On the determinants of employment-related organised education and informal learning

Abstract

This paper analyses the distribution of employment-related organised education and informal learning in the Canadian workforce. The paper draws on a large-scale survey, the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL), which was based on structured and standardised telephone interviews with a representative sample of 5783 Canadian members of the employed labour force. In exploring the determinants facilitating employment-related informal learning, three analytical categories of factors derived from previous research on learning participation were used: individual-level factors, job characteristics and workplace environment. The analyses focus on differences in individuals, jobs and workplace characteristics among adult workers who acquired or improved their job-related skills through different training pathways. In addition, analyses were performed to compare the extent to which these factors differ in their influence on learning decisions among workers who combine both organised education and informal learning and those who receive only informal learning. The results indicate that important predictors of participation in employment-related organised education and informal learning are age, educational attainment, learning skills, occupational class, education-job relation, degree of autonomy, degree of labour intensity, principal area of production and organisation size.

Keywords:

• informal learning
• organised education
• formal learning
• workplace learning
• job characteristics

Acknowledgements

Data from the 2003/4 National Survey of Work and Lifelong Learning were provided by the Institute for Social Research, York University. The survey was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and was completed for the research network of the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning in the New Economy under the direction of Dr David Livingstone, principal investigator and Doug Hart, project manager from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. The Institute for Social Research, the SSHRC, the principal investigator and the OISE are not responsible for the analyses and interpretations presented here.