Learning across working life: educative experiences and individuals’ participation

ABSTRACT

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

KEYWORDS:

• Worklife learning
• working life
• educative experiences
• personal curriculum
• worklife histories
• worklife transitions

Introduction: learning across working life: imperatives and practices

Understanding more fully what constitutes learning across working life and how working age adults’ negotiation of occupational and workplace transitions might be best supported has, perhaps, never been more salient than now for these adults, their workplaces, and communities. The kinds and frequencies of change in occupational and workplace requirements are proceeding in unprecedented ways because of new technologies, ways of working, occupational requirements (Bughin et al. 2018; Healy, Nicholson, and Gahan 2017), and the dynamic nature of workplace practices where those occupations are enacted (e.g. physical, distributed, virtual workplaces) (Kane et al. 2021; Nappi and Ribeiro 2021). Added here is heightened level of intra- or inter-national worker mobility (Eriksson 2016; Simonen et al. 2018; Stawarz 2018), diverse working teams and the changing demands for occupations (Billett 2006). Moreover, the recent pandemic and emerging geopolitical tensions and conflicts are requiring nation states to be more self-reliant and self-sufficient in producing the goods and services they need, to redress a reliance on other countries. All these changes have consequences for individuals’ worklife goals, workplace viability and communities’ economic and social wellbeing, and, therefore, working age adults’ worklife learning. Now, that learning is more than about personal employability, it is about workplaces’ and communities’ viability and servicing nation states’ needs.

In response to these challenges to both individual and societal continuities, there is a need to elaborate: (i) the goals for and processes of learning across working life and (ii) what constitutes the educative worklife experiences that can realise these goals. The former is advanced, discussed and elaborated through considerations of learning and development generated through engagement in both day-to-day work and worklife transitions, drawing on a practical inquiry informed by developmental studies, socio-cultural conceptions of learning (Billett et al. 2021). The latter is elaborated through accounting for what constitutes the range of educative experiences that individuals engage in across working life, including worklife transitions, as premised on activities and interactions afforded by social institutions (e.g. educational institutions and workplace) and their communities. The bases for discussing these challenges and advancing proposals here is a three-phase national project that: (i) captured a sample of 66 Australians’ work life histories and transitions through work life history narratives (Salling-Olesen 2016) (and follow-up interviews) and monitored work and learning of a cohort of workers across an 18-month period, (ii) surveyed a larger population of working age Australians to extend the findings from the first two stages of Phase 1, and (iii) a consolidation of findings and advancing policy and practices implications (Billett et al. 2021).

In doing so, this paper refers to the transitions these working age adults negotiate across their working lives. That includes the kinds of learning needed and the kinds and qualities of the educative experiences enabling that learning. That is, those experiences that directly or indirectly guide, support and extend these individuals’ learning and lifespan development. The case begins with considerations of what constitutes lifelong learning and lifelong education. Despite being conceptually distinct, these concepts are often conflated. A brief overview and justification of the phases of the practical enquiry are then advanced. To delineate the kinds of goals required for sustaining participation in employment and securing employability, the transitions identified across working lives and the kinds of learning associated with them are elaborated and discussed. Following that, the concepts of educative experiences and personal curriculum are elaborated and exemplified. They refer to the processes (i.e. educative experiences and individuals’ engagement with them) and progression of individuals’ learning journey (i.e. personal curriculums) across working life, as socio-personal processes. That is those where personal and social contributions are entwined. This includes the kinds of educative experiences afforded individuals across working life, particularly as they engage in transitions of different kinds: i.e. what constitutes lifelong education. In all, it furthers the case for viewing lifelong learning and lifelong education as being distinct and sperate phenomena, the interdependence among the contributions of adults, their educational experiences and those provided by their communities, leading to the explanatory concepts of personal curriculum and educative experiences to illuminate and elaborate learning and development across working life.

