Participation in further education is a central success factor for economic growth and societal as well as individual development. This is especially true today because in most industrialized ...countries, labor markets and work processes are changing rapidly. Data on further education, however, show that not everybody participates and that different social groups participate to different degrees. Activities in continuous vocational education and training (CVET) are mainly differentiated as formal, non-formal and informal CVET, whereby further differences between offers of non-formal and informal CVET are seldom elaborated. Furthermore, reasons for participation or non-participation are often neglected. In this study, the authors therefore analyze and compare predictors for participation in both forms of CVET, namely, non-formal and informal. To learn more about the reasons for participation, the authors focus on the individual perspective of employees (invidual factors, job-related factors, and learning biography) and additionally integrate institutional characteristics (workplace and company-based characteristics). The results mainly show that non-formal CVET is still strongly influenced by institutional settings. In the case of informal CVET, on the other hand, the learning biography plays a central role. (Orig.).
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