to receive a qualification with more vocational prospects. Her first employment after casual employment during her studies was as a community development officer in local government. Transitions to similar positions were motivated by the financial security that they offered, despite not finding much interest and satisfaction in the type of labour. In these “pay the rent” positions she found value in the flexibility of working hours and financial stability to enable her to pursue her creative endeavours. Working hard, for Marli, does not equate working long hours or upskilling, but navigating the “bizarre social landscape” that constructs barriers to some people. Here, Marli refers to Indigenous people, and in particular women, who do not have the same privileges as non-Indigenous people. For Indigenous people to succeed in achieving their ambitions requires a resourcefulness and a tolerance to working in an environment where people have “no experience engaging, working and socialising the whole gamut that is Aboriginal people”. Resourcefulness in the research participants’ experiences is best understood from the racialised context from which they are speaking. Indigenous workers are often facing more barriers entering the workforce and find themselves needing to be resourceful to be considered employable. This is shown through their readiness and agency to commit to meaningful labour, which, in the case of Bob, is considered meaningful because it constitutes an income. Despite the hard labour, Bob is satisfied remaining in one career position because it brings an income, reflecting in words such as “head down and work” (Bob). Rather than suggesting Bob’s decision is testimony to a lack of resourcefulness, it demonstrates a commitment to overcome the difficulties that the “politics of work” (Bob) present Indigenous workers. Thus, resourcefulness is not only understood from a “Western” perspective that infers an ability to obtain and gain resources and opportunities but is also indicative of the commitment to accept the difficulties that come with Indigenous labour. In other words, there is a resourcefulness in the decision to remain employed in one position and accept the expectations that come with that, such as relocation. Reflecting on another participant’s voice, Migay shows an immense resourcefulness

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in her commitment to seek apprenticeships and, later in her career, develop programs for mob to promote alternative pathways into employment. These pathways are important, because, paraphrasing Tony, not being strong enough in your own beliefs can be your worst enemy. Seeking clever ways to overcome foreseeable challenges and limitations thus becomes a mechanism to prevent and protect oneself from being unemployed.

Authentic Mentoring and Advocacy It was serendipity that led me to university (John)

John is a man in his early 40s from Queensland who started his working life while at university doing night shifts as a cleaner in a hotel. At the time, John was not interested in career progression, his focus was on receiving a minimum income to support himself and his lifestyle. Having been raised under difficult circumstances, John got himself into regular trouble with authorities during his late teens and it was for a friend who had enrolled in university that he engaged in “deep self-reflection” and decided to enrol in university through an alternative entry pathway. In his high school experience, university was never considered an option for John; it was simply never introduced to him, and it was only serendipity that led him there. In his words, “I could not believe this existed the whole time”. He was shocked at the time that such a life existed and they [young Indigenous people and People of Colour youth] were not exposed to it, because, in John’s words, “you can only be what you see, right?”. Upon graduation, John secured a position as a research assistant for a former lecturer who acted as a mentor at the time. Rather than a form of cultural ‘cloning’, John received the kind of mentoring that allowed him to be who he was, which was “raw as hell”. It was the authenticity of the mentor – his lived experience of hardship – that “kept it real” and made a true impact on John’s attitude and decisions. He did not have to leave his Indigeneity at the door, so to speak. Instead, he could embrace it while learning the parameters of a “semi-professionality”. He had grown up with a multiplicity of non-white people, including Muslims, and, during his time working at the university and doing a lot of reading, John converted to Islam. This coincided with leaving academia and entering a position at a halal abattoir to “get a grounding inside the faith of Islam”. Through authentic mentoring, John returned to university both as a student and a teacher, where he eventually enrolled in a PhD program which he has now completed. He currently works as a researcher. Transitions to and from different academic institutions were the result of being with and without the right mentors. It was through authentic mentorship that John was able to work according to his strengths and not be persuaded or forced – structurally – to commit to the red tape that would effectively have him focus on responsibilities that did not result in success. I was valued as a teacher, but never as an Indigenous person (Deana)

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Deana is a woman in her 50s from Victoria who began her teaching career at the age of twenty. At this point, Deana had become familiar with racialised structures, having been recognised for her merit and talents, but not her Indigeneity. This racialisation continued in a nuanced form, expecting Deana to leave her ‘Indigeneity at the door’ – that is leave behind her ways of knowing, being and doing as an Aboriginal woman. She was recognised as an Indigenous teacher for diversity and inclusion’s sake, but she was expected to adjust her Indigeneity to the environment of whiteness. In Deana’s words, “no one ever talked to me, but always about me”, concerning her career progression, where she would fit best, as an Indigenous person and teacher. From the beginning of her career, Deana had to learn to operate within a racially illiterate environment, being surrounded by people “who had never crossed paths with an Aboriginal person in their lives before”. As a teacher and as an Indigenous woman, Deana has been ignored by the system “for her entire career”, which she accounts to her Aboriginality and the absence of acknowledging it. Deana often felt she was a ‘tick box’ when she was included in meetings, but her Indigenous knowledge and emphasis on “process over outcome” was never recognised. And because of this disconnect, the mentorship Deana received was more a kind of ‘cultural cloning’ or ‘reproduction of sameness’ (Essed, 2002) that expected her to assimilate to the established dominant cultural ways of conducting herself as a teacher to better fit into the workplace culture. Experiencing the organisational design to be ‘all about disconnection’, Deana experienced little in the way of authentic mentoring that was to connect, rather than further disconnect, her from the mob. Combined with ‘blatant racism’, Deana has been isolated and excluded for most of her career, which speaks to the lack of authentic mentoring and mentorship opportunities. Mentorship is only effective in creating positive changes in the worklife experiences of Indigenous people when it is not a form of cultural cloning. When mentoring is not authentic, it tends to take the form of cultural cloning, where Indigenous workers are expected to adjust to embedded assumptions, presuppositions, and understandings on how to “do” work (Delgado, 1996). As a practice of reproducing sameness (Essed & Goldberg, 2002), cultural cloning disallows Indigeneity to inform worklife practices and choices, which can be seen for instance in the alternative pathways into employment of some participants. Informal mentoring relationships were found to be the key enabler of career opportunity and advancement. Considering the various and specific racialised challenges Indigenous people face in their worklife journey, mentorship that acknowledges and values Indigeneity, supports career development and growth, and act as a source of guidance, advocacy and reassurance can be the changing factor in a person’s life. Migay, for instance, went back to High School to complete her HSC because of authentic mentorship that served her best interests. Her mentor challenged her by saying she is not going to be the “little kid from the ghetto” she identified as. Maree, commented on her experience of racialisation while working in the public sector with the thought “What do people actually think of me?” being always at the front of her mind. She took for granted she “had to work a little harder” and “have colleagues that harbour bigoted, discriminatory attitudes” because she appreciated the “opportunity to empower our mob”.

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Racism at Work: The Underlying Theme When unpacking the core themes that are characterising the worklife experiences of Indigenous people, what is brought to the foreground is the normalised experience of racism. Participants are showing a readiness and preparedness to engage in racialised hierarchies in their working life, because it is what they are familiar with in their personal lives. Their response to the question of racism in the workplace suggests a normalisation of being subjects of a racialised order in comments such as “I grew up with racism, so…” (Nathaniel). Or the position to not experience racism because it is so prevalent and to instead “tackle it straight up” (Peter). The fact Peter does not consider these experiences as racism (because he tackles it) suggests a normalisation of a racist bias that remains dominant in Indigenous people’s working and personal lives. “Tackling” it then becomes synonymous to not experiencing it. But despite how people experience or do not experience racism, it does not take away the racial hierarchies and bias that define their working life. Similarly, Bob, who is heading towards his retirement from being a welder on a mining site, informed that he purposefully chose not to progress his career as a supervisor due to racism. In Bob’s words: I’ve done enough. You got to go through the politics of work and there’s all that racism stuff. I’d rather keep out of it. There’s not a lot of Murri’s2 there, and there should be more of us. I’m glad I was not there when the Black Lives Matter rights were going down or it would have ended up bad.

These are some examples of how racism operates in the everyday at work and comes to define worklife decisions. Racism is easily masked in research about worklife experiences when reasons for staying or leaving a particular job are easily perceived as having other foundations such as environmental, economic, personal, or whatever, but are in fact grounded in racist experiences. Research on worklife experiences often fails to centre racism as a category for analysis.

Concluding Remarks The research presented and discussed here confirms that the transitions Indigenous people encounter are layered, nuanced, and varied and worklife decisions do not easily fit into clear-cut categories. In the vignettes, we have seen, for example, that the decision to relocate can have a multitude of motivations, some of which are grounded in racist experiences, and the desire to be amongst mob. It has also become evident that Indigenous workers’ desire to be amongst the mob can be motivated by racist experiences when being isolated from mob. Hence, looking at the motivations behind worklife decisions requires piercing through the worklife structures that  Murri is a denonym for Indigenous Australian peoples of Queensland and north-western New South Wales. 2

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Indigenous workers engage in, most of which are firmly embedded in whiteness that requires Indigenous workers to leave their Indigeneity behind. The research findings and vignettes illustrate that racialised experiences continue to define Indigenous worklife decisions and experiences. These realities are captured well by Norris’ book written more than a decade ago titled: “The more things change... The origins and impact of Australian Indigenous exclusion”. And although this is a historical account of the exclusion of Indigenous workers in the Australian workforce and accumulation of wealth, the title is pertinent to this chapter as we are still addressing experiences of Indigenous exclusion on a foundational level. Despite the progress towards equality and relative improvements of Indigenous inclusion, the voices of participants reveal a prevailing set of assumptions that prevent Indigenous workers from strengthening their Indigeneity in their mode of being and working. In all, this chapter has pointed to the importance of taking an Indigenist standpoint to understand the worklife realities of Indigenous workers. It not only recognises the concealed expectations that Indigenous workers must adhere to for them to become employable, but it also presents an alternative perspective on the outcome and effects of individual worklife decisions. For example, from an Indigenist research position, “personal facts” (Billett, 2009) and the choices that follow can be considered acts of resistance to neoliberal and individualised structures of labour that bring with them certain expectations about career progression. Seeking alternative pathways towards employability, as several participants’ voices resonate, is another mode of resistance against formalised expectations around education and career progression. Overall, despite the fact that Indigenous workers in Australia today continue to face additional barriers to employability, including multiple forms of racism, they are demonstrating a resourcefulness, agency, and readiness to seek and sustain employment. This is further strengthened through authentic mentoring and advocacy that values and respects Indigenous ways of being and working, and collective bonds with mob. Future research would benefit from exploring Indigenous people’s worklife decisions as acts of resistance against sedimented stereotypes around Indigenous labour and modes of working.

References Australian Human Right Commission. (2020, October 9). Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s voices). Available on: https://humanrights.gov.au/our-­work/ aboriginal-­and-­torres-­strait-­islander-­social-­justice/projects/wiyi-­yani-­u-­thangani-­womens Bargallie, D. (2020). Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voice on racism in the Australian Public Service. Aboriginal Studies Press. Bessarab, D., & Ng’andu, B. (2010). Yarning about yarning as a legitimate method in indigenous research. International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies, 3(1), 37–50. Billett, S. (2009). Personal epistemologies, work and learning. Educational Research Review, 4(3), 210–219. Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

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Carlson, B., Berglund, J., Harris, M., & Poata-Smith, E. S. (2014). Four scholars speak to navigating the complexities of naming in indigenous studies. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(1), 58–72. Collins, P. H. (1997). Standpoint theory revisited: Where’s the power? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 22(2), 375–381. Delgado, R. (1996). The coming race war: And other apocalyptic Tales of America after affirmative action and welfare. New York University Press. Essed, P. (2002). Cloning cultural homogeneity while talking diversity: Old wine in new bottles in Dutch work organizations? Transforming Anthropology, 11(1), 2–12. Essed, P., & Goldberg, D. T. (2002). Cloning cultures: The social injustices of sameness. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 25(6), 1066–1082. Le, A. H., Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H. & Bargallie, D. (this volume). Investigating learning for employability: Method and procedures. In Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H. & Filliettaz, L. (Eds,), Sustaining employability through worklife learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Martin, J. R. (2003). Voicing the ‘other’: Reading and writing indigenous Australians. In Critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity (pp. 199–219). Springer. Martin, D. (2008). Maat and order in African cosmology: A conceptual tool for understanding indigenous knowledge. Journal of Black Studies, 38(6), 951–967. McGrath, A., & Saunders, K. (1995). Introduction: Aboriginal workers. Labour History: A Journal of Labour and Social History, 69, 30–51. Moreton-Robinson, A. (2013). Towards an Australian indigenous women’s standpoint theory: A methodological tool. Australian Feminist Studies, 28(78), 331–347. Murrup-Stewart, C., Atkinson, P., & Adams, K. (2022). Storying ways to reflect on power, contestation, and yarning research method application. The Qualitative Report, 27(3), 777–791. Norris, R. (2010). The more things change... The origins and impact of Australian indigenous economic exclusion. eContent Management Pty Limited. Rigney, L. I. (1999). Internationalization of an indigenous anticolonial cultural critique of research methodologies: A guide to indigenist research methodology and its principles. Wicazo Sa Review, 14(2), 109–121. https://doi.org/10.2307/1409555 Salling Olesen, H. (2016). A pyscho-societal approach to life histories. In I.  Goodson, A. Antikainen, P. Sikes, & M. Andrews (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook on narrative and life history. Routledge. Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books. Wellman, D. T. (1993). Portraits of white racism. Cambridge University Press. Debbie Bargallie is a descendent of the Kamilaroi and Wonnarua Aboriginal peoples of New South Wales, Australia. She is Associate Professor (Principal Research Fellow) at Griffith University, Queensland. Debbie is a critical race scholar. Her book Unmasking the racial contract: Indigenous voices on racism in the Australian Public Service (2020) was published by AIATSIS Aboriginal Studies Press in June 2020.  

The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions Raymond Smith

Abstract  Working life is a dynamic trajectory of personal and social worklife transitions, sequenced transformations of self and practice. Through these transitions workers learn and live their membership in the labour market and their need of employment. As such, worklife transitions are both the contexts in which individuals negotiate their lives and the processes by which those negotiations are enacted. Worklife transitions are the increasingly familiar and common experience of contemporary societies and economies that have arguably never been so volatile, the rate and nature of change never so dynamic. The chapter advances that better understanding worklife transitions and the kinds of work and learning support they require, can follow from understanding workers’ as engaged in a range of socio-­ personal negotiations that comprise their work, learning and transition practices. Drawing on interview data from extensive participant responses in a research project that examined the working life trajectories and experiences of more than 60 Australian workers, the chapter outlines and illustrates a set of five transition trajectories that workers may enact in their movement from one perceptibly significant work state to another. They are descriptively named: (1) incremental steps, (2) spinning plates, (3) project management, (4) carousel and (5) full renovation. The discussion that follows from the outline of these five transition trajectories considers (i) the question of the value of worklife transition through the lens of two concepts – value claiming and value creation, and (ii) the kinds of learning support each of the trajectories suggests may be foundational to considerations of public policy and provision initiatives that could support worklife transition process and outcome. Keywords  Transition · Trajectory · Worklife transition · Worklife trajectories · Substantial transition · Work-learning · Socio-personal practice · Negotiation · Employability · Value claiming · Value creation · Membership · Participation · Action · Mediation · Unemployment · Occupational practice · Personal agency

