ABSTRACT
The interest in vocational training has moved in the direction of workplace learning or work-based learning, including also work-related learning activities outside the workplace. There has been a growing interest in different ideas and theories about what characterises work-related education and learning and how to conduct this most suitably in different contexts, the barriers that exist, the general qualifications that are necessary. Learning is something that happens within the individual and involves specific biological qualities which the human species has acquired over thousands of years. Understanding learning simultaneously implies understanding the human psychological mechanisms involved and the external conditions and their adequacy. The central fact in relation to adult learning is that adults, in contrast with children, are no longer minors and are capable and willing of taking responsibility for their behaviour, actions and opinions and thus also for their learning.