Lifelong learning and education

As foreshadowed, there are now growing and urgent needs to understand more fully and support working age adults’ learning across the duration of their working lives (e.g. Billett 2006; Eriksson 2016; Healy, Nicholson, and Gahan 2017). It is now accepted that individuals’ initial occupational preparation, usually in the transition from youth to adulthood, is insufficient to remain employable across working life given the changing requirements of occupational competence and workplace performance (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2006; 2010). As working life gets longer, so too the prospects for the redundancy of that initial preparation. Moreover, when adults transition through a number of occupations across working life, this inevitably requires either fresh preparation or forms of continuing educational development of some kinds (Billett and Hodge 2016). Purposeful engagement in educative processes is prompted by ongoing changes in employability requirements that encompass the fluctuating demand for specific occupations, changes in occupational competence and specific workplace performance requirements (Billett 2006). The imperatives to realise important social and economic outcomes at the workplace, occupational and national levels, are, therefore, dependent upon adults’ learning and development across working life. Employability here is not just about securing employment, it is also about sustaining the ability to be employed in a changing work environment, and individuals being able to realise their aspirations of advancement and broadening of occupational bases (Billett and Hodge 2016). Consequently, informed approaches and effective practices are needed to assist working age adults sustain their employability through negotiating the kinds, duration and extent of changes that comprise the transitions they negotiate and their workplaces and communities face across working life.

However, this imperative requires clarity in key premises and processes through which personal and institutional efforts are made to achieve outcomes of employability, workplace viability and greater national self-reliance. Yet, some key concepts remain positioned unhelpfully. Erroneously, all too often, the separate concepts of ‘lifelong education’ and ‘lifelong learning’ are conflated, when they are conceptually distinct (Billett 2010; Billett and Hodge 2016). Typically, in governmental discourses when referring to ‘lifelong learning’, it is primarily about the provision of educational experiences to achieve specific intended outcomes. This should be correctly termed as ‘lifelong education’. This conflation becomes problematic when unconsciously or unthinkingly what constitutes understandings about and provisions of experiences to support learning are constrained to those that are provided through structured educational experiences (i.e. lifelong education). Yet, such a focus denies, limits or underestimates much of the learning that arises in and through working life by participation in work activities and interactions. The Program of International Assessment of Adult Competence (PIAAC) data indicates the extent, frequency and kind of learning arising through work. This includes activities associated with developing higher order capacities, occurring frequently (i.e. at least once a week) for all kinds and classifications of workers (OECD 2013). Moreover, that learning is consistently reported being supported by supervisors and other workers, but even more so by individual learning efforts alone. This appears to be the case across most, if not all, countries that have participated in PIAAC. Moreover, the kinds and extent of discretion that workers report being able to enact in and through their work, and the problem-solving they engage in are demonstrative of both work performance and learning arising through undertaking those kinds of tasks (Billett 2015).

The importance of this learning through work is widely acknowledged (e.g. Boud, Garrick, and Greenfield 2000; Fenwick 2008; Tynjälä 2008). Yet, it is often overlooked in policy formation or taken for granted, rather than seen as being central to constitutes more encompassing views of lifelong or worklife education. So, whilst engagement in structured educational programmes occurs, particularly at points of transitions in adults’ working life, these are relatively infrequent and transitory experiences compared to the educative experiences that working age adults encounter in and through their daily work activities and interactions. We also know that such educative experiences while frequent and commonly accessed across workforces and generative of much of the capacities that promote employability, usually need to be augmented, supported or guided in specific ways to realise their full potential to support learning. However, these kinds of educative experiences are often quite distinct from those supporting learning within educational institutions and programmes.

As noted, what constitutes education is the provision of experiences from which individuals are expected to learn and these are often organised to achieve intentional learning outcomes especially afforded by educational institutions such as schools, colleges or universities. Lifelong education is no exception here. Thus, whereas learning is a personal fact (Billett 2009), educational provisions arise from society, culture and history and are what Searle (1995) refers to as institutional facts. They are a product of society and suggested and enacted through institutional means, albeit education institutions, workplaces or other kinds of institutions. These institutional facts, as Searle (1995) reminds us, just like brute facts (e.g. maturation) cannot be wished away; they exist and individuals engaging them in different ways and with personally specific kinds and levels of interest and enthusiasm. Elsewhere, Wertsch (1998) proposes how individuals engage with socially suggested experiences are captured as being either about superficial engagement and outcomes (i.e. mastery) or with focused and intentional participation and outcomes (i.e. appropriation). Hence, relying upon institutional facts alone is an inadequate explanation for learning across working life. This is because learning is, ultimately, mediated by working age adults. The bases for that mediation is their personal epistemologies (i.e. what they know, can do and value) (Billett 2009). These arise through their earlier or premediate experiences (Valsiner and van der Veer 2000) that comprise their ontogenetic development (i.e. that across the life course). In this way, individuals’ ontogenies shape how they construe experiences and construct meaning and outcomes from them (i.e. learn). Hence, there are clear distinctions between the person-particular process of meaning making (i.e. the construal of experiences and construction of knowledge that individuals engage in when encountering what the social world affords them) (i.e. lifelong learning) from the provision of experiences (i.e. lifelong education). It is important, therefore, to account for personal facts as they comprise the contributions to thinking and acting arise individuals’ personal histories or ontogenies. It is these that ultimately shape and are explanatory of what constitutes both the processes and outcomes of individuals’ learning across working life.

