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Vocational training and professional development: a capability perspective
Author(s) -
Lambert Marion,
Vero Josiane,
Zimmermann Bénédicte
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
international journal of training and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.558
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1468-2419
pISSN - 1360-3736
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-2419.2012.00402.x
Subject(s) - vocational education , conceptualization , lifelong learning , perspective (graphical) , career development , training (meteorology) , professional development , public relations , empirical research , work (physics) , psychology , sociology , political science , pedagogy , computer science , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , physics , epistemology , artificial intelligence , meteorology
Lifelong learning has become one of the keys to making workers' career paths more secure at both the French and the European policy level. However, the implementation of these policy lines raises delicate questions as to how the responsibility for vocational training should be shared among employees, employers and public institutions. The capability approach is used here to elucidate the ambiguous relationships between responsibility and freedom that characterized French training reforms in 2004. The study, based on quantitative and qualitative surveys in which employers and their employees were consulted, shows that the environment provided by the company contributes more decisively than employees' previous training and career paths to the capability of the latter to attend vocational training and develop professionally at work. Relying on these empirical findings, it proposes a scheme for a capability‐based conceptualization of professional development.