Abstract:

The present economic situation and several aspects of globalization are straining our lives and market competitiveness, with severe social and personal consequences [1, 2].
In addition, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are quickly and deeply permeating almost every aspect of everyday social, studying and working life. Most consequences are positive, but there are also many drawbacks. Traditional jobs, for instance, are being transformed by e-commerce and, in order not to surrender, workers are forced to acquire new skills and look for new jobs in their adult or mature age.
Another important consequence of the whole situation is that the education system is being stressed and forced to change quickly. New market requirements and the ICT are entering classes and, although the Education ICT revolution is both certain and necessary, many people find it difficult to be ready in a short period of time [3-8]. The reform of education systems is thus becoming more and more difficult and urgent.
In order to strike a new balance among studying, working, private life and wellness, several aspects are to be taken into account.
In this work a three-layered architecture is proposed, which describes the individual’s path from childhood to adulthood from the training viewpoint and takes the individual’s attitudes and skills into account. As a matter of fact, in this difficult period, it is increasingly important to consider the fundamental role of self-motivation [9-12], capacity to face unexpected situations and be strongly adaptable [13, 14], and the chance to keep in touch with long-life training systems [15, 16].
The layered architecture is here represented by means of a three-layered graph defined over time, and can be described as follows.
The 0th-level represents the early childhood and contains a 2-node graph, which first node represents the stimuli available during such period (private environment, parents, relatives, friends, innate aptitudes, breeding, first schooling experiences, …) and which second node is the individual. An edge goes from the first to the second node and vice versa.
The 1st-level contains the evolution over time of the 0th-level nodes, and acquires three further ones: node 3 represents several macro-working areas; node 4 is the education system; node 5 represents personal attitudes, interests and skills and their refinement during time, private life and the education process.
A very important factor is that, nowadays, macro-working and application areas can guide education and training choices, suggesting new methods, skills to be acquired, subjects, ways of teaching, new stimuli that the individual can explore [17, 18]. In consequence, an edge goes from the macro-working areas (node 3) to the education system (node 4).
A cycle connects the individual, the education system and the individual’s attitudes, interests and skills.
The 2nd-level represents the individual in his adulthood and contains a further node representing him or her when leaving the education system (node 6); such node is connected to node 3 (macro working areas) and represents working possibilities.
In order to represent long-life training, nodes 3 to 6 in the third level are meant to evolve over time (including personal interests and skills), so that the individual can re enter a sort of training system, keep up to date and try to find new opportunities.

Keywords:

Globalization, ICT, personal attitudes, education system, life-long training.