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This paper presents an analysis of individuals’ experiential learning through their work as entrepreneurs. In particular, it examines women’s learning as a ‘working-through’ of discursive conflicts of subjectivity. The paper is grounded in a poststructural frame that understands subjectivity to be continuously constituted through engagement with cultural discourses and learning to occur at the interstices of negotiating positionality and identity amidst contradictory discourses. The data under analysis is drawn from a qualitative study examining the learning and development of women entrepreneurs across Canada. Interviews explored the process of work learning and personal change reported by these women after at least four years running their new business, their challenges and personal needs in work, the practices they chose to engage, and their meanings of both learning and success. This analysis focuses on the discursive contexts of entrepreneurship, examining the competing images and messages which implicate women, and the various ways women business-owners learn to appropriate or resist these messages to negotiate subject positions and craft their own meanings of success and work. Implications for educators are presented at the conclusion.

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The 'Professional Practices in Adult Education and Lifelong Learning' series examines questions and matters relating to the field of adult education and lifelong learning.

Experiential learning has an important role to play across all educational sectors. This book examines five perspectives of experiential learning, providing elementary explanations and critically examining theories surrounding experiential learning. The author also explores various pedagogical strategies and the role of the educator within the practice of experiential learning. Chapters in this book include: Why a book about experiential learning?: introduction and background; What is the theoretical base?: different conceptions of experiential learning; How and what do people learn from experience?; Critiques and debates; So what?: roles for adult educators; Now what?: approaches for educational practice; and What's next?: further research about experiential learning. Show less

Recent human resource development (HRD) scholarship has called for greater focus on social responsibility and ecological sustainability. The purpose of this article is to explore the engagement of HRD professionals in corporate social responsibility (CSR), examining one central question: how do HRD professionals perceive their roles and challenges in implementing CSR in organizations that claim CSR to be a key focus of their corporate identity and operation? Understandings of CSR vary and are widely contested, but for the purposes of this discussion, CSR is defined as treating the stakeholders of the firm ethically or in a responsible manner. Drawing from a qualitative study of HRD managers in eight large North American firms declaring explicit commitment to CSR, the evidence shows that their engagement tends to focus on employee learning and promotion, employee ownership of development, and employee safety and respect. Overall, however, HRD appeared to be only marginally involved or interested in the firms’ CSR activities. The article concludes with an argument for greater engagement of HRD in CSR and offers suggestions for research and practice towards this end.

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Drawing from critical management studies and critical pedagogy, this article proposes principles and practices to support the emerging critical human resource development (HRD) field as one stream among existing theories and practice of HRD. A critical HRD would challenge the subjugation of human knowledge, skills, and relationships to organisational or shareholder gain and focus on transforming workplaces and HRD practice toward justice, fairness, and equity. Because both HRD practices and critical perspectives themselves are so diverse, a critical HRD must be formulated in sufficiently broad terms to encourage a variety of conceptual developments including discursive, gendered, materialist, and anti-racist lines of analysis. Theoretical dilemmas of a critical HRD are discussed, such as ideological contradictions between the radical orientation of critical theory and the managerialist or performative frames to which much HRD practice is accountable. Possible configurations of a critical HRD are described, as these might play out in contexts of HRD practice.

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This chapter considers if it is possible to foster workers' rights and improve working life through workplace learning. Workplace learning themes are considered including: lifelong learning amidst changing forms of work; processes of practice-based (informal) learning; and justice, equity, and human rights in workplace learning. Implications for practice and research are also discussed.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 90.632. Selected chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 90.633 to TD/TNC 90.641. Show less

