ABSTRACT

In this chapter we explore the complex relationship between an individual’s perspectives on time, their learning careers, professional development and lifelong learning journeys. The study developed from our observation that we each had a particular and distinct relationship to time both in terms of managing our working lives on a daily basis and also through our approaches to developing our professional and learning careers. Through working closely together over more than a decade we observed that our individual temporal perspective had a significant impact on our learning and professional careers as academics and authors, and it also appeared to influence our individual lifelong learning journeys. We also noted that the research literature on lifelong learning often focused on ‘life history’ yet rarely adopted a temporal perspective: this is in contrast to the emerging literature in the fields of management and organisational studies, and also e-learning. Another driver for this research was changes in employment legislation, e.g. European Working Time directive and the new Work and Families Act 2006, and changes in employment practices, e.g. the rise in work/life balance and lifelong learning policies and practices. At the same time, we noted that despite these changes in legislation, policies and practices and also current debates about diversity, the concept of individual temporal differences was absent. We believe that it is important to understand individual approaches to time and to take them into account in developing policies and practices related to supporting learning careers, lifelong learning and career development. At the same time, we are conscious that society’s approaches to time, work and leisure are changing, e.g. the rise of the 24/7 society, the development of ‘anywhere/anytime learning’ offered in some e-learning programmes and the blurring of boundaries between work, learning and leisure. The rise in the discourse of learning careers and lifelong learning appears to have shifted responsibility for managing learning from the employer to the learner (Raggett et al. 1995). Consequently, it has become even more important that individuals manage their own time and create time for learning and learning

activities. In this study we wanted to explore how individuals manage this process with reference to their own temporal perspectives. We therefore decided to focus our research on the following questions:

a Do concepts of fast and slow time relate to the women’s experiences? b How do time vision theories relate to the women’s working lives? c Is there a relationship between the women’s time horizons and their

approaches to career development and career planning? d Is there a relationship between time depth and individual approaches to

career planning and lifelong learning? e Do individual differences in approaches to time management affect indi-

vidual approaches to work and learning?