Workplace ‘learning’ and adult education: Messy objects, blurry maps and making difference

This article reviews diverse representations of learning evident among published accounts of workplace learning across fields such as adult education, human resource development, management and organisation studies. The discussion critically addresses the question of how to mediate a multiplicity of definitional, ideological and purposive orientations. The argument here is that the issue is not perspectival, but ontological. The critical problem lies in mistaking learning as a single object when in fact it is enacted as multiple objects, as very different things in different logics of study and practice. Particularly in the contested arena of work as a site of economic conflict and production, learning needs to be appreciated as a messy object, existing in different states, or perhaps a series of different objects that are patched together through some manufactured linkages. If a field called ‘workplace learning’ can be argued to exist, it would need to embrace research and interventions now proliferating within a wide range of fields. Adult education is only one of these regions, itself a highly multi-disciplinary, conflictual and elusive group of activities and actors. Adult education finds itself tackling issues of workplace learning alongside fields which often operate with fundamentally different starting points and purposes, yet share equally strong interest and investment in workplace learning. These fields include, at the minimum, human resource development with its focus on developing organizations and individual careers; organization and management studies with primary interests in understanding and improving organizational performance and culture; professional and vocational education concerned with training individuals; and labour studies oriented to workers’ well-being and collective empowerment. While the same terms ‘learning’, ‘development’, ‘pedagogy’ and ‘education’ – are visible in the discourses of all of these fields, they bear radically different meanings, framed by different logics and questions. These terms also are employed towards very different ends. The term learning is used, for example, to refer to skill development, information access and personal consciousness-raising for individuals. The same term is employed to describe system processes ranging from innovation and organizational change to knowledge management. Further, as Usher and Edwards (2007) show in their extended discussion of lifelong learning discourses, ‘learning’ is a wily shapeshifter, conjuring itself in discursive guises such as policy imperative, code for growth, and synonym for education. One is tempted sometimes to abandon the word as utterly hollowed out of any meaning worth discussing. But in most studies of workplace learning, the term is employed straightforwardly in attempts to represent an actual observed phenomenon. Something happens in work activity, something distinct from other aspects of the ongoing flow of interactions and labour, that is called learning. Not many writers, as this discussion will show, offer precise definitions about what they mean by ‘learning’ when they present their descriptions of this phenomenon. This tendency to omit explicit definitions of learning, either because it’s too difficult or it seems unnecessary, reinforces the problematic assumption that ‘learning’ is a single object, self-evident and mutually understood. Further, the disparate and often conflicting purposes for promoting learning in the workplace – from increasing a firm’s competitiveness or an individual’s labour mobility to building economic democracy or sustainable ecologies in organizations – can become so invisible that we sometimes forget to ask the question that should be core in any discussion of learning: learning what, exactly? learning for what, because why? These two issues of definition and purpose pose problems for anyone studying workplace learning. The nature of these problems is often attributed to interpretation: we all have different perspectives, and just need to be reminded to make them explicit. However, this article argues for a different analysis. The problem is not simply one of perspective, as though all perspectives can be embraced and understood in a single ontology that values things like inclusion and tolerance. The critical problem lies in mistaking learning as a single object when in fact it is enacted as multiple objects, as very different things in different logics of study and practice. At the very least, particularly in the contested arena of work as a site of economic conflict and production, learning needs to be appreciated as a messy object, existing in different states, or perhaps a series of different objects that are patched together through some manufactured linkages. For those who align themselves more with the sensibilities of adult education, however they might define that field, than with fields such as HRD, management, organization, vocational or labour studies, there lies a responsibility in surfacing and confronting this problem. Because the understanding of learning is arguably a core tenet of adult education tradition, we should expect adult education researchers to help delineate the diverse objects that have come to be represented under the one over-stretched signifier of ‘learning’. Even better, adult education might help extend conceptual strategies for bridging these messy objects calling themselves learning, and suggest languages for tracing their diverse enactments. The discussion here draws from a review of workplace learning articles published in journals across fields of HRD, organization/management studies, and adult education. This review illustrates the messy object(s) and purposes that are called learning among these publications. The first section of the article outlines the diverse maps of learning that emerged in the study, showing how researchers in diverse fields were conceptualizing and representing various workplace phenomena that they all referred to as learning. The second section discusses the distinctions among these phenomena, arguing that these represent fundamental differences that are not merely definitional, but also ontological: that they actually delineate