What are training needs based on?

aikuisten ammatillisen lisäkoulutuksen tarpeesta työelämässä

• Heikki Silvennoinen Turun yliopisto https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8304-0021
• Päivi Naumanen Turun yliopisto https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2815-535X

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33336/aik.96891

Abstract

The article is an examination of the training need as experienced by 4,000 adult interviewees. ln 1990, the situation was such that 1,3 million Finnish adults were of the opinion that they were in need of training that would enhance their skills and career development. The group most in need of further training was composed of people who already had had more training than others and who had also continuously acquired more of it in their adulthood. Through standardisation of characteristics depicting work and the need for training, the author arrived at four categories of training need. The categories "Elite needers of training" and "Elite non-needers of training" are the betteroff groups. The other two groups "Battlers" and "Subjected" are clearly worse-off with regard to their work. The gender distribution among the groups was clear: regardless of their training needs, women were relegated to "not-so-good" jobs while the "better" jobs were done by an elite composed mainly of men. Groups with a dominant representation of women are of two main kinds: a lower-salaried group of Battlers, which appears to want to put some distance between themselves and their proletarian sisters, the latter being fairly alienated from training life as a whole.