The rooting of ALT in the strategy and productive activities of a company and in the lives of those participating in it is a complex reality that has an impact far beyond immediate ALT practices. In Quebec, while needs diagnosis and activities planning are beginning to form part of companies' ALT management and practices, they are far from being integrated into an overall "engineering" of training.
ALT engineering includes not only the organization of education and training but also prior and subsequent activities — "upstream" and "downstream" activities — which form part of its relevance and quality. In addition, there is support for informal learning, an activity that is less visible but just as significant (Livingstone, 2000).
In Chapter 5, we will examine the practices and strategies for expressing the "learning demand," the "upstream" planning of ALT programs and "downstream" activities related to evaluation, monitoring and transfer. In this chapter, we will consider the organization of ALT and the forms it may take in companies, as well as discussing the unequal way in which informal learning is accounted for.
At the present time, a number of factors encourage firms to further prioritize ALT. Be it the competitiveness of the market, the precarious nature of employment in some areas, the speed of technological change or, more profoundly, the value of continuing professional development and life-long learning, ALT in firms is a phenomenon that cries out for further study.
Given the limited statistical studies and data available, it is difficult to draw a picture of recent work-related ALT practices in Quebec. An initial picture of workplace ALT in Quebec companies was drawn by Doray (1991). It was "less a statistical picture of the situation than a more qualitative analysis of the uses made by industrial firms of investments in training" (Doray, 1991, p. 329; transl.). It is still the only general picture that we have of ALT in Quebec. The author "shows the existence of a certain diversity in the relationship between ALT and work in the large manufacturing companies in Quebec" (Doray, 1991, p. 351; transl.). This benchmark description came four years before Bill 90 became law and 11 years before the Quebec Government policy on adult education and continuing education and training was issued.
We must complete our picture on the basis of certain recent studies, including the work done by Dunberry (2006) and Lesemann (2005), the article by Bélanger, Doray and Levesque (2007) and especially the study entitled Les pratiques et l'organisation de la formation en entreprise au Québec [Practice and organization of company training in Quebec] conducted by CIRDEP (Bélanger, Larivière and Voyer, 2004). Footnote 46 The latter study drew a detailed picture of structured ALT and support for informal learning and self- administered training in fifteen companies. Other studies have explained the magnitude of the phenomenon in Quebec and the rest of Canada (Statistics Canada, 2003; Wall, 2004). Using these sources, therefore, we will attempt to paint a portrait of what is happening in terms of structured ALT and support for informal learning in workplaces in Quebec.
Return to note 46 The research of Bélanger et al. (2004) considered the structuring of ALT roles and practices in 15 companies in Quebec in three major sectors of economic activity: the retail sector, food processing and biopharmaceuticals. The data were collected in two successive series of interviews and a documentary study. The empirical reconstruction of the different ALT contexts and support for informal learning was based on data collected through interviews and documentary analysis.