The neoliberal agenda of workplace learning in NGOs: contestation, narratives and resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT The education-based NGO sector in India is a large sector and it depends on activities of learning, training and motivation to sustain its underpaid and overworked workers. I articulate a theoretical perspective on the ‘learning activity’ in these workplaces using ideas of Engeström and Freire, I focus and problematise the discourse of empowerment and analyse its impact on the learning activity in these organisations focusing on its implications for the worker. I argue that the notion of ‘Permanent pedagogy’ is an essential strategy of NGOs to position the worker in a deficit perspective and trade their services for low employment, low wages, precarious work and often intensive emotional labour. Permanent pedagogy manifests itself at the levels of cultural norms and ethos of a workplace, socio-historical perception and realities of the workplace and individual consciousness. Using the lens of CHAT and Freire’s pedagogic model, I identify specific features of the learning activity that operate within the logic of the neoliberal order. I propose an alternative framework of workplace learning that focuses on resistance. The paper intends to stimulate critical reflection amongst NGO practitioners and scholars to question the broader notion of empowerment and, instead advance empirical focus on emancipatory learning structures.