R. Smith (*) Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_7

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Worklife Transition Adults’ working life can be conceptualised as a dynamic trajectory of personal and social worklife transitions that constitute an integrated series of chronologically sequenced transformations of self and practice. These transitions or transformations are the numerous states of being and acting in and through which workers of all kinds (e.g., managers, labourers, business builders, executives, professionals, technicians, sports men and women, etc.) work, learn and live. That is, enact those key aspects of their lives aligned with membership in the labour market and their need of employment and income. Membership means more than participation – workers, especially those with many years of experience; do not simply take part in work. Rather, they belong to, actively pursue and manage their priorities and actions in occupations, organisations, industries and economies that variably need and support them and that they equally need and support, indeed create. As such, worklife transitions are both the contexts in which individuals negotiate their working lives and the processes by which those negotiations are enacted. The personal and social significance of worklife transitions can be variable and debateable. Some transitions are welcome, voluntary and planned  – many are unwelcome, involuntary and highly unexpected. Some may be considered momentous and represent great change in a person’s life and circumstances while others may be minor and expected and of seeming minimal impact. Yet their familiarity and common experience as fundamental aspects of working life remains. This ubiquity or high prevalence of worklife transition is evidenced, for example, in national labour market statistics such as job mobility, workforce participation and job turnover rates. As much as such indicators wax and wane with economic cycles (e.g., are more dramatic in times of disruption such as the GFC 2008–09 and the Covid 19 pandemic 2020–21) the trend across western economies such as the UK, USA and Australia in these early decades of the twenty-first century has been one of high rates of mobility when economic growth has been strong and high rates of job turnover when growth has been weak or in decline (Black & Chow, 2022). Moving from job to job and or in and out of work is increasingly the norm for adult workers. For young people entering the labour market, the ubiquity of worklife transition is indicated by claims they can expect to have 17 job changes over 5 career changes during their working lives (FYA, 2017). Additionally, the high prevalence and significance of worklife transition is clearly evidenced in the range of transitions examined by researchers and the plethora of foci they bring to their projects – into work from education, from welfare, from motherhood, from disability, from the military, from prison – through different work via promotion, unemployment, ill health, structural change, technology enhancement, training, occupational shift, relocation – out of work and into retirement, into parenthood, into convalescence, into migration, into asylum, into persecution. These are but some of the myriad kinds of worklife transitions that garner purposeful research attention in today’s economies. Further, contemporary societies and economies have arguably never been so volatile, the rate and nature of change never so dynamic. Efforts to harness such

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dynamism and volatility (and there are many  – e.g., (i) government policies and regulations that encourage and reward industry innovation and business disruption, (ii) institutions privileging specific vocational and professional skills and development programs in education systems, (iii) organisational management initiatives that promote lean systems, (iv) productivity gains based human resource practices, etc.) may be said to have given rise to the attractive assumption that better understanding and supporting worklife transitions can enable improved work performance and thus, secure the many benefits (personal, social, economic, etc.) that should accrue from such improvement. Within this context of consistent worklife transition and the volatility that such transitions both emerge from and sustain, this chapter seeks to advance understandings of worklife transition. It focuses on what are referred to here as ‘substantial worklife transitions’ – those that challenge individual workers in times of significant personal disruption and their subsequent need of greater volumes and or more secure work to sustain their employability and respondent livelihood and wellbeing needs. Such transitions describe trajectories into employment that go well beyond the experience of what could be viewed as career progression or development – as when, for example, through increasing levels of professional experience, a teacher moves from classroom practice into additional leadership roles and onto becoming a school principal, or when a nurse moves from ward practice into supervision and the management of specialist medical units, or when a professional sports person moves from playing into team coaching and club management. These kinds of work transition are commonly addressed in career oriented literature in behavioural science perspectives (see e.g., Vondracek et al., 2019; Featherman et al., 1994). They may be enabled by further training and skill development. They may be enabled by favourable connections and or relationships. They may be the result of great ambition and personal effort. Indeed, career progression or development kinds of work transition can be and often do mark significant change but they mostly likely follow from a relatively clear and direct path of employment that traces a familiar or common line into subsequent work and employment experience. Such work transitions could, or perhaps should, be more accurately referred to as standard ‘occupational practice’ in that they typically involve the enactment of common and often expected trajectories into occupational progress. Indeed, for some of the participants in the research reported here, these kinds of occupational trajectories into continuing occupational development were very normal – and strong careers and fruitful livelihoods were experienced. These kinds of occupational practice transitions are not the focus here, despite their often being highly demanding and illustrative of the kinds of deep socio-personal learning and support that successful transition in any and all occupational fields can require. Rather, the focus here is considerate of substantial worklife transition, those that mark serious struggle through the need to respond to unfavourable and unwelcome personal worklife disruption. Through its focus on substantial transitions, the chapter advances that better understanding worklife transitions, the kinds of transformations they generate and the kinds of work and learning support they require, can follow from understanding workers as engaged in a range of socio-personal negotiations (Smith, 2018) that

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comprise their work, learning and transition practices. Drawing on interview data from extensive participant responses in a research project that examined the working life trajectories and experiences of 66 Australian workers, the chapter outlines and illustrates a set of five transition trajectories or transition forms that workers may enact in their movement from one perceptibly significant work state to another. They are descriptively named: (1) incremental steps, (2) spinning plates, (3) project management, (4) carousel and (5) full renovation. These five trajectories do not constitute a definitive set of worklife transition forms. Rather, they are five identifiable transition trajectories that emerged from a focused thematic analysis of the worklife history interviews conducted. They are important findings because they accommodate the person dependent complexity that is arguably missing in common ‘stage’ transition models (see e.g., Bridges, 2004). These kinds of models often and frequently characterise transitions (such as education to work, career progression and employment to retirement) as linear movement through a series of identifiable stages rather than as a dynamic, multidirectional and highly context dependent process of personal gains and losses (see e.g., Baltes, 1987). The discussion that follows from the outline of these five transition trajectories considers (i) the question of the value of worklife transition through the lens of two key negotiation concepts – value claiming and value creation, and (ii) the kinds of learning support each of the trajectories suggests may be foundational to considerations of the kinds of public policy and provision initiatives that could support worklife transition process and outcome.

Work-Learning and Transition as Socio-personal Practice There are many ways to understand and appreciate workers’ work, learning and transformation practices as simultaneously both personal and social practice. Quite famously, Lave and Wenger (1991) describe and explain them as participatory practices based in the social legitimacy of being actively engaged in a community of practice (CoP) – a CoP being a recognisable “set of relations among persons, activity and the world” (Lave & Wenger, 1991: 98). That CoP could be, for example, an employing organisation, an occupation, a special interest group or any affiliation to which a person belongs. Such belonging, be it weak and peripheral or strong and central, bestows legitimate and thus meaningful identity and access to opportunity for allied learning and the transformation of person and practice that follows from this learning. Hence, apprentices develop expertise and transition to become masters who go on to reshape practice through the authoritative enactment of their work-learning. For Lave and Wenger, participation is the key to this ‘situated learning’ and the changes it generates. Similarly focused on such change but with a more personal cognition based focus, Kolb (1984) describes and explains adults’ work, learning and subsequent development as experiential – based in a four phase cycle of enhanced knowledge building that follows from the inability of current understanding and practice to

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adequately address emerging problems. To summarise, the four phases are; (i) concrete experience, (ii) observation of and reflection on that experience, (iii) the formulation of abstract concepts and generalisations that support understanding that experience and (iv) the active experimentation of testing the implications of those concepts and the new situation this implies – to arrive back at a new and different state of understanding (i.e., knowledge) that presents as a new concrete experience. In work, this awareness and knowledge building (i.e., learning) involves solution postulation and active experimentation with those potential solutions in efforts to generate new practices and experiences that overcome the initiating problem experiences. All such experience is emergent from individuals’ activity in the social world and their efforts to address the disruption that marks the need of moving (i.e., transitioning) to a new and more effective knowledge state. Similarly again, but with a much stronger emphasis on the social or collective nature of the phases of a work focused learning cycle, Engestrom (1987, 2001) advanced his theory of expansive learning. Essentially, experience or social activity is enacted within collective systems (such as work, occupational practice, etc.) that are in constant states of contradiction because they are made up of actions that cannot be isolated or separated from all the other actions that are operating to generate the activity under consideration. In brief, all action is interaction. All interaction is activity. All activity is co-operational contradiction and when the tensions created by these numerous contradictions become sufficient to the generation of change, that change is addressed and observable through the collective enactment of seven stages in the cycle of expansive learning. They are, (i) questioning, (ii) analysis, (iii) modelling the new solution, (iv) examining and testing the new model, (v) implementing the new model, (vi) reflecting on the process, and (vii) consolidating and generalizing the new practice made possible by the new model (Engestrom & Sannino, 2010). This cycle is a spiralling process of transition as emergent new and more sufficient models and the practices they become can be seen as an expansion of preceding models. Less concerned with the phase or stage identification of work, learning and transformation process, Billett (2008) focuses on the kinds and intensities of the numerous significant factors that mediate and culminate in the experience of learning. Primarily, the key factors are observable through the numerous ‘relational interdependencies’ that constitute the practices enacted in work. Essentially, work enables and affords workers context and occupational specific opportunity to undertake certain tasks, to access certain resources and knowledges, to engage with certain sets of others, to develop certain kinds of skills and so on. Equally, workers will approach and undertake this range of work affordances with very personally derived understandings and ways of doing and prioritising the meaning and value of their actions and what their work requires. In sum, these many factors, variably aligned and or as discrepant as they may be, shape workers’ construction of the subjectivities, practices and possibilities they experience as ever developing work and learning processes and knowledge outcomes. “Ultimately, it is individuals that generate the purposes, enact the processes and realise the outcomes of learning in through and for work” (Billett, 2022: 157) and they do so as relationally positioned co-creators

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of that activity and meaning. That activity and meaning may well constitute transition from one set of work practices to another, from one kind of understanding of self and practice to another, from one set of affordances and opportunities to another. Transition is a work-learning process. These few (and here, highly condensed) views of adults’ socio-personal work and learning direct attention to the experience and practice of work as an obvious site to consider the nature and gravitas of adults’ work-learning  – the personal, occupational and organisational changes it generates, the new and creative bases of technical, economic and industrial development it creates and the political, environmental and social challenges it can address. Better understanding and supporting adults’ practices in, through and for work offers the hope of greater prosperity and enhanced humanity in and across all these domains. Yet the reality of work transition can push the experience of work-learning well beyond the work place and or education provision proximally implied in the term ‘learning in, through and for work’. Work transition can often and for many, be the reality of no work at all, that is, unemployment. However, unemployment must be recognised as a work state. Officially defined as both wanting and being available for work but currently out of a paying job (ABS, 2022), unemployment is a clear marker of labour marker participation. It can also be a significant marker of substantial worklife transition. This chapter advances that work and work-learning does not stop because employment or the pursuit of employment stops (through transition or otherwise). Rather, the nature of work changes. For individuals in transition, the activity systems and CoPs within which they operate are altered (the familiar becomes alien and vice versa), the range of accessible resources and opportunities varies (expands for some, contracts for others) and their ways of utilising that access and those resources is adapted to the new circumstances experienced (what was once important becomes less so and vice versa). Hence, individuals’ personal agency is highly significant as the choices they make within those circumstances become increasingly salient. Personal agency and its exercise, like work, learning and transition, is a relationally enacted experience. It is more than a personal capacity to enact choice and judgement not least because all such enactments are socially mediated. As Archer (2000) advances, personal agency can be viewed as a measure of personal and social worth arbitrated by individuals’ “prioritising their ultimate concerns, which will determine how much of themselves is invested in their social identities, and therefore what they will bring to living them out” (Archer, 2000: 12 – Italics in original). Hence, the exercise of agency is fundamental to work. Workers are and must be constantly making choices about what they will attend to and how much attention they will give to their work. Yet, as much as the choices and judgements individuals make are the foundations of their actions enacted – their agency exercised in activity and made visible through action (e.g., work) – it is their interests and concerns, what they value most in the circumstances of their experience, that is the foundation of their choices and judgements. Archer summarises (2000: 10), “In short, we are who we are because of what we care about”. Such a view does not neglect error, greed, ignorance or indifference as motivations and sources of personal action – many are those who have acted in ways contrary to their primary concerns. Rather, such a

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view centres agency in the person, not as subject of their context but as creatively and responsively subjective within their context, be that subjectivity highly or weakly influential of their options.

Negotiating the Socio-personal Practice of Worklife Transition Adults, as workers in employment and or as workers in transition, are not passive bystanders in the complexity of activity that is work and or unemployment. Their learning (to work, to live, to survive, to transition from one state to another, etc.) does not stop. They are constantly engaged in their own personal and social transformations through the many actions and practices that make their living. Researcher efforts to capture the nature of those practices have generated numerous concepts that unite the personal and the social processes and outcomes that can be identified as adult work and learning. For example, Lave and Wenger (1991) define legitimate peripheral participation, and so capture the sense of workers’ belonging to the social practice of the organisation and occupational practice into which they are immersing themselves. To work and learn is to join in a relational set of practices and in doing so find and be accepted as integral to that practice  – to become ‘we’ who enact these practices. Engestrom (2008) outlines knotworking, the coming together of people and resources (i.e., ways of understanding and practicing) for the purposes of addressing specific emergent needs and then separating as those needs are resolved in light of new and additional emergent needs. Knots tie people together and are then undone as solutions and new challenges enable other knots of resources. Rogoff (1995) advances participatory appropriation, revealing the context dependence of activity – context being the whole of the set of influences (cultural, personal, social, situational, etc.) that shape activity and the learning possibilities it can generate and accomplish. Gherardi (2019) prefers emergent knowing in practice and Hager (2000) the development of practical judgement. Billett et al. (2023b) (see chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review” this volume), like Wertsch (1995), seek to acknowledge and accommodate the extensive range of mediating factors (their sources, kinds and levels of influence) that generate work-­ learning processes and their transformational outcomes. Workers with their personal histories and priorities and in conjunction with, their workplaces, and their resources, and their situated practices, and the industrial cultures in which they operate, and their occupational legacies, and socio-political contexts are all variably contributing to the mediation of individuals’ work practice and their perspectives on the experiences that accompany that engagement. The array of relational interdependencies necessarily considered in this socio-personal ‘fusion’ of mediation enables the dynamic complexity of work accomplishments to be made visible and thereby addressed with sensitivity rather than being blanketed as invariant experience. Work, work-learning and worklife transition are not homogenous activities. They cannot be accurately understood and addressed when viewed as socially common experience.

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All the above examples are seeking to describe and explain learning as persons’ immersive engagement in social practice, not simply as being ‘in’ but as being an integral part of, inseparable from and contributing to, social practice. In this chapter, that inseparability is captured in the term socio-personal and both the context and process of such practice is negotiation. This perspective is simply stated – work, work-learning and worklife transition are socio-personal practices  – all socio-­ personal practices are negotiations. The concept of ‘negotiation’ offers unique opportunity to make visible and valuable some of the factors and qualities that constitute the interlocked socio-personal practices of work, transition and learning. By negotiation here is not meant the easily recognisable stereotype of ‘making deals’ as might be common in fields of business, law and politics. But, more than this, negotiation here is as it was outlined by Smith (2018) as a model for better understanding individuals’ personal practices within the socio-personal practice of learning in work. At its simplest, negotiation is a concept that unites all actors (people, things, ideas, etc.) in socio-personal practice as co-proactive influences that continuously shape and reshape the interactions that constitute practice. That shaping and reshaping, adjusting and readjusting, is not merely passive response to altered circumstance but is more rightly viewed as expressing or enacting a purposeful stake in the action unfolding as work, as learning, as transition or whatever is happening. Through this perspective of negotiation, adults in work are positioned as negotiators, agentic actors who are intentionally investing themselves, by varying degrees and capacities, in the personal and social development and outcomes of their work and learning practice. And that personal investment is but one part of the set of mediations that make up the context in which personal investment is enacted – that context is the broader negotiation in and by which the complex of interconnected negotiations of the many parties involved are being undertaken. And those many parties are not just people or sets of interests. Rather, such parties are best viewed as mediating factors in their own right. For example, tools, equipment, regulations, ideas, operational processes, physical spaces, etc. are all forms of influence and control over the actions and interactions that constitute work, work-learning and worklife transition. Each of these forms, like the people involved, are negotiants in the socio-personal practices of work. As previously stated, worklife transitions are many and varied and have been examined from a plethora of perspectives. Subsequently, a broad range of transition models and theories have been proposed as lenses to observe and means to understand how workers and organisations negotiate the creation, response to and progression of their many worklife transitions. Some focus on individuals’ thinking and acting and propose personal strategies that could support workers to secure successful transition outcomes. Within this behavioural focus some concentrate on stress alleviation and wellbeing development while others concentrate on labour market structures and the need of being informed about socio-industrial trends. Others focus on more conceptual understandings of the processes encountered and

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enacted, both personally and socially, as ways of segmenting the complexity of transitions into analytical components and categories. Within this focus, some are descriptive, some are prescriptive, some are axiomatic. For example, ‘out, through and into’ models divide the transition trajectory into phases or stages and seek to identify the kinds of behaviours workers enact at each phase. Bridges (2004) describes three quite linear phases. In the first phase, ironically called ‘ending’, workers in transition begin to abandon held identities and ways of doing things that characterise what they are transitioning from. In the second, ‘neutral zone’, the old ways are insufficient and necessary new ways are uncertain, hence confusion and insecurity are common. In the third ‘new beginning’ phase, goal orientation and identity formation come to align with the new circumstances into which they are transitioning. Similarly, but with less emphasis on individual behaviour and far greater acknowledgement of the social and the relational realities of working life, Chan (2013) outlines how apprentices move from novice to expertise through the three concomitant phases of (i) ‘belonging’ to a workplace, (ii) ‘becoming’ part of an occupational practice and (iii) ‘being’ a skilled trades person through their immersion in the learning by doing, increment by increment, that marks the apprenticeship process. Less concerned with phases and mirroring, to a certain extent, Parsons (1909) rational thinking/choice steps model to securing new and or better work, Rudisill et  al. (2010) describe workers’ need to, among other personal practices, reflectively consider their goals and skills, to accurately evaluate the job market and to strategically search for job opportunity. Significant throughout these steps is the need to develop strong coping skills that enable resilience and proactive self-management in order to address the stresses that are part of the transition experience. With the yet broader goal of progressing Baltes’ whole of lifespan developmental theory (Baltes, 1978, 1987), researchers such as Salmela-Aro (2009) and Heckhausen et  al. (2010) highlight the importance of personal goal setting and motivation within and as part of the social contextual bounds of critical worklife transitions. Salmela-Aro (2009: 64) defines the four ‘C’ processes enacted through transition – channelling, choice, co-agency and compensation. To paraphrase, first, channelling acknowledges that individuals develop in a socio-cultural context (of beliefs, structures and events) that defines the ‘opportunity space’ in which they, second, make choices about what and how they will do and expect as they progress. Third, the enactment of those choices occurs with and is inseparable from others, co-agents, who contribute to and share in the processes and outcomes generated. And fourth, constant throughout the developmental process, is the need to adjust to the altering circumstances of the changing socio-personal environment and so compensate for those adjustments. Hence, the construction and enactment of the personal goals that characterise the emergent developmental trajectories, and the worklife transitions that will comprise adults’ engagement in the labour market, can be viewed as socio-personally negotiated.

