Authentic education for meaningful work : beyond “Career management skills”

Abstract

This chapter focuses on work education in education settings and explores how it can be conceptualized so that it contributes to flourishing and well-being. The chapter first provides an overview of recent developments in “career learning” worldwide, noting the increasing importance that it has been given as a contributor to enhanced competitivity in knowledge-based economies. The chapter notes that the centrality of work in the curriculum is justified because “meaningful work” maintains its importance as the hallmark of a

flourishing life. Much of the work that is available in neoliberal economies, however, is increasingly the cause of distress, hardship, exploitation, and abuse. A case is made for an

authentic work education programme that helps participants understand the nature of meaningful work, to aspire to it, and to decode the causes that frustrate access to it. It is argued that, as with all truly educational enterprises, authentic work education should provide the intellectual tools and encourage the moral resolve to imagine more socially

just and fulfilling ways of living together and to gain a measure of individual and collective control over the forces that shape lives.