Hence, to understand further what constitutes learning and development across working life requires an elaboration of both concepts and their duality: (i) the provision of experiences, (ii) how individuals come to construe, engage, and learn through them, and (iii) the relational character of that engagement and learning. Such considerations open discussions about what constitutes lifelong education and how it can best support individuals’ learning across lengthening working lives.

Investigating learning across working life

The issues above about learning across working life motivated an investigation to understand more fully the experiences of working age adults across their working lives and the goals they must achieve to remain employable and bases by which that employability was secured. This investigation was funded by the Australian Research Council over a three-year period and conducted wholly within Australia with different kinds and categories of workers. The research question guiding this project is:

What personal, educational and workplace practices can best sustain employability across working life?

It comprises three phases (Billett et al. 2021). As foreshadowed, in the first, the goal was to identify processes and outcomes of worklife learning of mature aged adults using a retrospective process of worklife history reporting (Salling-Olesen 2016). This phase comprised engaging 66 working age adults from diverse occupational classifications, genders, ages and reflecting the culturally and linguistically diverse nature of the Australian adult population. To secure accounts from across working lives, informants selected were mainly in their mid-thirties and above and through personal and professional contacts. These informants were identified using criteria sampling to secure those that are well positioned to provide detailed and substantial retrospective accounts of worklife learning processes and outcomes. These informants comprised those who had been born in Australia and those who had migrated, including as refugees. All 66 informants were engaged in the first interview comprising an open narrative through which they described their working life from their first paid (or unpaid) work until their present circumstances. The technique is of a non-structured and open narrative encouraged by the interviewer, but with limited interventions other than general prompts. The narratives were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed to identify key transitions the informants had encountered and negotiated across their working lives.

The second stage of this phase comprised shadowing through a series of interviews with 30 (out of 66) informants across an 18-month period to identify changes in their working lives and their engagement in activities associated with learning and development. As this stage of the project coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, intended observations could not occur. However, the impact of COVID-19 on certain industries and sectors led to selecting some of these workers. These included those from the airline industry (i.e. pilots, groundcrew), and service workers to highlight the kinds of changes they had to negotiate and, for some, initiate career changes. Intentionally, these informants were from a range of ages including younger workers and they also provided life history accounts which were analysed in similar ways to those from the first phase. The second phase of the project was to undertake a survey to verify and extend the findings from the two stages of the first phase. This was conducted online and comprised items about learning activities and improving learning in both workplaces and tertiary and occasional institutions, particularly for practice and policy recommendations. In Phase 3, a consolidation of findings was advanced, drawing out deductions and addressing procedural questions about enhancing everyday learning activities and generating specific policy recommendations for workplace and governmental considerations. However, this paper primarily refers to the data reported and discussed from the first phase.

The reporting and discussions provided below focuses, firstly, on the worklife transitions informants described in their life history interviews. From analyses of these data, it was possible to identify six kinds of transitions or changes these informants had negotiated, and their subcategories within them. Moreover, indications of the kind of learning and developmental goals required to be secured by these informants are identified and discussed as being fivefold. Then, the findings about what constitutes educative experiences supporting these informants’ learning and development are then explained and discussed. From these data, an array of educative experiences was identified, and these experiences are, in many ways, quite distinct from those comprising what is often referred to as lifelong education (i.e. taught experiences facilitated by educators). Interrater reliability was conducted to determine if there was agreement between two researchers’ judgement on whether one or a combination of six kinds of changes or five kinds of educative experience could be identified across 300 + worklife transitions. There was substantial agreement between the two researchers’ judgements, generating 85% of agreement between the two researchers, higher than the minimum acceptable interrater agreement of 80% (McHugh 2012). Finally, consideration is given to personal curriculum – the individual pathways of experiencing, learning and development that these informants reported and described.

Worklife transitions

The worklife history interviews of the 66 informants in the first phase rendered over 300 instances of transitions across their working lives. Once analysed, these transitions were found to be initiated by six categorises of changes these individuals had to negotiate and these were variously associated with institutional and brute facts (Searle 1995), and personal factors (Billett 2009). Whilst these changes are sixfold (with some sub-categories), as:

1. life stages,

2. employment status,

3. occupations,

4. relocations,

5. health, and

6. personal preference or trajectories.

