Times of global change and increasing diversity are associated with transitions that individuals encounter when first engaging in and then continuing to participate in working life. Understanding, elaborating and responding productively to these transitions is salient for at least three reasons. These are the conceptual importance, their methodological adroitness and procedural worth.
Conceptually, most explanatory accounts of human learning and development across the life course acknowledge transitions variously explained through maturation, societal roles, moral and/or cognitive development. The stages of development associated with paid work and participation in it is no exception and is central to adulthood and adults. Much of working age adults’ sense of self, social purpose and engagement with community is premised upon employability, for instance. This process commences with transitions to working life, often for young adults identifying and preparing for specific occupations and then continuing across working life associated with a personal project of employability. That employability is sustaining employment, advancing or broadening occupational engagement or seeking new lines of employment. However, despite its importance as a stage of ontogenetic or lifespan development, explanatory accounts of transitions across working life remain an area requiring more empirically informed and conceptual inclusive accounts, to do justice to the diverse learning and development for working age adults that it comprises.
Methodologically, these transitions offer bases by which that learning and development can be illuminated and elaborated. Whilst learning arises constantly through lived experiences, it is perhaps most intentionally enacted in and through goal-directed activities such when transitions are negotiated. Hence while incremental learning and development remains difficult to capture, those moments of transitions provide experiences that can be captured more readily and provide data that are grounded in those events. Hence, these transitions offer the prospect of securing insights into that learning and development. This can be because these events are often salient to the individual, memorable and reportable, and provide instantiations of how the individual engages with others, institutions, aspects of materiality in negotiating those transitions. In this way, these transitions provide access to insights and explanations that might not otherwise be accessible.
Procedurally, transitions provide insights into how best both younger and working age adults’ learning and development can be guided and supported against the backdrop of increased recognition of diversity. Such insights can be used to identify, trial and validate the range of educative experiences in educational, workplace and community settings that can support these worklife transitions – whether it is about sustaining their current employment, advancing further their capacities in that field or advancing a different and new occupational or career trajectory.
These premises are elaborated through presentations and discussion of empirical research derived from distinct conceptual orientations, from diverse national and cultural situations and stages in adult development: The contributions explore the perilous transitions of young adults from vocational education to working life (1), the different types of learning and changes adults negotiate across worklife transitions (2), career changes in the context of sustainability along with the associated transformative learning experiences (3), and migrants’ learning as they confront labour market barriers (4). The shared concern and goal of these four presentations is to engage diverse perspectives in order to deepen our understanding of transitions to and through working lives.

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