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In this article, the author proposes bases for a workplace pedagogy. Workplaces afford opportunities for vocational learning through engagement in everyday work tasks, direct guidance, e.g. interactions with work colleagues, and indirect guidance, e.g. observing and listening in the workplace. However, the quality of learning through these activities ultimately relies on the workplace’s participatory practices. These practices determine the shape and distribution of the activities and support the workplace affordances available to workers from which they learn. These workplace affordances are underpinned by situational and political processes. Participatory practices are reciprocally constructed because individuals make their own decisions about how to engage in and learn from what workplaces afford them. The author proposes that a workplace pedagogy is instituted in these coparticipatory practices and needs to consider how workplaces encourage access to activities and guidance and how the workers themselves choose to participate in what the workplace affords them. Show less

Recently the meaning of lifelong learning has been transformed by economic imperatives from a focus on securing personal development to individuals’ maintenance of their vocational practice throughout their working lives. This paper proposes an account of learning at work as a component of individuals’ development across their lifespan. It argues that learning throughout working life is an inevitable product of everyday thinking and acting, shaped by the work practices in which individuals participate. However, the quality of learning is contingent on the kinds of activities individuals engage in and the guidance they can access. These contributions are referred to as the activities and interdependencies afforded by the workplace. Continuities and discontinuities in development through working life can be understood in part by patterns of participation in these social practices. Yet there is tension between individuals’ interest in participation and the affordance of the work practices in which they act. It is proposed that, although able to regulate their participation, ultimately individuals’ ability to maintain their vocational practice is constrained by the way workplaces afford opportunities for engagement and interactions.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner. Show less

In this paper, the author examines factors that affect the process of learning in workplaces. The focus is on how workplaces provide opportunities for learning and how individuals choose to take part in learning activities and with support and guidance supplied by the workplace. These dual bases for participation at work (co-participation), and the relations between them, are key to understanding the kinds of learning that workplaces are able to provide. Consequently, the disposition of the workplace to provide opportunities for employees to take part in work activities and reap the benefits of both direct and indirect support, are key determinants of the quality of learning in workplaces. These workplace opportunities are important to the learning outcomes of both structured workplace learning arrangements such as mentoring, and the learning accessed through daily participation at work.

The volumes of collected papers are indexed from TD/TNC 69.351 to TD/TNC 69.353. Individual papers are indexed from TD/TNC 69.354 to TD/TNC 69.445. Show less

The aim of this report is to assist with the development and implementation of effective mentoring for workplaces. Its conclusions are drawn from an investigation of the use of guided learning strategies on five workplaces over a six month period, during which period some key principles and practices, which should assist in making workplaces effective learning environments, were identified. The research methodology is described and findings offered. Show less

In this chapter, the author pursues the role of context in patterning cognition, by examining effects on communities of practice in fashioning individual cognitive structures. Psychological and socio-cultural views of cognition are contrasted and reconciled, and it is argued that guided learning within an authentic culture of work practice is needed to embed vocational knowledge in the context of its use.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 36.34. Show less

This chapter proposes workplace learning in terms of participatory practices. Learning through work is interdependent between the individuals' participation and workplace affordances. Rather than being informal, workplace activities, opportunities and support for learning are directed towards its continuity and in ways often inherently pedagogical. Individuals, likewise, engage and learn in workplaces as directed by their personal goals and directions. Core tensions in this relationship are between these two sets of continuities. A critique of the current discourse on workplace learning is used as a basis to propose an alternative view of workplace learning environments as participatory practices.

Published summary reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 82.297. Selected chapters are indexed from TD/TNC 82.298 to TD/TNC 82.311. Show less

This paper proposes bases for conceptualising a workplace pedagogy. Its central elements include three levels of guided participation at work comprising: everyday participation at work; guided learning for work; and guided learning for transfer. Together, these levels of guidance and the sequenced access to workplace activities represent the superstructure of this pedagogy. However, its foundations are located in the access to activities and guidance the workplace affords. The prospects for learning through guided participation are formed by the support and sponsorship afforded by the workplace, and how workers decide to engage with the workplace. Consequently, the bases of a workplace pedagogy cannot be restricted to the intentional and unintended experiences that learners are afforded through guided learning. It also needs to account for how workplaces invite access to activities and guidance, and also how individuals participate in activities and engage with the guidance that workplaces afford. Together, these bases for learning through work edge us closer to a comprehensive workplace pedagogy.

Published abstract.

The volumes of collected papers are indexed at TD/TNC 64.287, and individual papers are indexed from TD/TNC 64.288 to TD/TNC 64.354. Show less

This paper evaluates the need and prospects for older workers to develop and deploy effective and critical personal epistemologies in order to maintain workplace competence, successfully negotiate work transitions and secure ontological security in their working life. Furthermore, it addresses different ways of reflecting by workers, which types of reflection are appreciated by workplace managers and how these relate to the work situation and other contextual factors. A personal epistemology is an approach to and a practice of learning directed by individuals, often for purposes that are important for them. This seems particularly salient for older workers as both the institutional and brute facts (Searle 1995) that comprise workplace affordances and maturation factors, respectively, may not be supportive of their attempts to maintain competence in their working lives. Instead, as both individual agents and parts of collective actions, the exercise of personal epistemologies premised on critical reflection stands as a means for older workers to understand and respond to the changing requirements of work life. These propositions are introduced and elaborated using a study of older workers’ capacities to be critically reflective of their practice and enact workplace change.

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This publication contains the transcripts of interviews conducted as part of the project, which was funded by the Training Initiatives Branch of the Office of Vocational Education Training and Employment Commission (VETEC), Queensland. The project was an evaluation of three modes of vocational skill development currently being used in Queensland. These modes are: the Formal pre-employment; Integrated; and On-the-job modes. The project provided some broad guidelines for use in the design, implementation and evaluation of these modes of skill acquisition. See also the project report at TD/TNC 46.21. Show less

This paper suggests that research into learning processes in informal or natural settings should become a priority for higher education in Australia, and that learning processes based in the workplace may provide the most likely opportunity for the development of vocational expertise. It is asserted that the utility of research into workplace learning provisions is premised upon two quite distinct rationales. Firstly, workplace learning provides an opportunity for access to skill development which meets the needs of both employers and employees; secondly, recent research into sited-cognition and authentic activities, as part of a developing body of research into learning, stresses the value of knowledge derived through social interaction in specific domains as a basis for the development of robust and transferable knowledge. Further research is required to link this work with industry training. The paper concludes by suggesting areas of research that will be needed to explore the potential of the workplace as a learning setting. Show less