Webinar Recording Now Available! PLA/RPL: A Strategic Lever for Workforce Development and Transformation

2026-09-18

Webinar Recording Now Available!

PLA/RPL: A Strategic Lever for Workforce Development and Transformation

On 10 September, PLAIO in concert with the Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) sponsored two different webinars that brought together practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for two panel discussions on PLA/RPL's evolving role in workforce development.

Each of these 90-minute sessions explored a range of issues, problems, and possibilities, including: 

• How PLA/RPL can be a strategic force in shaping human resource development and sustainable labor markets;
• PLA/RPL’s role in workforce development, from equity and inclusion, to organizational practices, to policy formation and systematic change;
• PLA/RPL and workforce policies and practices occurring across the globe.

The webinars welcomed six guest panelists.

For the first panel, these guests included: Geertrui Lanneau, International Organization for Migration (Thailand); Sophie Lanyon, Chartered Practising Accountant (Australia); and Anthony Chan, Build Skills (Australia).

For the second panel, these guests included: Christine Hofmann (International Labour Organization (Côte d’Ivoire); European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training [Cedefop] (Greece); and Jens Brouwer, Firda Vocational Education and Training College (The Netherlands).

The recording of the first panel is available at:https://youtu.be/4W0DiPuoFAA

The recording of the second panel is available at:https://youtu.be/2D3uodHgGag

Please expect news from PLAIO about future webinars, and please see the call for contributions to PLAIO #10 that will focus on the theme of these 10 September webinars.

Call for Contributions: PLAIO #10

2026-06-03

Across the world of work, a transformation is unfolding. Occupations shift, careers fragment, skills are redefined, and learning escapes the boundaries of classrooms and institutions. Yet our systems of recognition often remain static, formal, and exclusionary. Too much talent remains unseen. Too many experiences remain undervalued.

In PLAIO #10 we are looking for research, theories, discussions, case studies, concrete examples, and resource materials that explore and support how PLA can become a strategic force in shaping human resource development and sustainable labor markets. These contributions may share new approaches; address controversies, debates, or tensions in the field; provide insights into what has worked and not worked; or illuminate pathways for scaling PLA as a sustainable and equity-centered workforce strategy. We welcome cross-sector and cross-national perspectives that broaden our collective understanding of PLA's evolving role, as well as explorations of the conditions under which PLA policies and practices most effectively advance both individual opportunity and systemic workforce resilience. We are equally interested in bold new frameworks that envision how PLA might reshape the future of work and learning, positioning it as a catalyst for equitable workforce transformation.

Please let us know if you have any questions about this upcoming issue of PLAIO. Questions can be directed to any of our editors: Carl Burkart, Ruud Duvekot, Susan Forseille, Alan Mandell, or Nan Travers. (carl.Burkart@SUNYEmpire.edu; SForseille@tru.ca; rdu@cl3.nl; alan.mandell@Emeritus.SUNYEmpire.edu; nantravers@me.com)

We look forward to your submission by 15 October 2026.

All submissions should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents to Alexa.Collesides@SUNYEmpire.edu.  

Webinar Recording Available!

2026-05-22

From Prior Learning Assessment to Open Recognition

With featured Panelists:

• Serge Ravet (France)
  
• Don Presant (Canada
• Julie Keane (U.S.A.)

In this new PLAIO webinar, we continued to examine ideas, practices, and research introduced at the ePIC conference 2025 in Paris, France — the focus of two special issues of PLAIO, the first of which is now available (plaio.org).

This 90-minute session explored how we think about “open” and how our use of the term “recognition” pushes us beyond narrower understandings of assessment. We asked an honest and unsettling question: Has recognition truly become more open or has it simply become more efficient at reproducing old hierarchies? As "The Paris Declaration on the Equality of Recognitions" affirms, recognition is a fundamental human practice. Yet as it expands, it is also at risk of being re-enclosed — through standardization, institutional control, and the logics of micro-credentials. Our goal is to examine that tension directly.

The webinar mapped the deeper fault lines running through today's open recognition landscape: questions of knowledge and power (who decides what is worth recognizing?); ethics and responsibility (can recognition exclude while claiming to include?); institutional autonomy (are we building alternatives or extensions of existing systems?); and the realities of recognition as it actually happens in workplaces and communities.

We also explored a fundamental conceptual shift — from recognition of learning to recognition as learning — asking: What changes when recognition becomes a relationship rather than a transaction, an infrastructure rather than an output?

Rather than offering neat conclusions, the session surfaced what remains unresolved and kept the spirit of ePIC 2025 and of PLAIO alive as an ongoing conversation.

The recording is available at: 

PLAIO #9 is Available

2026-01-08

We’re pleased to share PLAIO Issue No. 9 (2025): PLA Responses to Urgent Social Realities: Access to Education and Work for Refugee, Migrant, Displaced, and Stateless People.

This issue features international perspectives on how prior learning assessment and recognition can expand access, equity, and opportunity in contexts of migration and displacement.

Webinar Recording Available!

2026-01-08

PLA Responses to Urgent Social Realities: Access to Education and Work for Refugee, Migrant, Displaced, and Stateless People:

Policies, Practices, and Possibilities

This session, held on January 28, 2026, explored:

• Current policies regarding PLA and refugee, migrant, displaced, and stateless people
• Practices and strategies that have addressed the needs of these people
• New directions and barriers to providing access through PLA

With featured guests:

• Selar Othman Ali, Erbil Polytechnic University (Iraq)
• Julie Reddy, University of Johannesburg (South Africa)
• Emma Stokes, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)

The recording is available at: