Workplace Learning as Co-Participation.

Abstract

A study conceptualized bases for learning in workplaces, examining reciprocity between how individuals are afforded access to workplace activities and guidance and how workers elect to engage in what they are offered. These reciprocal bases for thinking, acting, and learning are called at The contributions that workplaces make to workers' learning primarily comprise the structuring of learners' access to workplace activities and guidance. These affordances or invitational qualities include how workplace activities and guidance are distributed and accessed, and by whom. Reciprocally, beyond what the workplace offers, what workers learn and how they draw upon and transform their ways of knowing about work is shaped by how they elect to engage in work activities and construe the invitational qualities of what is afforded. Recent accounts of reciprocity in relations between mind and social practice have emphasized the interdependencies or relatedness between individuals' acting and social practice,' including the workplaces in which they act. A key premisa is that engagement in work and what is learned through work are shaped at the intersection between the evolving social practice of the workplace and individuals' ongoing development founded in their ontogeneses. Therefore, an understanding of participation in and learning at work illuminates relations between social and cognitive contributions to adult development throughout working lives. (Contains 48 references.) (Author/KC) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. Workplace learning as co-participation Stephen Billett Faculty of Education Griffith University, Australia 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This paper conceptualises bases for learning in workplaces, comprising reciprocity between how individuals are afforded access to workplace activities and guidance, and how workers elect to engage with what is afforded them. These reciprocal bases for thinking, acting and learning are referred to as coparticipation at work (Billett 2001a). The contributions that workplaces make to workers' learning primarily comprise the structuring of learners' access to workplace activities and guidance. These or-o affordances or invitational qualities include how workplace activities and guidance are distributed and tr) accessed, and by whom. Reciprocally, beyond what the workplace affords, how individuals elect to .7r engage in work activities and construe the invitational qualities of what is afforded shape what they learn, and how they draw upon and transform their ways of knowing about work. Recent accounts of reciprocity in relations between mind and social practice, such as those of Valsiner (1994) Valsiner and Van de Veer (2000), Wertsch (1991, 1998), Cole (1998) and (Lave 1991), have emphasised the interdependencies or relatedness between individuals' thinking, acting and learning, and social practices and sources. These and other accounts (e.g. Cobb 1998; Scribner 199Th; Valsiner 1992) also acknowledge the complexity of the interdependencies between individuals' acting and social practice, including the workplaces in which they act. A key premise here is that engagement in work and what is learnt through work are shaped at the intersection between the evolving social practice of the workplace and individuals' ongoing development founded in their ontogeneses. Therefore, an understanding of participation in and learning at work illuminates relations between social and cognitive contributions to adult development throughout working lives. Findings from a. study that examined participatory practices in a workplace, illuminates and illustrates these conceptual premises. Introduction For those interested in the development of a workplace pedagogy, key concerns include understanding how individuals come to learn and develop further their vocational practice through work and throughout their working lives, and how that learning can be best supported and enhanced. Such concerns both draw upon, reflect and may ultimately inform deliberations within sociocultural, cultural psychology and historical activity theories. The focuses of these deliberations include: (i) the relations between engagement in the social practice of work and adults' learning and development; (ii) the relations between individuals' ontogenies (life histories) and history; and (iii) evolving conceptions of inter-psychological processes those between individuals and social sources and intra-psychological outcomes cognitive change within individuals arising from social experiences. These deliberations are unified by an overall concern to understand further the relations between individuals' development and social practice, manifesting itself here in a discussion about what comprises learning through work. The reciprocal bases that underpin learning through and throughout working life, albeit through engagement in everyday activities or through intentional guided learning at work, are proposed as workplace participatory practices (Billett 2001c). This paper advances the concept of co-participation at work (Billett 2001a): the reciprocal process of how the workplace affords participation and how individuals elect to engage with and participate in work. It emphasises mutuality in relations between contributions to learning afforded by the workplace, on the one hand, and how individuals decide to act in that practice, on the other. Both kinds of participatory practice influence how (and which) individuals engage in vocational activities and how and what they learn or come to know. The affordances (Gibson 1969) of the work practice are proposed as shaping individuals' participation at work and thereby mediating their learning. The kinds of activities and guidance individuals are able to access will shape their learning. However, this participation, and hence learning (Rogoff 1995), is also mediated by how individuals construe what is being afforded (i.e. as invitational). Co-participation is constituted at the intersection of the trajectories of the evolving social practice that constitutes the particular workplace, and individuals' socially shaped personal histories or ontogenies (see Figure 1). However, not depicted in Figure 1 is individuals' simultaneous participation in other social practice (e.g. family and community life) that influences their participation at work (Lave & Wenger 1991; Billett 1998b). These practices include those directly influencing engagement in the workplace, such as membership of a trade union or professional groups, or involvement in recreational activities with `IP 0 coworkers. Other forms of participation, such as family commitments and participation in the local community groups or other work commitments also influence individuals' participation at work. For instance, Hull (1997) notes that some contingent workers (i.e. part-time, contractual) are required to engage

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