The Handbook of Work Based Learning

Ian Cunningham,Graham Dawes

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317029342
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Bildung
• Sous-sujet: Berufsausbildung

Organizational leaders, governments and trade unions all agree that learning is fundamental to organizational and economic success. The question is how it should best be supported. The Handbook of Work Based Learning delivers a compelling answer to this question. Learning needs to be based in the realities of organizational life. This unique, groundbreaking handbook provides a definitive guide to the set of strategies, tactics and methods for supporting work based learning. The three main parts of the Handbook, which focus in turn on strategies, tactics and methods, are written for both the learner and the professional developer alike. Each includes a description of the process (strategy, tactic or method), provides examples of what it looks like in action, explains the benefits and the likely limitations and provides a set of operating hints for applying the process. Nothing has been neglected, so alongside detailed descriptions of what to do and how to do it, the authors have included the Declaration on Learning, created by thirteen of the major figures in the field of organizational learning, a section guiding you towards routes for gaining qualifications, along with a well-researched set of references and further reading.

PART 1
The Rationale for Work Based Learning

Introduction

This part of the handbook contains three sections. The first one is designed to provide a rationale for work based learning. It introduces the topic in a general way and it covers aspects such as definitions as well as research evidence on the use of work based learning.

The second section is written for those in strategic leadership roles, for example, Board members, Directors, senior HR professionals, and so on. It provides a basis for considering strategic choices about learning and makes the case for various approaches to work based learning that all strategic leaders need to consider. The section can be skipped if you don’t see yourself in this role.

The third section is primarily for those who need to assist learners either from a professional position such as an HR Development specialist or a learning consultant, or as an individual manager who takes seriously their role in supporting the learning of the people around them. The sections specifically for developers may be of less interest to managers and could be safely skipped over, if necessary.

After Part 1 the next three parts of the handbook are written for learners. We assume that everyone is a learner and so Parts 2, 3 and 4 should be relevant to all readers. Part 5 is a short concluding piece of a more general nature.

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A CASE OF WORK BASED LEARNING

Delia Smith is the best-selling cookery author ever in the UK, with some books of hers selling over one million copies each. She has undoubtedly influenced more people on their cooking than anyone else. She has also been a much watched TV star. So how did she learn to do this?

As she comments: ‘I want to learn and I want others to learn’. Note that she is not thinking just of herself. Learning is a shared activity in her mind (and in the mind of other excellent learners who we have studied). She clearly has helped others to learn, through her TV shows and her books. But how did she learn?

Her career started with working in a restaurant kitchen washing dishes. She took the job in order to learn how this restaurant produced such high quality food. She spent time looking at how the chefs worked, asking them questions and making notes on how dishes were cooked. She went away and read avidly about cooking, including tracking down obscure recipes in the British Library.

As she developed her ideas she used all sorts of contacts to further her learning. For instance, she talked to people who ran speciality food shops in Soho in order to learn more about the use of particular ingredients. On top of this she experimented widely, trying out methods and techniques.

In all this she never had any training. She learned through work based learning and the kinds of learning methods she used are ones that we will emphasize in this handbook. It is also worth noting that other great cooks/chefs have followed a similar path to Delia Smith. Keith Floyd uses all the approaches that Delia Smith used and in addition he quotes travel as a key learning mode, especially travelling in France in his early career.

According to the UK government, these people are non-learners. They have learned through work based approaches only and they therefore don’t count as learners. Yet we can see that Delia Smith, Keith Floyd and other great chefs are brilliant learners. They are passionate about their work and learn avidly all the time through their work. Note that it is this passion and motivation that is a key. Lyn Davies, a former Olympic gold medal-winning long jumper, commented that if someone devotes four hours a day every day to practising something, they will become good at it. But of course in order to do that the person needs a high level of commitment.

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SECTION 1.1
The Basis of Work Based Learning

This section is a general opening to the subject of work based learning. In it we will show how work based learning is the central and most important aspect of learning to impact on performance at work. We want to make a case for work based learning before showing the practical approaches that can be used. So often when people at work think about improving their knowledge or skills, they think of going on a training course. Yet the research evidence suggests that this knee-jerk reaction is usually unhelpful and that more cost-effective learning approaches may be available to meet a particular need. That is to say, it might be a case for work based learning.

We are not intending to knock training per se. Off-the-job training has a place – it’s just that it occupies a minor place in supporting learning and organizational improvement. For example, at a conference of trainers, we asked about 350 people who were attending a particular session, who used Microsoft Office. Over 90 per cent of the people put their hands up. We then asked how many people had been on a course to learn how to use Office. About 30 per cent of the audience put their hands up. We then asked how many people had learned all they needed to know on such a course. No hands went up. And that is not surprising. Most people learn how to use computer software through reading the manuals, experimenting directly, getting coaching, talking with colleagues, and so on. (Even if you have been on a course, these methods are likely to come into play at some time.)

These latter methods are amongst the work based learning methods that we will explore later. Suffice it to say that in many areas of work people learn all they need through work based learning alone. However, before getting into the issue of work based learning itself we need to say a little about this commonly used verb ‘to learn’.

