Introduction
The first section of the Handbook of Learning and Work presents 10 chapters each examining aspects of where the two foci of this Handbook, Learning and Work, are placed within different theory and research perspectives and how they intersect.
In the first chapter Len Cairns presents the historical, philosophical and cultural perspectives on learning and work and examines how the roles of learners and workers have changed and impacted societies over the past decades. The chapter also critiques how simple binaries and metaphors have tended to dominate the way thinking about learning and work has been seen and discussed in the past. The case that there are different views in ‘non-western’ perspectives and that there are emerging trends in the third decade of the 21st century amid the ‘liquid times’ of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0 and Work 4.0) underpins the chapter.
In the second chapter, Stephen Billett argues that it is essential to align workplace innovation and workers’ learning for effective adaptive workplaces and workers’ development. He further emphasises that most innovations in workplaces have not been ‘de novo’ (novel) but have been the product of workers’ innovation and learning. Billett proposes that, ultimately, the prospects for workers’ employability and workplace viability are richly intertwined and remain localised processes of worker engagement and workplace support that initiate, secure and sustain both learning and innovation.
Terry Hyland in Chapter 3, initially critiques the rise of the inappropriate use of mindfulness elements in short-term programmes of professional and vocational education and training in a manner described as ‘McMindfulness'. He then turns to offering some positive suggestions for utilising the potential of contemplative approaches for and in workplace learning. Hyland suggests that the matters of embodied and holistic learning where mindfulness, as a form of education, is essentially ethical and transformative can be seen as work over time, which provides a guiding principle for its involvement at work and in preparation for work.
Chapter 4, from Päivi Tynjälä, Hannu Heikkinen and Eeva Kallio, offers a theoretical discussion of how work and learning can be integrated in Higher Education and VET. The chapter presents a revised version of an Integrative Pedagogy model which suggests that as high-level competence involves a ‘tightly integrated and fused’ set of elements of expertise, conceptual, practical, self-regulative and socio-cultural knowledge, this requires educational practices that support making connections and the necessity for authentic and practical work experience and self-reflection in learning activities. The approach is situated within discussion of the 3P model of Workplace Learning.
In the fifth chapter, Stewart Hase and Lisa Marie Blaschke advance their development of the innovative concept and theorisation of heutagogy or self-determined learning. The chapter describes the origins and applications of self-determined learning, including its application in work environments across a variety of disciplines and the role of the learning leader in realising a heutagogic approach.
In Chapter 6, Hanna Toivianen tackles the significant aspects and impacts of work-life networks on learning and the extent to which the theory of organisational learning and development has not been able to handle the cross-organisational and multi-layered nature of this network learning. Toivianen offers an approach based on expansive learning theory and development work research (DWR) to suggest a better starting point to address the work-life network learning, utilising work in Nordic work-life practices and research. The Chapter combines theory and empirical research examples to propose models to use in the analysis of learning in networks.
In Chapter 7 Loek Nieuwenhuis, Lia Fluit and Wietske Kuijer-Siebelink offer an examination of the adaptive needs of professions and how they can learn strategies in and for the workplace. They suggest that for the development of adaptive expertise, a promising approach is the design of work-based learning in the form of challenge-based education in which students, professionals and teachers cooperate to resolve open-ended problems in professional practice. In an innovative conceptualisation, the authors present, through a lens of a knowledge-creating metaphor of learning, how the traditional novice-expert model is combined with more open and ‘ill-structured’ workplace problems so as to enhance adaptive skills and expertise development. (Ill-structured problems are, to some extent, the opposite of ‘well-structured problems', and represent the unpredictable and real issues faced in professional workplaces).
The importance of the emerging ideas around moving from learning organisation theories and understandings to a ‘landscape of ecosystems’ is presented in Chapter 8 by Maarit Virolainen, Hannu Heikkinen, Sirpa Laitinen-Väänänen and Juhani Rautopuro. The transformation towards the new ‘ecosystem’ discussion is related to the adoption of new technologies for information sharing, exchange and communication as a result of industrial revolutions, the latest being ‘Industrial Revolution 4.0'. The adoption of new technologies has coincided with the shift from the classic bureaucratic organisation towards a landscape of ecosystems.
In Chapter 9, Elina Maslo takes a participatory ethnographic approach to examine learners and how learning at work in spaces and places leads to different perspectives on what the learning is and how it relates to each learner's perception and reflection while they are working. The role of reflection and language in the study of learning at work is a key element of this discussion. In this case, all three participants in the conversation had their own understanding of the phenomenon ‘learning at work'. The chapter then provides a short state of the art on the phenomenon ‘workplaces as learning spaces'. Then, the chapter addresses the question of ‘Why learning spaces at work are difficult to study', based on the theory of language and learning and the necessity of studying learning spaces at work together with persons who learn and work, and of applying a more reflexive and dialogic approach. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of numerous reflection levels in a study process which are usually not explicit and discuss the role of language in the research process.
In Chapter 10 Terri Seddon takes us through a personal narrative essay that examines the significance of learning in ‘liquid times’ and puts a case for critiquing ‘situatedness'. This chapter draws on comparative historical sociologies of education to trouble the idea of ‘situatedness'. It questions what it means to be ‘located', ‘here’ and ‘uncertain’ by using four autobiographical vignettes and contextualising commentaries to interrogate the ‘lived-in-world', where learning that is both objective and subjective unfolds iteratively, as both resource and effects, through relational spaces and times. It is argued that learning is not ‘situated’ in a simple here and now, but also melts and morphs the lived-in-world moment by moment.