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Examining Worklife Transitions The above outline of some models and theories of adults’ work-learning and transition practices describes a set of perspectives that together form an analytical context used to examine the worklife history interviews of 66 working adults. Those interviews formed part of a broader data set generated by the Australian Research Council project reported through this volume (see Le et al., this volume, chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures” for greater detail of the methodology adopted and participants involved). Through the many interviews conducted, and for some participants this meant multiple interviews across an 18-month period, the 66 workers cumulatively described hundreds of worklife transitions emergent from yet more hundreds of worklife circumstantial changes (Billett et al., 2021). Some discussed the trauma of becoming refugees fleeing war and persecution and the absolute upheaval this meant for them and their families. Others discussed the anxiety of international and long-distance relocation – some in support of partners moving for work, some in pursuit of new life and opportunity, some as potential realisation of long held dreams. Some reported the fearful reality of abrupt lost livelihood – others the excitement of new adventure. All 66 recounted experiences of what must be described as significant, and sometimes desperate, learning needs and efforts to address them. The worklife history interviews began with a question – can you tell me when you started work and what you’ve done from then to now? This simple question enabled participants to recount their worklife experiences without need of explanation or justification. It invited them to personally narrate their worklife history. Questions and discussions about ‘why’ and ‘how’ came only in subsequent interviews where the focus was not on the nature of transitions enacted per se but on the kinds and qualities of learning experiences accompanying and required through the different transitions recounted (see Le et  al., this volume, chapter “Investigating Learning for Employability: Method and Procedures”). That work-learning focus was driven by the overall project focus on how workers sustain their employability through past and now more dynamic times of increased labour market volatility and socio-industrial change. It was the emergent high prevalence and significance of worklife transition recounted through the interviews that prompted the analyses and findings reported in this chapter. No specific theoretical framework from the range of models and theories outlined above was brought to the analysis of the worklife interview data. Rather, that range of socio-personal work-learning and adult development perspectives informs and founds the qualitative thematic analysis undertaken. The analysis followed standard coding and theme building processes in the search for patterns of recounted meanings that could best enable researcher’s accurate identification and insightful description of substantial worklife transitions as they are and were experienced by the workers involved in the project (see e.g., Braun & Clarke, 2021; Terry & Hayfield, 2021). Initial coding focused on what workers did as they pursued employment and or desired work opportunities. For example, contacting potential

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employers, friends and past colleagues, etc., led to emergent behavioural themes such as proactivity and emergent opportunity source themes such as community affiliation, allied organisations, etc. This first approach was abandoned as its focus became more and more person directed and less transition phenomena directed. All the participants in the project were variably proactive and all variably relied on external contacts and connections to secure their employability. Further coding focused on change sources and responses (see Billett et al., 2021). So, for example, location changes could be associated with new schools for children, hence, new friends and contacts, new premises associated with new neighbours, etc. However, these kinds of codes and emergent themes again proved unproductive in efforts to distinguish and describe transitions. Coding that focused on employment take up patterns proved more useful. For example, working multiple jobs while waiting for more desired opportunity to arise, or not taking up employment opportunity because it did not meet specific requirements lead to transition descriptive themes such as parallel or contiguous transition where workers recounted pursuing employment in one field because it was perceived to be supportive of work in another field. Or broken transition where pursuit of specific employment goals was suspended for a time and resumed when circumstances became more favourable. The following worklife transition trajectories report findings based on emergent themes that sought to capture a holistic interpretive description of substantial transition phenomena. The five trajectories outlined are not advanced as a complete set of transition types. They are presented as qualitative descriptors that go some way to capturing and addressing the different kinds of transitions that characterise workers’ lived experienced when faced with changes in their circumstances that demand substantial alteration to how and why they work, sustain their employability and secure their livelihoods.

Five Forms of Worklife Transition Trajectory Substantial worklife transitions are those that confront workers with significant uncertainty, be they anticipated and planned or unanticipated and often unwelcome. Such transitions are those that force evaluative reflection and decision about what one is doing, what one wants to do and why, where, how. They can be initiated by all manner of planning and or disruption. They demand new learning (see the chapters of Part III of this volume: Billet et al., 2023a). All 66 of the participants interviewed through the project reported throughout this volume related their experiences of such transitions. Each of these transitions traces a trajectory that has a recognisable shape or form that is constructed by the coming together and impactful interaction (i.e., negotiation) of the many personal and structural factors that shape employment and working life. Five such trajectories are outlined below. Each is illustrated by the experiences of one or two of the 66 worklife history participants, not because they are the only workers who enacted such trajectories but because their experiences clearly illustrate the trajectory described.

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1: Incremental Steps For some of the participants in the project, the transition trajectory from little or no employment to sufficient and desired levels of employment was accomplished through a series of personally realised negotiations. Such negotiations are intentionally enacted as goals pursued and outcomes that successfully resolve the initiating issue (Smith, 2018). In terms of the participants who recounted this kind of trajectory, the goal pursued and the favourable outcome secured is more work. Incrementally successive steps build relationship strength, confidence, reliability and expertise (for all parties involved) which in turn afford further opportunity to incrementally expand levels of participation into greater volumes of work. For example, Annita, after having worked in various administrative roles and with her husband in his medical practice for many years, found herself isolated and increasingly dissatisfied following the couple’s move to the Middle East. Her initial efforts to generate work began with teaching aerobics and stretch classes at the local expats gym. This developed into additionally teaching dance and ballet that then required more space. She approached the local school and began using their rooms before being asked by the school principal to conduct classes for the school’s students (5–14  year olds). This grew to teaching arts and sports across the school (despite no formal education qualifications) and into the additional administrative role of school events organiser – all at the same time as her private dance and ballet teaching was growing into being a small school in its own right. This development into full and satisfying employment occurred over a few years and was accomplished within the single yet complex context of an expat community of foreign professionals living and working in a Middle East country. Each of the steps into more work was established through targeted objectives being secured in the numerous negotiated transactions undertaken. Initial meetings with the gym management, scheduling class times, meeting exercise and dance clients, the school management, students and their parents, fellow teachers and expat community members – through the conduct of these many transactions, Annita and those involved secured outcomes that successfully resolved their efforts. Initial outcomes became the foundation for future negotiations and the trajectory of incremental steps into greater volumes of favourable work was sustained. Annita, however, was not to remain so fortunate. Following the death of her husband and as a young and mourning single mother with a two year old son, Annita returned to Australia and began the arduous task of re-establishing her life. When her son started school, she again initiated efforts to work and again she enacted the incremental steps strategy that had proven successful for her in the past. She started volunteering care support work with the elderly and invalid through a local charity and through connections made with a parent from her son’s school, who had a daughter with a disability, she came to work and train for a large agency within the disability care sector. Over time she undertook specific vocational training to secure a nationally recognised Certificate IV in Disability Services and took on more and more clients. Over an approximate 10 year period and through the various organisational and regulatory changes that impacted her employer and the national care industry

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she moved to establish her own business as a care provider contractor while retaining employment with the agency. Each of the steps into greater and more responsible levels of employment was secured through her realised negotiations with employers, government agencies, education providers and disability clients. While broader and more complex than her previous expat community, these negotiations were enacted in what could be described as the single context of the disability care sector as it operated in her sphere of social activity. None of this was easy for Annita. Yet she initiated here employability trajectory in both these instances from bases of prior experience and with the support of her husband in the first instance and a meagre single mothers’ pension in the second instance. She had been a student of dance and ballet, had worked in various administrative roles in her early working years post school, including in hospitals where she met her husband. On this base of prior learning, her strength of personal agency and resilience were essential to the self-successes she created. These successes belie the simplicity implied by the incremental step trajectory form. Incremental steps are not always easy yet, as Annita’s experience illustrates, they can trace a clearly identifiable sequence of accomplishments that build on each other to secure a successful transition from no work to sufficient work and sustained employability.

2: Spinning Plates For some participants, the knowledge base of prior experience was insufficient to the task of being a suitable platform from which to initiate the pursuit of re-­employment. When income needs are immediate in order to ensure economic viability, the sudden loss of employment (be it voluntary or forced) can mean that any work is better than none. Equally, when the pathway forward into satisfactory employment is unclear and work options are minimal (if present at all), any work is better than none. In such cases working a number of jobs, that is, simultaneously initiating the pursuit of suitable employment from multiple platforms, can be necessary for survival and or identifying a suitable way forward. In some circumstances, this kind of employability trajectory requires seizing whatever opportunity for work emerges and can come to seem like the circus act of ‘spinning plates’, that is, trying to do numerous things at the same time. To illustrate  – Nathan was a fully qualified and practicing scientist. From his native South Pacific island home he had studied marine biology and gone on to build a strong career in the fields of aquaculture and agriculture development. He had worked in numerous countries across the world, including with the United Nations, and had developed innovative systems and processes for commercial aquaculture production. For this high level of expertise he had been recruited by an international company to build and manage a crayfish farm in sub-tropical Australia. He and his young family moved to Australia and began the work of creating and managing this new enterprise. After a little more than a year into this venture he was thrust into unemployment due to the financial collapse of his employer. His circumstances required that he be securing income immediately.

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With no construction experience, Nathan took casual work as a painter’s labourer, working alongside contract house painters. He also took casual work with a roofing tiler, a landscape gardener and started self-contracting to builders to build low level stone retaining walls. While working these various housing construction jobs he started work within the juvenile justice system as a casual youth worker and teachers aid at a youth detention centre. This then lead to additional work as a casual detention officer. All this work was casual on call response labour. The phone would ring and he would respond accordingly to whatever work request was made. His day could consist of construction work in the morning, youth work in the afternoon and detention work through the evening or any combination of such tasks and timelines. This ‘spinning plates’ trajectory into sufficient levels of employment enabled Nathan to secure financial viability for his growing family. Over a period of a year and a half Nathan had moved from being an unemployed aquaculturalist to being a full time youth detention officer with the state government public service. This new employment position would become the stable platform from which Nathan would later initiate another round of ‘spinning plates’ practices (this time voluntarily) that would eventuate in his owning and running a highly successful events management company. While many of the transition practices enacted by Nathan could be viewed as realised negotiations with numerous employers, many were resolved as incidental discoveries through which Nathan came to understand the value of the connections he was making. His improved employability was being incidentally negotiated through each of the work opportunities that arose as a result of his broadening associations with potential employers. For example, he was not to know that the relationship he was building with the painting contractor would lead to connections with a builder and then other builders who benefitted from his developing skill set and work ethic. Similarly, he was not to know that sending his science and fisheries related CV to a professional employment service would lead to offers of work in the completely unrelated field of youth detention. And overall, he did not realise until much later in his working life that he had been developing as an entrepreneur through these many incidental accomplishments and the complementary attitudes he was inadvertently cultivating. His willingness, driven by the need of immediate income following sudden unemployment, to take up whatever work opportunity arose, led to him ‘spinning numerous plates’ and thereby developing new and useful skills and contacts that sustained his employability and secured his livelihood.

3: Project Management For some participants, rather than the reactive urgency generated by sudden unemployment, the need of continuing future employment could be addressed through careful planning and management. Such a proactive response to the foreseeable loss or decline of employment, or the planned move from current employment to future employment, can be seen as a form of project management whereby individuals faced with these kinds of change circumstances enter into negotiations that will

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hopefully generate the favourable future outcome of secure employability. The foreseeable market decline created by the Covid 19 pandemic as workers and businesses curtailed activity for predominantly health protection reasons was one instance of foreseeable employment decline. To illustrate – Simon was a business man who could see that with the closure of many private and public facilities and the need of people to be locked down in their homes for months on end, his businesses were not going to be able to generate the levels of activity and income he needed. His field was software development and application and on this skill set he had established a number of different businesses servicing the sports and recreation club industry. Across the nation, sports clubs, like all manner of recreation clubs, closed down (intermittently or permanently) through the two years of pandemic emergency (2020 and 2021). Very early in this period, Simon looked for opportunity to both protect and expand his businesses. Two options were taken up. Firstly, he used the slowdown and halt in his current businesses to improve and expand the services he offered. New software was developed and existing software was enhanced with the result that the products and services he provided his existing clients were better able to support the running of their businesses as the pandemic emergency waned and they returned to full function. Secondly, he developed a new business that addressed one of the immediate needs emergent from the outset of the pandemic, namely the supply of medical grade PPE (personal protective equipment used by hospital and medical staff to protect against infectious materials). The speed of Covid infection through the community lead to PPE, predominantly N95 or P2 quality face mask respirators, becoming mandatory for public use. The short supply of PPE became acute. In interview Simon outlined the tasks and actions necessary to the creation and operation of this business – in much the same methodical way as project managers use Gantt charts to plan and map their progress. For Simon, the many tasks required and appropriately scheduled included registering the business with the numerous regulatory bodies, setting up accounts, sourcing and securing product from international manufacturers, getting product approved by the TGA (therapeutic goods administration) and other government and medical bodies, building the market and distribution channels, etc. A very high degree of energy and effort, research and planning, was required to build this new business that continues to operate. Being proactive, with clear goals and specifically targeted actions that are well executed and sequenced, is the basis of the project management style transition trajectory. Such management does not guarantee success but it traces a trajectory of goal oriented and planned overlapping decisions and actions that address evident challenges to employability and livelihood.

