IAL rESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES

Engage with international adult education experts and thought leaders from Australia, the United Kingdom and Singapore. Sign up now for a range of engaging workshops and panel discussions.

Click here to view the list of speakers and workshops.

Developing Teaching and Learning through Research and Reflection

Overview

This seminar will share with you key aspects of the project “Developing Teaching and Learning through Practitioner Research and Reflection”. Helen will provide an overview of how this 2 year project is being conducted, discuss what is means to be a reflective practitioner and pose for discussion some questions that are arising from the very early data that has been collected (this is early in the project). For example, if we identify that it is important to engage learners (and we all agree that it is important), what do we mean by engagement, what is our purpose in doing so, what do we as trainers’ value and look for in the engagement? We can pose similar questions about the sharing of our own experience and our intent to inspire learners. Our responses will be partially informed by where we place ourselves along a continuum of teacher centered and learner centered approaches. The context in which we train also influences our training approaches, for example, how aware are we of the ways in which the curriculum influences the training we do? Why might this be important? While these questions may seem obvious, it is only when we examine our beliefs and values as trainers that we can claim to be reflective practitioners.

The intent of the seminar is to not only share the very early stages of this project with you but to engage in a discussion that provides us all with “food for thought”.

Speaker Profile

Please click here to view speaker's profile.

SUSTAINING LIFELONG EMPLOYABILITY FOR SINGAPORE'S 
OLDER WORKERS: WORKPLACE, EDUCATIONAL AND 
PERSONAL PRACTICES

Overview

The Singaporean workforce comprises a growing number of mature age workers (i.e. those over 45) upon whom the future prosperity of the island nation will come to increasingly rely. Yet, currently, a large percentage of these workers have only enjoyed low levels of educational achievement and too few are employable in the kinds of occupations upon which the future of Singapore is founded (i.e. professional, managerial, executive and technical (PMET) work). There are two key priorities for the continuing education and training (CET) agenda for these workers to:
i) sustain and extend their work life employability, and ii) develop further their capacities to engage in PMET kinds of work.

This seminar reports the findings of a recent study into sustaining the lifelong employability of Singapore's older workers, comprising a review of literature and policy, and interviews with and a survey of mature aged workers. It will involve both presentation of the findings and also an opportunity for participants to engage in a structured set of activities to discuss the findings and their implications. So, please come along and be prepared to listen, contribute and advance our understandings and practices about how CET can assist Singapore’s mature age workers.

Professor Billett will also outline and discuss his next research extending from this project into different sectors.

Speaker Profile

Please click here to view speaker's profile.

SUSTAINING LIFELONG EMPLOYABILITY FOR SINGAPORE'S
OLDER WORKERS: WORKPLACE, EDUCATIONAL AND
PERSONAL PRACTICES

Overview

The Singaporean workforce comprises a growing number of mature age workers (i.e. those over 45) upon whom the future prosperity of the island nation will come to increasingly rely. Yet, currently, a large percentage of these workers have only enjoyed low levels of educational achievement and too few are employable in the kinds of occupations upon which the future of Singapore is founded (i.e. professional, managerial, executive and technical (PMET) work). There are two key priorities for the continuing education and training (CET) agenda for these workers to: i) sustain and extend their work life employability, and ii) develop further their capacities to engage in PMET kinds of work.

This seminar reports the findings of a recent study into sustaining the lifelong employability of Singapore's older workers, comprising a review of literature and policy, and interviews with and a survey of mature aged workers. What the study found was that lifelong employability has two dimensions: workers capacities and interests and the ability for those workers to engage, extend and develop further their capacities through work and educational provisions. Consequently, to achieve the key priorities for CET requires measures that focus on both developing individual capacities and also extending the facilitative arrangements within Singaporean workplaces, post secondary educational institutions (PSEIs) and community, more generally.

In this seminar, particular attention will be given to what mature aged workers themselves will need to do and also the kinds of facilitative arrangements needed to be developed further in workplaces and PSEIs to realise this employability.

Having provided an overview of the context for this research, the findings from the interviews and surveys will be briefly overviewed, before suggestions are made about the kinds of provisions that government, workplaces and PSEIs need to enact and individuals need to practise.

Speaker Profile

Professor Stephen Billett worked as a vocational educator, administrator, teacher educator, professional development practitioner and policy developer within the Australian vocation education before teaching and researching at Griffith University. Since 1992, he has researched and published in learning through and for work, vocational learning, workplace learning and conceptual accounts of learning for vocational purposes and secured over $2.5 million in funded research. He has published in Culture and Psychology, Learning and Instruction and Mind, Culture and Activity, British Journal of Educational Studies, Studies in Continuing Education. His books include Learning through work: Strategies for effective practice (Allen and Unwin 2001); Work, change and workers (Springer 2006) and edited books (Work, Subjectivity and Learning (Springer, 2006) and Emerging Perspectives of Work and Learning (Sense 2008). He is currently preparing a book entitled Vocational Education for Springer. He is Founding and Editor in Chief of Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational and Professional Education (Springer).

The Global Auction: Skills, Jobs and the Labour Market

Synopsis

The economic downturn has reinforced the idea that future prosperity depends on winning a competitive advantage in the global ‘knowledge’ economy. This view is reflected in the central role of education and skills in national economic and social policy. Not only are they seen to hold the key to a competitive economy but to the foundation of social justice and social cohesion. This presentation will challenge these policy assumptions drawing on key findings from a major study of global corporate strategies and the future of skills, involving leading transnational companies and policy-makers from seven countries: China, Germany, India, Korea, Singapore, United States and the United Kingdom. It will examine some of the latest trends that are shaping the global supply of university graduates and the demand for ‘knowledge’ workers. It will also examine the rise of the high-skilled, low-waged workforce and its implications for education and labour market policies in the developed economies, including Singapore. It will also be argued that the human capital assumptions on which the current policy consensus rests are historically contingent and increasingly redundant in the early decades of the twenty first century. This presentation will conclude will an outline of new research that we are now conducting into the aftermath of the global recession and its implications for national skill formation and the future of work.

Speaker Profile

Phillip Brown is a Distinguished Research Professor in the School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. He began life as a craft apprentice in the auto industry in the early 1970s before training as a teacher. His academic career took him to Cambridge University and the University of Kent before joining Cardiff University in 1997. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver and Sciences Po in Paris, and is currently a member of the expert panel that offers independent advice to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES). He has written, co-authored and co-edited sixteen books, including The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes (2010); Education Globalization and Social Change (2006); The Mismanagement of Talent (2004), High Skills: Globalization, Competitiveness and Skill Formation (2001), which are all published by Oxford University Press.