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D.W. Livingstone (Editor)
Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps
University of Toronto Press, 2009.
Link to Publisher Site
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Written
as a sequel to the critically acclaimed The Education-Jobs Gap
by D.W. Livingstone, Education and Jobs reviews prior
theoretical and empirical work on gaps between workers’ educational
attainments and employers’ job requirements, analyses an unprecedented
amount of new evidence obtained by surveys and case studies about
multiple forms of learning and work, and develops an empirically
grounded account of a dynamic interrelationship between the formation
and utilization of human abilities at work. The survey evidence finds
an increasingly overqualified, non-managerial labour force (especially
service and industrial workers, recent immigrants and visible
minorities). The case studies of professional employees (teachers and
computer programmers), service and industrial workers (clerical and
auto workers) and workers with disabilities explore how discrepancies
between formal educational attainments and requirements are modified
by the ways in which workers continue to learn and reshape their jobs.
The book develops a new paradigm of an active labour force which
integrates the formation and utilization of abilities during learning
by experience in paid and unpaid work, and recommends reforms of
policy and practice with an emphasis on job reforms permitting greater
utilization of worker’s abilities.
The Education-Job Requirement Matching (EJRM) Research Project team,
including M. Lordan, S. Officer, K.V. Pankhurst, M. Radsma, M.
Raykov, J. Weststar, and O. Wilson worked closely together for several
years conducting and analyzing both survey and case study data. This
book is the most thorough exploration to date of relations between
workers and jobs. The new paradigm aims to help reshape future studies
of learning and work.