4: Carousel For some participants, the starting point of substantial worklife transition becomes the seeming end point or outcome of a trajectory out of one kind of employment, through a range of alternative kinds of employment and back into the original kind

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of employment. Such a transition trajectory can be described as like being on a carousel – going around and around only to, figuratively, get off where one got on. Two contrasting illustrations are presented. First – By the end of January, the first month of 2020, Jane had completed her university studies and all the flight training and exams that were a necessary component of the cadetship program she was undertaking with a large national aviation company – she graduated with an aviation degree – she was very successfully pursuing her dream of becoming a commercial pilot through the paid cadetship program in which she would now continue. She took leave in February and returned in March to find herself, like thousands of other employees, stood down as the Covid 19 pandemic brought domestic and international flight travel to a halt. By November, and again like so many other employees, she was made redundant after having been reliant on the government financial support package for income. Jane moved home with her parents and managed to find some work with a call centre. She was spending her money on keeping her flight hours and aircraft ratings up (at costs of thousands of dollars) and undertaking training courses (first aid, dangerous goods handling, etc.) that could make her attractive to the smaller general aviation companies that might still operate despite the pandemic emergency. These kinds of companies were the scenic flights companies, charter companies and the fly in fly out carriers for remote mining companies. They continued to need pilots but there were now many unemployed pilots in the labour market. Getting to these companies was difficult. They were typically in the tropical north and west of the country, thousands of kilometres away, and many state borders had been closed and cities placed in lockdown. Jane persisted, contacting many companies in north-west Australia. Within six months of redundancy she was flying for a small general aviation company that supported tour operators in north-west Australia, thousands of kilometres from her home base on the eastern seaboard. Her carousel ride had taken one year. She was now, once again, a working commercial pilot, albeit in smaller aircraft with a much smaller company operating from a very small town in the remote reaches of Australia where aircraft were essential elements of the transport system  – and despite the pandemic emergency. Highly intentional, targeted, proactive  – the numerous negotiations that marked Jane’s learning and response to her need of employment in her chosen field are testament to her determination. The support of parents, accessible training and flight opportunity, albeit very expensive, were essential to her success but she did not get off the carousel until her goals were realised. She sustained her focus, did not allow herself to get off the carousel, and subsequently sustained her employability to again secure work as a pilot. Second and by contrast – A couple of years out of secondary school and after many unskilled labouring jobs and a six month stint in the Army (a potential career choice Max had been pursuing but after initial training realised this was not for him), Max decides to go to university where he undertakes a dual degree in criminology and international relations – his specific objective is to work in the government foreign affairs department and the holding of an appropriate degree qualification is essential to meet the application requirements. To support himself through this degree he takes some day labouring work in housing construction but eventually

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drops this in favour of part-time evening work with a cinema company. Over the approximate six years of his tertiary studies (this time includes some discontinued study and a change of university) Max continued to work for the cinema company across its numerous city sites and had been promoted to an assistant management level – all the while retaining his focus on working in the field of foreign affairs. On completion of his degree, Max finds that changes to the structure and operation of the government foreign affairs department has meant that they are no longer recruiting for graduate positions – there are no employment positions for which he can apply. This lack of opportunity corresponded with the cinema company offering him progression to general management level and full-time employment which he gladly accepted. Now eight years later he continues to enjoy his work and management role for the same cinema company. Essentially, Max discovered that the carousel of casual cinema management employment he thought he was on, as he worked and studied to become eligible for employment in his chosen field of foreign affairs, was in fact the work he was sustaining as his primary occupation. Through experience and opportunity, he had incidentally become a successful cinema business manager. It would seem that this occupational field had chosen him. The essential learning that was the foundation of his sustained employability was sourced through his experience on the carousel of addressing livelihood needs as a developing cinema manager. He did not need to alight the carousel.

5: Full Renovation For some participants in this research the degree of change they experienced as substantial transition could only be described as immense. The walls, roofs and foundations of their lives were, metaphorically speaking, torn down and needing to be rebuilt – as might be the case when the old family home is completely gutted for full renovation by builders and architects who are yet to confirm their plans for the new building that will eventuate. The full renovation transition trajectory is life altering. It can impact so many aspects of a life that the single element of work, despite its significance as the predominant generator of income and foundation of livelihood, can seem of minor importance. Such transition can involve physical relocation, often to another country, and immersion in foreign culture, often with the need of learning another language. It can involve doing so with little to no personal resources beyond a willingness to try to fit in and the hope of success in the faltering attempt. Such transition can demand great sacrifice, great courage, great endurance. Its outcomes, if they eventuate, are more than uncertain – they can be unfathomable. Full renovation transition can be the experience of the resettled refugee, the migrant, the newly disabled, the returning soldier, the released long term prisoner. Its parameters vary – its outcomes, when successful, inspiring. Full renovation transitions are deeply personal experiences and can be mediated by innumerable factors and revealing of many transformations. Two contrasting illustrations are presented.

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First, Salim is a refugee migrant. As a young man he graduates secondary school and completes a university degree in mechanical engineering. Unfortunately he is unable to work because his religious faith makes him persona non grata following the Islamic revolution in his country. For two years and with a young family of his own he takes what work he can get through his family and friend connections – bus driving, truck driving, sales assistant in a hardware shop – anything. To avoid conscription into the army amid ongoing war with a neighbouring country and the threat of death and persecution due to his faith, Salim flees his country with his wife and child to secure United Nations refugee status in a central Asian country. After approximately one year he and his family are accepted for resettlement in Australia where the challenging task of rebuilding their lives begins – with English language classes, sporadic periods of paid work (factory assembly, pizza delivery, taxi driving, house painting, construction labouring, cleaning, etc.), starting into and abandoning another engineering degree (because his previous qualifications cannot be recognised in Australia), moving from one city to another and the need of establishing connections in a new city. This move (2–3 years after arriving in Australia and with an additional child) and the new connections it enables leads to more stable work in the construction industry following the completion of a vocational certificate qualification in building – until a back injury requiring surgery forces him into far less physical work. Salim buys a coffee franchise and starts into the hospitality industry, with no experience at all, as a coffee shop proprietor (who drives buses for the local city council from time to time)  – something he sustains for nearly five years before selling and beginning his return to the building industry and the kind of work he has come to feel is his passion, his vocation. Today, and more than twenty years later, he retains his work in the housing construction industry as a project manager for a large building company, views himself as proudly Australian and able to pursue his passions. Second, Veronica. As a young woman and secondary school graduate, Veronica pursued tertiary studies at an agricultural college with the expectation of working closely with and managing horses on completion. Her goals were realised and she began work with a thoroughbred stud breeding farm. Twelve months later and after her request for a wage increase was denied, she took work with a horse trainer where she enjoyed working more closely with the animals rather than working across all aspects of a farm’s agricultural practices – then moved on to take work on a warm blood stud working with horses that compete in dressage rather than on race tracks. Two years into her working life, pursuing her passion with horses and suffering the poor wages and conditions this work entails she traveled overseas for a few months and returned from this holiday to take up work with a large blinds and awnings company. Across the following five years with this company and her developing customer services skills she was promoted to become the state sales manager – then moved to work for another two years with a wholesale blind distribution company before falling pregnant and finishing work due to pregnancy associated illness. Several children later and having successfully completed a vocational certificate qualification in book-keeping, Veronica started managing the accounts of her husband’s roofing business and looking after her growing family. Ten years later

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the family moves to another state and another city and following her developing interest in fitness and the completion of a vocational certificate qualification in fitness training, she takes work as a fitness instructor at a gymnasium. This enabled her to take additional classes and personal clients as the beginnings of establishing her own business, work around the schooling requirements of her children and continue to support her husband’s business. Today, and just over twenty years later, Veronica is very much enjoying working in the fitness industry and in ways that align with her needs and interests but still describes her vocational passion as working with horses. Both Salim and Veronica, differently yet completely, have transformed their lives from the days of their initial entry into the world of work as high school graduates. The range of work-learning experiences each has enacted, the range of negotiation practices that have characterised that learning and the range of personal and social transformations transacted through those negotiations are deep and broad. More than age and lived experience, more than skill and desire, more than training and qualification, more than occupational diversity and location, more than illness and altered capacity, more than personal drive and social support, more than all the influences of these significant factors, these two people have found ways to be and accept themselves through all the interactions and changes that might be said to comprise the plasticity and flux of their work lives. They have seemingly moved freely along continuums of intentionality and goal resolution to enact numerous forms of work-learning negotiation. And in doing so, they have transformed struggle into opportunity, opportunity into purposeful goals, goals into realisation, and realisation into planning foundations for future progression in the transition trajectories that have defined their working lives to date. They have, figuratively speaking, across a range of worklife transition experiences that trace a trajectory of full renovation, emerged as very different people from who they were when they started pursuing their worklife goals.

The Value of Transition The five worklife transition trajectories outlined above are not advanced as a definitive set of trajectory forms. Nor are they advanced as exclusive or specific for any of the 66 workers who offered their worklife history interviews as data for this project. Indeed, many of the participants reported transitions that could be described by several of the trajectories outlined. For example, Nathan, who was spinning plates after being suddenly thrust into unemployment reported the incremental steps that led him into establishing his event management company. Veronica, similarly reported the incremental steps that enabled her becoming a fitness trainer as but part of her broader full renovation trajectory. All 66 participants recounted transition experiences that traced two more of the five trajectories outlined. More important than the accurate description of worklife transitions as trajectories of varying kinds, is the question of their value for the individuals who live them.

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The value of experience is about accurately assessing the worth of the things (e.g., ideas, positions, roles, responsibilities, skills, expectations, etc.) being transacted through activity and the worth of the outcomes generated as they manifest and demonstrate differences between what was and what now is. Hence work and learning, the negotiations by which they are enacted (e.g., engaging with people, equipment, problems, concepts, etc.) and the transition trajectories they define, become transactions that can turn novices into experts, wasteful processes into efficiencies, the unmotivated into the ambitious, etc. For many of the 66 men and women whose worklife history interviews are the data foundation of this chapter, and particularly for some of those whose stories have been used to illustrate the five transition trajectories above, their capacity to assess their work experience was dramatically altered by their transition. Their bases of assessment were weakened, for example, by their being removed from the familiar CoPs (see Lave & Wenger, 1991) in which they were very actively engaged. Nathan’s long association with aquaculture was completely severed. Salim was forced to abandon his country and his extended family. Annita lost her husband. The normal, the familiar, the highly relied upon – has been removed. The prospect of making sense of anything following such life altering experiences, let alone accurately assessing ones’ circumstances is, at best, improbable – until new connections are made, new relationships are forged, new opportunities are recognised, new learning has occurred, new negotiations entered into. Further, and as Archer (2000) advances, assessment of the value of experience is based in the personal criteria people hold as their ‘primary concerns’, the things they ‘care about’. These are foundational of the choices made, the degree to which people, workers, invest themselves in the activities they are part of – their exercise of personal agency. When these bases are torn away by substantial work transition events, the assessment of the value of work, of work related learning, of potential work opportunity, becomes questionable. It seems too easy to suggest that all worklife transitions are valuable. To claim, for example, that for individual workers, the negotiated work-learning practices necessitated by the need to sustain employability generate positive enhancements to self-understanding and skill development  – or that the avoidance of prolonged unemployment is strong evidence of labour market survival, especially when market conditions are poor or in decline – seems cavalier, an over simplification of life challenges. However, and with a fear of inaccurate assessment, such research claims appear reasonable given the worklife transition stories that illustrate the five trajectories outlined above. As challenging and as difficult as it was for Salim and Veronica, for Annita and for Nathan and the others to endure their transition experiences, none can be said to have failed – they all secured the successful transition outcomes of satisfying employment and better living conditions they pursued. The many and varied socio-personal work-learning and work-transition negotiations they enacted realised clearly identifiable positive outcomes. Yet the question of the value of substantial worklife transitions remains given that they are both deeply personal and socially ubiquitous practices. None of the 66 participants reported not having had a successful worklife transition. Such transitions and the trajectories they define are incomplete it seems until some form of identifiable success is

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realised – even if that success is a resolution to do something else because current activity is proving insufficient. This perspective embeds the value of worklife transition within the individual. They, and by the personal criteria grounded in their subjective world view, are able to assess the value of their actions and outcomes. So, Jane chooses not to get off the carousel until the time is right. Nathan seems never reluctant to spin more plates. Simon refuses to let supply issues curtail his project plans. Max readjusts his perspective on current activity when his initial objectives become redundant. They are the agents of their transition trajectory and the value it brings is theirs to assess and realise. Hence, supporting workers in their worklife transitions should be about assisting them to sustain those value propositions. They know what they want – they know why it is important and worth pursuing – therefore, worklife transition support should be about the timely provision of resources that enable individuals to realise that value. At a public policy and provision level, as the participant stories above attest, those resources should include accessible education and training, financial support for living expenses, small business development support and child care provision at levels far greater than is currently available to those in substantial worklife transition. Such support, at its most fundamental, could assist workers to re-enter the labour market and or create income producing ventures sooner than they otherwise would under current support conditions. This individual or personal perspective represents what is called a ‘value claiming’ approach to negotiated practice. That is, negotiations continue until one or other of the parties involved decides that they have secured what they want. The assumption is that value is fixed or definable in advance and when that point of value is reached, actions taken to secure it necessarily cease – the objective has been realised. As clearly demonstrated by the transition trajectory stories and forms outlined in the previous section, worklife transitions are value claiming practices. And that value is, in part, assessed by the kind of trajectory enacted. For example, the spinning plates trajectory makes all work opportunity valuable and whatever single plate (i.e., job) can be spun the longest is the most valuable. By contrast, the carousel trajectory makes additional unrelated job opportunity worthless. Such opportunity is at best an unwanted distraction from the prized preferred goal. Nathan highly valued emergent new job opportunity as he spun the plates that secured his needs. Jane could not allow herself to be distracted by such opportunity that might see her alight the carousel too soon. Additionally, and perhaps more significantly as socio-personal negotiations, worklife transitions are ‘value creating’ practices enacted by a range of parties, beyond a single individual worker, each looking to secure outcomes that address their needs. The value of met needs is not necessarily fixed or discernible prior to the negotiation being enacted but is rather an emergent outcome of a shared relationship building process. For example and at its simplest, workers seeking work engage with employers seeking employees. The arrangements they come to through their negotiations are the value created – and this value may or may not be what each expected. For example, Max spent years working towards a goal of employment in the field of foreign affairs. Through those years he supported himself in

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work for the cinema company. Just as Max was invested in his career ambitions and its requirements, the cinema company was invested in him – he had developed sufficient skills and competence through his work that they had promoted him to management level. The offer of greater employment to general manager level could be seen as the cinema company seeking to secure its investment after its years of supporting Max’s on-the-job skill development and establishing him as a trusted and respected employee. It is not unreasonable to assume that they did not want to lose him. Max’s worklife transition trajectory as riding a carousel is also the cinema company’s management recruitment and development program. Similarly, Annita’s incremental steps trajectory into dance teaching was the school’s dance curriculum addition to its student offerings – probably making it more attractive to a broader range of parents looking for opportunities for their children. And similarly again but with a more deeply society wide impact, Simon’s project management trajectory into new business building went some way to alleviating a national shortage of PPE that governments were working to redress as well as bringing additional business to the organisations he partnered with. These few instances of value creation emergent from the worklife transition trajectories illustrated earlier are clear and evident. It is not unreasonable to suggest that deeper analysis of participant stories would reveal other and perhaps less obvious examples of such value creation. There are many parties engaged in the worklife transition negotiations of a single worker – individuals, families, friends, employers, education and training providers, governments, businesses – many can and do share in the value created by such transitions. The value creation perspective begins to account for the greater number of parties engaged in the negotiations that constitute substantial worklife transitions. It suggests that supporting such transitions requires better understanding the needs of all involved and how those needs intersect and interact in bringing about positive outcomes within the trajectory in which they are negotiated. The full renovation trajectory, for example, is invariably longer, broader, deeper than the other transition trajectories. It can engage greater disparity across distance, time, culture, goal orientation, etc. Greater numbers and varying degrees of influences are coalescing and diverging through the numerous changes being negotiated. Its dragging on through the failure to identify and adequately support the bringing together of all impacted parties can only delay successful outcomes. Indeed, across all the trajectories outlined above, better public policy and provision means enabling and supporting stronger relationships among the organisations and stakeholders impacted by worklife transition. For example, the triple helix of worker, employer and training provider cannot be generalised via a one size fits all approach – doing so, for example, discounts the needs of regions, dismisses the advantage of diversity and ignores the often necessary learning immediacy the different trajectories make visible. Equally, incentives that bring larger organisations with strong research and development resources together with small organisations to share and partner in the development of innovative process and product generation are required. The same is true of access to expertise. Businesses and education/research organisation partnerships need to be more broadly nurtured.

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Conclusion Substantial worklife transitions are far more than the struggle and experience of individual workers seeking to re-establish themselves in the labour market and so build a livelihood for themselves. They are better seen as occupational or employment based practices that identify instances of the socio-personal nature of the many negotiations that comprise work, learning and employability. Such negotiations are not separate activities. They are interrelated and implicate numerous stakeholders as partners in the processes by which they are built and the outcomes they generate. The influence and or magnitude of these interrelations and implications should not be underestimated. When Jane can’t fly, we can’t travel. If she can’t access necessary training, we are in danger. If Simon is not selling PPE, our health system is less reliable. When Nathan is not growing crayfish, our food sources are more limited. When Salim is not building houses, the national housing shortage is more acute. And so on it goes – when one is in need of transition support, we are all in need of support. Such claims should not be dismissed as exaggeration rhetoric. They are declared here to highlight the interconnectedness that worklife transition practices identify. They are premised on the socio-personal perspective – worklife transition and the trajectories they trace are work practices, work is a learning practice, learning is a negotiation practice, negotiation is a transition practice. Better understanding and supporting these numerous practices and the workers who are constantly engaged in them can follow from acknowledging and recognising the negotiations on which they are premised and the trajectories in which they are enacted. Supporting an individual worker in transition is supporting us all, supporting society to accomplish the improved performance it relies on for greater prosperity.

