Learning across boundaries in elderly care (LABCare): Enabling expansive learning in and across vocational education and workplace practices
Amid global concerns about increasingly ageing societies, there is today an urgent need to attract and retain qualified elderly care staff; the LABCare project responds to that need, first and foremost, by exploring how we may improve the conditions for learning in the elderly care field by facilitating collaboration between vocational education and municipal employers.
The elderly care sector faces worldwide challenges with recruitment, retention, and upskilling, but these challenges are further complicated in Norway and Denmark by a range of regionally-specific factors, including demographic shifts, professional regulations, and norms that introduce unique demands on healthcare students and licensed practical nurses (LPNs). LABCare will provide a richer account of the learning environments, vocational education, and practical experiences necessary to address these factors—and, consequently, to establish a competent and reliable workforce for the future.
This project consists of an interdisciplinary, comparative study that traverses demographic and national boundaries. The key sites of investigation are the learning environments in and across vocational education and elderly care workplaces. Research will involve document studies, fieldwork, and interviews anchored in six municipalities over three regions: Nordland, Oslo, and one Danish region. The findings will be of critical relevance to several development initiatives – strategic, managerial, practical – that endeavour to secure a skilled and qualified elderly care workforce.
Worker recruitment, retainment, and upskilling are interwoven challenges in the elderly care field. Although these are priorities in both Norway and Denmark, the complex demands and treatment of healthcare students and licensed practical nurses (LPNs) is complicating the fulfillment of such goals. A richer account of learning environments, vocational education, and experiences of care work will be necessary to provide a competent and reliable workforce for the future. Responding to the urgent need to attract and retain qualified elderly care staff, a core objective of LABCare is to explore, using appropriately boundary-crossing frameworks, how conditions for learning may be enhanced through collaborative arrangements between vocational education and municipal employers. Built around the concept of Expansive Learning Environments this project proposes an interdisciplinary, comparative study that extends across demographic and national boundaries. A multi-case-study design, which uses several data sources and methods, is employed for cross-site comparison. The key sites of the study are the learning environments in and across vocational education and elderly care workplaces, and the research, involving document studies, fieldwork, and interviews, will be conducted in 6 municipalities across 3 regions: Nordland, Oslo, and 1 Danish region. By utilising the Expansive-Restrictive Framework from Fuller & Unwin (2004), LABCare will newly identify policy and organisational elements that shape student/LPN motivation and learning, investigate synergies between the personal engagement of students/LPNs and the development of elderly care education and organisations, and ultimately provide a novel analytical framework for evaluating the quality of learning environments pertaining to care work. The findings will be of critical relevance to several development initiatives – strategic, managerial, practical – that endeavour to secure a competent and qualified elderly care workforce.