Challenges of Researching Work and Learning in the Changing Social Landscapes of Asia and Europe, in: bwp@ Profil 11: Lern- und Forschungsräume im Wandel – Perspektiven der Wirtschafts- und Berufspädagogik. Digitale Festschrift für Annette Ostendorf

The ASEM Education and Research Hub for Lifelong Learning (ASEMLLL Hub), established in 2005, is an official partnership of Asian and European higher education institutions, working and learning together to develop collaborative inquiries and mutual understanding between Asia and Europe. A Research Network on Workplace Learning (RN2 - WPL) was set up shortly after the launch of the Hub. The network focuses on learning in, for and through workplaces across Asia and Europe. Workplaces exist not simply in companies and public services, but across a wide range of organizational and social contexts. Non-profit-making NGOs, voluntary work, and diverse forms of self-employment, including under irregular and precarious conditions all offer and enable multifarious opportunities for learning in and through workplaces. Some contexts are learning-conducive, others are less so; some provide structured work-related education and training for employees, whereas in others, learning is integrated into the flow of working processes. The network operates through exchanges of information, workshops, webinars and joint studies of how workplace learning is provided, practiced and understood in Asian and European countries. Network members are aiming to build up a shared body of knowledge that is empirically based, contextualized and theoretically informed. This contribution is a personal reflection of the network chair on the ways in which the network has developed an extended dialogue between ideas and evidence, focusing on the decade 2014 – 2024. The search for common cause is contributing to a better understanding to the interrelationships between adult education, workplace learning and lifelong learning, beyond the discourses that have shaped their development in the past.