References ABS. (2022). Australian Bureau of Statistics. Unemployment. Available at: https://www.abs.gov. au/statistics/detailed-­methodology-­information/concepts-­sources-­methods/labour-­statistics-­ concepts-­sources-­and-­methods/2021/concepts-­and-­sources/unemployment (15 Feb 2022). Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge University Press. Baltes, P. B. (1978). Life-span development and behavior. Academic. Baltes, P.  B. (1987). Theoretical propositions of life-span developmental psychology: On the dynamics between growth and decline. Developmental Psychology, 23(5), 611–626. Billett, S. (2008). Learning throughout working life: A relational interdependence between personal and social agency. British Journal of Educational Studies, 56(1), 39–58. Billett, S. (2022). Learning in and through work: Positioning the individual. In C.  Harteis, D. Gjbels, & E. Kyndt (Eds.), Research approaches on workplace learning: Insights from a growing field (pp. 157–175). Springer. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Smith, R., & Choy, S. (2021). The kinds and character of changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 40, 1–15. Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., & Filliettaz, L. (Eds.). (2023a). Sustaining employability through worklife learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature.

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Billett, S., Le, A. H., Choy, S., & Smith, R. (2023b). The imperatives of and for worklife learning: A review. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Black, S., & Chow, E. (2022). Job mobility in Australia during the Covid 19 pandemic. Reserve Bank of Australia. June Bulletin 2022. Available at: https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2022/jun/job-­mobility-­in-­australia-­during-­the-­covid-­19-­pandemic.html Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2021). Thematic analysis: A practical guide to understanding and doing. Sage. Bridges, W. (2004). Transitions: Making sense of life’s changes. Da Capo Press. Chan, S. (2013). Learning through apprenticeship: Belonging to a workplace, becoming and being. Vocations and Learning, 6(3), 367–383. Engestrom, Y. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Orienta-Konsultit. Engestrom, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualisation. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133–156. Engestrom, Y. (2008). From teams to knots: Activity-theoretical studies of collaboration and learning at work. Cambridge University Press. Engestrom, Y., & Sannino, A. (2010). Studies of expansive learning: Foundations, findings and future challenges. Educational Research Review, 5, 10–24. Featherman, D., Lerner, R., & Perlmutter, M. (1994). Life-span development and behaviour. Routledge. FYA – Foundation for Young Australians. (2017). The new work order: Ensuring young Australians have skills and experience for the jobs of the future, not the past. Available at: https://www.fya. org.au/app/uploads/2021/09/new-­work-­order-­2015.pdf Gherardi, S. (2019). How to conduct a practice-based study: Problems and methods (2nd ed.). Edward Elgar Publishing. Hager, P. (2000). Know-how and workplace practical judgement. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 34(2), 281–296. Heckhausen, J., Wrosch, C., & Schulz, R. (2010). A motivational theory of life-span development. Psychological Review, 117(1), 32–60. Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice Hall. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge University Press. Le, A. H., Billett, S., Olesen, H., & Bargallie, D. (this volume). Investigating learning for employability: Method and procedures. In S.  Billett, H.  Salling-Olesen, & L.  Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer. Parsons, F. (1909). Choosing a vocation. Houghton-Mifflin. Rogoff, B. (1995). Observing socio-cultural activity on three planes: Participatory appropriation, guided participation and apprenticeship. In J.  V. Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A.  Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 139–164). Cambridge University Press. Rudisill, J., Edwards, J., Hershberger, P., Jadwin, J., & McKee, J. (2010). Coping with transitions over the worklife. In T.  Miller (Ed.), Handbook of stressful transitions across the lifespan (pp. 111–132). Springer. Salmela-Aro, K. (2009). Personal goals and well-being during critical life transitions: The four C’s—Channelling, choice, co-agency and compensation. Advances in Life Course Research, 14(1), 63–73. Smith, R. (2018). Learning in work: A negotiation model of socio-personal learning. Springer.

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Terry, G., & Hayfield, N. (2021). Essentials of thematic analysis. American Psychological Association. Vondracek, F., Lerner, R., & Schulenberg, J. (2019). Career development: A life-span developmental approach. Routledge. Wertsch, J. (1995). The need for action in sociocultural research. In J.  Wertsch, P. del Rio, & A. Alvarez (Eds.), Sociocultural studies of mind (pp. 56–74). Cambridge University Press. Raymond Smith is an educator and learning theorist who works in the fields of adult learning, organisational learning and vocational education. His research focuses primarily on the personal nature of adults’ learning as it is generated by and emerges from their needs and contributions in the social context of work.  

Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation Stephen Billett

, Anh Hai Le, and Laurent Filliettaz

Abstract  Across working life, there are daily and continual challenges for workers to learn to adapt to the changes required in their work. This comprises much of what constitutes learning across their working lives. However, across those lives most adults are confronted with significant transitions that they have to negotiate as their occupations change fundamentally or are rendered redundant, their personal and family circumstances change, either voluntarily or involuntary they have to do change their location. The learning associated with these transitions can extend to needing to learn new languages, but also ways of working and engaging in work settings. So, beyond of the everyday and incremental learning that arises through work, is the need to negotiate these challenges, which can comprise significant challenges for their learning and development. This chapter sets out to illustrate and elaborate how those transitions have impacted and been negotiated by working age Australians, of different kinds (i.e., cultural background, gender and age). Drawing upon the data from the survey of over 600 respondents, the chapter identifies the kind of changes in these respondents’ working life that generated or necessitated these transitions, the impacts and set out the requirements for the kinds of learning they require to negotiate those transitions. In many ways, these set out the goals for what is often referred to as lifelong learning or learning across working life and advances the kinds of policy and practice consideration needed for individuals to achieve the kinds of outcomes that governments, workplaces and working age adults themselves want to achieve. So, this chapter provides a basis for coming to understand what the goals for policy and practice interventions might be to assist realising these outcomes.

S. Billett (*) · A. H. Le Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] L. Filliettaz University of Geneva, Corsier, Switzerland © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_8

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Keywords  Worklife learning · Worklife transitions · Lifelong learning · Worklife learning · Negotiations · Age · Gender · Cultural and ethnic identities · Employability · Educational provisions · Policy · Government · Changes in work

Securing Learning Across Working Life Throughout human history and across cultures, adults’ learning in and through their working lives has progressed largely and necessarily through their own constructive efforts and guidance from those with whom they work closely (Barbieri-Low, 2007; Gimpel, 1961; Menon & Varma, 2010; Turnbull, 1993). When required to generate responses to occupational challenges, similar processes were enacted (Epstein, 2005). In recent times, the interest of government and supra-government agencies in continuing employability has increased and has shifted the focus to promote further development of adults’ occupational capacities through educational programs and practice settings (Frost et  al., 2010). This governmental, professional, and industry interest in “lifelong education” largely premised on responding to economic imperatives has become focussed on maintaining employability through lifelong learning. Indeed, a focus on lifelong education and learning has become a global movement in response to the constantly evolving requirements for occupational competence and specific workplace performance needs and their contributions to workplaces’ viability and nation states’ social and economic goals (OECD, 2013). The provisions of lifelong education, by orthodoxy, often comprise taught experiences within educational institutions and are increasingly managed and mandated administratively by government sponsors (OECD, 2010). Yet, such an orientation may overlook the centuries-old processes of learning through work, and then considering how those processes might be augmented by those provided through intentional educational programs. However, these experiences alone cannot guarantee the kinds of learning that are required, without the active engagement and constructive efforts of working age adults (i.e., the learners). That learning cannot be so easily mandated. What is afforded educatively by the social institutions, albeit through educational institutions, workplace or other settings is ultimately mediated by individuals and premised on their readiness, interest, and agency (Billett, 2009). It is they who construe and construct what they experience: what they learn. So, more than a focus on lifelong educational experiences there is a need to understand what prompts, directs and informs adults’ worklife learning efforts. For instance, working age adults must take action to initiate, navigate and negotiate transitions that occur across their working lives (Billett et al., 2021b). Transitions can include seeking out another job, engaging in a new occupation or form of employment, and deciding what worklife goals that they want to achieve and how. This includes their consideration of balances between worklife and other activities and commitments (e.g., family, community). Navigating these transitions often requires learning new ways of working, engagement with others and extending their occupational knowledge or acquiring

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new occupational capacities. Often, these occur in tandem with managing new roles and expectations as adults (e.g., family, community responsibilities). It follows that, approaches to understanding what contributes to working age adults’ learning need to go beyond the governmental discourse that adults’ learning across working life can be realized through lifelong education (i.e., those of educational institutions and practices) (Billett, 2022). Instead, it is necessary to understand the imperatives and changes working age adults face; and the kinds and qualities of educative experiences they need to confront those challenges and negotiate those transitions. In addition to provisions of intentional educative experiences are also those that arise through day-to-day work activities and interactions that are mediated by workers themselves as much as by more experienced co-workers (OECD, 2016). These kinds of learning experiences constitute what likely stands as the most ubiquitous and continuous contributions to their learning both between and during worklife transitions. Whilst educational programs are at times essential, their primacy in the lifelong education discourse distorts and limits considerations of other kinds of contributions to effective worklife learning. In particular, this privileging can exclude or downplay learning that is supported and arises outside of intentional educational programs and experiences such as those in their workplaces or work practices and through contributions provided by communities (i.e., family and other familiars). Therefore, considerations of learning across working life needs to be premised on the totality of the educative experiences that are afforded to adults, on the one hand, and how they come to engage and mediate those experiences, on the other (Billett et al., 2023). Together, these constitute what is central to the interest of government, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults themselves: working age adults’ employability. So, the premise here is that, whilst essential, provisions of educational and workplace experiences alone (i.e., lifelong education) may be insufficient to explain, elaborate, or effectively support adults’ learning across working life, including the transitions they initiate and must negotiate. Individuals’ learning efforts and practices are also central to this explanation. Also, largely unacknowledged are contributions that arise through the community adults inhabit. These premises are illuminated and elaborated by drawing on an investigation of lifelong learning of Australian workers and the separate but interdependent contributions of the individual (i.e., person), education (i.e., educative experiences), and community (i.e., opportunities, support, and guidance) found to have mediated the worklife learning of individuals (Billett et  al., 2023). The findings from analysing worklife history data of over 60 Australian workers. These findings indicate that the transitions the informants reported comprised a set of changes that initiate, shape and present worklife transitions. For these informants, the relationships between their ongoing learning and the need for specific kinds of educational support for that learning (i.e., mediation provided by educative experiences) were most accentuated by the need to negotiate key transitions across their adult working lives (Billett et  al., 2021b). From reviewing their life history narrative data, securing transitions to achieve the desired significant learning and developmental outcomes was prompted by and required to secure those transitions is premised on three mediating factors: (a)

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person (e.g., capacities, personal needs, ambitions, trajectories), (b) educative support (e.g., experiences intentionally supporting that learning), and (c) “community” (i.e., affordances outside of the person such as family and familiars, ethnic/cultural affiliates, workplaces, opportunity, societal sentiment, or happenstance). To advance further these initial findings and tentative premises from these 66 informants, it was necessary to determine whether and how they are applicable to a broader population of working age Australians. Consequently, from the analysis of these life history narratives, a survey was then developed, trialled and administered to verify, elaborate and extend the findings from this inquiry with a broader population of Australian working age adults. This empirical work is the key focus of this chapter, drawing upon the data from the survey and how this aligns with the overall concerns of this project. This chapter is specifically concerned with the survey respondents’ worklife learning experiences.

Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation As foreshadowed, the processes and findings described and discussed here are part of a project that sought to understand how learning across working life can most effectively arise through work, educational and community activities and interactions. The project’s purpose is to generate evidence-based policies and informed practices supporting work-life learning arrangements promoting Australian workers’ employability. It comprises three phases including worklife history interviews in Phase 1, online surveys in Phase 2, and analysis of the data sets to inform policy and practice in Phase 3. Phase 1 interviews were conducted with 66 working age Australians to record retrospective accounts of their working lives. Subsequently, Phase 2 online surveys were administered to a broader population of working age Australians to verify and elaborate findings from Phase 1. The administration and distribution of the survey was facilitated through personal contact, unions, associations, professional bodies, institutional contacts, community organisations and through social media. The project was subject to ethical clearance through Griffith University (GU No: 2019/816). It is the survey’s findings that are presented and discussed in this chapter. However, findings from worklife histories, where relevant, were used to clarify and verify the discussion of the survey findings. The survey consisted of four sections gathering information and responses about (a) demographic background, (b) occupational transition, (c) learning through working life, and (d) strategies to promote lifelong learning. It provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The survey items consisted of a series of multiple-­ choice, Likert-scaled and open-ended questions for respondents to provide explanations, comments and suggestions. Five-point Likert scales were used to measure, for example, the impact of occupational transitions, the effectiveness of different learning processes and the importance of different strategies to promote lifelong learning. The open questions generated views about efficacy of strategies, for instance.

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The findings described and reported here are those derived from descriptive and inferential (i.e., Chi-square test) analyses of the survey in Phase 2, with a particular focus on occupational transitions, i.e., the reported major occupational transitions, changes initiating, factors supporting these transitions, and their impact. The items in the survey gathered demographic information about cultural identify, age, gender, highest qualification, employment status, and workplace size. The next section invited responses to a set of items arising from interview data with regard to: (i) the changes that initiated the transitions, (ii) supporting factors, and (iii) impact of these transitions. The administration and distribution of the survey was facilitated through social media platforms and engagement with organisations and networks who were able to circulate the information/links to potential informants. For instance, unions, associations and professional bodies for various occupations across Australia were contacted. Engagements with specific communities, including Indigenous Australians and refugee migrants also occurred to secure data. In those instances, specific strategies were used to secure respondents. For refugee migrant and migrant communities, individuals in those communities were identified who were able to facilitate the completion of the surveys by members of their communities. For indigenous respondents, specific lists of informants were identified, and networks contacted, and gift vouchers issued for completed survey forms. The findings reported below are derived from 678 respondents, identified as Australian born non-Indigenous (n  =  276 or 40.9%), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (n = 106 or 15.7%), migrants from English-speaking background (n = 177 or 26.2%) and migrants from non-English-speaking background (n = 116 or 17.2%) who completed the survey. The representations from Aboriginal and migrant backgrounds are greater than those of the Australian population. That is, the Indigenous Australians represent 3.2% (Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS], 2022a), however, with 27.6% of the population were born overseas (ABS, 2022c), their representation is consistent with the percentage of respondents. The respondents were predominantly represented by female (65%) as compared to an equal gender distribution of the population – 49.3% of male and 50.7% of female (ABS, 2022e), so there is a bias in the sample favouring females. Over 74% of the respondents were aged 40 or above, with this age distribution being representative of the population (i.e., male population with a median age of 37 and female of 39 years old) (ABS, 2022e). Table 1 presents some demographic data about cultural and ethnic identities, gender and age of these respondents, and their alignment with specific informant characteristics. Then, the number of respondents and how they constituted a percentage of each of the variables is set out in the two right-hand columns. The respondents represent a relatively highly educated segment of the Australian population. That is, 76% of them hold a degree as their highest qualification (i.e., diploma/advanced diploma, bachelor or postgraduate) as compared to 63% of Australians aged 15–64 having a non-school qualification in 2018–19 (ABS, 2020). In this way, the sample is biased towards those with higher education qualifications. However, that is unlikely to be a crucial impediment as it is these kinds of informants who are most likely to engage in structured educational experiences. This sample permits an analysis of a cohort of workers who likely have experienced a

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Table 1  Cultural/ethnic identities, gender and age of 678 respondents Variable Identified as

Gender

Age

Characteristics Australian born (non-Indigenous) Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Migrant from English-speaking background Migrant from non-English-speaking background Female Male Not specified 19 and below 20–29 30–39 40–49 50–59 60+

N 276 106 177 116 438 234 4 13 67 159 146 182 108

% 40.9 15.7 26.2 17.2 64.8 34.6 .6 1.9 9.9 23.6 21.6 27.0 16.0

combination of both lifelong education and work life learning experiences. Most of the respondents were currently employed (92%) albeit of different types (fixed term/contract, casual/self-employed or permanent) at the time they responded to the survey. The locations of their work were distributed equally across different sizes of workplace with 44.3% in small and medium enterprises (≤199 employees) and 42.2% in large enterprises (≥200 employees). This again does not reflect the kinds of workplaces that Australians engage in (ABS, 2022b). One reason to focus on the size of workplaces is that larger workplaces are more likely to provide a wider range of intentional educational support and experiences (e.g., Billett, 2000; Lizier & Reich, 2021), whereas, sometimes, smaller workplaces provide a broader range of workplace activities and interactions (e.g., Billett et al., 2003, 2021a). The reason for this distinction is that, potentially, quite different kinds of workplace affordances (i.e., support for learning) are experienced in these different kinds and sizes of workplaces. Table 2 presents some background data about qualifications, employment status and workplace size of these respondents. So, overall, the distributions of the respondents are not wholly representative of the Australian population. However, and importantly they give carriage to the key measures associated with people (i.e., population, people and community, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and education), labour (i.e., labour force), and economy (i.e., business indicators) (ABS, 2022f).

