ABSTRACT
Structural and technological change are profoundly transforming industries and occupations. In many cases these changes in the workplace connote a major educational and training challenge as skill requirements are also changing. This chapter focuses on these changes in the workplace and their implications for occupational skills, and on the consequences for adult vocational education and training. It deals with the consequences of structural and technological change neither for initial vocational education and training nor for education in general, but is concerned with the worker whose workplace is affected by these changes. The emergence and introduction on a large scale of a new generation of production technology is one of the factors behind present structural change. The new technologies at the workplace have an important impact on skill requirements. Technological change at the workplace and the need for the recurrent adaptation of workers’ skills are thus reinforcing the concept of lifelong learning and recurrent education.
