Learning In The Workplace

Strategies for effective practice

Stephen Billett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367754754
• eBook ISBN: 9781000257762
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Learning in the workplace has come of age with the publication of this book. It shows the way for a new level of sophistication in the ways learning and work are treated. And it opens new territory for exploration in the world of learning throughout life.

David Boud, University of Technology, Sydney

Stephen Billett provides a comprehensive and practical model, well-grounded in theory and research, to guide learning in the workplace. This is a 'must read' for

those in vocational education and training.

Victoria Marsick, Columbia University

Learning does not stop when you leave school or tertiary studies, but continues throughout life. The workplace is now seen as an important learning environment, and businesses and government units are encouraged to become 'learning organisations'. This is all very well in theory, but how does learning actually occur in the workplace?

Drawing on research of a wide variety of workplaces in different countries, Stephen Billett analyses the strengths and limitations of 'on-the-job' learning. He outlines what knowledge individuals need and how they can best acquire this knowledge in workplace settings. He shows how to develop a workplace curriculum, and how it can be implemented in organisations of different sizes.

Learning in the Workplace offers a comprehensive pedagogy for the workplace. It is a valuable reference for human resource practitioners and students in courses on professional development and adult and vocational learning.

PART I
Understanding workplaces as learning environments

1
Working and learning

WORKPLACES AS LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The two production workers had spent most of the morning trying to free a chute that had become blocked with a build up of 'fines'—tiny particles of ore. They worked together, discussing the problem and communicating constantly with the control room as they tried different means of removing the blockage and adjusting the feed from the conveyor belt to prevent it happening again. As they worked on the problem, another worker—a new employee—was listening to the exchanges between the control room and the fitters on his 'two-way'. Once the blockage had been cleared and the belts and feeders to the kilns were operating again, the two workers continued to adjust the feed from the conveyors, still communicating with the control room workers. The new worker continued to listen.

Through their actions, all those involved had extended their understanding of the plant and the best means of controlling the flow of the ore. They had done this through participation in an everyday work activity, In the process, they had received feedback from colleagues about the effectiveness of the various settings they had used. The control room workers had applied their knowledge of the plant in a different way from their usual monitoring and control activities, and learnt more about how feed adjustments affect the flow of the ore. The new employee who had been following the procedures had built a mental model of what the other workers had been doing. Later, over lunch, this novice listened in as the two production workers discussed with others the adjustments they had made, thereby extending his understanding of the procedures used.

Through their engagement in different kinds of workplace activities and the guidance provided by other workers, these workers had learnt more about their vocational practice, extending their understanding of and procedural ability required for their work. This learning occurred through everyday work activity. For the novice, the learning was of a different order, relating to the kinds of task goals to be achieved and the means of achieving these goals. This could have included such things as the relationships among the particular functions of this part of the processing plant, the quality of the ore and control of the flow of the ore.

As the above vignette illustrates, workplaces structure and routinely provide learning experiences as part of everyday work activities and through guidance from other workers. Participation in workplace tasks assists new learning and reinforces what has been learnt through further practice. This account of the workplace's contributions to learning is consistent with contemporary learning theories, which helps substantiate the case for workplaces to be seen as legitimate and effective learning environments. This legitimisation is important as there remains much scepticism about the quality of learning acquired in workplaces. An explanation of how situational contributions to learning influence the way individuals learn their vocational practice is part of this legitimisation.

The common labelling of workplaces as 'informal' learning environments reveals their ambiguous status in terms of learning. Even advocates have described workplace learning processes and outcomes as being 'informal' and 'incidental', and as failing to furnish critical insights (Marsick & Watkins 1990). Although unintended, this labelling has fostered a view that learning experiences in the workplace are incoherent, lack structure and have outcomes wholly specific to the particular enterprise. The use of negative labels for workplace learning, such as 'non-formal' and 'informal', persists— usually without critical appraisal. Perhaps it is not surprising, given the pervasiveness of most individuals' encounters with educational institutions, that views about the qualities of workplace learning will commonly be based on what happens in these institutions.

Teaching and learning are often seen to be synonymous, so the absence of qualified teachers and a deliberately structured curriculum can easily lead to assumptions that learning in workplaces will be inferior to that occurring in schools, colleges and universities. Workplace learning may be seen as piecemeal because the activities are not structured in ways consistent with the familiar organisation of learning experiences adopted in educational institutions. Accordingly, weak or incidental learning outcomes will be anticipated wherever personnel in the workplace lack formal instructional expertise. In this view, which privileges the practices of educational institutions, the absence of a written curriculum, qualified teachers and the teaching practices found in educational institutions raises the concern that learning in workplaces—if it occurs at all—will be weak, piecemeal, concrete and incidental.

However, many of these premises are questionable. Although not written down, the pathways of experience and guidance provided in workplaces are often structured or 'formalised'. Just as the goals and practices of educational institutions frame the activities in which students engage, so too the goals and practices of workplaces determine workplace activities (Billett 1996a; Scribner 1997). Further, rather than being weak, the learning occurring outside teaching and institutional practice is often central to sustaining the practices—and even the communities—in which the learning occurs. Occupational examples include learning to navigate (Hurchins 1983), weaving (Childs & Greenfield 1980), coal mining (Billett 1993a), dairy work (Scribner 1984), midwifery (Jordan 1989) and tailoring (Lave 1990).