The changes can be seen as being a product of societal factors (i.e. institutional facts) or those arising through nature (i.e. brute facts) (Searle 1995), as are presented in Table 1, and briefly outlined and exemplified in the following sections. That is those changes were initiated and shaped by these factors. Amongst these are personal facts (Billett 2009). Importantly, although these changes are set out as separate categories, individuals’ transitions might comprise a number of them. For instance, refugee migrant might be dealing with relocation, changes in employment status, needing to renew occupations and dealing with issues of health and well-being.

Table 1. Examples of kinds of changes initiating and shaping worklife transitions.

1. Stages of life changes (i.e. maturation – brute fact)	Transitions occur in response to different stages of life, including physiological maturity (i.e. brute fact) or societal roles and expectation (i.e. institutional fact). For example, finding a partner and commencing a family can initiate transitions in working life associated with needing to secure better paid or more stable employment. Or a ‘stay-at-home mother’ once completing her responsibilities as primary caregiver to her children might transition to seeking employment, resulting in a shift in her personal identity (i.e. subjectivity – from being a caregiver to having a defined occupation). Or identification of another form of work or occupational pathway at some point in their working lives to meet their changed interest or physical capacities better than their current job. Hence, transitions in this category are precipitated by and pursued when reaching a particular stage of adult life in which the brute fact of maturation (Searle 1995) predominates.
2. Change of employment status (i.e. socially derived – institutional facts)	Transitions occur in response to or are a product of a change in individuals’ employment status (i.e. institutional fact). An example includes the shift from being an employee to a supervisor or self-employed or owner of a business, bringing about changes in what individuals know, can do, and value (i.e. likely significant learning). These changes also likely play a very powerful role in individuals’ sense of self and well-being at the beginning (e.g. formation of adult occupational identity), throughout working life (e.g. achievement, relative success, societal standing of occupations) (i.e. personal fact), and also towards the end of working life (i.e. moving outside of paid employment and occupational identity) (i.e. brute and personal facts). Hence, such transitions might be defined as those initiating, advancing, and reconciling employment status (i.e. interaction between institutional and personal facts).
3. Change in occupations (i.e. individually and socially derived – intersection between personal and institutional facts)
3a Change in occupations or occupational focus	This subcategory is associated with individuals’ changes in their occupations or a variation of their occupational practice. Such changes can occur voluntarily (e.g. to secure more personally appropriate occupations – personal fact) or involuntarily (e.g. changes in demand for location of, or existence of, specific occupations or kinds of work, or perhaps prompted by the prospect of such changes – institutional facts). These changes require the development of new or distinct sets of occupational capacities, necessitating adapting what they already know (e.g. from tradesperson to trade teacher) or generating an entirely new set of occupational-specific capacities (e.g. from builder to coffee shop owner). In this instance, occupational change might be defined as the further development of work-life capacities in the form of occupational-specific concepts, practices, and values but the imperatives to do so may be personal, institutional, or brute.
3b Change in skills and capacities (i.e. personal facts)	This subcategory refers to changes within individuals’ capacities to practice occupations or associated roles that allows individuals to engage in different kinds and forms of work unknown to them. So, this change is about individuals’ learning and appropriation of new knowledge and capacities to apply that knowledge (i.e. personal fact). An example of this kind includes a refugee migrant, learnt new knowledge in a course on building and construction, adding to what he had acquired through an informal apprenticeship comprising observing, imitating, and practising building work as guided by others.
3c Change in employment through restructuring or changed economic circumstances (i.e. institutional facts)	These changes are brought about by external factors such as economic restructuring making specific forms of work and occupations either redundant or in very low supply. For instance, a man in his mid-fifty had intended to retire from the paid workforce given his relatively strong financial situation that comprised having significant savings and investments, and accommodation that were rented to students. However, his plan was all disrupted by COVID-19, prompting him the need to secure employment.
4. Change in location – geographical or societal (i.e. accommodating new language norms, forms, and practices – institutional facts)	Relocation, mainly through voluntary means (i.e. personal facts) although sometimes traumatically through involuntary acts by refugee migrants enacted by others (i.e. institutional facts), constitutes significant transitions for adults that are becoming more common. The shift from a community where the norms, forms, and practices are well known and understood, the language is possessed, and futures are visible and viable to one in which all of these are unfamiliar and difficult to access and comprehend represents significant challenges regardless of their initiation. For instance, a refugee migrant came to Australia and needed to learn English and secure employment to cater to their family’s needs. Hence, more than learning an occupation, there were a range of societal and language acquisition issues they had to negotiate.
5. Change in physical and psychological health/well-being (i.e. maturation – brute fact; societally derived pressures – institutional facts) Maturation brings with it changes in physical capacities and dispositional well-being, both through biological progress and through the accumulation of lived experiences. This maturation has impacts upon individuals’ choices about working life, and at different worklife stages, as well as abilities to perform specific occupations.
5a Change in personal health and well-being	Not all work is age tolerant, i.e. age suitability of physically demanding work. For instance, it is quite common in emergency service work and the military for workers to retire by 40 or 45 from frontline activities, as they do not have the strength and may become a risk to themselves and others (e.g. co-workers). Shirley, who has a cognitive impairment retired early due to the growing demands of her work affecting her effective response to those changes. Alex as a diesel mechanic working on small boats had his career disrupted because of back injury.
5b Changes in family health and well-being	Issues of family health and well-being can initiate a change in occupations or modes and forms of work. This can include the impact upon the families of workers who are absent from home for extended periods of time, or whom are engaged in long term shift work that can disrupt family life, particularly childcare. For example, Annita’s career trajectory was totally changed after the death of her husband, as he left her with a young child; she had to live on a single-parent pension for years before progressing into employment in the disability support sector
5. Change in personal lifestyle (personal facts – individual choice/agency) This kind of change is brought about by personal factors such as existing or emerging beliefs (e.g. religious, political, or ethical) or approaches to lifestyle (e.g. being a vegetarian, environmentally active, commercially disengaged). Transitions can be initiated by either a prosecution of those beliefs or changes in occupational workplace practices that precipitate the need to transition away from that occupation, form of work, or workplace (i.e. institutional facts).
6a Change in personal preferences and values	This subcategory refers to specific kinds of changes in individuals’ values that lead to how they conduct themselves now and, in the future (i.e. personal facts). For instance, across his working life, Salim wanted to find work that was fulfilling for him and was directing his efforts to that goal, but also in a way that suited his preferences to work for himself and not to be employed by and be subject to other people’s preferences, and control.
6b Change in subjectivity	This subcategory refers to changes in how individuals come to see themselves and is evident in many of the interviews, indicating their sense of self or subjectivity (i.e. personal facts). For example, Salim went from being a Bahà’í and an Iranian citizen to a refugee migrant, to intentionally gaining Australian citizenship, and to forming the occupational subjectivity of a builder. After an incident when they seemingly made a mistake with an established cultural practice, he made conscious efforts not to repeat that same error.

