ABSTRACT
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development identifies education as a knowledge-intensive service sector of a knowledge-based economy. They contend that a knowledge-based economy is characterised by the need for continuous learning of both codified information and the competences to use this information. They challenge government policies to prioritise knowledge-diffusion, promote change, and upgrade human capital through policies which should promote access to skills and competences and especially the capability to learn. However, a post-compulsory education system designed to promote learning appears to have been replaced by a learning and skills system dedicated to the development of economically useful skills. Within the discourses of post-compulsory education and training, this separation and hierarchisation is known as an academic. Complementarity supports a constructivist view that learning prioritises sense-making over acquisition and promotes dynamic interrelationships between knowledge and skills. The combination of constructivist grounded theory and action learning is one reciprocal theory-practice approach. The interconnection of theory and practice is called praxis.
