Apprenticeship is engrained in America's history -- three of the Founding Fathers started their careers as apprentices. Apprenticeship is a model employers can trust, helping to ensure talent is prepared for in-demand opportunities while also providing a quality postsecondary path for young Americans who are questioning the traditional four-year…

This report looks at the impact of the business cycle on participation in adult learning in the EU-27 using aggregate quarterly country level data for the period 2005Q1-2019Q4. Data come from the EU Labour Force Survey. Although downturns may give individuals more incentives and more time to update their skills and knowledge, their ability to pay…

These Key Indicators on Education, Skills and Employment (KIESE) are a collection of statistics that are part of a broader set of indicators proposed by the ETF to enable an assessment of developments in the field of human capital in the partner countries. They include data on education, initial vocational education and training, lifelong…

Workforce development programs and job satisfaction were topics that were well-studied in traditional groups of workers and it was known that these programs had a positive effect on the contributions and outcomes of today's organizations. The research problem addressed the lack of focus on non-traditional groups of workers and the associated lower…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

Impressions are influential. Through more than 40,000 interviews of people aged 25 and over in the European Union (EU), Norway and Iceland, this survey explores people's impressions about adult learning and continuing vocational education and training (CVET), which are central to enabling adults acquire the knowledge, skills and competences they…

Impressions are influential. Through more than 40,000 interviews of people aged 25 and over in the European Union, Norway and Iceland, Cedefop's second opinion survey explores people's impressions about adult learning and continuing vocational education and training (CVET), which are central to enabling adults acquire the knowledge, skills and…

The Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) developed the Adult Learner Leaders for Institutional Effectiveness (ALLIES) Framework to help guide institutional policies and practices in their work to support adult learners. This document begins by describing the Framework's series of planning and operational domains through which…

This article summarizes the findings of a 2016 national survey of the formal schooling, further education, and job-related informal learning of the employed Canadian labour force and compares the results with those of prior national surveys conducted in 1998, 2004, and 2010. The major finding is an unprecedented growing gap between increasing…

Adult non-formal education and training (NFET) in South Africa was adopted in 1990 to address the problem of unemployment of non-educated and unskilled adults. Public and private NFET centres aim to meet the training needs of adults who were deprived of formal education that would foster access to opportunities for employment. The paper reports on…

People aged 55 and older are one of the fastest growing demographic groups in much of the developed world. While they have seen tremendous changes in technology and everyday living over their lifetime, some of the biggest societal changes are those that they themselves are helping to make. In the U.S., these mature individuals can expect to live…

Many adult learners have employment goals, from preparing to enter the workforce to improving skills that can lead to a better job. Resources in the Workforce Competitiveness Collection--research-based products and materials, and research papers--can help readers expand and improve work-based basic skills classes offered to adults. This paper…

Government reports and documents claim that building a knowledge economy and innovative society are key goals in Canada. In this paper, we draw on critical policy analysis to examine 10 Canadian federal government training and employment policies in relation to the government's espoused priorities of innovation and developing a high skills society…

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to determine how Baby Boomers make meaning out of disorientating dilemmas and challenges as they enroll in community college for career training. The dilemmas include: retirement, layoffs, shrinking job market, returning to school, and dwindling retirement accounts. Understanding Baby Boomers'…

Organizational life evokes joy, hate, anger, despair, curiosity, and esteem, yet as far as management is concerned, emotions are disruptive, dysfunctional, and derailing. In spite of managerial reluctance to embrace the emotional self as a relevant aspect of the worker, emotion makes everyone human, and organizations weigh on workers' emotional…