Across the 300 + transitions, it was also possible to identify and quantify the different kinds of changes associated with the changes they comprised. Here, personal/lifestyle (i.e. 88%) and occupational changes (i.e. 87%) are most frequently reported. So, issues of self are emphasised in this patterning as initiating and directing change. That is, the decision-making was reportedly prompted by individual decisions, rather than coercion to change (i.e. personal factors). However, this might be misleading conclusion because often in such circumstances, individuals had to make decisions about their initiation and kinds and for what purposes. For instance, when threatened with the real prospect of being conscripted into a war (e.g. Salim) or faced with an industry in decline (e.g. Beau), individuals reported making choices about their pathways and engaging in transitions to secure better personal or occupational outcomes for themselves, and their families. Indeed, combinations of changes in institutional and personal factors were most prominently featured across the reported transitions (Billett et al. 2021).

The data about these transitions as described and validated in the life history interviews also provided accounts of the learning required to negotiate them (Billett et al. 2021; Billett, Choy, and Le 2023). So, it is helpful to delineate and elaborate the kinds of learning required to negotiate these transitions. This is taken up in the next section.

Kinds and categories of learning required across working life

Through the analysis of the life history data, it was also found that these changes comprised specific kinds of learning required for successfully negotiating these worklife transitions. These represent the kinds of learning that adults might be required to secure across working life and are of five kinds:

1. Language and literacy – language skills and capacities, both spoken and written, were evident in trajectories of the informants, albeit in quite different ways.

2. Cultural practices – the norms, forms, and practices associated with a nation’s political, social, or educational systems, institutional mores, occupational requirements, and those associated with the individuals (e.g. family tradition, faith).

3. World of work – involving awareness of requirements for paid employment, including being productive, punctual, reliable, solving problems, and responsive to those who employ and whose needs are served. This extends to understanding of different occupations and career pathways.

4. Occupational skills – associated with the occupations in which individuals are employed or seeking to be employed.

5. Work-life engagement – Learning about work-life involves individuals’ responses to and engagement in work as their circumstances change or are changed. This requires adults to fit their working life in with other priorities.

