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Arguing against a concept of learning as only a formal process occurring in explicitly educational settings like schools, the paper proposes a conception of the workplace as a learning environment focusing on the interaction between the affordances and constraints of the social setting, on the one hand, and the agency and biography of the individual participant, on the other. Workplaces impose certain expectations and norms in the interest of their own continuity and survival, and in the interest of certain participants; but learners also choose to act in certain ways dependent on their own preferences and goals. Thus, the workplace as a learning environment must be understood as a complex negotiation about knowledge-use, roles and processes - essentially as a question of the learner's participation in situated work activities.

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This article proposes an approach to vocational skill development which emphasises the authenticity of learning experiences. The article attempts to make explicit the application of emerging views of thinking and acting to vocational activities and the development of vocational skills. Show less

This paper examines how identity and learning are constituted and transformed at work. Its central concern is how individuals engage agentically in and learn through workplace practices, and in ways that transform work. Drawing upon recent research into work and participation in workplaces, the negotiated and contested relationship between workplace practices and individuals’ identity and intentionality, and learning is illuminated and discussed. For instance, aged care workers and coal miners acquire work injuries that are almost emblematic of their work identity. Only particularly dramatic events (i.e. serious illness or workplace accidents) wholly transform their identity and views about work practice - their subjectivities. However, it is through the agentic actions of these individuals that workplace practices can be transformed. Yet individuals’ agentic action is not necessarily directed to the abstracted and de-contextualised economic and civic goals privileged in lifelong learning policies. Instead, there is relational interdependency between the individual and work that can act to sustain or transform both self and their work. Individuals’ agentic action is exercised within these relations in ways directed by their subjectivities. So these relations and that agentic action have policy and practice implications for the conduct of work and learning through and for work.

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We study transitions between different types of formal and informal employment using retrospective job histories from a new survey in Bangladesh. Workers transitioning between jobs are most likely to remain in the same type of employment, although there is still substantial churn across employment types. Private wage employees have higher probability of transitioning to a new job, and changes in earnings and benefits suggest evidence of upward mobility. Nevertheless, there is also non-trivial risk of downward mobility, especially for those transitioning into casual employment, which has the lowest level of earnings and benefits and the highest levels of exposure to workplace hazards and violence. Overall, the informal sector appears to include subpopulations consistent with both the traditional view that it is a segmented portion of the labor market with few prospects of upward mobility, and with the alternative view that it is a dynamic, entrepreneurial alternative to wage employment.

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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.

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This paper advances conceptual tentative bases for understanding workplace pedagogic practices. It proposes that whether arising through everyday work activities or guided learning in workplaces, learning is shaped by workplace participatory practices. This learning is held to be co-participative: the reciprocal process of how the workplace affords participation and therefore learning, and how individuals elect to engage with the work practice (Billett 2001b). In order to make a space to understand workplaces as learning environments, it is necessary for them to be discussed and conceptualised on their own terms. Describing learning through work as ‘informal’ is negative, imprecise and denies key premises about participation in and learning through work. Access to workplace activities and guidance, and the distribution of opportunities to participate are structured by workplace factors. Much of this structuring has been intentionally associated with the continuity of the work practice through participants’ learning. Workplace experiences (activities and interactions) are, therefore, not ‘ad hoc’ or ‘informal’, they are a product of the historical, cultural and situational factors that constitute the work practices and their enactment, and individuals’ engagement in those practices. These factors shape the activities, goals and interactions afforded by the work practice and how individuals construe and learn through them.

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This paper discusses experiences of racism and racial discrimination of seven refugee immigrants attending different courses at two Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes in South East Queensland, Australia. In doing so, the paper draws from two studies that focused on resettlement of refugee immigrants in Australia. A transformative psychosocial approach is used to explore the students' experiences of racism and racial discrimination at the TAFE institutes. Acknowledging the historical constructions of racism in Australia, the paper proposes an anti-racism framework to buttress the students against experiences of racial discrimination at the TAFE institutes. The proposed anti-racism framework has three components; the National Anti-Racism Strategy, the vocational and education system and TAFE institutes and individual refugee immigrant students. The Bubalamai Bawa Gumada is suggested as a possible anti-racism strategy that could enable the refugee immigrant students challenge racial discrimination.

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This article is part of a special issue entitled 'VET, race and ethnicity', guest edited by James Avis, Kiran Mirchandani and Paul Warmington. Show less

The low standing of vocational education and training (VET) generates reluctance amongst young people and their parents to consider VET as a viable post-school option. A survey was developed and administered to verify and elaborate the findings from an earlier round of interviews. In all, 168 school-aged students, 148 schoolteachers, 296 vocational educators and 230 parents completed the online survey. They ranked (i) important factors in decision-making about post-school pathways; (ii) the influence of familiars on school students' decision-making about study pathways and preferred occupations; (iii) important messages to promote the standing of vocational education; and (iv) effective presentations of informed and positive messages.

The findings indicate differences in perspectives between the school-aged students and their adult counterparts (i.e., parents, teachers or other familiars). These findings highlighted information about utility, authenticity and status of VET as being effective when communicating about VET to make informed decisions. They also draw attention to the importance of providing accurate details and model examples about VET and the occupations it serves. More tailored strategies to reach individual goals were sought by students and parents (see Billett et al., Chap. 18) [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 148.674].

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Reports and discusses the findings of an investigation that examined the efficacy of guided learning in the workplace. The investigation comprised the trialing of guided learning strategies and an analysis of the learning occurring in five workplaces over a period of six months. The guided learning strategies selected for investigation were questioning dialogues, the use of diagrams and analogies within an approach to workplace learning emphasising modelling and coaching. Throughout the investigation, critical incident interviews were conducted to identify the contributions to learning that had occurred during these periods, including those provided by the guided learning. As anticipated, it was found that participation in everyday work activities (the learning curriculum) was most valued and reported as making effective contributions to learning in the workplace. However, there was also correlation between reports of the frequency of guided learning interactions and their efficacy in resolving novel workplace tasks, and therefore learning. It is postulated that some of these learning outcomes could not have been secured by everyday participation in the workplace alone. Further, factors associated with the readiness of enterprise and those within it were identified as influencing the likely effectiveness of guided learning at work.

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Learning in the circumstances of practice stands as the commonest and most enduring way occupational capacities have been learnt across human history, and, likely, are currently learnt. Yet, a comprehensive account of this means of learning remains absent, which limits the legitimacy of workplaces as sites of learning, the learning arising from them and understandings of how to organize, promote and evaluate that learning. When advancing this account, it is necessary to avoid being constrained by the discourse of schooling and orthodoxies of schooled societies, which can distort considerations of learning through practice on its own terms. When reviewed, anthropological and historical literature on learning occupational practices outside of educational provisions offers fresh suggestions including that such an account likely comprise elements of practice curriculum and pedagogies and personal epistemologies, albeit set within particular complexes of cultural, societal and situational factors. A key distinction arising from such a review is the emphasis on individuals' active processes of learning and how these are enacted in the circumstances of practice, rather than on teaching or instruction. Such a distinction runs deep in this literature and has consequences for conceptions of understandings and efforts to promote and improve learning through practice.

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