The Future of Education

In Latvia, workplace learning is mostly discussed in relation to work-based learning, vocational education or professional education. In this context, the process of transferring knowledge and skills has a long history. Looking at it retrospectively, the craft skills were transferred from generation to generation through workplace learning, initially learning the skill from the family members, later switching to the apprentice and masters learning model. Thus, it can be concluded that workplace pedagogy, although not always defined as such, is nothing particularly new. It has merely obtained new forms. The article will deal with the process of the transformation of the term nowadays, examining the context of Latvia in more detail. The new form of workplace pedagogy is learning at workplace, which is not understood as internship, but life long learning. For several years two tendencies have become apparent in the administration of Latvia-based global corporations, which are proud of their modern Human Resource policies. First, workplaces are increasingly turning into learning places; secondly, the employees frequently play the role of teachers, namely, colleagues teach colleagues. In the studies published so far, the authors have concluded that in fact there are very little things that one cannot learn at his or her workplace (Eraut, 2004b). Also, the terms learning for and in the workplace are differentiated (Billett,2002). Consequently, the author of the article examines the new forms of workplace learning and questions whether there is a reason to speak about workplace pedagogy as a separate study in Latvia. Semi-structured interviews and the author’s personal experience have been used as key data collection methods. 

Keywords: workplace learning, workplace pedagogy, adult education;