The kinds and extent of learning required by each informant was, by degree, person dependent. For instance, for Salim – who moved from a country in which Farsi is spoken and where very few people would be competent in English – English competence was required to live and work in Australia. Salim was also initially frustrated in his efforts to secure a university qualification based on his studies as he had no certification of its completion. This meant he could not get credit for his university studies or entry into higher degrees. He had to start all over again, which was not possible as he had to be employed to provide for his family. Later, once he had learnt construction skills by working in the sector, he used the recognition of prior learning (RPL) process to secure credit for his existing skills in construction work such as fencing, landscaping, carpentry, and building.

Yet, for others, even those from English-speaking backgrounds, becoming and being literate took different forms. Shirley had difficulties with her literacy skills (i.e. a form of dyslexia) that inhibited her employment options, and which she worked to overcome through returning to school as a young adult, completing, firstly, her high schooling and then going on to tertiary education. Across these transitions, the development of Shirley’s occupational skills and transition from one occupation to another was associated with access to relevant educational provisions. These included undertaking a course to become a beauty therapist, a secretarial course to become a receptionist, and an education degree to become a teacher, which were then followed by working in those occupations.

Overall, the evidence provided through the focussed second interview indicated that a complex of societal, personal, educational, and workplace factors support and sustain the learning required for employability across the participants’ working lives (Billett, Choy, and Le 2023). These factors are both person-particular and relational. The life history narratives generated factors initiating key transitions in these adult informants’ lives, the kinds and scope of changes they encountered, domains of knowledge to be learnt, how they learn to secure those outcomes and support that was effective in doing so.

Worklife learning and lifelong education

Much learning occurs incrementally both through moment by moment learning or microgenesis that occurs daily as adults engage workplace activities and interactions. Much of this learning is driven and mediated by personal agency and engagement with others, and often in circumstances where external guidance and support is only periodically available or accessible PIAAC data (OECD 2013). Much of this learning can be explained by what is referred to as mimetic learning: processes of observation, imitation and practice (Billett 2014) that shapes individuals’ development that arises through moment-by-moment engagement in goal-directed activities and interactions (Scribner 1984; 1985). Then, there is the problem-solving and exercise of discretion that can include the development of higher order knowledge and is highly intentional in its enactment (OECD 2013). Beyond these are the intensive and expansive learning arising during transitions in these adults’ working lives. On a personal plane, that learning collectively contribute to individuals’ ontogenetic development (i.e. the development of personal knowledge across the lifespan) (Scribner 1985). That processes of meaning making or learning from experience are shaped by individuals’ personal epistemologies and how that directs their intentional engagement with the world (Malle, Moses, and Baldwin 2001). This is not to suggest that intentionality for learning across working life is always intensely and singularly focused, long-term, or strategic or even coherent. But, that intentionality for learning arises through accomplishing those culturally and societally derived tasks (Scribner 1984), as indicated in the informants’ data. Also, there are intense interludes of learning, much of it potentially the source of new knowledge arising during worklife transitions.

The source of the much of the knowledge required for working life is derived from outside of the individual (e.g. occupational knowledge). Therefore, that knowledge needs to be accessed and engaged with inter-psychologically (i.e. between the person and the ‘world beyond the skin’). So, this knowledge cannot always be realised through individuals’ discovery efforts alone. Instead, access to and guidance in securing this socially generated knowledge is usually mediated by others (e.g. more experienced workers, educators). That is those who possess that knowledge, an ability to share it and collaborate in its development in others. However, beyond access to highly domain-specific occupational knowledge, the data indicates that other forms of guidance are necessary for opportunities to be provided, engagements to occur and goals to be set. The evidence suggests that the source of that came from the communities in which the informants inhabited. These included affordances (i.e. invitational interactions) that provided, advice, guidance and opportunities that otherwise the informants would not have been able to access. Salim, for instance, was provided with opportunities to engage in and learn construction skills from local Bahà’í community members. Thus, beyond access to occupational knowledge and workplace practices, there were other kinds of educative support assisting these informants’ ability to negotiate transitions.

Indeed, from the life history data, it was concluded that securing transitions to achieve the learning and developmental outcomes are prompted by and required to secure those transitions is premised on three interrelated 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) (see Figure 1). Yet, relations amongst and mediation of person, education, and community are complex and varied, depending on the diverse supportive suggestions in terms of community affordances and educative experiences, and also who these were engage with and mediated by individuals engaged (Billett, Choy, and Le 2023).

