Theories of Workplace Learning in Changing Times

Filip Dochy, David Gijbels, Mien Segers, Piet Van den Bossche

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000424782
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Psicología educativa

This book is an expansion and major updating of the highly successful Theories of Learning for the Workplace, first published in 2011. It offers fascinating overviews into some of the most important theories of learning and how they are practically applied to organisational or workplace learning. Each chapter is co-authored by an academic researcher and an expert in business or industry, providing practical case studies combined with a thorough analysis of theories and models of learning.

Key figures in education, psychology, and cognitive science present a comprehensive range of conceptual perspectives on learning theory, offering a wealth of new insights to support innovative research directions and innovation in learning, training, and teaching for the upcoming post-Covid-19 decades. Containing overviews of theories from Argyris, Decuyper, Dochy & Segers, Engeström, Ericsson, Kolb, Lave & Wenger, Mezirow, Raes & Boon, Schön, Senge, and Van den Bossche, this book discusses:

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• Learning of employees in the digital era

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• Workplace learning

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• High impact learning

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• Informal learning

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• Adult learning

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• Learning & development didactics (L&D)

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• Reflective practice

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• Transformational learning

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• Experiential learning

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• Deliberate practice

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• Communities of practice

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• Team learning

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• Organisational learning

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• Expansive learning

Combining theory and practice, this book will be essential reading for all trainee and practising educational psychologists, organisational psychologists, researchers, and students in the field of lifelong learning, educational policy makers, students, researchers, and teachers in vocational and higher education. It will also be of interest to those involved in training trainers and teacher training.

Chapter 1

From Classic Perspectives on Learning to Current Views on Learning

Mien Segers, Maaike Endedijk, and David Gijbels

DOI: 10.4324/9781003187790-2

In the July 2017 issue of Human Capital Magazine, senior editor Shruti Chadha wrote an article on the evolution of learning and development and described (not surprisingly) that the role of the human resource developer has changed from a trainer of individuals to a facilitator of learning. In the article, the four major phases in the sphere of corporate training that has traversed over the past four decades are discussed.

1. Until the end of the 1990s, one could say that traditional instructions-led trainings was the default mode of training.

2. Near the end of the 1990s, the Internet became more mainstream and e-learning, which was mainly characterised by a formal, linear online training program, became popular.

3. Soon after, it became clear that the high expectations for e-learning could not completely be met and organisations started to invest in traditional classrooms again, resulting in mainly ‘blended’ learning environments.

4. The final phase is described by the evolution that includes both formal and structured (macro and micro learning) programs, as well as a wide range of informal, more unstructured ways of learning supported by technology and enhanced by social networking. In this latter phase, learning analytics plays an increasingly important role in supporting learners and informing learning and development professionals.

This short summary of the article in Human Capital Magazine illustrates the (re)volution in learning and development over the past decades. Directly visible is the great influence of technology development, which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis in 2020, on how we organise learning in organisations. A closer look reveals also a development in theoretical perspectives that have influenced how learning and development are given shape in organisations.

The theories of learning for the workplace that are further discussed in this book are also clearly rooted in these different perspectives on learning. In this book, we embrace the broad definition of workplace learning as described by Tynjälä (2008). In her review, she examined the nature of workplace learning and concludes that workplace learning includes many forms of learning (formal, non-formal, and informal; unplanned or more deliberate), taking place at different levels with learners being individuals, groups, organisations, and even inter-organisational learning may take place, with the ultimate aim to develop better practices and social and material innovations (Tynjälä, 2008).

While at first you might think that the concept of learning belongs to the discipline of education, actually the bulk of research on learning stems from many different disciplines, each taking a different starting point. As Ertmer and Newby (2013, p. 44) state: ‘learning is a complex process that has generated numerous interpretations and theories of how it is effectively accomplished.’ Let us give one example. The Transfer of Training literature aims to better understand the factors influencing participants in training programs to use the acquired competences in their daily professional life. Although a lot of attention is paid to the influence of trainee and work environment characteristics, how the training is organised has received a lot of attention. The argumentation for training design characteristics to be valid is grounded within (often implicit) theories of how people learn. In the same vein, expertise development research, which is rooted in the field of cognitive psychology, aims to understand how people develop from novice into expert and has been investigated in many different domains such as chess, medicine, accountancy, sports, etc. Various theories have been developed to understand this developmental process (see e.g., Elvira, Imants, Dankbaar, & Segers, 2017 for a review).

In this chapter, we will describe some of the core paradigms and viewpoints on learning relevant for workplace learning. Although not positioned or presented in the literature as Theories of Workplace Learning, they have been implicitly or explicitly influencing these theories and offer interesting insights on the phenomenon of learning in the workplace. We will start with a short description of the learning paradigms that have been developed during the course of the past century and that have been very influential in learning research and practice in schools, at the workplace, and beyond.

