Learning in a knowledge economy: What strategies are required?

The concept of a knowledge economy presupposes that those working within it are able to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct knowledge in order to meet changing conditions of work and global markets. This leads to a fundamental question which needs to be addressed by vocational education and training practitioners and policy makers: How do we best prepare our current and future students to access, maintain and manipulate information within such a climate?This paper reports on some of the tentative findings of a nearly completed PhD research project. Although the research focused on the perceptions of practitioners of how they adapted their current competence when moving across changing or different contexts, there was also an emphasis on the strategies which would enable such knowledge and skill transfer. The paper discusses these emerging strategies and speculates on how learning might be understood and practised.