Working, Learning

1
Working, Learning Thriving in Risk Society

• Professor Bob Fryer CBE
• National Director Widening Participation in
  Learning
• Department of Health
• Bob.Fryer _at_dh.gsi.gov.uk

2
Only the well educated will be able to act
effectively in the Information Society.

• The key to the Learning Society is to seek the
  learning potential in everyday situations.A
  learning culture must, after all mean finding
  learning in the most unlikely places.
• Michael Barber, The Learning Game

3
A former UK Secretary of States lyrical vision
for lifelong learning

• Fulfilling individual potential
• Skills for national prosperity
• Success in the knowledge-based global economy
• Creativity imagination
• Civilisation spirituality
• Love of music, art literature - aesthetics
• Enterprise scholarship of all
• Active citizenship social cohesion
• Contribution to family community

4
Living in an era of profound widespread social
cultural change

• Changes in social, political cultural
  institutions (Family, Politics, Consumption etc)
• Restructuring of work, employment industry
• Shifts in personal group identities
  aspirations
• A growing tendency for choice
• An information knowledge revolution
• Changing technologies
• Greater localism within globalisation
• Social fragmentation division
• New forms expressions of citizenship

5
Learning Individual Life Chances

• Material Wellbeing - Income, Poverty Wealth
• Social Capital
• Authority Autonomy at Work
• Experience Duration of Unemployment
• Health, Mental Health Longevity
• Social Civic Engagement
• Geographic Social Mobility
• Social Inclusion
• Choice

6
What is Happening to the World of Work?

• Structural changes in industries occupations
• Demand for new skills
• Challenges of greater competitiveness
• Technological change
• Globalisation
• New sorts of workplace - flatter structures,
  project management - fuzzy boundaries
• Non- and de-unionisation
• No more jobs for life
• Household 3-generational un/underemployment
• Need for workers to be flexible creative
• Stress getting the work-life balance right

7
Turbo Capitalism an Age of Uncertainty
Insecurity?

• No jobs are guaranteed, no positions are
  foolproof, no skills are of lasting utility,
  experience and know-how turn into liability as
  soon as they become assets, seductive careers all
  too often prove to be suicide tracks. In their
  present rendering, human rights do not entail the
  acquisition of a right to a job, however well
  performed , or - more generally - the right to
  care and consideration for the sake of past
  merits. Livelihood, social position,
  acknowledgement of usefulness and the entitlement
  to self-dignity may all vanish together,
  overnight and without notice.

Zygmunt Bauman, Postmodernity its Discontents,
page 22
8
Towards Risk Society (Beck)
Ubiquitous Change
Unreliability
Uncertainty
Risk Society
Unpredictability
Un-sustainability
Fuzzy Boundaries
Choice
Beyond Conventions, Rules Structures
Multiple Contested Information Knowledge
9
Living at the Crossroads - Bauman

• The overwhelming feelings of crisis (in
  education), of living at the crossroads, have
  little to do with the faults, errors or
  negligence of the professional pedagogues or the
  failures of educational theory, but quite a lot
  to do with the de-regulation and privatization of
  the identity-formation processes, the dispersal
  of authorities , the polyphony of value messages
  and the ensuring fragmentation of life Beyond
  all this slicing and spicing, one can sense the
  crumbling of time. (Crisis) plays havoc with all
  the rules the fragmentary life is lived in
  fragmentary time.
• Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualized Society, 2001

10
The Core Purposes of Learning

• According to the celebrated Delors Commission on
  Lifelong Learning, The Treasure Within, they are
  fourfold
• Learning to Know (learning to learn, general
  knowledge understanding)
• Learning to Do (skills, competence, practical
  ability in a variety of settings)
• Learning to Live Together (tolerance, mutual
  understanding, interdependence)
• Learning to Be (personal autonomy
  responsibility, memory, aesthetics, ethics,
  communication physical capacity)

11
The advent of tertiary learning

• The world in which post-modern men and women
  need to live their lives and shape their life
  strategies puts a premium on tertiary learning
  - a kind of learning which our inherited
  institutions, born and matured in the modern
  ordering bustle are ill prepared to handle and
  one which educational theory, developed as a
  reflection of modern ambitions and their
  institutional embodiments, can only view with a
  mixture of bewilderment and horror, a
  pathological growth or a portent of advancing
  schizophrenia.
• Source Bauman, op. cit.

12
An emergent model of learning
Source Jarvis 2001
13
From mass production to personalisation
14
The importance of critical reflection in
effective learning

• Critical action has to be accompanied by
  critical thought, interpretation insight.
• When critical thought, the critical self
  critical action come together, we are in the
  presence of critical persons (who) can come about
  only through the critical company of other
  critical persons.
• Notions of the learning organisation have to be
  seen as efforts to articulate a sense of
  critique
• The world of work of work understandably shrinks
  from spelling it all out, if it did it would have
  to understand that there can be no limits to
  critique.
• Ronald Barnett, Higher education a Critical
  Business

15
Discovering the hidden treasure in us all

• "None of the talents which are hidden like
  buried treasure in every person must be left
  untapped memory, reasoning power, imagination,
  physical ability, aesthetic sense, the aptitude
  to communicate with others and the natural
  charisma of the group leader, which again goes to
  improve the need for greater self-knowledge."
• Jacques Delors, UNESCO, 1997

16
Raymond Williams three vital functions of
learning in periods of rapid widespread social
change

• For Making Sense of Change - Information, ideas,
  knowledge, concepts, understandings, insights,
  theories, a critical challenging mind
• For Adapting to Change - Maximising benefits
  minimising costs, making the most of change,
  capturing applying knowledge
• For Shaping Change - As authors of change rather
  than its Victims, navigating risk uncertainty,
  at the heart of citizenship for the 20th century
  the democratic project

17
The Learning Citizen for the 21st Century

• High levels of technical skills competences
• Curious, inquisitive eager to explore
• Creative, inventive innovative
• Knowing how to know - having learned how to
  learn
• Critical analytical thinker - including
  auto-critique
• Skills to shuffle back forth between ideas
  concepts and data, evidence experience
• Confident able to sift, evaluate, review
  synthesise
• Tolerant of difference- open to the experiences
  perspectives of others
• A sense of both self society both independent
  cooperative
• Both learner teacher
• Comfortable with own identity, with confidence
  self-esteem

18
Possible Elements of a Learning Revolution

• More Inclusive Types, Meanings Purposes of
  Learning
• Huge Step Changes in Demand
• - Aggregate Increase
• - Diversification of Learning Population
• - Strengthening Depth of Learners Involvement
• - Learning Spread Across all Aspects of Life
• Radical Shifts in Aspirations, Orientations
  Attitudes
• More Ownership of Shared Responsibility
  for Learning
• Marked Increase in Employers Commitment
  Support
• New Locations,Times, Styles Forms of Learning
• Innovative Forms of Delivery Ways of Learning
• Making Learning Normal, Part of Everyday Life