Learning in and Through Work: Positioning the Individual

Abstract

AbstractUnderstanding the purposes, processes and outcomes of learning in and through work – workplace learning – necessitates positioning individuals centrally in those deliberations. The purposes of engaging in learning in, through and for work are central to individuals developing the capacity to participate in adult and working life, to form a specific occupational identity, to have bases to realise and maintain economic independence through ongoing employment and to sustain that ability across working life. This includes advancements within an occupation field and as a means to transfer to other occupations as interests and economic circumstances change. The process of that learning is shaped by experiences afforded by social settings such as workplaces and educational institutions, but ultimately mediated by individuals. It is the construction of personal domains of occupational knowledge, including understanding variations in requirements and capacities to adapt what individuals know, can do and value that is central to occupational performance. These domains of knowledge are not some version of a textbook or uniformly constructed. Instead, they are developed in personally-specific ways that arise from the particular sets of experiences which individuals are afforded and how they construe, construct and reconcile those experiences based on the previous experiences and development. Hence, beyond what is afforded by social institutions (e.g. workplaces), ultimately, it is individuals that generate the purposes, enact the processes and realise the outcomes of learning in through and for work (i.e. workplace learning). In advancing a case for individuals as meaning makers, knowledge producers and innovators is not to position these purposes, processes and outcomes as being abstracted from the social and cultural world. On the contrary, the purposes are embedded in the social world, processes are inherently interdependent with what is experience socially and culturally, and the outcomes represent a version of what is suggested, required and enacted in the social world. It is these concepts that are advanced in this chapter to elaborate the role of the individual in what is referred to as workplace learning.KeywordsSocietal developmentIndividualPersonalInterdependenceProcesses and outcomes