Continuing knowledge, skills, and practice update through continuing education, which then becomes the lever of society and the recipe for a successful future. This chapter aims to initiate a discussion about the concepts of knowledge societies, globalization, and their perceptions and impact on knowledge management in relation to the Brazilian educational reality. From a theoretical-methodological perspective, continuing education is considered as a key element that can sustain knowledge management and foster knowledge societies. This question is the reason why this intensity of the offer of continuing education nowadays becomes pertinent, as well as to look at how the knowledge societies have seduced people to consume more and more knowledge. The conclusions raise the question of how societies of knowledge have become a contemporary imperative, justified by the acceleration of time in different spaces and driven by globalization. As knowledge management has contributed to this movement, it is necessary for professionals to be more flexible and resourceful, as well as about what can happen to the individuals who cannot keep up with the demands of the market and become disposable in society.
TopContinuing Education And Knowledge Societies
Continuing knowledge, skills and practice upgrade through continuing education is the lever of society and the recipe for a successful future. According to Camozzato and Costa (2013), “it is possible to assume we are dealing with subjectivities that seek constant upgrades to meet the social demands of current times” (p. 10). Its importance is linked to the subjects’ possibility to constantly recreate themselves, which is an indispensable demand to compete in the market and acquire values and behavior required for human coexistence.
In the general sense of the volume Learn to Be, continuing education means understanding the relevant idea of preparing people to live in their time and follow changes in the world and labor. It is important to consider that the ideas of living and preparing yourself for your time, of being a responsible person, a citizen who can understand the constant changes in the world and, therefore, should be reading, studying and getting up-to-date are the focus of Faure’s report (1972). Clearly, it does not have the same connotation that continuing education has today.
The concept of continuing education arose and strengthened itself with the ideas aforementioned. However, from the most recent changes in contemporary societies, it began increasingly to take shape and approach the idea that Robertson (2003) refers to as “knowledge society”, in which the characteristics of competition and competitiveness prevail and permeate education as a whole.
The desire to be accepted by society is what drives individuals to pursue continuing education and this relates to the general meaning of knowledge economy, in which the culture of consumption is present and has qualified all fields of life. The acquisition of different kinds of knowledge and practices of all types incorporate into subjectivities some attributes, which make them more valuable in varied spheres of life and causes the commodification of people that Bauman mentions (2008a).