Worklife Transitions The survey respondents were asked to recall their most recent significant occupational or worklife transitions and indicate the changes they confronted that initiated those transitions and the support they needed, and their impact as a negotiated those transitions.

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Table 2  Qualifications, employment status and workplace size of 678 respondents Variable Highest qualification

Current employment status

Workplace size

Values Junior secondary school Senior secondary school (i.e., year 11 and 12) Vocational certificate Diploma/Advanced Diploma Bachelor Degree Postgraduate Qualification Fixed-term/Contract Casual/Self-employed Permanent Seeking (other) employment Unemployed Retired Less than 20 20–199 200+ Not applicable

N 27 53 82 100 172 241 170 127 324 33 35 32 125 174 285 91

% 4.0 7.9 12.1 14.8 25.5 35.7 25.1 18.7 47.8 4.9 5.2 4.7 18.5 25.8 42.2 13.5

Changes Initiating Transitions Figure 1 presents the frequencies of changes that initiated the reported transitions. The set of six changes in the survey derived from thematic review and analysis of the transitions was reported in the worklife history interviews in Phase 1. These six kinds of changes include (i) stages of life changes, (ii) change of employment status, (iii) change in occupation, (iv) change in location, (v) change in physical and psychological health/well-being, and (vi) change in personal/lifestyle (see Billett et al., 2021b). As depicted in Fig. 1, among the six kinds of changes that initiate, shape, and represent worklife transitions, changes in employment status were most frequently reported (40%), followed by life stage changes (36%). It was also noteworthy that 32% of the respondents reported their most significant transition involved a change of occupation. This comprises a significant change and one requiring learning of new occupational knowledge, but, also inevitably, ways of working and engaging in new kinds of work settings and workers. Also, here are challenges to adults’ sense of self or subjectivity which is often strongly associated with the occupation in which they engage (Abrahamsson, 2006; Eteläpelto & Saarinen, 2006; O’Doherty & Willmott, 2001). That is, changes to and transformations of their occupations have consequences beyond the learning of new capacities and ways of working and are aligned with adults’ subjectivities (Beckett & Gough, 2004; Billett, 2006; Fenwick, 2004; Vähäsantanen et  al., 2008). Issues of maturation (i.e., health and wellbeing) follow. Maturation unfolds over time, inevitably as brute fact of nature (Searle, 1995). In terms of worklife, some occupations are less age tolerant than others. Indeed, there are age restrictions on some occupations for occupational health and safety purposes. However, age brings with it experience and that can

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35.7

32.3

35

27.9

30 25

19.6

20

18.4

15 10 5 0

Employment status

Stages of life

Occupation

Personal/lifestyle Health and wellbeing

Re-location

Fig. 1  Changes prompting transitions

sometimes compensate for any limitations brought about by maturation. Hence, in terms of learning, maturation should not be seen as being an inevitable decline, but rather one of change and adjustment as well as contributions across working life (Ainsworth & Hardy, 2007; Bosman, 1993). Just as the unfolding capacities of children and adolescents and young adults provides them with particular abilities, the accumulation of knowledge and experience across life can also provide specific contributions that are simply unavailable to younger people (Bosman, 1993). Also associated with maturation are issues of health and well-being arise in ways that are not necessarily initiated by the individual, but stand as brute facts that require responses. As Searle (1995) states – they cannot be wished away. So, these facts of nature can bring about changes in the kinds of work that individuals are able or elect to, and as this category of changes extends to family, this can include impacts caused by ill-health within family. For instance, mature age adults might be more likely to have to care for elderly relatives (e.g., parents, partners), whereas younger adults might have to care for ill-health amongst children or partners. Relocation being the least frequently reported (18%) yet can bring with it a series of associated challenges and transitions. This change can extend to moving to a country where the language represents barriers, the cultural practices are on familiar and requirements for working life needs to be understood and learnt. As indicated in the worklife histories transitions (see Billett et al., 2021b), the informants reported were often the product of or shaped by a range of imperatives that prompted them to initiate changes in what they need to know, do and value. For instance, a transition comprising a geographical relocation might include change of occupational status or changing occupations. These, in turn, might involve learning a new language and societal norms, forms, and practices, when relocating across countries, particularly when migrants confront new linguistic, social, and cultural practices that are required to be learnt. So, the extent and kinds of learning that working age adults might need to secure will likely be person and situational dependant. The learning required to engage in new occupational tasks are likely to be quite different than for those adults who have migrated as refugees, for example. As noted, the latter might be confronted with a

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range of required changes, including learning to become competent in English, acquire occupational capacities that can provide employment and learn how to engage and interact effectively in Australian workplaces and with others. So, the learning required to negotiate these transitions are not just premised upon addressing one of the six factors alone in the learning, but for some, can be a compounding set of factors. Table 3 presents the potential compounding complexity of these transitions and the learning associated with them. In this table, the kinds of change and their reported frequencies in the survey are listed on the left-hand columns and the number of changes comprising each transition identified from the interview data on the right-hand columns. In this table, each of 678 survey respondents indicated one key transition and the changes initiating that transition, thus resulting in 678 transitions. From 66 worklife narratives, 304 transitions were identified and the number of changes the kinds of change comprising the transition were recorded. From the interview data, most of these transitions (93%) are found to comprise more than one kind of change. Three kinds stand to be the mode. Indeed, typically, these transitions comprise three kinds of changes that bring with them new will requirements for worklife learning. For example, it is possible to identify four kinds of changes comprising the transition of becoming a teacher as a post-school pathway. These include (1) a Stages of life change (i.e., becoming a working adult), (2) a change in Employment status (i.e., becoming employed), (3) a change in Occupations (i.e., change in skills and capacities), and (4) a change in subjectivity (i.e., sense of self or professional identity associated with the teaching profession). In the case of Annita, for instance, one of her transitions (i.e., back in Australia and the beginning of her work in the Disability Support Sector) comprised six kinds of changes that need to be accommodated. In this transition, Annita returned to Australia from Saudi Arabia (1-Re-location) with a newborn child (2-becoming a parent – Stages of life change) after the death of her husband (3-family member’s Health/wellbeing). Thus, she had to live on a single parenting pension (4-change of Employment status) until her son was old enough to attend day care before she could take some voluntary blue care, working with aged people and people with disability (5-change in Occupation including occupational skills and capacities) – a way for her to start out in the community (6-change of Personal lifestyle – a change in subjectivity).

Table 3  Transitions and their compounding set of factors Interview data – of 304 transitions Number of changes comprising the transition Six changes Five Four Three Two One

n 1 8 64 134 90 7

% 0.3 2.6 21.1 44.1 29.6 2.3

Survey data – of 678 transitions Kinds of change n % Stages of life 242 35.7 Employment status 270 39.8 Occupation 219 32.3 Re-location 125 18.4 Health and wellbeing 133 19.6 Personal/lifestyle 189 27.9

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So, the processes that initiate and involve changes that comprising the transitions that adults need to negotiate are rarely attributable to just one set of change factors. Consequently, extent and kinds of learning required are often both diverse and impending thereby, in different ways, requiring specific forms of effort and support to become competent when negotiating those changes. Personal initiatives are frequently seen as the basis for initiating and enacting transitions, but also for negotiating with them, all of which have implications for the kinds and scope of learning that is required to be successfully negotiated. So, beyond the individual’s actions and mediation, inevitably, other forms of support or a combination of both may be essential for navigating transitions and effectively negotiating those changes.

Factors Supporting Transitions Given the potentially complex and compounding impacts of the changes required and learning needed to negotiate these transitions, it is important to understand the level and kinds of support that working age adults need to negotiate those transitions. As depicted in Fig. 2, this often required a combination of individual skill and other forms of support (50.3%), as compared to solely relying on individual skill and initiative (35.2%) or other forms of support and guidance (14.5%). This finding suggests that a combination of individual effort and support from external sources is necessary in many, if not most, of the reported transitions. That is, engagements and interactions between, on the one hand, individuals’ capacities, interest and agency and, on the other, what is afforded by the social world (e.g., through workplace, community or education provision) need to be negotiated. That negotiation comprises individuals construing and constructing meaning from what they experience and then selecting responses in the form of goal-directed activities (Ericsson, 2006). It is these processes that generates legacies in terms of what they know, can do and value: i.e., learning. Indeed, much incremental learning seemingly arises 60 50

50.3 35.2

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a combination of my skill individual skill and initiative reliance on other support and other support and guidance

Fig. 2  Factors supporting transitions

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through personal agency and engagement (e.g., ‘winging it’, ‘trial and error’), and external support may be minimal or unnecessary (Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). However, learning required for a domain of socially generated knowledge (e.g., language, occupation) often requires effortful engagement as well as support from outside the person (i.e., education, co-workers, family), as well as structured educational intervention of some kind. Moreover, the interview data indicated that beyond the person’s actions and mediation (i.e., person) and educational provisions (i.e., education), inevitably a third set of contributions or affordances are perennially and ubiquitously evident (i.e., from ‘community’). These include cultural or social capital, and those mediated by circumstance, location and ‘happen chance’ (Billett et al., 2023). Together, these contributions can be understood through relations amongst and mediation of person + education + ‘community’ (see Billett et al., 2023). Findings from the survey about factors supporting the transition verified these propositions as depicted in Fig. 2. That is, the importance of the combined contributions to successfully navigating the transitions and secure desired outcomes. The personal intentionality that initiates and directs lifelong learning efforts (Malle et al., 2001) is not always singular, strategically focused and coherent, yet is still goal-directed towards particular purposes, even when not specifically directed towards tangible goals (Billett, 2001). The interview data indicates that some work-­ life goals, such as career progression, were often subordinated to others, such as family commitments, partners’ progress, life disruptions, cultural or other non-­ work-­related priorities. Thus, worklife transitions, their scope and extent inevitably achieve certain impacts on aspects of an individual’s working life. Yet, these impacts are likely to be quite personally manifested and constructed. Again, what for one individual would be an incremental change or transition, for another would be a wholly transformational transition. So, the impacts, legacies and changes arising through these transitions are, by degree person dependant.

Impact of the Transition A range of impacts arising from these transitions that are able to be delineated from an analysis of the survey data. They are often complex, in so far as they are related to and interdependent with others. Those impacts associated individual identity as a working adult are noteworthy. More than half of the respondents (52.6%) reported the impact of these transitions on their sense of self or subjectivity as working age adult as being very or extremely significant. Between 45% and 46% reported significant impacts on financial needs, ability to secure needed hours of employment, and ability to remain employed in their preferred occupation. Again, these factors are central to adult roles and subjectivities as being a provider for family. So, being able to realise these kinds of goals are central to expectations of adulthood (Arnett, 1998). Around 35% of respondents reported their transitions led to changes in the

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your identity as a working adult

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Moderately

your or your family/familiars’ health

Very & Extremely

Fig. 3  Impact of the transition

locations where they work and live and on their or their family/familiars’ health and wellbeing. Figure 3 provides a visual presentation of these data. As depicted in Fig. 3, the subjectivity (i.e., sense of self) or identity as a working adult was most impacted by transitions. This finding verified analysis from the worklife interviews. That is, among the changes associated with over 300 transitions identified across the 66 life history interviews, personal or lifestyle changes, including subjectivity changes, and their associated impacts were most frequently reported. This change in subjectivity, as reported in the interviews, involved both positive and negative experiences and outcomes. Hence, these transitions could be initiated by individuals to realise better outcomes for themselves and for those whom they care or have responsibilities. These actions were variously in response to career progression, or challenges brought about by involuntary changes such as being made redundant, having to leave a location and find employment elsewhere or being forced to flee the country because of fear of repression or violence. Consequently, the impact could also include needing to fulfill further educational outcomes to enable career change or achieve satisfaction through the work they have aimed to secure. It could also be the fulfillment of an educational trajectory, yet still experience failure to practice the occupation in which they have been prepared. It could also involve being reconciled to engaging in a work role with lower status than that in the previous job, whilst being more fulfilled and suited to personal trajectories, or vice versus. Also, the change in work or occupational subjectivity might be negative, and result in restricted options for continuing to practice a preferred occupation or educational opportunities or even finding employment of any kind to support individual and family material needs. Importantly, there were statistically significant differences among the cultural identity groups (i.e., Australian born non-Indigenous, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, migrants from English-speaking background and migrants from non-English-speaking background) about the level of impact of different kinds of their major transitions. Table 4 shows the group differences. In this table, aspects

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Table 4  Cultural group differences on the impact of worklife transitions Aspects of impact Identify as a working adult

Ability to secure hours of employment

Ability to remain employed in preferred occupation

Location

Group Aus ATSI Eng Non-E Aus ATSI Eng Non-E Aus ATSI Eng Non-E Aus ATSI Eng Non-E

N 275 105 157 108 275 104 160 107 275 104 149 105 275 105 159 107

% of responses NA + S M + V + E 22.9 77.1 33.3 66.7 36.3 63.6 25.9 74.0 36.7 63.3 21.2 78.8 42.6 57.5 29.0 71.1 41.1 59.0 21.1 78.8 40.3 59.7 27.6 72.4 49.4 50.5 41.0 59.1 41.5 58.5 29.0 71.0

P .021*

.000***

.000***

.043*

Note: Aus Australian born (non-Indigenous), ATSI Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, Eng Migrant from English-speaking background, non-E Migrant from non-English-speaking background, NA + S Not at all = Slightly, M + V + E Moderately + Very + Extremely p40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Note: Aus Australian born non-Indigenous Table 6  Ranking of the effectiveness of learning processes by gender and age within the Indigenous cohort Learning processes Learning individually Learning assisted by other workers Learning through one-on-one mentoring Learning through training on-site Learning through training off-site Learning through educational provision Learning through online support

ATSI 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Female 1 2 3 4 7 5 6

Male 1 3 4 2 5 7 6

≤40 4 2 1 3 5 6 7

>40 1 2 3 4 6 7 5

Note: ATSI aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander

and online support. Whilst the male respondents within this cohort ranked off-site training 5th, the female counterpart ranked this at the bottom of the list (i.e., 7th). For online support, the early working age group considered this moderately effective (i.e., ranked 5th), the middle working age group viewed it to be least effective. This suggests generational difference in the era of technological advancements that have popularised online learning provisions. For example, the so-called Baby Boomer and Generation X learners reported less comfort and higher levels of anxiety using technology (Culp-Roche et  al., 2020), thus finding online support less effective. Within the Indigenous Group There is disparity in views between gender and age groups within the Indigenous group. Table 6 displays these data, hierarchically ranked on mean scores. A ranked list of learning processes based on ratings from the Indigenous cohort is in the left-­ hand column and rankings of mean scores of responses from the gender and age groups in the subsequent columns. Different from the consistency in views of gender and age groups within the Australian born non-Indigenous, there are variations, mostly disparity, in views of the Indigenous cohort. Generally, being consistent with other findings discussed so

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far, learning processes occurring in workplaces were considered more effective than those outside of them, including institution-based educational provisions. Interestingly, while learning through work individually (i.e., the person) was considered the most effective (i.e., ranked 1st) of all learning processes by most workers of all classifications as discussed so far, it was rated low by the Indigenous respondents of early working life (i.e., ranked 4th). However, this group rated one-­ on-­one mentoring to be the most effective whereas others ranked it either 3rd or 4th, even 7th and 6th respectively by the English-speaking and non-English-speaking background adults (see Table  3). The findings indicate a cultural preference (see Bargallie, this volume, chapter “Indigenous Australian Peoples and Work: Examining Worklife Histories”). This suggest one-on-one interactions with more experienced workers or supervisors were important for Indigenous working adults who are at an early stage of working life. And, not surprisingly, learning assistance by other workers was second most effective for this group. Ranked 3rd by this group was on-site training, also highly by the male group (i.e., 2nd) as compared to moderate ranking (i.e., 4th) by females within the cohort. Within the English-Speaking Background Group Comparisons of the gender and age groups within the English-speaking-background cohort in Table 7 indicated a slightly different pattern with those discussed previously. Learning processes occurring in workplaces were not necessarily more effective than those outside of this environment. For example, an educational provision was considered moderately effective for the male respondents (i.e., ranked 3rd) within this cohort. Similar consideration was given to off-site training by the female counterpart and early working life group (i.e., ranked 4th by both). Interestingly, in contrast to the generational difference in the use of online support within the Indigenous cohort discussed above (see Table 6), the reverse pattern was recorded for English-speaking adults. That is, whilst those at a middle stage of working life ranked 4th (moderately effective) for learning through online support, the younger counterpart rated it least effective (i.e., bottom rank). That is, young people tend to take it for granted. This confirms and highlights the Table 7  Ranking of the effectiveness of learning processes by gender and age within the English-­ speaking cohort Learning processes Learning assisted by other workers Learning individually Learning through training on-site Learning through online support Learning through training off-site Learning through educational provision Learning through one-on-one mentoring

