Raymond John Smith

Understanding work, learning and the remaking of cultural practices

This paper focuses on dualities in both the process and outcomes of participation in work. Firstly, the process of participation in work activities and interactions draws on contributions of both individuals and the social world in ways that are variably interdependent, that is, relational. The affordances of workplaces shape the array of experiences individuals are able to access and, they in turn, elect how they engage, construe and construct what is afforded them. Both the social and individual contributions are exercisable with different degrees of intensity, focus and intentionality, thereby making the process of participation in work a relational one. Secondly, and consistent with these processes, the outcomes of workplace participation also comprise dualities. These are individuals’ learning or change, on one hand, and the remaking and transformation of cultural practice that comprises work, on the other. In illuminating and elaborating these concepts, this paper draws upon the initial findings of an inquiry that is mapping the working lives of groups of three workers in each of four workplaces. The aim is to understand how these relational interdependences shape the participation, learning and remaking of work practices in these workplaces. Further, the paper identifies the exercise of both affordances and engagement for each participant within their workplaces. The findings emphasise the distinctive bases by which the groups of workers engage with their work and construct meaning and remake practice as a result of that engagement.

Clarifying the subject centred approach to vocational learning theory: negotiated participation

Workplace learning research has taken what could be termed a turn to the subjective. This brings the person and agency of workers to the centre of work learning theory. Within sociocultural perspectives that emphasise participative practice as the basis of vocational learning, a key concept that emerges from this subject centred approach is ‘negotiation’. This paper suggests that negotiation is insufficiently understood in sociocultural perspectives of work learning and needs to be more fully elaborated to support understandings of workers’ learning practices. Workers are negotiators who manage the conduct of their work participation through sets of personal values that are transacted as personal working and learning practices. These transactions are not bargaining or deal making but ongoing processes of creating mutualities that unite worker and work as sites of personal and cultural transformation. From research with workers engaged in work based vocational learning programs, the paper explores how such understandings may offer ways of conceptualising workplace learning as a transactive process that is personally negotiated. In this way the paper helps clarify how the personal practices of workers can be better understood within the subject centred approach to vocational learning that rightfully emphasises the person as the locus of learning.

Epistemological agency in the workplace

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report and discuss research that sought to explore how the individually purposeful nature of new employee workplace learning might be understood through its conception as epistemological agency, that is, the personally mediated construction of knowledge.Design/methodology/approach – Using a sociocultural constructivist perspective on learning as necessary action‐in‐context, the ethnographic study investigates the working and learning actions of three new employees through the first months of their employment.Findings – This paper proposes that the actions of its participants can be interpreted within a framework that accounts for the major influences on their learning as mediational means. It suggests that these mediations comprise an individualised workplace agenda that is purposefully managed by the new employee. Epistemological agency is defined and presented as a conception of learning that captures the new employees taking charge of the conduct and accomplish...

Work(er)-Driven Innovation.

Purpose The focus on innovation as a foundational element of enhanced organisational performance has led to the promoting and valuing of greater levels of employee participation in innovation processes. An emergent concept of employee-driven innovation could be argued to have hindered understandings of the creative and transformative nature of work and the kinds of work and learning practices that all workers engage in as part of their routine occupational practices. The purpose of this paper is to propose that a stronger focus on work-learning as workers’ personal enactment of the collective activities that comprise their occupational practice and its circumstances can clarify the nature of innovation. Design/methodology/approach The paper is based on an extended ethnographic study (18 months) of 12 employees from four different workplaces and who were engaged in a variety of different occupational practices. Findings The argument is advanced through discussion of four kinds of innovation that were identified through examining the work-learning practices of restaurant, gymnasium, computing and fire service workers. They are personal heuristics, test benching, efficiencies and shared needs. Originality/value These innovation forms illuminate personal work-learning practices and offer means of explaining innovation as a foundational factor of work, suggesting that work that supports these work-learning practices can enhance organisational innovation.

Learning in the Circumstances of Professional Practice

This chapter discusses what constitutes learning in the circumstances of professional practice. It progresses from the perspective that examining learning in and through work supports opportunity to make visible and interrogate the complex array of factors that necessarily combine and transform to identify and explain learning as the process and product of engagement in practice. Its elaboration of these factors is framed by two sets of interrelated concepts. First and primarily, the chapter advances learning in practice as the integration of three learning attributes or perspectives of practice. They are; curriculum practices, pedagogic practices and personal epistemological practices. Together, these three perspectives comprise a framework that enables the incorporation and consideration of a second set of concepts, namely, social, situational and individual contributions to the enactment of learning in the circumstances of work as the integration of curriculum, pedagogy and personal epistemology practices. Learning is advanced throughout as co-occurring with work and the practices by which it is constituted. More than being relational and interdependent, the practices of and contributions to work are viewed as negotiated and always generative of change due to the transactions that characterise the dynamics of workers’ engagement in the activities of their particular occupational practice. Practice is transformative of the people, places and practices engaged in its enactment. Here, these factors, their interrelationships and consequences are discussed in terms of understanding and enhancing learning experiences in the circumstances of professional practice that is work.

