ABSTRACT
What is involved, and what is at stake, in educating a global workforce for a knowledge-based economy? In this chapter we examine current rhetoric of education in a knowledge-based economy – what is work-related education, what roles does it play and who it is for? What does it mean to identify a global workforce, and what kinds of workers comprise such a workforce? We begin with the growing emphasis placed on education as a ‘driver’ of the knowledge-based economy and move to a discussion of the knowledge implied in such education. We then consider the circumstances under which the (or even a) workforce can be characterised as global (or local) and what the implications might be for the education of the people and communities and organisations that make up that workforce. For
our purposes here, when we talk about work-related education we mean spaces and activities intentionally planned to mobilise particular practices, behaviours and ideas related to paid work.
