Travail et formation des adultes

Abstract

This chapter advances some conceptual bases for understanding learning through work. Regardless of whether it arises through everyday work activities or through experiences that are intentionally organized and supported by experienced coworkers, learning through work is shaped by workplace participatory practices. There are two contributions to such practices: those that are exercised by the workplace, including the activities and interactions the workplace affords those who work in it; and those which relate to how worker-learners engage with and learn from what is afforded them. As such, these practices comprise a duality between how the workplace affords or invites participation and how individuals elect to take up that invitation and learn through their participation. This duality is characterized by its relational character. What the workplace affords (i.e. activities and interactions) is a product of the historical, cultural and situational factors that shape the activities, goals and interactions of the work practice and its particular workplace manifestation. Yet, how individuals construe and learn through them is, by degree, person-dependant. In this way, learning is conceptualised as arising inter-psychologically through negotiations between personal and workplace practices. Moreover, although different kinds of workplace experiences (e.g. routine or non-routine activities) are likely to have legacies for learning, these will be person-dependent. Therefore, in considering how to improve learning in workplaces and through work, participation needs to be considered from both the personal and workplace perspectives, and the negotiations between them.

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