different objects of study. The third section discusses these themes with a view to exploring the responsibility of adult education confronting these messy objects and blurry maps of workplace learning. This responsibility is not just about, or even mostly about, normative purposes associated with ‘making a (positive) difference’, but about making difference that resists the press to seek similarity. Making difference resists the assumption that learning is one universallyunderstood phenomenon and that all workplace learning purposes are benignly aligned: making difference is about highlighting distinctions and provoking debates, as well as about building the partial connections that may be possible between those distinctions. Different Objects and Maps of Learning The study from which this discussion draws was a meta-review of workplace learning research published in ten journals within the six-year period 1999-2004. All articles in these journals that focused on topics clearly pertaining to learning in and through work (processes, dimensions, relations) were included in the analysis. The journals, all scholarly refereed publications, were selected to represent diverse audiences in adult education, management/organization studies, and HRD (the brackets show the number of articles from that journal included in the review): Journal of Workplace Learning (52), Management Learning (44), Organization Studies (16), Organization (9), International Journal of Lifelong Education (8), Studies in Continuing Education (21), Studies in the Education of Adults (7), Human Resource Development International (20), and Human Resource Development Quarterly (31). Methodological details of article selection and analysis, as well as full discussion of the themes and the study limitations, are reported in Fenwick (2008) and Fenwick and Rubenson (2005). The focus here is on the researchers’ diverse objects of inquiry. While most researchers explicitly used the term ‘learning’ to represent these objects, almost none defined explicitly what they meant by learning. Many invented different models or maps to articulate these objects. We grouped these maps into eight categories. The groupings were emergent, and were intended to capture what seemed to be ontological distinctions in the relations among knowledge, individual minds, experienced events, groups of people in action, and whatever was construed to be the ‘organization’. In most of the publications, the focus was on relations of the social and personal, with a concern to distinguishing the ‘individual’ and various configurations of the ‘collective’ or group. In a very few publications, authors eschewed such distinctions and worked with more emergent or blurred categories, and even included non-human objects as important actors. These were so few (in this period of workplace learning literature) that we grouped them into one category even though there are significantly different orientations collected there. Of course, the delineation of any categories such as these eight is an imperfect map-making exercise. Some categories overlap. Some may protest this particular map’s inclusions, exclusions, and forms of representation. So let us treat these categories as nothing more than provisional and indicative, a way of introducing the discussion that follows in section two. Each theme here is described only briefly to indicate the key distinctions reported in the earlier publications. 1. Sensemaking and reflective dialogue Here the emphasis is on learning as reflective meaning-making, through language. Appearing in 14 articles or about 6% of the dataset, the sensemaking theme portrays learning as individual and collective construction of (new or altered) meanings: to identify problems, emerge solutions, or engage in collective inquiry. Research focused on the nature of reflection, and what factors influence particular meaning constructions at work (Svensson et al. 2004). The collective was viewed as a prompt for individual critical reflection, a forum for meaning sharing among individuals, and a forum for conflicting meanings that must be worked through to create new knowledge. Further, the collective moulds particular meanings among workers (such as accepting the opinions of those in power). Yet individual intentions shape the meanings they bring to the collective (Jorgenson, 2004). A number of studies took up story-telling for work learning: building the collective, helping it appreciate issues, confront counter stories, reconstruct canonized stories, and name its experiences (e.g. Abma, 2003). However, researchers critical of sensemaking ideas showed the rarity in practice of group critical reflection, dialogue and inquiry. Individuals are disillusioned with such practices (Snell, 2002), and the notion fails to sufficiently account for power relations in workplaces and knowledge hierarchies – including those created by researchers. 2. ‘Levels’ of learning Here the organization and individual (and team) are viewed as separate, distinct levels and forms of learning, not intertwined or co-participational. This static layer-cake depiction, present in about 17 articles or 8% of the dataset, is similar to the networks model (#3 below) but goes beyond linear transmission of information to acknowledge practices and politics. Research focused on what happened at different levels, how different levels affected one another, how to link the levels in practice, and how/when to balance the ‘exploratory’ (knowledge creating) with the ‘exploitive’ (knowledge diffusion) dynamics. An example is Lehesvirta (2004) analysing interactions among three learning levels (individual, group, organization) and four processes (intuiting, interpreting, integrating, and institutionalising). Brady & Davies (2004) suggested different learning phases (innovation, sharing, routinizing) for different project phases and levels such as individual-to-project. The link between levels was often conceptualised rather mechanistically as cross-fertilization, diffusion, pipeline sharing, and even motoring (Cule, Robey, 2004). Factors affecting the linkage of different learning ‘levels’ were identified as social (e.g., tensions, caution and blame created between levels of micro-politics), institutional (rules, or protection mechanisms at each level); or personal (individual career aspirations). Only two articles worked more critically within a ‘levels’ analysis of learning, and both used a critical conflict perspective contrasting collective structures (labour exchange process and human capital ideology of workplace) with workers’ learning (conceived as worker empowerment and autonomy). 