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. Governments and their supra-governmental counterparts are concerned about working age adults respond to changing work and occupational requirements to sustain their employability across lengthening working lives (OECD, 2006).
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. These transitions have specific kinds of scope, duration, and impacts in terms of continuity/discontinuity with individuals’ earlier activities and knowing. Transitions can be observed, captured, and represented by a complex of personal, institutional, and/or brute factors. Understanding the changes comprising these worklife transitions and how they can be supported and facilitated requires accounting for societal factors as well as individuals’ personal histories and legacies and impacts of maturation 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 (Author et al 2021).
The changes can be seen as being a product of societal factors (i.e., institutional facts) or those arising through nature (i.e., brute facts) (Searle, 1995). Amongst these are those that arise through individuals’ personal histories or ontogenies, referred to as personal facts (Author, 2009). Moreover, learning for and through these transitions were of five kinds and about: i) language and literacy; ii) cultural practices; iii) world of work; iv) occupational skills; and v) worklife engagement.
These findings suggests explaining the processes of learning that support sustained employability in times of change and uncertainty need to account for the complex of factors comprising what is suggested by the social world (i.e., the social suggestion - e.g., opportunities, barriers, invitations, , close-distance support, et cetera) and how individuals engage with and shaped by their subjectivities (i.e., sense of self, relations to others), capacities (i.e., what they know, can do, and value), and personal epistemologies (i.e., how they make sense of the world and respond to it). 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.
