Contemporary Working Dilemmas and European Policies for Transformation (Published)
The contemporary societal characteristics, the rapid development of technology, the intense demographic changes, the high and persistent unemployment rates have led to major changes in the workplace. More and more professional groups are becoming vulnerable and they need to redefine their work profile and strengthen it with skills that will let them respond to the mental, physical and emotional demands of the new labor market. In such a context, the training and education of potential professionals becomes a matter of major importance and a reference point for the policies of international organizations. The European Commission has drafted texts which aim to increase the employability of individuals. One recent text is that of “A New Skills Agenda for Europe”, which was adopted by the Commission on 10 June 2016. Following the quantitative methodology and in particular the content analysis of the text we examine the way it can be achieved. The categories used for the analysis of the text come from the transformative learning theory of Mezirow and in particular the ten stages of stochastic processing. The results of this study show that the aim of this text seems to be the learning transformation of employees in order to become more employable.
Keywords: Dilemma, Employability, European Policies, Skills, Transformative Learning