Abstract:

In recent years, it has been suggested that the education should be restructured in line with the requirements of the economy both national and international level  and in order to do this, regulations are made at the global level under the leadership of international organizations. The history of education’s role in economy by functioning in the training of qualified workforce necessary for the production goes back to the industrial revolution. There is a parallelism between the function expected from education with the acceleration of industrialization in the nineteenth century and the function expected from education to provide changing workforce qualities with the development of technology in recent years. Today, however, this function has a more centralized position and the educational policies shaped entirely by the economy are being accelerated. While existing change is defined as a requirement of developing technology, it is pointed out that providing these qualities by education is important because new technologies require new qualifications. It is argued that a new industrial revolution has been experienced, defined by the concepts such as smart factories, internet of things, cyber-physical systems. With this revolution, it is claimed that on the one hand, the nature of work, the quality of the workforce, the organization of production will change on the other hand education must be transformed into this axis. This study first examines the historical development of technology and production organizations, and then it discusses the changes in labour qualities in parallel with the experienced changes by a historical approach around the concepts of skill and employment. Finally, it deals with the reconstruction of education in the context of previous discussions and evaluates the changes in the functions of education on the basis of knowledge economy and lifelong learning conceptualizations. Thus, it analyses the relationship between developing technologies, changing labour qualities and education historically and theoretically.

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