The broadening use of the concepts of lifelong and lifewide learning has opened space for exploring learning processes beyond official educational institutions providing formal education. Environments where adults learn intensively in both informal and non-formal ways include businesses. The specific environment of family businesses is an attractive research topic in the context of intergenerational learning and consistent with the concept of workplace learning (Evans, Hodkinson, Rainbird, & Unwin, 2006; Novotný, 2009). A family business is a place where intergenerational learning is a necessary and desirable part of its everyday operation. One might even speculate that the success of the family business depends to a certain extent on intergenerational learning among the employees, who happen to be family members. This aspect of family businesses has not yet received research interest in the Czech Republic. This chapter presents findings concerning intergenerational learning interactions in family businesses, what initiates these learning interactions, and their form and content. The findings are then related to organizational culture, i.e. the culture of the family business.
This article aims to identify, measure, and deeply understand the educational trajectories of non-traditional students (students over the age of 26 who are enrolled following a break in their formal educational trajectory) studying for education degrees in the Czech Republic. To fulfill the aims, we adapted previously identified types of educational trajectories that are traveled by non-traditional students to the circumstances of the Czech higher education system. We measured the distribution of three types (deferrers, returners, and recurrent learners) in a sample of 713 non-traditional students. We found that the types were nearly evenly distributed, with a slight prevalence of deferrers. For a deeper understanding of these types, we analyzed 30 narrative interviews. Qualitative data revealed each group's specific features, including their attitudes toward higher education studies, their academic enculturation, and their academic skills. We suggest that the returner type should be split into two categories for more specific quantitative analysis. On the basis of our research, we offer tailored recommendations for supporting particular groups of non-traditional students.
Current social changes that also affect the situation in the Czech Republic have raised considerable interest in intergenerational learning and in the senior generation as participants in it. The very forms that the lives of seniors assume are undergoing radical changes, as is their role in the family. In addition to the grandparent role lived within the biological family, in which an individual becomes a grandparent at the moment their children become parents, there are alternative grandparent roles. One example of this is "surrogate grandparenthood," i.e. one reflecting a social rather than biological relationship between the child and the senior. In the present text, we link the topic of intergenerational learning and surrogate grandparenthood. The questions we asked were: How does intergenerational learning take place? What is the role of surrogate grandmothers as actors in the process of intergenerational learning? What is the content of this learning, i.e. what is transmitted within intergenerational learning? What are the methods used in this kind of learning? To qualify as intergenerational learning in our study, learning had to take place between the surrogate grandmother and the mother in the family where the surrogate grandparenting was provided.