What do we hope to accomplish?

We hope to create a national forum to bring forward best practices in the training industry and to examine the providers of  training: the public policy which creates, shapes and limits them, their role in the  success or failure of training. We see the providers of training as divided into  three sectors: the public sector, the commercial sector and the  community-associative sector. We intend to look at the training industry's labour market, and the intense competition developing between public and private providers, and between both the community-associative sector and the state. We also see another triangular relationship: between the providers of training, the organisations which buy training, and those who receive it; the fragmented populations of the trained. Have universities and community colleges engaged the training challenge as they should? Have secondary schools adjusted to the new needs of the labour market? How does the growth industry in school-corporate and partnership change the structure of the training industry and its potential for working effectively? How well is this training industry regulated, both in terms of practice and in the training oftrainers? Should it be more regulated and if so, in what ways?

We see training as the dialogue between the world of work and the world of education, but a dialogue whose conclusions need to be communicated nationally. Quebec is breaking new ground on the financing of training and licensing of trainers. British Columbia has developed innovative programmes to bring the traditionally excluded, not only into training programmes, but into training to become trainers. We have a lot to learn from each other. And, we have a great deal to learn from Germany, Australia, France, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan. In Germany and the U.K., we look at apprenticeships. In Belgium, France and Australia, we look at the changing parameters of government organization of training. In Sweden and Japan, we examine divergent outcomes between labour market goals and the source of training provision.

Thus, goals:

1) the study of training industry, through analysis of providers of training in Canada and abroad;
2) A greater integration between universities, community colleges and work organisations for training, and the study of the provision of training;
3) The creation of a privileged space for real national exchange of knowledge and best practice.

1) an ambitious integration of academics and practitioners;
2) the sharing of existing knowledge;
3) wide dissemination and replication of best practices, in accessible, provocative ways.

2-3 books
30 working papers
4 conferences (one per year)
a large number of popular, short summaries of research projects
a Training Bulletin (to be published twice a year)

The development of a research culture which makes the university permeable;
Upskilling the labour and community sectors;
Changing the portrait of critique and analysis of the Canadian training situation, by integrating the work of groups that rarely work together on training research.

1. BUILD ON THE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH METHOD LINKING ACADEMICS AND THE COMMUNITY
DEVELOPED BY CRWS:

a. Joint academic-community defined research projects;
b. 12 month turnaround on projects;
c. publication from every project;
d. public and popular dissemination of every project.

a. Bring together researchers from provinces and regions of Canada who rarely share their work (annual national conference; 4 regional groups; 7 national thematic working groups);
b. Quebec-English Canada joint research projects, inter-provincial comparisons, evaluations ( carried out and published in both languages).

a. truly accessible, popular research summaries;
b. public and popular fora;
c. electronic communication;
d. international publications of our projects.