Rethinking Work-BasedLearning

Karen Evans

Jude the Obscure (Hardy 1895)• “You are one of the very men Christminster was

intended for when the colleges were founded; a man with a passion for learning, but no money or opportunities or friends. But you were elbowed off the pavement by the millionaire’s sons.” Sue Brideshead to Jude (151).

• For a moment there fell on Jude a true illumination; that here in the stone-yard was a centre of effort as worthy as that dignified by the name of scholarly study within the noblest of the colleges ( 84-85).

Different Lenses…tunnel visions?

‘WBL’• As appropriated by HE/FE;

family of programmes (Boud)

• Acknowledges antecedents and rich traditions (without building on them)

• Strong focus on ‘equivalence’(for acceptance)

‘Workplace Learning’• HRD versions focus on

‘managing employee competence’ - systems

• Socio-cultural versions foreground learning in and through communities of social practice

• New thinking at intersection of industrial relations and ‘situated’ theories of learning

• The tensions between participatory and acquisition views of learning,

• lack of engagement between work on learning processes and work on inequalities of access to learning,

• failure to combine organizational, individual, and wider socioeconomic perspectives in much current theorizing and practice,

• need to incorporate both on-and off-the-job learning

WBL defined by relationships between processes of learning and working :

• AT WORK, FOR WORK AND ACCESSED THROUGH WORK

• INVOLVING EXPANSION OF HUMAN CAPACITIES (individually and collectively) THROUGH PURPOSEFUL ACTIVITY

• WHERE THOSE PURPOSES DERIVE FROM THE CONTEXT OF EMPLOYMENT

Purposes that derive from the context employment include -

• enculturation• competence, licence to practice• improvement and innovation through practice• equity, ethics and social justice• wider capabilities (eg to work in a range of

cultures and environments; to go beyond the present job)

• vocational/professional identity development

The need for fresh thinking…

• Moving beyond a preoccupation with ‘transfer’ from one setting to another.

• Moving beyond typologies of knowledge (eg subject, personal , procedural, work process knowledge ) to strategies for putting different types of knowledge to work

A new focus….on putting knowledge to work.

• Concentrates on different forms of knowledge and the ways in which these are contextualized & re-contextualized as move between different sites of learning and practice.

• Encapsulates:- the nature of knowledge itself - employment practices which shape and are shaped by

knowledge.

• Explores the ways adults (incl. young adults) make sense of these contexts, ‘personalize’ their learning in, for and through work and develop professional/vocational identities

Putting Knowledge to Work

PKtW in the programme design environment:

Content recontextualization

PKTW in the workplace environment

Workplace recontextualisation

PKtW in the teaching and facilitating learning environment

Pedagogic recontextualisation

What the ‘learner’ (worker, manager, trainee….) makes of it all

Learner recontextualisation

Karen Evans, David Guile, Judy Harris 2009

PKTW in the workplace environment (WR)

• Workplace recontextualization takes place through the workplace practices and activities that generate and support knowledge development.

• And through mentorship, coaching and other arrangements enabling learning through workplace environments.

• These practices are fundamental to learners beginning to vary and modify existing workplace activities; or working with experienced others to change them.

11Karen Evans, David Guile,,Judy Harris 2008

Workplace recontextualisation

Knowledge embedded in routines, protocols, artefacts

Key challenges: learn to• (i) participate in workplace activities & use artefacts, bringing together prior

and new knowledge • (ii) vary and eventually improve practice and find new ways of doing new

things

How?• workplaces can create stretching but supportive environments for working &

learning• participants take responsibility for ‘observing, inquiring & acting’• drawing on knowledge resources of all kinds to deepen and strengthen

learning.

Karen Evans, David Guile, Judy Harris 2009

PKTW : what the ‘learner’/employee/participant makes of these

processes (LR)

• What ‘learners’ make of these processes varies according to personal characteristics, work group/cohort and scope for action.

• LR takes place through strategies they themselves use to bring together different types of knowledge and experience – this sometimes (often) involves creation of new knowledge, insights, activities.

• LR is critical to the development of a professional and/or vocational identity.

13Karen Evans, David Guile,Judy Harris 2008

Focusing on how Knowledge (K) is put to work in WBL allows us to:

• explain ways in which all forms of K tied to context (settings where things are done)

• identify what actions assist people to move K from context to context

• identify how K changes as it is used differently in different social practices (ways of doing things) & contexts

• identify how new K changes people, social practices and contexts change

• identify who and what supports recontextualisation process

7 sets of practices that facilitate work-based learning

1. Multi-faceted partnerships

2. Gradual release3. Enacting new knowledge4. Utilising company

resources

5. Diagnosing organisational problems and solutions

6. Using industry educators as knowledge brokers

7. Establishing critical mass of compatibility re dual accreditation

Karen Evans, David Guile, Judy Harris 2009