The Learning and Changes Adults Negotiate Across Worklife Transitions

Context: The transitions adults negotiate across their working lives as they secure, maintain and develop further employability through their learning are of interest to governments, workplaces, and workers themselves.

Approach: Through analyses of worklife history interview data with 30 working age adults, distinct kinds of changes comprising these transitions have been delineated as representative of changes that have person-particular meanings and impacts. This delineation represents understandings of processes and outcomes for adults’ learning and development.

Findings: These transitions have specific kinds of scope, duration, and impacts in terms of continuity/discontinuity with individuals’ earlier activities and knowing. These transitions were identified as being of six kinds: i) life stages, ii) employment status, iii) occupations, iv) relocations, v) health, and vi) personal preference or trajectories.

Conclusion: Such findings point to a broader range of educative experiences than those privileged in lifelong educational provisions and the importance as viewing curriculum as being a personal, rather than institutional pathway.