Peter Sawchuk

Theories and methods for research on informal learning and work: towards cross-fertilization

The topic of informal learning and work has quickly become a staple in contemporary work and adult learning research internationally. The narrow conceptualization of work is briefly challenged before the article turns to a review of the historical origins as well as contemporary theories and methods involved in researching informal learning and work. I review leading theoretical models by Livingstone, Eraut and Illeris, and summarize established methods in terms of case study, ethnographic and interview approaches, survey approaches and situated micro-analytic approaches. I argue that no single theoretical model or methodological approach has yet established dominance, and that these models and methods largely speak to distinctive, not wholly incompatible, features of the phenomena in question. I argue this suggests the potential for cross-fertilization of ideas is high.

Informal Learning as a Speech-Exchange System: Implications for Knowledge Production, Power and Social Transformation

Most empirical investigations of ‘informal learning’ either arbitrarily operationalize the term or take common sense notions of the term as the basis for their claims. Few studies to date have problematized the phenomenon itself with reference to its accomplishment in moment-bymoment interaction. This article draws on detailed analysis to make claims about the nature of informal learning as a distinct speech-exchange system with features of both formal pedagogical communication and everyday conversation. The analysis shows how two novice computer users can collectively construct a Zone of Proximal Development for their learning. I discuss ambiguities of informal learning, the difficulties of computer-mediated learning interaction specifically, and the political significance of shared control over turn-allocation. I conclude that analysis of informal learning as a speechexchange system is useful and that learning can be understood outside of expert–novice relationships. The broader social implications of this are that hierarchical knowledge/power relations are not necessarily definitive of the learning process. This, in turn, provides support for the claim that informal learning may be a means of transforming rather than reproducing knowledge forms.

‘Use-Value’ and the Re-thinking of Skills, Learning and the Labour Process:

Reviewing multiple traditions of social analysis of work, skill and knowledge this article seeks to renew the possibility for a critical, integrated approach. Contextualizing and then criticizing the ongoing ‘up-skilling/de-skilling impasse’, I offer discussion of several alternative conceptual resources that may contribute to a more robust appreciation for learning and human development, potentially unified under a suggested ‘Use-Value Thesis’ on the labour/learning process. It is argued that recognizing ‘use-value’ sets the stage for a broader systemic understanding of the contradictory processes (e.g. up-skilling/de-skilling, engagement/alienation, co-operation/conflict) that occur simultaneously in all workplaces under capitalism, and in turn offers a means to more coherently assess the full range of human learning.

Work and organizational behaviour

PART I: WORK AND ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR Capitalism and Organizational Behaviour The Social Nature of Work Studying Work and Organizations PART II: INDIVIDUALS AND WORK Personality and Identity Perception and Emotion Learning and Innovation Motivation at Work Gender, Race, Disability and Class PART III: GROUPS AND SOCIAL INTERACTION Groups and Teams PART IV: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE, PROCESSES AND PERFORMANCE Organizational Design Technology in Work Organizations Organizational Culture Leadership and Change Communications Decision Making and Ethics Power, Politics and Conflict Human Resource Management

Worker responses to technological change in the Canadian public sector: issues of learning and labour process

This article reports selected findings from a study on the changing nature of work, learning and technology in the Canadian public sector (Ontario). Vis‐a‐vis the involvement of a major management consultant firm, these findings mirror the experiences at the nexus of policy, labour process and technology, seen in several other western countries. The authors examined workers’ learning responses to management‐led introduction of a leading edge, Web‐based social service delivery system. The paper shows how neo‐Taylorist principles have shaped work design, and argues that the result has been a high‐tech form of “de‐skilling” (Braverman) in which semi‐professionalized case management workers’ skill/knowledge sets have been systematically broken down. The process has been contested however. Workers have sought to learn and re‐skill, generating not only specific computer‐based skills (or “work‐arounds”) but more general, collective cultures of learning within the everyday life of work. This learning is sometimes in keeping with managerial interests, and sometimes not.

