Your learning journey is a lengthy one, often spreading across your entire career, starting in the early years of life right through to retirement and even then, you will find you’d like to try a new skill and are eager to learn something new.
The Journey Starts Here
Starting the journey from the beginning, we naturally learn from our parents or guardians, from early years care settings and the environments around us. These life skills help us learn the basics of interaction, relationships, how to play and how to do basic everyday tasks.
Once school age is reached the learning starts to change. We still learn life skills and develop on those learnt so far, but the more formal education now begins, and we move from learning to be able to put on our shoes and coat to learning everything we need to pass exams and move through the school years.
The Bedrock Phase
Quite often as you age you look back and wonder what the relevance was of this learning, some of it you never even use and have forgotten. However, this isn’t true and its amazing what how you use this learning throughout your lifetime, even the things we think we have forgotten lay at the back of our minds ready to pop out unexpectedly.
This bedrock learning is our foundation. Learning in a safe environment allows us to test our own likes and dislikes, we learn our subject strengths and weaknesses and with the right support can start on a specific career path.
The chosen path could be one of hundreds of careers available. An Architect, Carpenter, Engineer, Nurse, Plumber, Technician, the list is endless.
Once on the chosen path this part of the learning journey is exciting but also still formal learning to form the foundation, to ‘learn the trade’. In this process we learn about the specific sector and can find what part of that we love or loath. Through this part of the learning journey, we are able to find our future path and know what specific area we would like to specialise in.
Skills Development
We continue to develop our individual bedrock learning in the sector and apply the principles to our environment. On our journey we are encouraged to learn new skills related to the profession. An example of this could be a nurse who is looking to specialise, the nurse may decide that she prefers to work in the community rather than inside a hospital and therefore trains to become a Community Nurse. Development is needed for everyone to develop new skills and knowledge to explore and fulfil our own potential.
Workplace Relevance
After completing the bedrock learning, choosing a career path, and qualifying for your profession, the learning continues. These ongoing skills are important and are often undervalued, we need to appreciate the learning and knowledge in how it enables the learner to improve how they do their job.
There is a vast amount of learning available and it’s not always easy to see which ones are the right ones for your own development. Academic learning through an institution is option but choosing learning which is contextualised specifically to the sector you are working in allows assimilation of knowledge, application, and the recognition of ‘how to’ apply much easier and in some cases the right way of learning. The learning also needs to provide the wrap around services that allows the learner to easily explore more than just the taught aspects.
Access to learning which is beyond the bedrock learning and sector focussed allows you to utilise previous experience and make your own mark using what has been learnt increases the confidence and ability to apply the knowledge quickly and develop new skills for the benefit of both Individual and organisation.
Modern learning and development approaches encourages learners to explore. It not only concentrates on the mandatory and health and safety training required in organisations but has a commitment to develop people and grow their own workforce for the future.