Work practice can tacitly structure learners' access to the knowledge they need to acquire. Lave (1990) found that tailors' apprentices learnt by participating in work activities that inherently structured their engagement in increasingly more accountable tasks and gave them greater access to knowledge. This structuring is quite pedagogically sound. The apprentices move through experiences that first provide access to the global—the overall goals required for performance—then the local—the requirements for particular performance. The apprentices first finish and iron completed garments. This provides a basis for understanding the overall requirements for their work. Next they learn specific procedures for constructing garments. The pathway of learning experiences is 'formalised' by a progression of tasks that carry increasing levels of accountability—that is, movement from tasks of low to high accountability (i.e. those where mistakes can be tolerated to those where mistakes would have significant consequences). Both access to models for performance, and direct and indirect guidance, are provided for apprentices to learn tailoring on this pathway. In this way, the workplace experiences of the tailors' apprentices in terms of the activities they engage in are structured by their work practice (Lave 1990). In a similar way, Hutchins' (1983) study of fishermen learning to navigate demonstrates other aspects of deliberately structured approaches to learning. Substitute objects (shells and beach debris) were used to represent objects (star patterns) that cannot be seen during the day. Jordan (1989) demonstrates how Yucatan birth attendants learn their profession through the structured observation and imitation of more experienced practitioners. Their apprenticeship proceeds with little or no separation between daily life and the learning of the professional skills of midwifery. The Guarenos of the Orinoco Delta of Venezuela teach cultivation, animal husbandry, hunting and fishing in ways that are highly structured through learning by doing and being provided with an initial understanding of each task and its goals (Ruddle & Chesterfield 1978). These processes of learning vocational practices, which are essential to the communities in which they are practised, would be described by many as being 'informal'. Yet they are highly structured and formalised. Moreover, rather than being ad hoc or incidental, these kinds of experiences structure learning that can have transferable outcomes. Indeed, Rogoff (1982) and Rogoff and Gauvain (1984) found that the potential for transfer from this kind of learning was as great as that from school-based learning.

Nominated pathways of learning activities have also been identified in contemporary work settings. For instance, in hairdressing salons, the apprentices' tasks are determined by the particular salon's approach to hairdressing (Billett 1995a). For instance, in one salon where the client is serviced by a number of hairdressers, the apprentices learn first to keep the salon clean and tidy, and communicate with clients by asking whether and how they want tea or coffee. Through these activities, the apprentices learn about hygiene, cleanliness and procedures for determining client needs. More than 'busy work', these tasks are necessary components in understanding and initially participating in hairdressing practice. This initial participation includes the building of the apprentices' confidence to negotiate with clients. The apprentices may next learn how to wash clients' hair, and later rinse out the chemicals used to shape and colour hair. These tasks provide new skills and advance further what they have already learnt, such as communicating with clients in more intimate ways. Also, as they wash or rinse clients' hair, they learn about the important aspects of these tasks (e.g. the importance of removing all the chemicals) and their place and significance in the hairdressing process. The apprentices later work alongside experienced hairdressers, helping to place rods and curlers in clients' hair. Later still, before being permitted to cut and colour women's hair, they commence by cutting men's hair, which is seen as being less difficult and of lower accountability than cutting women's hair. This pathway of activities continues until the apprentices can style hair indenendently.

In another salon, however, where hairdressers have responsibility for the entire hairdressing task, the apprentice is required to learn to cut and colour far earlier than in the kind of salon referred to above. The structured pathway of activities in the second salon includes mastery of a set of procedures that permit independent practice early in the apprenticeship. So, in the same vocation, the particular goals and practices of the workplace will determine much of the structuring of learning.

Darrah (1996) has also shown how, in a computer manufacturing company, access to work is organised and sequenced to structure learning through a pathway of activities comprising the assembly and testing of computers. To take a further example, in commercial aviation there is a pathway of learning associated with movement from being a flight engineer, to first officer through to captain (Hutchins & Palen 1997).

There are organisational factors that clearly structure and distribute opportunities for workers to participate in workplaces. Seniority in workplaces (Dore & Sako 1989) and work demarcations (Danford 1998), as well as internal and external competition, restructuring and redeployment, all structure access to work tasks and hence to learning (Billett et al. 1997). Consequently, the bases for learning in workplaces are not ad hoc or without structure. They are formalised and structured by the goals, activities and culture of the work practice (Brown et al. 1989), just as learners' experiences in educational institutions are structured by those institutions' cultures of practice. As discussed in greater detail in subsequent chapters, workplaces are often highly contested, with access to the activities and guidance required for learning not being uniformly distributed. Opportunities to participate may be distributed on the basis of factors such as workplace cliques, affiliations, gender, race, language or employment s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Foreword
• Contents
• Tables and figures
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Part I: Understanding workplaces as learning environments
• Part II: Guided learning at work: A curriculum for the workplace
• Appendix 1 Items to identify the pathway from peripheral to full participation
• References
• Index