3. Networks of information transmission Here, learning refers to individuals and teams sharing useful strategies through networks within and across organizations, often electronically-enabled, primarily for purposes of improving others’ performance. Learning is thus information transmission, through networks which operate as linear pipelines. (This orientation, it must be noted, is fundamentally different to the tenets of actor-network theory which, although using the term ‘network’, conceives networks and their assemblage and power in much more complex terms). Networks as linear information transmission was evident in 19 articles or about 9% of the dataset. The key research preoccupations are improving diffusion: ‘capturing’, managing and organizing content, removing network barriers, and generally facilitating efficient, effective information flow or ‘knowledge transmission’ (just-intime) through a network. Learning networks are reported to take different shapes related to contexts, work characteristics, interactions, actor dynamics and strategies; interorganizational networks are the most complex and take long time periods to develop. Most other findings reported in this data set are related to socio-cultural issues. Individuals and teams are willing to share if sharing is valued and supported; and if the organization restructures pay-offs for contributing, increases efficacy perceptions, and makes employees' sense of group identity and personal responsibility more salient (Cabrera and Cabrera, 2002). Micro-politics inhibit free knowledge sharing (Currie and Kerrin, 2004), affects what information is shared and what is perceived as actual and desired performance. Critique of this network transmission model focuses on its linearity, rational conception of knowledge, and tendency to separate knowledge from activity (Wood and Ferlie, 2003). 4. Communities of practice This notion, popularized principally by Wenger (2000), views learning as participation, embodied in the joint action of a group of practitioners sharing identity, tasks and/or environment. The individual does not receive particular attention as separate from the community: the relation of individual learning processes to collective processes is rarely actually theorized, so individual difference in perspective, disposition, position, social/cultural capital, and forms of participation is unaccounted for. The CoP orientation, despite its apparent proliferation in workplace learning discourses, appeared in only 24 articles or about 11% of the dataset. Research seeks to explain the adaptation and reconfiguration of practices to meet changing pressures, and identify ways to facilitate these dynamics. Community learning is affected by both relational stability (trust), variety (new ideas, risk), and group structure (networks, competence) (Bogenrieder and Nooteboom, 2004). Learning is constrained by time pressure, deferral, and centralization within and across projects (Keegan and Turner, 2001). At least five articles discussed problems with the CoP model, including its insufficient analysis of macro-politics and solidarities within the community expertise and specialized knowledge (especially how to develop it during rapid change); individual habitus and agency/structure dynamics; and innovation, which appears to occur more at interface of CoPS than within them (Reedy, 2003; Swan et al. 2002). 5. Individual human development Here the focus is solidly on the individual, with the assumption that the individual learns and then affects the group. The purpose is mostly about developing individuals, not producing skills and innovation for the organization (Jacobs and Washington 2003). The general base is constructivist learning, e.g. through reflection, and respect for individual’s history, with focus on individual’s meaning-making and helping individuals to continually learn. This orientation of individual human development, appearing in about 27 articles or 13% of the dataset, was particularly prominent in discussions of continuing professional education and human resource development. Research preoccupations included how to promote individuals’ self-directed learning capability (Straka, 2000), and how to understand the relation of work to individual developmental processes and learning styles. The role of the collective was vague or not mentioned, but the primary assumption was that aspects of context served primarily to foster the individual’s learning ability. 6. Individual knowledge acquisition = human capital These articles presented learning in the most conventional cognitive terms, as an individual human process of mentally acquiring and storing new concepts and skills/behaviours. The focus frequently was on the translation of learning to capabilities or capital that adds value to organizational resources (Nafukho et al., 2004). This perspective was present in all journals except two, and appeared to be the dominant perspective in about 34 articles or 16% of the data set (the frequency dropped off after about 2001 in all fields except human resource development). Research tended to focus on how to ‘harness’, draw out and use the individual’s acquired knowledge. Preoccupations included transferring acquired knowledge to practice, measuring competency (reliable valid measures and competence definitions are identified as problematic), narrowing the gap between training investment and results, and turning ‘tacit’ knowledge acquisition into ‘explicit’ knowledge (Weithoff, 2004). A key finding of this review overall was that, despite some movement to more practice-based, sociomaterial conceptions of learning, where boundaries between individuals and objects are considered mutually constitutive and learning is viewed as relational knowledge production rather than mentalist acquisition, the conception of learning as individual knowledge acquisition persists strongly. 