Educational Outcomes for the Canadian Workplace explores how educational programs are changing, which skills matter in the economy, and how policy has responded to the educational and economic pressures of the 1990s.
Lifelong Learning is essential to all individuals and in recent years has become a guiding principle for policy initiatives, ranging from national economic competition to issues of social cohesion and personal fulfilment. However, despite the importance of lifelong learning there is a critical absence of direct, international evidence on its extent, content and outcomes. Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work provides a new paradigm for understanding work and learning, documenting the active contribution of workers to their development and their adaptation to paid and unpaid work. Empirical evidence drawn from national surveys in Canada and eight related case studies is used to explore the current learning activities of those in paid employment, housework and volunteer work, addressing all forms of learning including: formal schooling, further education courses, informal training and self-directed learning, particularly in the context of organisational and technological change. Proposing an expanded conceptual framework for investigating the relationships between learning and work, the contributors offer new insights into the ways in which adult learning adapts to and helps reshape the wide contemporary world of work throughout the life course.
In the past two decades, advanced capitalist countries have seen sustained growth in labour market participation along with a growth in the number of jobs workers tend to have in their working lives. Over a slightly longer period we also see that participation in both formal educational attainment and a range of non-compulsory learning/training has grown. However, labour market discrimination based on gender, age, disability and race/ethnicity remains a serious issue in virtually all OECD countries. ‘Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work’ presents a critical and expansive exploration of learning and work transitions within this context. These transitions are challenging for those enmeshed in them and need to be actively challenged through the critical research reported. The impetus for this volume, its conceptual framing, and much of the research emerges from the team of Canadian researchers who together completed case study and survey projects within the ‘Work and Lifelong Learning’ (WALL) network. The authors include leading scholars with established international reputations as well as emerging researchers with fresh perspectives. This volume will appeal to researchers and policy-makers internationally with an interest in educational studies and industrial sociology.
The last decade has given rise to a strong public discourse in most highly industrialized economies about the importance of a skilled workforce as a key response to the competitive dynamic fostered by economic globalisation. The challenge for different training regimes is twofold: attracting young people into the vocational training system while continuing to train workers already in employment. Yet, on the whole, most countries and their training systems have failed to reach those goals. How can we explain this contradiction? Why is vocational training seen to be an "old" institution? Why does vocational training not seem to be easily adapted to the realities of the 21st century? This book seeks to respond to these important questions. It does so through an in-depth comparative analysis of the vocational training systems in ten different countries: Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, the United Kingdom and the USA.
Rising income inequality has been at the forefront of public debate in Canada in recent years, yet there is still much to learn about the economic forces driving the distribution of earnings and income in this country and how they might evolve in the future. With research showing that the tax-and-transfer system is losing the ability to counteract income disparity, the need for policy-makers to understand the factors at play is all the more urgent. Income Inequality provides a comprehensive review of Canadian inequality trends, including changing earnings and income dynamics among the middle class and top earners, wage and job polarization across provinces, and persistent poverty among vulnerable groups. The Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP), in collaboration with the Canadian Labour Market and Skills Researcher Network (CLSRN), presents new evidence by some of the country’s leading experts on the impact of skills and education, unionization and labour relations laws, as well as the complex interplay of redistributive policies and politics over time. Amid growing anxieties about the economic prospects of the middle class, Income Inequality will serve to inform the public discourse on inequality, an issue that ultimately concerns all Canadians.
Covers issues of vocational education and training (VET) in light of social and economic changes, such as apprenticeship, information technology, structural adjustment, and shifting regional political and economic agendas. Reports on global VET concerns in a dozen countries around the world.
Based on the Adult Literacy and Life Skills survey conducted in Bermuda, Canada, Italy, Mexico (Nuevo Leon), Norway, and the United States of America in 2003 and 2004, this book presents an initial set of findings that shed new light on the twin processes of skill gain and loss.
This insightful book is ideal for students, researchers and policy makers wanting a sound overview of the critical issues of gender in lifelong learning. Asking pertinent questions relating to discourses on policy, the authors offer the reader a rare view of lifelong learning from a gender-focused perspective, filling a gap in the literature and moving current debate on into new areas. Questions addressed include: To what extent can the policy discourses and institutional contexts of lifelong learning be seen as masculinised and/or feminised? What are the gender implications of lifelong learning policy? In what ways are learners’ identities constructed through lifelong learning? Does lifelong learning provide opportunities to challenge or transgress gender binaries? What are the implications for practice?
Living a long, healthy life is one obvious goal of pretty much all of us. We are told, over and over, to change our “lifestyles” and accept that if we become ill, we have likely brought it on ourselves. Yet, hundreds of studies, over the past four decades, tell the real story: the living and working conditions we experience every day play a determining role in our health. How income and wealth, housing, education and adequate food are distributed, whether or not we are employed, and the working conditions we experience — not medical treatments nor so-called wellness lifestyles — determine whether we stay healthy or become ill. These living and working conditions reflect the social inequalities that are associated with social class, gender, race and other social locations in Canadian society. The third edition of Health and Illness shows how inequitable distribution of the social determinants of health are determined by public policy decisions. Dennis Raphael updates information that connects health and illness to the worsening levels of inequality in Canada – the rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting sick! This edition also includes a chapter on the social determinants of who got sick and died from COVID-19. The experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic make the clear case that we need to restructure work and living conditions through public policy that more equitably distributes economic resources. It is only through such actions that we will be able to promote the health of Canadians and prevent illness in an effective manner.
This book is a collection of three independent but closely related studies. The focus is on the potential causes of skill mismatch, the extent of skill mismatch, the socio-demographic make-up of skill mismatch, and the consequences of skill mismatch in terms of earnings as well as employer sponsored adult education/training. A distinction is made between skill mismatch and education mismatch. All three studies use data from the Adult Literacy and Lifeskills Survey (ALLS) to investigate the relationships between select outcomes and skill supply-demand characteristics as well as their interactions which materialize into skill match-mismatch situations. The dataset contains direct measures of literacy skills as well as measures of the use of these skills at work which allow for a direct measure of literacy match-mismatch. The analysis points to the complex ways in which mismatch is generated and the need for an accurate and up to date measure of mismatch, one that reflects the possibilities for skill gain and skill loss over the lifespan, and reflects differences in the quality of qualifications. It also emphasizes that addressing mismatch requires a careful consideration of both the demand and supply sides of the labour market, so as to understand better the variety of factors which may have a negative impact on the effectiveness of skill formation, skill maintenance, and also skill use. Among the key findings: Skill demand characteristics appear to be as important as skill supply characteristics in explaining observed variation in earnings. There is a substantive association between the requirement to read at work and earnings, which is independent of whether individuals have high or low levels of literacy proficiency. Premiums associated with literacy skills are strongest in occupation types where they are most relevant, but premiums associated with the requirement to use those skills are nevertheless found to be strong within all occupational groups. The requirement to read at work seems to have a strong association with the incidence of participation in employer supported adult education/training. This has important implications for understanding better the relationship between how work is organized and the decision to further invest in human capital.