Drawing on findings of a qualitative study exploring the learning processes of individuals working in environments characterised as enterprise cultures, this paper proposes a conceptualisation of work knowing as co-emergence, at the intersection of invention, identity and environment. This conceptualisation is based upon an ecological theory of learning called ‘enactivism’, which holds that human beings, natural objects and cognition emerge together as intertwined systems. This theory appears useful in the examination of work knowledge produced by a growing number of individuals who are entering the ranks of the self-employed, becoming entrepreneurs in the new economy. Three dimensions of enactivist theory in particular are argued to hold heuristic value for understanding knowledge production and subjectivity in the new world of enterprise. First, that knowledge unfolds in systems, whereby cognition co-emerges with environment, individuals and activity. Second, that understanding is embedded in the conduct and relationships among systems and sub-systems, rather than the minds of individual actors. Third, that learning is continuous invention and exploration, linked to disequilibrium experienced in systems. These three dimensions are illustrated with examples from the learning experiences reported by those negotiating the world of enterprise.

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This paper is part of a special issue of ‘Studies in continuing education’ containing articles derived from a recent conference on ‘working knowledge’ held at the University of Technology, Sydney, in December 2000. The conference paper by the author is indexed at TD/TNC 67.85. Show less

Workplace learning is much more than training; attention is turning to practice-based perspectives and power and politics in workplace learning. This chapter outlines recent research in four areas that can help us rethink workplace learning: definitions, practice-based system perspectives, identities and literacies, and power and politics in workplace learning.

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A review was conducted of literature addressing learning in work, focusing on relations between individual and collective learning published in nine journals during the period 1999-2004. The journals represent three distinct fields of management/organization studies, adult education and human resource development; all publish material about workplace learning regularly. In total, 209 articles were selected for content analysis, containing a range of material including reports of empirical research to theoretical discussion. Eight themes of individual-collective learning were identified through inductive content analysis of this literature: individual knowledge acquisition, sense-making/reflective dialogue, levels of learning, network utility, individual human development, individuals in community, communities-of-practice and co-participation or co-emergence. The discussion highlights similar issues stated in the different journals about understanding individual-collective learning, the apparent lack of dialogue across the fields, the ontological and ideological differences among the themes of learning currently in circulation and the low frequency of analysis of power relations in the articles reviewed.

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Policies hailing lifelong learning in the so-called ‘new economy’ promote equitable knowledge work and work-related learning opportunities for all. Gender is hardly mentioned in these discourses; some might assume gender is ‘resolved’ in a new economy emphasising entrepreneurism, technology, knowledge creation and continuous learning. However a closer look reveals that gendered inequity persists both in access to and experience of these learning opportunities. Indeed, familiar issues of women, work and learning are exacerbated in the changing contexts and designs of work comprising the so-called ‘new economy’. This is argued in the frame of Canada’s most recent policies on work and learning, drawing from contemporary Canadian studies and statistics to underline the point. Current provisions for girls’ and women’s vocational education in Canada are assessed in light of these issues, focusing on particular learning needs of girls and gendered issues they face in entering the labour market of the ‘new economy’. To move beyond a critical analysis and outline a possible way forward, four directions for change are suggested: more gender-sensitive career education for girls; sponsored vocational education for women; management education in gendered issues arising in the changing economy; and critical vocational education in both schools and workplaces.

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The general rise in contractors, particularly among knowledge workers negotiating ‘boundaryless’ employment conditions, has generated interest in the nature and forms of contract work. This article explores the learning of contract workers as they negotiate these conditions, with a focus on women. Drawing from a qualitative study of women practicing nursing and education in Canada as self-employed contractors, the discussion focuses on the practices that they learn in order to manage their work activities and identities. In these practices, tensions abound - particularly around the recognition of knowledge in ways that establish the contractor’s identity, position within the organisation, and market value. For women, it is argued from the study findings, boundaryless contract work incurs particular gendered demands that embed contradictions that the contractor must learn to negotiate. This article describes five practices that women contractors learn within these contradictions: (1) being noticed while avoiding notice, (2) nailing down contracts without nailing the contractor, (3) performing a woman in control while hiding the chaos, (4) shape-shifting while ‘branding’ one shape, and (5) proving knowledge in a market of impressions. The article concludes with implications for education that might assist women contract workers.

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