Consecutive Perspectives on Learning

Most handbooks on learning will describe three perspectives on learning that are generally labelled as a behaviourist perspective, a cognitive perspective, and a socio-constructivist (or situated) perspective on learning. Each of these perspectives takes a different position on the nature of learning and has different implications for how to support learning. We will describe each of these perspectives below and will argue to add the perspectives of ‘connectivism’ and ‘hybrid expansivism’ to this list.

Behaviourist Perspectives on Learning

Behaviourism was developed one century ago based on the conviction that psychology could only become a ‘true science’ if researchers used ‘more objective research methods’ by looking at observable behaviour (Ormrod, 2004, p. 30). John B. Watson (1878–1958) can be seen as the father of behaviourism, and he reacted against psychoanalytic ideas and concepts such as (un)consciousness (Watson, 1913 in Alexander, 2006). Behaviourism does not address internal processes such as thoughts, motives, and emotions, they reside in the mind of organisms and therefore cannot be measured objectively. The idea of stimulus-response is at the heart of the behaviourist perspective whereby learning is described as reacting to stimuli in the environment and the goal of learning is to tap into stimulus-response parings that already exist to form new stimulus-response patterns. This type of ‘classical conditioning’ was at the heart of the famous experiment by Pavlov, in which a dog was presented food together with the sound of a bell. After a while, the sound of the bell alone was enough to trigger salivation, indicating that the dog had been conditioned, or in behaviourist terms: had learned. Skinner went one step further with ‘operant conditioning’ and proved that natural human actions could be conditioned via the use of reinforcements or punishments. Even today, behaviourism still influences workplace learning, e.g., by means of learning through role models, by imitation. Generally speaking, still too much surface learning is based on coercion, force, and fear of punishment.

Cognitive Perspectives on Learning

As a reaction against behaviourism, a collection of theories that can be labelled ‘cognitivism’ have emerged and criticised the exclusion of internal processes and mental events when studying learning. Consequently, scholars included ‘cognitive processes’ when they modelled learning, addressing ‘problem solving, language, concept formation and information processing’ (Ertmer & Newby, 2013, p. 50). They argue that ‘objective, systematic observations of people’s behaviour should be the focus of scientific inquiry; however, inferences about unobservable mental processes can often be drawn from behaviour’ (p. 177). Core questions posed by scholars taking a cognitivism approach are: What happens in our brains when information is acquired? How is information processed, stored, retained, discarded, organised, and retrieved and transferred outward again?

One of the dominant theories addressing cognitive processes is information-processing theory (IPT) (Lachman, Lachman, & Butterfield, 1979). This theory focussed on the role of ‘multi-store’ models and has been developed describing the type of information they can hold, the capacity they have, and their forgetting rates and mechanisms. Several theories have proposed conditions on how to store and retain information. In the traditional multi-store model, repetition and rehearsal are the key concepts (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). With respect to the latter, Craik and Lockhart (1972) proposed a levels-of-processing model, arguing that deeper levels of analysis, such as attaching meaning to a word, results in better storage and retention of information. In addition, other scholars argued that elaboration of processing matters leads to building relationships between pieces of information. Moreover, Loftus and Loftus (1980) argued ‘information becomes less available as the interval increases between the time of the information’s initial acquisition and the time of its attempted retrieval’ (p. 409). Successful retrieval depends on the re-enactment of the way information was stored or encoded in the brain or retrieval is enhanced by a trigger.

Finally, in the theoretical framework of cognitive processes, the role of meta-cognition is stressed and sometimes called ‘the most powerful predictor of learning’ (Veenman, Van Hout-Wolters, & Afflerbach, 2006, p. 3). Metacognition is defined by McCrindle and Christensen (1995, p. 167) as ‘knowledge and awareness of one’s own cognitive processes and the ability [or skill] to actively control and manage those processes’. Several ‘metacognitive strategies’ or approaches that people take to enhance their knowledge of or ability to actively control and manage their cognitive processes have been discerned, such as reflection, making notes, marking information, planning and organising learning through time schedules and deadlines, addressing obstacles that complicate performance (i.e., stage fright), and testing one’s knowledge (Hallam, 2001). The concept of metacognition plays a more important role in more socio-constructivist theories of learning, which are discussed in the next paragraph.

Situated Perspectives on Learning

One major criticism is that cognitivism is ‘largely based on the assumption that learning is an individual process’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 3). This critique has inspired scholars to develop the social cognitive theory including social and cultural factors of learning. Already during the decade when behaviourism was the dominant learning theory, Bandura as the founding father of social learning theory argued and evidenced that people learn from others by observing both their behaviour and the outcomes of those behaviours (Ormrod, 2004). Observation and imitation of behaviour of others were seen as important learning behaviours. Over the years, social learning theory gradually adopted a more cognitive approach to understand the black box between stimulus and response. Social cognitivists propose the interplay between behaviour, person, and the environment. From this work, the idea emerged that learners are not passive recipients of information, but while interacting with the environment, they actively construct their own knowledge (and skills) by actively reorganising their own mental structures (De Corte, 2010).

This idea is at t...