Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Therefore, the aspects that are brought about
by these three trends will seriously influence
learning and education in the 21st century. From a
labour market perspective, the sketched transition
towards an information society indeed increases its
dynamics and upsets the content and security of oc-
cupations (Schmid, 1998). Lifetime employment
within one company is replaced by the notion of
employability throughout the career. Some knowl-
edge and skills become obsolete and at the same
time, large groups of employees will experience
that their work requires continuous learning across
the life-span. Whilst in the 20th century learning
equalled formal learning offered by educational
providers, learning in the 21st century will need
to be increasingly characterised as informal and
non-formal. Indeed, there is a growing recognition
that formal learning represents only a minor frac-
tion of all the human capital gathered. Informal
learning in various daily-job situations is at least
an equally important source of learning (see for
example the work of Tough (1979) and Lave and
Wenger (1991)). Studies have shown that informal
learning already has become the most important
type of learning within organisations. Marsick
(2006) estimated that 60-80% of the learning in
today's workplace occurs informally. Canadian
national surveys revealed that 82% of the em-
ployees considered themselves to be engaged in
job-related informal learning with an average of
six hours a week (Livingstone & Eichler, 2005).
However, such job-related learning does not
suffice. Remaining attractive and employable in the
21st century requires that employees themselves
must take responsibility for their own learning
and career development, which, in turn, presup-
poses a high level of employee self-directedness.
Unfortunately, there are several problems attached
to the concept of the self-directed employee. Re-
search shows that not all employees are willing or
able to take up the responsibility to consciously
steer their own learning and career. Employees
differ strongly in their willingness and ability to
utilise learning opportunities in their own work
setting (Van der Heijden, Boon, Van der Klink, &
Meys, 2009). This also applies to highly educated
professionals (Raemdonck, 2006; Van der Klink,
Schlusmans, & Boon, 2007).
If we really want employees to take charge
of their own career and hence learning, we need
to develop a (digital) learning infrastructure that
supports them in this respect (Van Merriënboer,
Kirschner, Paas, Sloep, & Caniëls, 2009). Recogni-
tion of prior learning will be a major cornerstone
of such an infrastructure. After all, collecting,
classifying and judging informal and non-formal
learning will support employees in the process
of making informed decisions about their future
learning endeavours.
ASSESSMENT OF PRIOR LEARNING
Assessment of prior learning (henceforth indicated
as APL) supports lifelong learning by assessing
and recognizing someone's competences obtained
in informal and non-formal learning environments.
It is a procedure that assesses competences inde-
pendently of the attended learning path (Joosten-
ten Brinke, 2008). In APL, it is important that
learners make visible what they have learned in
the past. To this end, they have to provide authentic
evidence of their competences. In general, APL
procedures consist of four phases, (1) candidate-
profiling phase, (2) evidence gathering phase, (3)
assessment phase and (4) recognition phase. These
phases will be described in more detail hereafter
based on the findings of various research projects,,
like the dissertation of Joosten-ten Brinke (2008),
and the research scans that were conducted by
Van der Klink, De Bie, Evers and Walhout (2007)
and Schlusmans, Joosten-ten Brinke and Van der
Klink (2006), respectively. This section concludes
with a table that provides a condensed summary of
the main challenges and obstacles for successful
APL procedures.
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