Search results

Drawing upon recent studies of individuals’ participation and learning through their working lives, this seminar argues that a greater acknowledgment of the interdependence between individual and social agency is warranted within current conceptions of learning, and policy and practice about learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning such as communities of practice, activity systems and distributed cognition, tend to overly privilege situational agency to the detriment of the more widely sourced, relational and negotiated contributions of individual and social agency. In particular, personal agency guided by individuals’ intentionalities and subjectivities stands as being denied in these accounts. A consideration of individual intentionality and agency and its interdependence with social and historical contributions is proposed to balance views that privilege particular social influences in current conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life. Perhaps most emblematic of this concern is discussed in terms of the distinct concepts of self which are adopted in literature on work and working life.