L'European Center for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) lance un appel à article en prélude à l'atelier qu'il organise du 30 septembre au 1er octobre prochain à Thessaloniki (Grèce), sur l'orientation et les conseils pour les travailleurs(euses) âgé(e)s.

Les meilleures contributions seront publiées. La date limite est fixée au 1er août.

Présentation (en version originale anglaise)

Call for papers : Guidance and counselling for ageing workers

Cedefop is planning a two-day international workshop on guidance and counselling for ageing workers, to be held in Thessaloniki on 30 September and 1 October 2010. The aim of the workshop is to bring together an international forum of researchers and experts in order to gather the latest insights on guidance and counselling for ageing workers and to learn from best practices. Cedefop intends to publish the best contributions in a conference reader.

Background
Europe is ageing rapidly. Many Member States are extending retirement age in order to make sure that their pension systems can last. Indeed, popular discussions about demographic changes tend to focus on such financial repercussions from an ageing population. But academic research is also exploring how ageing affects the ability to find work and to learn on the job. The key issue is how to make sure that longer working lives can be successful.

This has sparked a debate on how to provide ageing workers with enough possibilities to update and renew their skills throughout their working lives. Ageing workers are vulnerable to different types of skills obsolescence: technical (losing skills because of physical wear and tear, or from not using them), economic (skills losing value on the labour market), and perspectivist (outdated views and beliefs about work and the labour market).

Research on ageing workers has grown significantly since the early 1990s, with much attention directed at their learning and working patterns. In 2008, Cedefop held an international workshop on learning and ageing.  Researchers from all over the world presented their latest findings on the needs of ageing workers and on factors that promote or inhibit longer working lives.

The two main conclusions from this workshop were that successful active ageing requires commitment and involvement from both workers and employers: the working environment of ageing workers should support learning and recognise their needs; and that older workers cannot successfully keep working if the labour market does not acquire a sound understanding of how the processes of ageing, working and learning relate to each other (Working and ageing: emerging theories and empirical perspectives. Cedefop 2010, forthcoming.).

EU Member States have started providing guidance services that address the particular counselling and learning needs of groups such as the long-term unemployed, workers over 45,  and workers in industries or companies undergoing restructuring. But we need more research on the impact and role of guidance and counselling for older workers across and beyond Europe. To design appropriate guidance and counselling services that fully cater for the needs of ageing workers, we need better theoretical and conceptual foundations and empirical evidence.

Cedefop therefore invites theoretical and empirical contributions that address guidance and counselling from an educational, occupational, psychological, sociological, human-resources or socio-economic research perspective. These contributions should aim to develop better theoretical frameworks (or extend existing ones) that take the specific needs and circumstances of ageing workers into account, or reveal more about which approaches to guidance and counselling for ageing workers are more effective, using sound empirical (quantitative or qualitative) analysis.

How to apply
We invite contributors to e-mail a 1-2 page abstract to the workshop organisers by 1 August 2010. Abstracts should contain a clear and concise description of a problem statement and/or research questions, research method and research findings. We particularly welcome pan-European or cross-national evidence on ageing and work.

Contributors will receive a review of their abstract by 9 August 2010. The deadline for sending full papers is 23 September 2010. Cedefop will reimburse the travel and accommodation costs of participants who present a full paper at the workshop, according to its rules. A few places are available for participants who do not present papers.

Workshop organisers.
Jasper van Loo, Project manager (ageing workers) : jasper.van-loo@cedefop.europa.eu   
Mika Launikari, Project manager (lifelong guidance) : mika.launikari@cedefop.europa.eu

_{[Source : http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/EN/news/15924.aspx]}