Skill and work experience in the European knowledge economy

‘curriculum of the future’ (Young 1999), which supports young people to develop the
‘practice of learning through work experience’ (Guile and Griffiths forthcoming). This
involves learning how to: (i) relate the codified knowledge acquired in school or
college and the everyday knowledge developed through work experience, and (ii) work
collaboratively to develop new knowledge and skill.

The emergence of the knowledge economy.

Background.

It has been widely acknowledged that a process of structural transformation has been
occurring with increasing rapidity in all advanced industrial states during the last 20
years. This process of economic restructuring is usually attributed to the complex inter-
relationships and inter-dependencies that exist between the following four key factors.

• the quickening pace of global scientific and technological innovation which has
resulted in knowledge becoming more important to global economic development
than such traditional factors of production as land, capital and labour (Drucker
1993).

• the emergence of a new techno-economic paradigm which has sometimes been
referred to as the ‘informational mode of development’ (Castells 1995; 2001). The
main features of this paradigm are: (i) the application of three new principles -
value-making, relation-making and decision-making - to work organisation, work
design and business-to-business interaction; and (ii) the deployment of information
and communication technology to monitor and provide feedback on workflow,
product and process performance and sales.

• the scale and impact of global multinational activity, which has resulted in the
emergence of more customer-focused organisations, less hierarchical divisions of

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