Three Aspects of Epistemological Agency: The Socio-personal Construction of Work-Learning

Agency is a concept that seeks to identify and explain the sources and levels of influence that mediate activity. Personal agency is a qualifying concept that seeks to identify and acknowledge the set of influences that can be attributed to individuals as their contribution to the sociocultural activities and practices in which they participate. These contributions may be considered strong and weak but cannot be disregarded in efforts to understand learning and how it emerges as both process and legacy of engaging in work. Workers are active learners. They are engaged in learning through the very practices that constitute work. Their learning endeavours can be conceptualised as epistemological agency – the socio-personal construction of learning in, through and for work, that is, work-learning. Epistemological agency is predicated on workers’ enactment of three aspects of agency. They are (a) agency as property, (b) agency as relationship and (c) agency as transformation. Drawing on a range of work-learning research to support and illustrate its case, this chapter elaborates the three aspects of agency and argues that understanding work-learning (and thereby its enhancement) requires accounting for and appreciating workers’ epistemological agency and the personal work-learning agenda enacted as its manifestation.

Continuing Education and Training at Work

An increasingly common means by which learning across working life is being provided is through provisions of continuing education and training (CET) organised and enacted in partnerships between tertiary education organisations and employers. Often, these provisions are seen as an extension or variation of initial occupational preparation, the traditional core business of tertiary education institutions. However, as CET becomes an increasingly important component of tertiary education provisions, greater consideration is required of processes and practices that are best suited to this form of provision of education and the needs and capacities of those who participate in it. This consideration includes issues of access for individuals who are employed while balancing family and other social commitments and the occupational capacities that employers seek to develop in their workers. This chapter reports the findings of a national project in Australia which examined the efficacy of existing CET provisions to identify and promote what a national CET provision should comprise. What the findings consistently indicate is that this provision of education will need to be based on the circumstances of individuals’ work and for the most part their work practices, augmented by assistance provided by more experienced co-workers and specialist trainers engaging with these workers in the circumstances of their work and, often, while engaged in work. This is not to deny the importance and roles that specific training interventions (e.g. classroom events) can play in the overall provision of CET, but these largely augment what is made available and what occurs within an individual’s circumstance of practice. In all, a key contribution of this chapter is to set out the range of CET models and practices that are likely to be most helpful for securing workers’ continuing education and training at work in ways which will sustain their employability across lengthening working lives and meet the demands for social cohesion and the increasing economic competitiveness nationally and internationally.

Learning in Response to Workplace Change

Across the world, and particularly in developed countries, workplaces are changing, arguably more rapidly than ever before in response to external and internal forces. Altering the ways workplaces operate inevitably requires changes in the knowledge and skills workers need. This relationship is evident in the conclusion by the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency (Future focus: 2013 National workforce development strategy, AWPA, Canberra, 2013) that the major influences on the nation’s skills and workforce development needs are driven by globalisation, technological change, the changing nature of work, the need to respond to climate change impacts and issues of sustainability. These are very broad influences that raise questions about the extent to which they impact workers, as distinct from affecting industries and enterprises. In order to examine how employees perceive the impact of change, 86 workers in various occupations in four different Australian industries were asked about current and anticipated changes in their jobs. Analysis of the semi-structured interview transcripts revealed that workers tend to perceive workplace changes in terms of their immediate work tasks rather than with, say, an organisation’s strategic directions or industry workforce development perspective. That is, their need to learn as a result of workplace change is essentially based on maintaining their individual competence and hence their employability. This focus on their own workplace practice suggests that the most appropriate setting for individual learning in response to change appears to be the workplace itself, which in turn has implications for the way such learning is organised.

Workers’ Perspectives and Preferences for Learning Across Working Life

Experienced workers hold substantial views about the kinds of work-learning experiences that will support and sustain their competence and employability development. These views, founded on years of generating and responding to the changes that characterise work, represent valuable sources of insight that can inform the provision of continuing education and training. Further, these views evidence workers’ understandings and acceptance of work as increasingly bound in learning. In short, workers are highly informed and capable contributors to the learning needs that underpin their work and their employer organisations’ viability. These conclusions and some of their implications for continuing education and training provision are advanced here.

Recognising Learning and Development in the Transaction of Personal Work Practices

Sociocultural constructivist perspectives advance learning in and through work as the process and product of workers’ situated participation in practice. Such participation is invariably interactive and personally enacted in the many ways workers’ engage in the activities and events that characterise their practice. Further, the nature of engagement in work practice is transformation: nothing is static, nothing remains the same. At its simplest, workers are always in the constant transformational state of doing something. The something they are doing is most often visible in some form or other as occupational practice that is historically founded, collectively defined and socially produced albeit through the personal and often idiosyncratic enactment of that practice. This chapter focuses on the transformational nature of work and its description and explanation as learning. Drawing on concepts of agency and Dewey’s ideas of transaction, the chapter explores and discusses ways of making the transformational qualities of workers’ personal work practices more visible as a means of understanding how change is enacted as learning through work and what changes are emergent as evidence of workers’ learning.