Workplace practices that support learning across working life.

In an ever-changing world of work, workers are expected to maintain currency of changes through lifelong learning to sustain employment and transition into new jobs or occupations - as the need arises. Adult workers rely on affordances from societal, workplace, community and educational institution sources that offer opportunities - intentional or sometimes unintentional. Productive engagement in these opportunities leads to positive outcomes in terms of learning and employment, although adults' personal epistemologies, agency, and intentionality determine which affordances they engage with, in what ways, and for what purposes (Billett, Choy and Le, 2023). Moreover, working age adults' learning is largely and necessarily premised on their own constructive efforts albeit with guidance from those with whom they work closely. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the working age population is defined as those aged 15 to 64 (OECD, 2023). In Australia, the working age can be extended to 74 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023). Working age adults' worklife learning is sustained through permutations of lifelong learning and lifelong education that enables them to navigate different kinds of transitions that may arise due to institutional or personal factors such as life stages, employment status, occupations, re-locations, health and personal preference or trajectories (Billett, Choy & Le, 2023). This means that lifelong educational provisions need to extend beyond those from educational institutions to include experiences in workplaces and the community. The growing realisation of the potency and importance of learning experiences in workplaces and other social settings is now attracting a greater consideration of these sites for ongoing learning of working age adults. This calls for learning in the course of everyday work to be acknowledged and systematised around work practices. In this paper, we illuminate and elaborate on workplace contributions to learning that support individuals' employability across working life. Drawing on the worklife history interviews (n=66) and a survey (n=678) data from an Australian Research Council funded project [DP 190101519], we report and discuss working age adults' perspectives of workplace affordances. The findings from the interviews indicate that three work-based models suggested by Billett et al. (2016) are most appropriate for supporting workers' learning in their work settings. These are wholly work-based experiences, work-based experiences with direct guidance and work-based experiences with educational interventions. The affordances and practices of workplaces are central to supporting workers' lifelong learning in workplaces, but they also need access to lifelong education provisions to maintain currency of knowledge and skills to sustain employment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]