7. Co-participation and emergence Each of these terms ‘co-participation’ and ‘emergence’ arose to characterize an enmeshment of individual and social processes, usually acknowledging the importance of artifacts as mediators in these processes. This category, including 35 articles or 17% of the dataset, embraces various perspectives of learning as knowledge creation through social or even socio-material participation in everyday activity. The conception is of mutual interaction and modification between individual actors, their histories, motivations and perspectives, and the collective (including social structures, cultural norms and histories, other actors). Some theorists retain the individual as an autonomous singularity, distinct from other elements comprising the community. Billett (2004) for instance delineates the agency/biography of individuals as separate but interacting with the affordances/constraints of work environments in a dynamic of ‘relational interdependency’. Olesen (2001) also maintains a clear separation between individuals, their subjective experiences and identity, and the collective particularly the social division of labour and social practices of everyday work – while emphasizing ongoing mutual interaction and influence. Elkjaer (2003), from a pragmatic perspective drawing from Deweyan concepts of experiential learning through inquiry, delineates the collective from individuals and individual processes of thinking ‘to acquire’ and reflection to pose and solve problems, but views individuals and organizations as ‘inseparable’ for both are ‘products and producers of human beings and knowledge’ (p. 491). Other more radical versions expanded the ‘collective’ to include environmental architecture, discourses and objects, as in actor-network theory (in three articles) where knowledge circulates and is ‘translated’ in each interaction of one agent mobilizing another. Cultural-historical activity theory (in seven articles) viewed individual and organization in dialectical relationship, where learning is occasioned by questioning practices or contradictions of the system, and is distributed among system elements: perspectives, activities, artefacts, affected by all contributors and clients. Complexity theory (in seven articles) explicitly uses the term ‘emergence’. Learning here is inventive/adaptive activity produced continuously through action and relations of complex systems, occasioned through disturbance. Most agreed that learning is prompted by particular individuals (guides or mentors), events (conflict or disturbance), leaders (e.g. encouraging inquiry, supporting improvisation), or conditions (‘learning architecture’). Issues raised included accreditation and assessment of learning when it’s buried in co-participation, how to distinguish desirable from undesirable knowledge development, how to account for changing notions of what is useful knowledge, and identifying different influences of particular groups in the co-participational flux (positional, generational, gendered, etc). 8. Individuals in community This orientation, evident in about 41 articles or 19% of the dataset, maintains a clear separation between the individual as a being and the community as a sort of monolithic, identifiable container. The individual learns through action in this community, and learning is affected by social, cultural cognitive contexts, but the fundamental focus remains the individual. This is a key distinction from the communities of practice orientation. Here, environment is only a mediating factor on individual learning and cognition, separate from the individual, not entwined with it. The individual affects the community knowledge by injecting new ideas, and the community affects the individual’s behaviour through teaching, providing resources, enabling action opportunities, etc. Research focused on what kinds of environments/communities positively affect individuals’ learning and how to generate these conditions; and how individual learning can help improve the community. Findings reported in the data set stress differences among individuals in expectations, preferences and ways of participating (Filstad, 2004) including women and younger workers. Individual differences are affected by the collective’s structures and opportunities/barriers to learning. Those with a greater sense of control over their work are more likely to engage in learning (Livingstone, 2001), such as in more democratic work structures or professionals developing individual expertise. The impact of the collective on individual learning is greatest in socialization (task mastery, role clarification, and social integration) and in defining or demanding particular competencies, and in the reward system and values placed on learning. However, even embedded in social structures, the individual retains a ‘durable disposition’ to act (Mutch, 2003), and workers organize their own learning regardless of management boundaries and innovation expectations (Poell and Van der Krogt, 2003). Overall, across the different categories and orientations calling themselves ‘learning’ that emerged in this review of publications from 1999-2004, some general observations might be ventured. First, in this period of literature about work processes and activities, perhaps linked somewhat to the first international conference for Researching Work and Learning held in 1999 (at the University of Leeds), there was a flowering of publication about workplace learning across diverse fields ranging from studies in innovation and technology to migration research. Second, a large part of this literature foregrounded some notion of ‘context’ in its discussions of learning. In particular, the most prominent preoccupation was conceptualize the relations between the individual and the collective: in producing knowledge, in modifying practices, in mutually constituting (or resisting) one another, and in opening or closing opportunities for reciprocity. Third, in a small number of publications, we saw some emphasis on the role of material artefacts, such as texts and tools, in conceptions of learning. However alongside these expanding threads, there persisted more conventional ‘mentalist’ orientations to learning as an individual acquisitive phenomenon, often rooted in normative positions of improvement along a linear trajectory of development.