NATIONAL CENTRE FOR VOCATIONAL EDUCATION RESEARCH ...

Table 6Examples of job roles and work activities for mature-age workers Special projects Internal and externalconsulting Business developmentfunctions Research roles Sales and marketing roles Advisory roles Troubleshooting duties Formal and informal trainingfunctions Liaison and lobbying functions Risk management rolesThe workplace culture of the organisation should be encouraging and supportive, with anacknowledgment that everyone has the potential to contribute—individually and collectively—tothe organisation’s innovation goals, regardless of age. The culture should reflect an understandingthat workers have the potential to grow and learn from their work and educational experiences andcan make an ongoing contribution providing: they are given the right level of support from theorganisation and their managers, supervisors, trainers and peers; they have a basic understanding ofhow they are able to learn and how their brain grows and evolves; and they are encouraged todevelop and maintain the enthusiasm, motivation, commitment and focus needed to benefit fromongoing workplace and educational learning experiences.Supervisors, team leaders and mentors in the workplace therefore need to promote a workplaceculture that is supportive and encouraging for workers, one which enables personal growth andprofessional development. Priority needs to be given to providing stimulating and challengingwork. Action should be taken to identify work arrangements that involve boring and overlyrepetitive work and these should be reorganised to be more challenging and interesting. Supervisorsand team leaders need to ensure that workers continue to have rich work and educationalexperiences and that they provide guidance, encouragement and support, not just in gainingtechnical skills and factual and procedural knowledge, but also thinking skills and knowledge. Theyneed to optimise workplace organisation, including job rotation, ensuring the availability of projectwork and the potential for extending the working lives of employees beyond traditional retirement.The workplace culture needs to be that of a learning organisation. Marquardt (1997) suggests thatthere are six important types of skills that need to be systematically developed within learningorganisations: systems thinking mental models (how people understand and interpret the world and take appropriate action) personal mastery (cognitive, metacognitive, psychomotor and dispositional skills and knowledgeachieved through initial training and ongoing personal and professional development) team learning (through collective professional development and work experiences) a shared vision within the organisation an ongoing dialogue between managers, supervisory personnel and peers.Implications for teachers and trainersThe key implication for vocational teachers and trainers is that they need to empower students tolearn effectively from their day-to-day experiences in educational, workplace and communitysettings. This will involve inculcating in students a basic understanding and awareness of howlearning takes place and how their brains continue to evolve throughout their lifetimes; they willalso need to understand the actions they can take to enhance their own brain development andlearning processes, improve their mental wellbeing and potentially extend their own effectiveworking lives. This does not preclude the role of teachers and trainers in helping learners todevelop the required factual and procedural knowledge, the prescribed cognitive and psychomotorskills and the disposition and attitudes essential for effective learning.62 Fostering enterprise: the innovation and skills nexus – research readings