The global economy is increasingly challenging the accepted divides between home life and work life, between employment and unemployment, and between paid work and unpaid work. In this context, it is imperative to rethink the concepts of “work”, “knowledge” and “learning”. And in order to move from where we are now to where we aspire to be, researching learning and work is not enough; we also need to be researching how to learn and work differently.
On Monday 28 September, the HSRC Press and the UWC Division for Life Long Learning, in conjunction with the ILRIG Globalisation School, will host a book launch and seminar challenging established understandings of lifelong learning and work at the Cape Town Ritz Hotel, Corner Main & Camberwell Rds, Sea Point at 5 pm to 6.30 pm. RSVP to Shaun Stuart at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., or call (021) 466 8002.

Learning/Work: Turning work and lifelong learning inside out (HSRC Press) explores the most useful approaches to work and lifelong learning in the interests of the people who are engaging, often at great personal and collective cost, in a wide spectrum of economic and social activities to sustain themselves and the environment. The collection of chapters challenges any simplistic understandings and argues that multiple viewpoints must be taken into account to understand learning/work, both locally and globally.

Edited by Linda Cooper and Shirley Walters, Learning/Work: Turning work and lifelong learning inside out features the work of 34 authors from 10 different countries who address conceptual rethinking concerns and imperatives. While the 25 chapters present a wide range of essays from academics, researchers and educationists, the authors share a common starting point: they are critical of globalisation’s impact on education and training, learning and knowledge. Distancing themselves from the position that globalisation has been beneficial in some ways, their arguments are premised on the polarisation that globalisation has produced, between a high-skilled labour market on the one hand, and generic, local and informal sectors on the other. And between the values placed on different forms of knowledge and learning.

The book has its genesis in the Fifth International Conference on Researching Work and Learning (RWL5) held in 2007 in Cape Town. The conference posed the question: What theoretical perspectives and evidence from empirical research might allow us to think more inclusively about work, knowledge and learning, and in ways that are able to capture the diversity of experiences that constitute work and learning internationally? Underpinning this question was the recognition that while it is known what policies are needed to make an impact on the worldwide growth of poverty and inequality, what is needed now is action. Thus the book provides illustrations of such action located in a range of contexts in the South, North, East and West.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is titled “Challenging perspectives”, includes writing on the National Qualifications Framework in South Africa, research on Canadian teachers’ work and learning, donor agendas in Timor-Leste and more

The second section is titled “Recognising knowledges”, and includes essays on domestic workers and knowledge, indigenous knowledge systems and the gender order of knowledge.

The third is called “Exploring possibilities: creating change” and includes chapters on learning and organising in the new world of work, learning at work and in the union, and insights from an environmental education research programme in South Africa.

Diverse, engaging and rigorous, the essays in the book are infused with imaginings of alternative futures which prioritise social justice and sustainability for the majority of the world’s people.

Learning/Work: Turning work and lifelong learning inside out is edited by Linda Cooper and Shirley Walters and published by the HSRC Press. Dr Linda Cooper is with the Higher and Adult Education Studies Development Unit in the Centre for Higher Education Development at the University of Cape Town. Professor Shirley Walters is with the Division for Lifelong Learning at the University of the Western Cape.

Copies of all of HSRC Press published titles are available from leading booksellers nationally, and from the online bookshop at www.hsrcpress.ac.za.

For a review copy of the publication, contact:

Karen Bruns
Marketing Manager
HSRC Press

Tel: +27 21 466 8022
Fax: +27 21 461 0836
Mobile: 083 231 8326
e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.