Figure 1. Securing transitions: Person + educative support + community.

It was evidenced from the worklife history interviews that most informants’ negotiation of worklife transitions was mediated with the assistance of familiars, local contacts or networks and in combinations of those three factors (Billett, Choy, and Le 2023). Only a tiny minority indicated that one or two of these mediational means was sufficient. Hence, individual effort and educational provisions alone were reportedly insufficient, and support and guidance from beyond them was necessitated and from what is broadly termed their ‘communities’.

It was evident from these informants’ life history narratives that a range of experiences and support of different kinds assisted these informants’ participation in and learning through working life. The key point here is that individuals’ learning and their ‘education’ across working life comprises personally shaped, enacted and mediated processes, but in curriculum terms can only be judged individually (Pinar 1980). This rehearses what Dewey (1916) stated: ‘the education process has no end, beyond itself; its own end. It is itself a process of living’ (59) and how Bobbitt (1918) defined curriculum: ‘entire range of experiences, both directed and undirected, concerned in the unfolding the abilities of the individual’ (43).

All this suggests the need to account for the continuities and discontinuities individuals encounter across transitions and working life. These include failures and successes, and these can only be judged from the informants’ perspectives. To elaborate these processes further, two concepts are advanced: educative experiences and personal curriculums. These are introduced and briefly outlined in the next section.

Educative experiences

Drawing on Dewey (1916), educative experiences are those that are germane to and salient for individuals as they guide, assist and support participation in activities and interactions through which they learn to achieve their goals. As elaborated elsewhere (Billett, Choy, and Le 2023), in terms of explaining how working age adults come to learn through work and be supported in negotiating worklife transitions, these experiences go beyond what comprises lifelong education (e.g. intentional programmes provided by educational institutions) and includes the interactions and contributions made by familiars (i.e. friends, parents family members), social partners (i.e. members of ethnic, cultural or religious groups) and the social world in which individuals engage and interact (e.g. the physical and social community where they live). They variously comprise those that:

• guide towards and provide opportunities for individuals to engage in activities and interactions from which they learn and would have otherwise been unavailable;

• invite to engage in activities and interactions that would be otherwise unavailable;

• support and mediate access to the knowledge required for engaging in those activities and interactions that they would not learn through discovery alone;

• guide the development of those capacities either directly or indirectly through their interventions; and

• acknowledge, capture, reward and certify their learning in ways that allow them to progress that they would otherwise be unable.

As indicated in the life history data, adults’ worklife learning arises through experiences via workplaces, community affiliations and social groupings and educational institutions. Evident in these data are examples of direct support, opportunities, guidance and even pathways that are inherently educative through what they afford adults. Yet, such contributions would be overlooked if the focus was only on intentional educational experiences. Similarly, without including these kinds of experiences in accounts of working adults’ educational experiences would restrict explanations only to intentional programmes. Hence, conceptions of what counts as ‘educative’, and curriculum advanced through the educational discourse need to be expansive. They should be extended to include all of the educative experiences that adults have across their working lives, albeit is afforded by community, workplaces or through intentional experiences organised by educational institutions. Indeed, such intentional experiences are relatively infrequent former is working age adults, thereby not representing a sufficient means of describing, informing and explaining those pathways across individuals’ lives (i.e. curriculum). These pathways are also personally unique. Thus, there is a need to offer a view of curriculum that acknowledges, captures and advances these qualities.

Personal curriculum

The orthodox view of curriculum refers to ‘the pathway to progress along or course to follow (Marsh 2004) that often have come to be understood as pathways through educational programmes. The concept of a personal curriculum offers a basis to describe and articulate individuals’ personally unique set of experiences across their life course, including, but not defined by or limited to those provided through intentional educational experiences. So, a personal curriculum can be defined:

… as personal pathways of activities and interactions across the lifespan as shaped interdependently by what is afforded by the social world, mediated by maturation and engaged with intentionally (i.e. consciously, effortfully and directedly) and un-intentionally (i.e. habitual and societally sanctioned) by individuals that shapes and is shaped by their (ontogenetic) development (Billett, Choy, and Le 2023).

This concept accommodates the brute fact of maturation, as well as institutional (Searle 1995) and personal (Billett 2009) factors, and distances itself from a view of curriculum from being constituted, largely, as an institutional fact (i.e. something intended and enacted by social institutions). As noted, early theorising positioned curriculum in these ways (e.g. Bobbitt 1918) before being captured by the dominant discourse of ‘schooling’ (Tyler 1949).