Sociological Understandings of Conduct for a Noncanonical Activity Theory: Exploring Intersections and Complementarities

Following a discussion of activity theory as an approach to human development originally rooted in transformational change, we review the historical context and diverse conceptualizations of social conduct from the field of sociology. The discussion of social conduct is broken into theories of social action, theories of enactment, and contemporary sociological attempts at critical integration of the two across local and extralocal social processes. We conclude with an assessment of these sociological contributions in relation to what we term the threefold dialectic of material production, local and extralocal dimensions of intersubjective exchanges, and subjectivity that is fundamental to noncanonical understandings of activity theory.

Trade Union-based Workplace Learning: A Case Study in Workplace Reorganization and Worker Knowledge Production.

Presents a case study on union‐based research and education activity generated in response to restructuring in the Canadian telecommunications industry and workplace reorganization. Findings suggest that an education/research/policy dynamic rooted in the union local helps to build the potential for workplace democracy and organizational capacity in the labour movement.

Understanding Diverse Outcomes for Working-Class Learning: Conceptualising Class Consciousness as Knowledge Activity

This article poses the question: Why is it that work/life teaches some workers resistance and militancy while it seems to teach others despondency, withdrawal or manic careerism? The significance of this question lies in the decline of working-class community. The question is answered through an exploration of ways of conceptualising working-class learning that account for a diversity of outcomes in terms of class consciousness. The article briefly reviews key dimensions of learning theory, and then, by drawing on two empirical illustrations, it argues that the workplace must be conceptualized as an ensemble of work/life spheres. The argument confirms the prospect for a better understanding of the complex nature of work-learning relations with an emphasis on artifact mediation (i.e. the role of tools and ideas) and participatory structures (i.e. activity systems). Here the content and structural location of working-class cultural practices and dispositions (i.e. habitus) within activity systems are deemed central.

Labour Perspectives on the New Politics of Skill and Competency Formation: International Reflections.

Skill/competency approaches to workplace-based policy seek to assess and train for discrete individual competencies with the goal of increasing employability and productivity. These approaches have become increasingly prominent across a range of advanced capitalist countries. A substantial critique has emerged over this same period regarding issues of instrumentality and social control, as well as the failure of skill/compentancy approaches to articulate a meaningful understanding of human learning capacities. In this article, these critical perspectives are clarified further by a review of contributions to understanding the skill/competence question emerging from sociology of work literature. Building from these critiques, this article outlines recent experiences with and perspectives on skill/competency frameworks amongst different national labour movements. Included in this outline is a more detailed, comparative analysis of Norway and Canada; here we see the lofty ‘new’, ‘knowledge economy’ rhetoric — in two countries where one might expect to see it blossom in application — brought down to earth by the realities of industrial relations, employer intransigence and intra-labour movement differences. ‘Skill/competence’ proves to be a floating signifier that, amongst both employers and labour, stands as a proxy for ‘power/control’ struggles. Degenerating in this way, from a labour perspective, the new politics of skill/competency formation is seen to have spiraled toward irrelevance in Norway and Canada; awaiting, in both countries, a re-invigoration through attention to changes in the participatory structure of the labour process itself.

The 'Unionization Effect' among Adult Computer Learners

Findings from qualitative and quantitative research in Canada are combined to explore the links between adult participation in progressive trade unionism and patterns of learning. Progressive trade unionism is defined partially by an organizations commitment to member education and the effective ‘buffering’ of supervisory discipline within the labour process. With a focus on computer learning specifically, the data suggest that involvement in such organizations and community formations encourages different subjective appreciation for learning and education, more effective informal learning practice, as well as greater access to material resources and greater involvement in formalized courses. Informal learning networks among manufacturing workers are described comparatively. Central to this effect is the formation of a proletarian public sphere articulated by culturally and materially stable forms of class-based community.