ABSTRACT
As we said in Chapter One, this book can be read in several ways. It can be taken as an evolving theoretical development, a collection of essays, a set of contradictions or indeed all of these. Our intention from the outset has been to explore flexible learning as it applies to human resource and organisational development practices. Many of the chapters have addressed the interwoven issues of contemporary learning requirements that confront formal education and training institutions and workplaces. Contributors have analysed concepts of flexible learning and HRD from a diverse set of perspectives. For instance, some have focused on the problematic issues concerning the relationships between private enterprise, government policies, and education and training providers. Others have focused on issues of globalisation and flexible learning; whilst others have highlighted the impact of new technologies upon our practices and our very ways of thinking. Some readers may be somewhat sceptical that such a pastiche could lead towards any coherent conclusion. But we have formed a conclusion: that flexible learning cannot, and ought not, be understood as a singularity. We argue that flexible learning is best understood as a mobile, dynamic facet of complex and rapidly evolving ecologies of learning. Flexible approaches to learning, whether governed by formal education providers or workplaces themselves, are not simply technical systems of conveyance or delivery. They are dynamically constructing and constructed by larger social forces – larger archaeological changes. New knowledge and new ways of legitimising knowledge are central to this historical moment, and flexible approaches to learning provide a critical frame for understanding the archaeological changes creating this future.
