1st Edition

Workplace Learning for Changing Social and Economic Circumstances

Edited By Helen Bound, Anne Edwards, Karen Evans, Arthur Chia Copyright 2023
    290 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    290 Pages 10 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    At the heart of this book is the rapid pace of change, the need to invest in and create good jobs and support the learning that this entails. It brings together a range of socio-cultural perspectives to examine the hard issues in relation to digitalisation, identity, work design and affordances for learning, mediated by the ecosystems within which work, and the workplace is positioned.

    The contributors take a strong social justice perspective that seeks to uncover commonly held assumptions about where the responsibility for workplace learning lies, how to understand workplace learning from a range of different perspectives and what it all means for practitioners and researchers in the field. The first section sets the scene in its theorisation of the role and place of workplace learning in the context of changing circumstances. The second section brings together a rich collection of investigations into workplace learning that address the challenges of rapidly changing circumstances. In the final section, the authors consider what workplace learning in changing circumstances means for change practitioners, the changing roles of human resource practitioners, and for workers and quality work.

    This volume will appeal to graduate and post-graduate students, and academics as well as practitioners such as adult educators, and human resource personnel.

    Section 1: Theoretical framing
    1. Complexity theory: a key to understanding emergent learning and judgements in workplaces
    David Beckett and Paul Hager
    2. Liminality, uncertainty and troublesome knowledge in learning at work
    Karen Evans
    3. Datafication of work and learning: what it is, why it matters and how we can deal with it
    Arthur Chia
    4. New interpretations of class and power in work and learning: contributions of a mind, culture and occupation perspective
    Peter H. Sawchuk
    5. Cultural-historical understandings of transitions in changing workplaces
    Anne Edwards and Dorothy Sutherland Olsen
    6. Socratic ignorance in processes of learning with technology
    Cathrine Hasse
    Section 2: Investigating workplace learning for changing circumstances
    7. Utilising pedagogically rich activities to meet emerging workplace learning challenges
    Stephen Billett
    8. Shaping the relationship between working and learning in digitalised working environments
    Daniela Ahrens and Michael Gessler
    9. Equipping and assessing learners for the ever-changing workplace: practices, assessment and evaluative judgement
    David Boud
    10. Vocational teachers’ identity construction at the interface of work and education: workplace-oriented VET teacher training
    Jiri Vilppola, Maarit Arvaja, Katja Vähäsantanen and Raija Hämäläinen
    11. Meaning-making in a trial of sector-wide change
    Helen Bound
    12. Workplace learning for fair work on digital labour platforms
    Laura Seppänen, Hanna Toiviainen and Mervi Hasu
    Section 3: Implications for practice
    13. How do public policy professionals work and learn? Exploring a missing dimension in workplace learning research
    Lorna Unwin
    14. Problem identification in Change Laboratories: workplace learning to eradicate homelessness
    Annalisa Sannino
    15. Working and learning in client-facing interprofessional project teams as 'fractional ontological performance': insights from consulting engineering
    David Guile and Rachel J. Wilde
    16. Innovations and learning at work: local factors and contributions
    Stephen Billett, Silin Yang and Arthur Chia
    17. Leadership in crisis: learning to lead beyond command and control
    Christine Owen

    Biography

    Helen Bound is Associate Professor, Institute for Adult Learning at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.

    Anne Edwards is Professor Emeritus, Department of Education at the University of Oxford.

    Karen Evans is Professor Emeritus, Institute of Education at University College London.

    Arthur Chia is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Ageing Research & Education at Duke-NUS Medical School.

    'This collection, curated by internationally renowned academics, brings together contributions from world-leading scholars to identify, theorise, evidence and illuminate the pressing contemporary challenges in workplace learning and vocational education and training research. This highly recommended book offers researchers, policymakers and practitioners in different countries a refreshing range of perspectives and insights that will enrich and augment their own interests and work.'

    Alison Fuller, Professor of Vocational Education and Work, University College London, UK

    'This is a refreshing book for where human intervention increasingly shapes and conflates the socio-cultural and environmental spheres. The contributing authors problematise central workplace learning themes within this context of uncertainty in which participants act both as agents and supplicants within such theoretically and practice-based informed spaces as digitisation, shifting identities, group collaboration, increasing knowledge and skill complexity, and rapidly changing definitions of work. The book is a ‘must-read’ for researchers, educators and policy makers.'

    Peter Rushbrook, Adjunct Associate Professor (VET), Charles Sturt University