Eng 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Note: Eng migrant from English-speaking background

Female 1 2 3 5 4 6 7

Male 2 1 4 6 7 3 5

≤40 1 3 5 7 4 6 2

>40 2 1 3 4 6 5 7

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complexity of what constitutes effective learning processes. That is, the perceived effectiveness of different learning processes differed and was shaped by individuals’ needs, age, and gender. This suggests that approaches to supporting working age adults’ learning needs to be tailored to their existing capacities and readiness. This is perhaps most evident within non-English-speaking background groups. Within the Non-English-Speaking Background Group Presented here in Table  8 is another variation of views from the gender and age groups within the non-English-speaking-background cohort, including those from refugee background. Again, without a clear cut, rather a mix of effectiveness of learning processes occurring within and outside of the workplace was judged by these groups within the cohort. Whilst learning from other workers was considered highly effective by most of the respondents of all classifications, there were differences in perceived efficacy across these classifications. For instance, this learning process was rated low by the male respondents (i.e., ranked 5th out of 7) as was one-on-one mentoring (i.e., ranked 6th) from non-English-background. Moreover, across the entire cohort of respondents, learning through an educational provision did not seem to be very effective but was rated highly (i.e., ranked 3rd) as was online support (i.e., ranked 4th). Whilst variations appear to come from the groups of different stages of working age within the Indigenous and English-speaking background cohorts (see Tables 6 and 7), such variations were confirmed in rankings by males within the non-­ English-­speaking-background cohort. Overall, these findings show that transitions required different kinds of support and guidance from the workplace. Individuals’ learning processes have diverse levels of effectiveness. Interestingly, the impacts of diverse factors such as identity, gender and age leverage the complexity of navigating these transitions. Often the mediation of more informed others (e.g., supervisors, more experienced workers) and specific kinds of educative experiences are required (Billett et al., 2022). So, these processes, whilst individual, are also influenced by factors that shaped the Table 8  Ranking of the effectiveness of learning processes by gender and age within the non-­ English-­speaking cohort Learning processes Learning individually Learning through training on-site Learning assisted by other workers Learning through educational provision Learning through online support Learning through one-on-one mentoring Learning through training off-site

Non-E 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Female 1 3 2 4 6 5 7

Note: Non-E migrant from non-English-speaking background

Male 1 2 5 3 4 6 7

≤40 1 3 2 4 5 6 7

>40 1 2 3 4 6 5 7

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kind of engagement and support found within work and at the educational settings. Recognising these influences suggests that understanding how adults’ learning and development progresses across working lives can begin with better understanding transitions and the changes that initiate them and the distinct means by which they are negotiated. These considerations can then be expanded to identify patterns (if any) across the individual’s lengthening working life. Importantly, to adapt or successfully negotiate changes, different kinds of support is required.

Support Respondents rated of importance of three sources of support in assisting them adapting to the changes they confronted across their working life, when learning something new for work, and when solving problems at work. These sources are (i) the respondents’ own skills and abilities, (ii) support from others (friends, contacts, colleagues or workplace) and (iii) educational programs. Responses to these questions are presented in Table 9. The three sources of support are listed in the left-hand column. The percentages of responses to ‘very important’ and extremely important’ options with regard to adapting to changes, learning something new and problem solving are in the subsequent columns. Individuals’ skills and abilities (i.e., person) were rated highly across all three learning/change areas, followed by support from others (i.e., ‘community’) then educational programs (i.e., education). For example, 76% reported reliance on their own skills and abilities to adapt to changes as compared to 40% who relied on support from educational programs. For learning something new for work, it was 71% and 46% respectively. This is perhaps because acquiring certain knowledge and skills needs relevant educational interventions which are difficult to secure through personal discovery activities alone. Solving problems at work required more reliance on one’s skills and abilities (80%) followed by workplace support (e.g., co-­ workers) (59%) than educational support (38%). This once again confirms PIAAC’s finding about Australian workers’ frequent engagement in learning at work through their own efforts and support from co-workers or supervisors (OECD, 2013).

Table 9  Hierarchically ranked from combined responses to ‘Very important’ & ‘Extremely important’ When learning Adapting to something new for When solving Sources of support changes work problems at work % of responses to ‘very’ and ‘extremely’ important Individual skills and capacities 76.3 71.3 80.1 Community (i.e., friends, contacts, 58.0 56.8 58.7 colleagues, workplace support) Educational programs 40.4 45.8 37.9

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Work activities and interactions best way

Assistance from other contacts

Getting qualifications essential

Strongly disagree & Disagree

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Educational Educational support with program in every major challenges transition

Agree & Strongly agree

Fig. 3  Views of learning activities

To elaborate further on the sources of support, respondents indicated their level of agreement on a list of propositions about learning activities in which they engaged in to sustain their employability across working life. Responses to these propositions on views of learning are visually represented in Fig. 3 where the five Likert scale levels (from 1 being strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree) are aggregated into three levels. Around 74% of the respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that learning through work activities and interactions was the best way to learn across working life (i.e., personally mediated learning), followed by assistance from other contacts (67%), including happen chance experience or other engagements (i.e., ‘community’), for a career change. Although 61% showed their agreement towards getting qualifications (i.e., education) being essential for remaining employed and securing new employment opportunities, around 51% of respondents indicated educational programs alone were not sufficient without support from friends, community and workplace. This highlights the importance and significance of contributions of the three factors that individuals need to mediate: person + education + ‘community’ (Billett et al., 2022). The interview data indicated that many of the transitions and the changes confronted by the informants required them to engage in an intentional and focused way. There were sometimes very clear plans, urgent need to respond, imperatives that must be addressed. All these emphasised high levels of intentionality, deliberate action and focused engagement in learning and securing support for learning. However, there was also much that was ad hoc, ‘happen chance’ and circuitous – sometimes shaped by factors beyond their control, but sometimes even quite unintentional outcomes are achieved through happen chance and low intentionality (see Smith, this volume, chapter “The Trajectories of Worklife Transitions”). From the survey and relevant interview data, it was possible to identify some of the means by which individuals’ learning efforts and support for that learning combine. Much of the learning required incremental changes, and engaging in work tasks that had low performance requirements for lack of risk or was undertaken

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through self-directed and discovery approaches. Yet, even in some more significant transitions, informants reported engaging in these kinds of approaches. They were able to successfully navigate through trial and error (‘winging it’), rather than being based on solid preparation and sound support. Educational provisions (i.e., support in terms of intentional experiences to develop knowledge) were reported to be most effective when key transitions in work life must be negotiated and/or where some form of certification was required to practice new occupations.

 erspectives and Experience About Learning Across P Working Life Securing the kinds of learning across working life to sustain employability is of growing interest to governments, workplaces, professional bodies and workers themselves. Beyond individuals’ lifelong learning efforts, premised on their capacities and agency, and the deliberate engagement in educative experiences afforded by workplaces, family, familiars, and educational institutions, are also the opportunities, guidance and support, and learning experiences afforded under their communities’ auspices in realising those outcomes. Hence, a combination and interdependence of working age adults’ learning efforts (i.e., lifelong learning), the provision of organized educational experiences (i.e., lifelong education), learning experiences in workplaces and support of the communities are central to understanding and realising adults’ work-related learning progresses across working lives. Drawing on the responses to a survey of over 670 working age Australians, this chapter has illustrated and elaborated how particular patterns of learning through work and educational provisions are distributed and premised upon their cultural and ethnic background, gender and age. That is, whilst there were overall patterns about the effectiveness of specific kinds and forms of experiences, support and guidance, their levels of perceived efficacy in supporting employability goals are not uniform across this population of working age Australians. So, rather than uniform measures, a more tailored approach might be required to meet the needs of these workers based on factors associated with age, gender and culturally and linguistically diverse background. Added here is the important point that the informants from the life history interviews indicated that the requirements and impacts of their many transitions are multi-fold. So more needed than iterations of the efficacy of specific kinds of learning experiences is also a consideration of the changes and impacts brought about by the transitions that individuals might face. Most likely, those individuals who have been outside of the occupational fields and labour market (e.g., migrants and refugee migrants, Indigenous adults) might face the most complex set of change factors. For instance, over a quarter of the respondents referred to the need for learning new language and literacy skills. These generally would sit outside of educational programs focused on developing occupational specific knowledge.

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In sum, the explanatory bases for the findings from interview and survey data are grounded in three sets of interrelated facts or factors. There are (i) institutional facts (Searle, 1995) with a societal genesis that arise through history, culture, society and situation, (ii) brute facts (i.e., those of nature) (Searle, 1995) such as physical, sensory and cognitive capacities that are the product of maturation; and (iii) personal facts (i.e., those that arise through individuals’ personal histories) (Billett, 2009) that shape what workers know, can do and value. Institutional facts exist as societal norms, forms and practice that are suggested and projected by the social world (Searle, 1995). Brute facts – those of nature – influence both institutional practices (i.e., needs of sustenance, shelter, conservation) and personal bases of maturity. The former can mediate institutional facts and the latter personal practices (preferences, decision-making, etc.). Personal facts are shaped by both institutional and brute factors, albeit in person-particular ways as individuals mediate what they experience across the life course (Malle, 2001). One of the key bases for individuals’ initiation, engagement in confronting and learning in and through these changes and making judgements about support and outcomes is their intentionality. It is this that directs the focus and direction of their efforts, exercise of beliefs and mediation of what they experience. Findings from the survey confirm and verify the interview findings, suggesting that although learning through working life is a personal journey thus person dependant, to sustain employability across lengthening working life and successfully negotiate, occupational transitions often required support from various sources, albeit of different scopes and scales depending on individual circumstances. To this end, it is important to understand the extent to which such support can be formulated within strategies or practices enacted by key stakeholders including government, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults themselves.

References Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022). Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics Bargallie, D. (this volume). Indigenous Australian peoples and work: Examining worklife learning histories of indigenous Australian workers. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Billett, S. (2001). Knowing in practice: Re-conceptualising vocational expertise. Learning and Instruction, 11(6), 431–452. Billett, S. (Ed.). (2006). Work, change and workers. Springer Netherlands. Billett, S. (2009). Personal epistemologies, work and learning. Educational Research Review, 4(3), 210–219. Billett, S. (2010). The practices of learning through occupations. In S.  Billett (Ed.), Learning through practice: Models, traditions, orientations and approaches (Vol. 1, pp. 59–81). Springer. Billett, S. (2011). Promoting lifelong employability for workforce aged over 45: Singaporean workers’ perspectives. International Journal of Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning, 3(2), 57–73. Billett, S. (2014). The standing of vocational education: Sources of its societal esteem and implications for its enactment. Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 66(1), 1–21.

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Billett, S. (2021). Personal curriculum: Worklife learning pathways and VET.  In C.  Nägele, B. E. Stalder, & M. Weich (Eds.), Pathways in vocational education and training and lifelong learning. Proceedings of the 4th Crossing Boundaries Conference in Vocational Education and Training, Muttenz and Bern online, 8–9. April (pp.  6–9). European Research Network on Vocational Education and Training, VETNET, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and Bern University of Teacher Education. https://doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.4636411 Billett, S. (2022). Promoting graduate employability: Key goals, and curriculum and pedagogic practices for higher education. In B. Ng Ling (Ed.), Graduate employability and workplace-­ based learning development: Insights from sociocultural perspectives. Springer. Billett, S., Choy, S., Dymock, D., Smith, R., Henderson, A., Tyler, M., & Kelly, A. (2015). Towards more effective continuing education and training for Australian workers. National Centre for Vocational Education Research Ltd. Billett, S., Harteis, C., & Gruber, H. (2018). Developing occupational expertise through everyday work activities and interactions. The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance, 2, 105–126. Billett, S., Le, A. H., Smith, R., & Choy, S. (2021). The kinds and character of changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 1–15. Billett, S., Choy, S., & Le, A. H. (2022). Lifelong learning across working lives: Personal, social and maturational factors. In K. Evans, W. O. Lee, J. Markowitsch, & M. Zukas (Eds.), Third international handbook of lifelong education. Springer Nature. Choy, S., Billett, S., & Dymock, D. (2016). Continuing education and training: Needs, models and approaches. In S. Billett, D. Dymock, & S. Choy (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life: Models, processes and practices. Springer. Culp-Roche, A., Hampton, D., Hensley, A., Wilson, J., Thaxton-Wiggins, A., Otts, J. A., & Moser, D.  K. (2020). Generational differences in faculty and student comfort with technology use. SAGE Open Nursing, 6, 2377960820941394. Eppich, W., Rethans, J.  J., Tueunissen, P.  W., & Dornan, T. (2016). Learning to work together through talk: Continuing professional development in medicine. In S.  Billett, D.  Dymock, & S. Choy (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life: Models, processes and practices (pp. 47–73). Springer. Frost, N., Zukas, M., Bradbury, H., & Kilminster, S. (Eds.). (2010). Beyond reflective practice: New approaches to professional lifelong learning. Routledge. Le, A. H., Billett, S., Salling-Olesen, H., & Bargallie, D. (this volume). Investigating learning for employability: Method and procedures. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Levinson, D. J. (1986). A conception of adult development. American Psychologist, 41(1), 3. Malle, B.  F. (2001). Folk explanations of intentional action. In Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 265–286). The MIT Press. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (2006). Live longer, work longer: A synthesis report. OECD. Organisation for Economic Co-operational and Development (OECD). (2013). OECD skills outlook 2013: First results from the survey of adult skills. OECD. Searle, J. R. (1995). The construction of social reality. Allen Lane. Smith, R. (this volume). Negotiation and work-life transitions. In S. Billett, H. Salling-Olesen, & L. Filliettaz (Eds.), Sustaining employability through work-life learning: Practices and policies. Springer Nature. Somerville, M. (2006). Becoming-worker: Vocational training for workers in aged care. Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 58(4), 471–481. Tyler, M., Dymock, D., & Henderson, A. (2016). The critical role of workplace managers in continuing education and training. In S. Billett, D. Dymock, & S. Choy (Eds.), Supporting learning across working life: Models, processes and practices. Springer.

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Anh Hai Le is a Research Fellow at Griffith University. Her research interest focuses on workplace learning and curriculum development in tertiary education, with a specific emphasis on the process of building knowledge through scholarly engagement with industry and tertiary institutions. Much of her recent research has focused on lifelong and adult education.  

Sarojni Choy is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Her teaching and research expertise are in workplace learning, adult education, vocational education and training, lifelong learning, connecting learning in different settings, continuing education and training, professional development and workforce capacity building.  

Raymond Smith is an educator and learning theorist who works in the fields of adult learning, organisational learning and vocational education. His research focuses primarily on the personal nature of adults’ learning as it is generated by and emerges from their needs and contributions in the social context of work.  

Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He has worked in vocational education, educational administration, teacher education, professional development and policy development in the Australian vocational education system and as a teacher and researcher in higher education.  

