Section One

Abstract

As suggested in the General Introduction, the notion of the emergence of a knowledge economy has become so widespread that it is now commonly assumed in both policy discussions and the mass media. Many advocates have heralded the knowledge economy as transforming the nature of both work and learning. A shift from materials handling to processing of information aided by global electronic technology is seen to be converting much of the labour force into knowledge workers; a direct consequence is that workers must devote more of their efforts to pursuit of lifelong learning to meet the growing knowledge demands of their jobs. The problem, as the chapters in this section make clear, is that this notion remains far from reality.