Intentions and enactment of personal curriculums

What is discernible in the data are sets of intentions or purposes that direct and engage adults’ learning efforts, on the one hand, but, on the other that these are engaged with in different ways, intensities and at specific points across these adults’ working lives. The life history data identified personal imperatives that motivate and direct working age adults’ learning efforts. These are delineated as: (i) their specific life stages; (ii) goals related to their employment status; (iii) goals related to their occupational capacities, including changes in occupations; (iv) relocation from one geographical place to another; (v) health-related imperatives; and (vi) personal preferences and interests (Billett et al. 2021). These data provide convincing evidence of intentionalities (Malle, Moses, and Baldwin 2001) associated with achieving personal goals within those six sets of imperatives. Yet, there were also means and forms of support that assisted those achievements or efforts to do so.

Referring to their transitions, informants reported the salience of the guidance, support and assistance by the communities in which they inhabit or engage. For instance, an airline captain who had become unemployed with the cessation of commercial flights during Covid, began studying a law degree. However, members of his golf club, who were lawyers and barristers, provided specific advice about a career change and paid part-time legal work while he was studying. Those community members facilitated his learning and development by providing advice and opportunities that he would not otherwise have been. Patterns of: (i) personal initiative, (ii) an educational provision providing specific learning experiences not accessible elsewhere and (iii) engagement with community providing guidance, support and opportunities typically were central to the successful progressions across worklife pathways. These contributions were evident in the 346 transitions that the Phase 1 informants (n = 66) reported negotiating and indications of when contributions of the person, education and community were evident. Most transitions (i.e. 79%) were supported by combinations of individual initiative, educational provisions, and community facilitation. So, it was in combinations of different kinds of these contributions that assisted these adults negotiate their worklife transitions.

Noteworthy is that even in circumstances where engagement in educational programmes and provisions (i.e. lifelong education) occurred, on its own it was rarely sufficient to support these informants’ progression along their working life pathways. This merely rehearses what Bobbitt (1918) proposed that we need to account for the entire set of experiences that supports learning when conceptualising what constitutes curriculum. So, both within and between key transitions were identified sets of educative experiences that included those within educational institutions, but these were far from the only source of these kinds of experiences.

Lifelong learning in prospect

The data briefly overviewed and explanatory concepts advanced here offer ways of capturing what constitutes the processes of worklife learning: i.e. what is afforded to adults and its mediation by them. They position and elaborate worklife learning as socio-personal processes shaped by complexes of institutional, personal and brute facts. The personal journeys comprising curriculums or pathways are person-particular and warrant understanding on their own terms (Pinar 1980). All this positions ‘lifelong education’ more inclusively than what is afforded by intentional educational programmes and institutions. Analogously, the practices of communities (Gherardi 2009) stand to be a helpful concept that extends the duality of participatory practices as explanatory bases for learning in work settings (Billett 2004). This raises the need to open policy and practice perspectives for supporting learning across working life beyond taught programmes and to consider personal pathways, community engagement and assistance to negotiate worklife transitions.

Also, making the distinction between ‘lifelong learning’ and ‘lifelong education’ seems essential. The adults’ worklife learning is personally defined, societally shaped, and framed by brute facts of maturation (e.g. ageing) emphasising their complex interdependency. The transitions they encountered and needed to negotiate are personally distinct in kind, scope and frequency across working lives, as evidenced by the informants’ diverse personal curriculums. Their learning and development is mediated by relations amongst personal agency and intentionality, interdependently with what is afforded by educative experiences in intentional education programmes and practices of the ‘community’. Beyond the lifelong education discourse, educative experiences are cast broadly here to include experiences that provide advice, opportunities, support learning, guide access and assist negotiate transitions. More than individual agency and intentionality and education provisions, what is afforded by ‘communities’ with which these adults engage, in variously sanctioned support that provide access to opportunities and augment adults’ learning and development. Therefore, lifelong educative experiences and personal pathways are facilitated by practices of their communities and complement lifelong educational experiences, albeit intentional or otherwise.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to acknowledge the funding provided for this research by the Australian Research Council through its Discovery program and the important contributions of the research team comprising Professors Henning Salling-Olesen (Roskilde University) and Laurent Filliattez (University of Geneva), and the assistance of Dr Anh Hai Le, Professor Sarojni Choy, Dr Raymond Smith and Dr Debbie Bargallie. Also, the investigation would have not progressed without the generosity of the informants who provided such rich and comprehensive data about their worklife histories and the means through which they are learning throughout them.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council: [Grant Number DP190101519].