In recent years, the focus in the UK has expanded to include the identification and mapping in policy, funding and curricular terms of work-related learning for the 14-19 year old age group as well as for older adults. There has been growing interest amongst all the main political parties in vocational education and qualifications, apprenticeship, work-based higher education, pre-employment training for those not in paid employment, workplace learning and ‘employability issues’. Recent research has pointed to the importance of improving understandings of the workplace as a learning environment and in identifying the types of learning opportunities it creates and for whom. We are highly involved in the analysis of and research into these important areas of research and policy, and to identifying the implications for workplace learners, teachers, trainers and employers.
Projects hosted wholly or partially in the University of Southampton are listed under the Research Projects tab. Other projects have included:
Learning as Work: teaching and learning processes in the contemporary work organisation (commissioned by the ESRC, http://learningaswork.cf.ac.uk/index.html
Pre-employment Training in city regions (commissioned by the ESRC as part of the LLAKES research centre, www.llakes.org).
This research area comes under the Lifelong and Work-Related Learning Research Centre (LaWRL).