Practices and Strategies to Support Worklife Learning: The Australian Context Stephen Billett

, Anh Hai Le, and Henning Salling Olesen

Abstract  Globally, there is growing recognition of and action for ongoing learning across individuals’ working lives. This imperative is for them to remain currently competent and employable amidst changing occupational competence and workplace requirements. Added here are expectations that working age adults would need to actively contribute through their learning to national economic well-being and to partially sponsor their ongoing development themselves. Hence, employability has come to comprise four aspects: (a) being employable (i.e., having specific work-related and occupational capacities); (b) sustaining employment (i.e., remaining current and employable); (c) securing advancement (i.e., gaining promotion or becoming more broadly skilled); and (d) transitioning to new/other occupations (i.e., being able to move into new occupations) (Billett S.  Promoting graduate employability: key goals, and curriculum and pedagogic practices for higher education. In: Ng Ling B (ed) Graduate employability and workplace-based learning development: Insights from sociocultural perspectives. Springer, Dordrecht, 2022). Together, these four aspects offer bases from which to appraise how the kinds of worklife learning outcomes desired by governments, workplaces and workers can be realised and in ways that are accessible and scalable for the working age population. This chapter presents and discusses the survey data of a project aiming to generate evidence-based policies and informed practices supporting worklife learning arrangements promoting Australian workers’ employability. The analyses of survey data provided by working age adults gauge their perspectives about practices by government, workplaces, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults themselves to promote worklife learning associated with employability. These findings note that the needs for and preferences about these practices differ across culturally and ethnically defined classifications of those workers, and across S. Billett (*) · A. H. Le Griffith University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia e-mail: [email protected] H. Salling Olesen Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 S. Billett et al. (eds.), Sustaining Employability Through Work-life Learning, Professional and Practice-based Learning 35, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3959-6_14

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their stages of working life. Proposed practices are ranked and this provides some bases to offer recommendations about how governments, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adults might come to promote employability across lengthening working lives. Keywords  Employability · Strategies · Practices · Policies · Occupational competence · Workplace performance · Advancement · Transitioning · Survey · Life history · Lifelong education policy · Culturally and linguistically diverse · Early working life · Middle working life · Recognition of prior learning · Aboriginal and Torres Straits Island (ATSI)

 trategies and Practices to Sustain Employability Across S Working Life Given the ongoing changes in occupational capacities and workplace requirements, and national strategic goals associated with being more self-sustainable, the abilities and capacities of workers of working age adults have become key national priorities. Indeed, adults’ employability has become a growing concern of employers, governmental and supra-governmental institutions and working age adults themselves over the past two decades (see Billett et  al., this volume-b, chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review”). That employability is not an outcome, but a process that evolves across individuals’ working lives as they confront changes in demand for their occupations, need to develop new occupational capacities and respond to changing ways of working, and the specific needs of the circumstances of their employment (i.e., workplace requirements). It follows that employability has four aspects: (a) being employable (i.e., having specific work-related and occupational capacities); (b) sustaining employment (i.e., remaining current and employable); (c) securing advancement (i.e., gaining promotion or becoming more broadly skilled); and (d) transitioning to new/other occupations (i.e., being able to move into new occupations) (Billett, 2022). These four aspects of employability are likely aligned to securing and developing further particular kinds of learning (i.e., occupational, workplace-specific, or supra-­ occupational capacities). Together, these four aspects of employability offer bases by which to appraise how the kinds of worklife learning outcomes desired by governments, workplaces and workers can be realised and in ways that are accessible and scalable for the working population. However, a complex of societal, personal, educational and workplace factors that are required to be addressed to effectively support and sustain the learning required for employability across individuals’

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working lives (e.g., Billett et al., 2022, this volume-c, chapter “Worklife Transitions: An Australian Investigation”; Le et  al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”). It is these factors that shape the kinds of practices and strategies enacted by governments (supra-national and national/local levels), educational institutions, workplaces and individuals themselves that are necessary to mediate and support sustaining employability across individuals’ working lives. Generating informed understandings and identifying effective practices and policies to achieve the employability goals necessitates securing a comprehensive account of the kinds of required worklife learning and how they can best be realised by these working age adults, governmental policies and actions, and policies and practices of workplaces, and educational institutions. The overall case made here is that policies and practices associated with promoting that employability need to be sensitive to the goals and aspirations of working age adults and how they can access, engage and benefit from experiences that are supporting their learning. Placing the adults centre stage seems to be necessary because they are the meaning makers and constructors of knowledge and even considerations of intentional educational experiences need to be sensitive to and commensurate with their levels of readiness to engage, which includes their interests and capacities. In making this case, the chapter first discusses adult and lifelong education policies in a very general way and then briefly the study from which the findings presented here were drawn. The perspectives of different kinds of working age adults, including those who were born in and had entire working lives within Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults who similarly progress their working lives within Australia and then those of migrants to Australia from English-­ speaking countries and those from non-English speaking countries. Their perspectives and preferences are important to understand, not least because they are not homogeneous and reflect particular kinds of needs and readiness for both learning through their own means, workplace settings and also intentional educational programs. Moreover, considerations of gender and age are important as these also indicate different levels of readiness and needs, as well as preferences for being supported in their learning across working life. Then, the findings on the practices of workers required to support their work and learning are set out. The analyses of survey data provided by working age adults gauge their perspectives about practices by government, workplaces, educational institutions, workplaces and working age adults themselves to promote worklife learning associated with employability. These findings note that the needs for and preferences about these practices differ across culturally and ethnically defined classifications of those workers, and across their stages of working life. Proposed practices are ranked and this provides some bases to offer recommendations about how governments, workplaces, educational institutions and working age adult might come to promote employability across lengthening working lives. The chapter concludes with some broad considerations for policy and practice that are then addressed in greater detail in Billett et al. (this volume-a, chapter “Policies and Practices for Sustaining Employability Through Worklife Learning”).

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Adult and Lifelong Education Policies Across countries with both developed and developing modern industrial economies, the purposes and implementation of adult and lifelong education in the last two decades has been increasingly shaped by two imperatives: (i) neoliberal reforms and (ii) focuses on employability and economic outcomes (e.g., Bowl, 2010; Fejes et al., 2018; Pata et al., 2021). These policy orientations and associated imperatives have seen a marked shift in how the education of working age adults is positioned, the kinds of learning that are valued and the provisions of education organised to achieve these imperatives. Driven by efforts of supra-government global agencies this shaping has led to purposes for and processes of adult and lifelong education taking similar pathways across many countries. Specifically, a growing focus on employability coming to dominate policy focuses about and provisions of adult education. In this way, globally, the origins and distinctiveness of the adult education sector as being that derived from and for members of the adult communities premised on their social and economic needs, often associated with social and cultural betterment, has been eroded and displaced, as has its purposes (Kump, 2009). Usually, this means moving away from an educational focus and process of personal and cultural betterment to one associated with promoting individual employability often in quite narrow terms  – concerns about immediate employment (Billett & Dymock, 2020). Of course, such concerns are important and central to adults’ well-being, sense of self and ability to be independent. Indeed, concerns about becoming more employable have long been a purpose of adult education, this has become the primary focus, often at a cost of other purposes. Globally, since the European Year of Lifelong Learning in 1996, and the subsequent education report commissioned by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Learning: The Treasure Within, known, as the Delors report (1996), there has been a global push for the purposes of adult education to be primarily aligned with promoting this kind of employability. It emphasised the need for ongoing educational engagement across individuals’ working lives for them to remain currently competent and employable (Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development [OECD], 1996). Added here are expectations that working age adults would need to actively contribute through their learning to national economic well-being and be prepared to partially sponsor their ongoing development themselves. As noted, this goal is usually associated with the development of work-related or occupational specific skills to respond to changing occupational requirements and with workplace competence (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006). This imperative led to significant changes in how governments across the world came to view and fund adult education, and for what purposes. This change of emphasis and the associated policy initiatives have transformed views about adults’ ongoing learning and educational provisions (Edwards, 2002), and away from educational provisions primarily about personal enrichment and cultural betterment (Coffield, 2000). This change in emphasis continues to be prosecuted across nation

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states. In many countries, this change was seen its purposes shift towards an employability focus albeit including general educational outcomes associated with enhanced literacy and numeracy, but primarily to assist adults’ employability. As far as these policy imperatives demand a change of orientation is not wholly problematic if the needs, aspirations and readiness of working age adults can be accommodated within them, which includes educational goals less aligned with specific employability outcomes. Both seems to be aligned with national goals for a more educated and engaged working age adult population. For instance, Singapore with its third most aged population globally and an economy largely based upon its citizens’ skills made the ongoing work-related learning of its adult population the first priority for sustaining its economic performance (Economic Strategies Committee, 2010). This has led to a series of national initiatives and incentives promoting working age Singaporean’s ongoing development, although they still support adult education of a broader kind. Each Singaporean citizen is provided with a sum of money each year and given broad discretion how they spend that money on their continuing education and training. Courses in languages, recreational pursuits and aesthetic development are popular. This sits alongside other policies associated with supporting and assisting working age adults’ participation in continuing education and training of a more employability focused kinds. That support extends to sponsorship and subsidies for the costs of their participation. Elsewhere, countries established and/or built more systematic approaches to continuing education and training (CET) (e.g., Germany) (Nuissl & Pehl, 2004), whereas other linked educational programs with occupational and workplace innovation (e.g., Switzerland (Hoffman & Schwartz, 2015), Scandinavian countries). In the United Kingdom, for instance, centres and programs in higher education institutions offering non-credit bearing lifelong education were closed (Naidoo & Williams, 2015), and in Australia the adult education courses offered through the technical and further education colleges were abolished with those institutions’ operational mandate to only offer programs leading directly to employable outcomes (Abbott-Chapman, 2006). Indeed, there has been a very strong focus on the adult education sector being wholly directed towards achieving employability outcomes, often at the cost of other programs that meet specific needs of working age adults, who might sit outside of current employment. To compensate, in many states, often locally based and funded, and volunteer-based initiatives have been introduced to address the needs of literacy, numeracy and other educational needs of these adults. These can include those whose success of school was limited, aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults whose school education might have been disrupted or incomplete and also migrants needing to develop language skills, and also refugee migrants who may be facing issues of trauma, disengagement and seeking to establish themselves within a new country. In responses to governmental policies on promoting employability across working life, educational provisions enacted at different levels to assist individuals in securing and sustaining their employability across their working lives. Yet, the likely efficacy of such policies will depend on their ability to account for the four aspects of employability mentioned above. Reported here are some practices and

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strategies provided by the government, workplaces, and the provision of support for learning provided through educational institutions and practices enacted by working age adults themselves that are directed to sustaining and extending individuals’ capacities, starting when they are being trained for specific occupations.

 olicies and Practices for Worklife Learning: P An Australian Investigation The processes and findings described and discussed here are part of a project funded by the Australian Research Council. That project sought to understand how learning across working life can most effectively arise through work and educational activities to generate evidence-based policies and informed practices supporting worklife learning arrangements promoting Australian workers’ employability. Although described in greater detail (Billett et  al., 2022; Le et  al., this volume, chapter “Learning Across Working Life: A Case from Australia”), in overview, the project comprised three phases including worklife history interviews in Phase 1, online surveys in Phase 2, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data in Phase 3. Phase 1 interviews were conducted with 66 working age Australians to provide retrospective accounts of their working lives. Subsequently, Phase 2 online surveys were administered to a broader population of working age Australians to verify and elaborate findings from Phase 1. The administration and distribution of the survey was facilitated through unions, associations, professional bodies, institutional contacts, community organisations and through social media. The project was subject to ethical clearance through Griffith University (GU No: 2019/816). It is part of the survey data that is presented and discussed in this chapter. The survey consisted of four sections gathering information and responses about (a) demographic background, (b) occupational transition, (c) learning through working life, and (d) strategies to promote lifelong learning. It provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The survey items consisted of a series of multiple-­ choice, Likert-scaled and open-ended questions for respondents to provide explanations, comments and suggestions. Five-point Likert scales were used to measure, for example, the impact of occupational transitions, the effectiveness of different learning processes and the importance of different strategies to promote lifelong learning. The findings described and reported here are those derived from descriptive analysis of the survey in Phase 2, with a particular focus on policies and practices enacted by government, educational institutions, workplaces, and working age adults themselves, comparing perspectives of different cultural groups of respondents (i.e., Australian born non-Indigenous, Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Australians, migrants from English-speaking background, and migrants from non-­ English-­speaking background), gender groups (i.e., female and male), and age groups (i.e., under 40s and 40 or above). The survey consisted of four sections

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gathering information and responses about (a) demographic background, (b) occupational transition, (c) learning through working life, and (d) strategies to promote lifelong learning. It provided both quantitative and qualitative data. The survey items consisted of a series of multiple-choice, Likert-scaled and open-ended questions. Five-point Likert scales were used to measure, for example, the impact of occupational transitions, the effectiveness of different learning processes and the importance of different strategies to promote lifelong learning. As noted, this chapter reports on analyses of survey data about strategies to promote learning across working life, albeit through educational programs, experiences in workplace settings and through the support and guidance of familiars (e.g., family members, acquaintances) and communities (e.g., informed others). In the survey data reported here, responses were invited to tentative findings in the form of propositions derived from the first phase findings regarding strategies enacted by government, workplaces, educational institutions, and working-age adults themselves to promote lifelong learning to secure and sustain employability across working life. The administration and distribution of the survey was facilitated through social media platforms and engagement with agencies who were able to circulate the information/links to potential informants. For instance, unions, professional associations and bodies for various occupations across Australia were contacted. Engagements with diverse communities, including Indigenous Australians and refugee migrants also occurred. Agencies such as Adult Learning Australia, and their state and territory affiliates to circulate the links/correspondence were also contacted and asked to distribute the links to the online survey. Incentives in the form of prizes were included and described in the information about the survey. The data whose findings are reported below derived from 678 respondents, identified as Australian born non-Indigenous (n  =  276), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians (n  =  106), migrants from English-speaking background (n = 177) and migrants from non-English-speaking background (n = 116), predominantly represented by female (65%) and those aged 40 or above (74%) (see Billett et  al., this volume-b, chapter “The Imperatives of and for Worklife Learning: A Review” for further details of the respondents’ characteristics). Comparisons are undertaken amongst the data provided by the respondent groups to identify any distinct views and experiences among these groups as compared to the sampled Australian population.

 ractices and Strategies to Promote Lifelong Learning Across P Working Life The survey respondents were asked to rate the importance of listed strategies and practices enacted by government, educational institutions, workplaces, and working age adults themselves to promote lifelong learning across working life. The findings described and reported in this section are those from descriptive (mean scores) and

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inferential (i.e., Chi-square test) analyses of the survey items on strategies to promote lifelong learning, with a particular focus on comparisons of perspectives of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD), gender and age groups. Comparative weightings using mean scores within each cohort are represented through rankings.

Policy and Practice for Government The responses to considerations about governmental policies and practices offered through this section are advanced in terms of the analysis of perspectives provided through of distinct groupings within the population sample, followed by those capturing gender and age, in turn. The aim here is to provide different perspectives on the kinds of policies and practices that these respondents report on a range of measures identified in the first phase interviews. CALD Groups’ Perspectives The data about the importance of strategies for government from across the diverse groups of respondents are presented in Table  1, hierarchically ranked on mean scores (i.e., averaged responses). In the left-hand column is a ranked list of proposed strategies for government based on ratings from the sampled participants as a whole. The subsequent columns show rankings of mean scores of responses from the four CALD groups, including Australian born (non-Indigenous), Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, migrants from English-speaking background, and migrants from non-English-speaking background. The listing of strategies in this table are shortened versions for those that are listed in Appendix A. These comprise strategies associated with: (i) access to opportunities within workplaces, (ii) continued education and training, (iii) diverse pathways to advance careers, (iv) the provision Table 1  Ranking of strategies for government by cultural groups Government should promote Fair access to employment opportunities Easy access to CET Multiple occupational pathways RPL for all kinds of work Different educational pathways Access to re-training CET at different phases of working life Financial support for re-training Access to educational certification

All 1 2 3 4 5 5 5 8 9

Aus 2 1 5 4 5 3 7 9 8

ATSI 2 5 2 1 9 8 5 5 2

Eng 5 6 1 3 3 7 2 8 9

non-E 1 5 3 9 3 7 6 2 7

Note: Aus Australian born (non-Indigenous), ATSI Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, Eng Migrant from English-speaking background, non-E Migrant from non-English-speaking background; CET Continuing Education and Training, RPL Recognition of Prior Learning

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of recognition of prior learning, (v) having diverse educational pathways, (vi) access to retraining and (vii) continuing education and training provisions aligned with different stages of working life, (viii) financial support for retraining and (ix) access to certification. What can be seen in Table 1 is a disparity1 in views among the respondents from different cultural groupings. The four groups’ perspectives differed depending on the strategy item. For example, whilst fair access to employment opportunities was ranked highly by of migrant from non-English background (1st out of 9), Australian born and the Indigenous (i.e., 2nd), it was lowly rated by the English-speaking migrant respondents (i.e., 5th). However, a different response pattern was found on item regarding easy access to CET which was rated highly by all (i.e., ranked 2nd) and the Australian born (i.e., 1st) yet lowly rated by others (i.e., 5th by the Indigenous and non-English migrants, and 6th by the English-speaking). Interestingly, access to re-training through VET and higher education was given moderate importance by all (i.e., ranked 5th) and the Australian born (i.e., ranked 3rd), it was lowly rated by other groups (i.e., ranked 7th or 8th). Statistically, significant differences within groups were recorded on all nine items (p