Working Life Learning: Learning-in-Practise

If learning is an integral part of living; if working life demands learning as a condition of survival; if learning is an essential human condition, why is it that we have such difficulty engaging with the phenomenon? The intimate relationship between learning, working and living is one that does not easily lend itself to analysis, partly because it is embedded in the dynamics of our human engagement with the challenges of living and working. Learning is both a process and product, a cause, a consequence and context in which emerging life and work patterns co-evolve and in turn organize learning. Therefore, learning is immensely rich and no one perspective is sufficient to capture fully the multiple connections and possibilities that it creates and from which it emerges. Yet, if we seek to move the learning debate forward we must learn to work with and live with the complexity of learning in ways that we can usefully engage and employ it as a driving force, helping us address many of the challenges working and living present us with. Only then can learning become a central feature to our life’s journey. Only then can working be lived as a learning journey too.