Selingo, J. (2016, March 28). The Future of Learning for Our Careers is Up to Us. Retrieved March 29, 2016, from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/future-learning-our-careers-up-us-jeff-selingo
Some ramblings here...
"We need to create a future professional development system that rewards learners in all types of jobs, at all points in their career."
Agreed! .. except I also think we need to reflect on our current hangup on the term "career". I'm coming to the conclusion that the whole notion of what a "career" is needs to change. That it may even be holding us back from adapting to a new, much more rapidly changing work world.
The common notion of a career suggests that once one has a "career" one can "hang their hat" on a course of study, or perhaps pursue a "discipline" to then anchor one's ability to "earn a living" on. But is this really the case now? The article suggests the need for today's graduate, today's worker to be engaged in life long learning. No argument there .. but can they count on pursuing the same "career" the whole of their working life? There are enough articles and studies out there to suggest that this is highly unlikely. So what is the option? I just had a chat with one of my daughters about how to make the difficult transition from a student of society to a contributor to society. It also dawned on me how perhaps the focus of one's efforts needs to change from finding a "career" to finding "problems" that one enjoys solving for others .. that this notion of learning how to solve problems is likely to never to let up and in fact is likely to evolve over time .. that out of it are likely to come employment opportunities and the refinement, perhaps even specialization, of those problem solving skills to eventually identify - dare I say it - a new career (?).
But to do this is no small feat. It means seeking out the knowledge required to address problems, mastering that knowledge and then practicing the application of that knowledge to become what could best be described as a "problem solving practitioner". Much of this is now possible thanks to freely available training resources on the Internet. Then the issue is what incentives are in place to encourage someone to commit to what is a rather radical departure from pursuing the traditional "career" pursuit?
My eye is on today's graduate learning to self curate materials found on the Internet that can help them document their journey to becoming "problem solvers" and having such work recognized via "digital badges" (independently verified, standard based credentials). They then peddle those "problem solving skills" to potential employers. Is this so outrageous? Is this already happening but we're not paying close enough attention to it? Is this actually what is needed to pursue "secure" employment in a world that is changing at what often seems a lightning fast pace? I'm coming around to believing this in fact may be true.
Your thoughts?