Learning

The UK’s Campaign for Learning defines learning as follows:

Learning is a process of active engagement with experience. It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world. It may involve an increase in skills, knowledge or understanding, a deepening of values or the capacity to reflect. Effective learning will lead to change, development and a desire to learn more (p. 2, 2002).

It’s possible to quibble about aspects of this definition – and it’s also possible to wheel out numerous other definitions. But, for the sake of a quiet life, we’ll accept the general tenor of this definition. Our own simple formula is as follows:

U = G + P + L

That means that you (U) are equal to what you are born with (we’ll call this G for genes and we’ll leave aside the possibility of aspects such as ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ as this will lead us into contentious waters), how you develop physically (P) and what you learn (L). That’s it. There is nothing else that we know for sure makes up a human being. We are either born with particular attributes or physical maturation changes us or we learn things. Since, for the time being at least, we can’t do much about G and P, the only way in which we can reasonably change for the better is through learning. There is no other process available to us.

This makes learning a ubiquitous process. Indeed the verb ‘to learn’ crops up all the time in our language. ‘I learned today that the train timetable has changed for the summer’; ‘I just learned something new about our neighbours’; ‘I learned how to grow tomatoes’, and so on. What is strange, then, is that the UK government and other official bodies talk about many people being ‘non-learners’. Indeed on the same page of the Campaign for Learning’s definition appears this quote from a research study:

…the vast majority of people who have not engaged in any learning since school, 33% of the total, have no intention of taking up learning.

Strange. Indeed it’s totally nonsensical and, juxtaposed with the Campaign’s own definition of learning, makes no sense whatsoever. People learn every day of their lives and in all sorts of ways.

So what’s going on here? The answer seems simple. The authors of the Campaign for Learning document, along with many in the education and training establishment, do not accept that proper learning can occur unless they sanction it through official channels, usually via a ‘recognised course’. Hence real work based learning can disappear from official recognition.

However, we also find many official UK government reports referring to learning at an organizational level. The Department of Health’s website for ‘Area Protection Committees’ mentions ‘The lessons to be learned from Serious Case Reviews’ (DOH, 2002). The use of the verb to learn in this and other cases seems to refer more to learning at a higher, more macro, level. Yet it is arguable that we are dealing with a similar process to that which goes on at an individual level. People change as a result of learning and in the process hopefully the organization benefits.

Given the continual reference to ‘learning from experience’ in organizations, we might expect a more rigorous analysis of what is involved. However, more often than not, official documents seem to imply that the learning needed is a simple process that needs little further comment. Is it possible that the obsession with formal, recognized courses as a vehicle for learning stops the authors of official reports from being able to make a more useful analysis of what is required, namely, work based learning?

TYPES OF LEARNING

Another problem with the verb ‘to learn’ is that it can imply that learning is all one process. We have already mentioned how the term can be used differently at the individual and the organizational level – and we will return to this issue later. Another factor is to recognize that learning to be more self-confident is quite a different process from learning a specific date – say, the date of the Battle of Hastings. The process of memorizing a date is quite different from what is usually seen as longer term and deeper learning, namely, to be more self-confident.

In the context of work based learning one particular distinction can be important, namely, between learning that is dependent on context and learning that is less so. To take a specific example, learning to use a laptop computer is largely independent of social context. If you use the laptop in a hotel in Hong Kong, Hamburg or Harrogate, the skills and knowledge required are pretty much the same, and are not affected by other people who may be present at the time.

However, if you learn to lead a tribe in Africa and then hope to transfer that learning to leading IBM (or vice versa) then you would find that context is dominant. In work based learning this distinction is important, namely, between learning independent of social context and learning dependent on social context.

Later we will return to the issue of transfer of learning as this has a bearing on what we have raised here. For the time being we merely want to log that the verb ‘to learn’ can actually cover a range of processes (further discussion of some of these distinctions can be found in Cunningham, 1999).

THE CASE FOR LEARNING AT WORK

‘Reductio ad absurdum’ is the process of proving a proposition by showing that its opposite is absurd. The use of reductio ad absurdum as a method in maths has always appealed to us, so it occurred to us that we could use it in our field. We therefore intend to prove that investment in learning at work is essential by using this tried and tested logical methodology. We will do this by showing that not investing in work based learning is genuinely absurd.

Let us first take an organization that is opposed to learning. In this organization people would be forbidden to learn anything. When a person is recruited they would be forbidden to learn how to do the job. This would only be a slightly more extreme version of the organization that claims only to recruit those who are already competent in the job. Also this organization presumes that all the processes and rules in place in the organization are 100 per cent the same as those in the organization the person left – that is, no learning at all is needed.

Let’s assume that the recruited person really can do everything required in the new job. What happens when some new technology arrives? They would be told not to learn how to use it. What happens when they face a new customer? The answer presumably is ‘don’t learn about them – just treat them the same as all previous customers’.

We could go on but we hope it’s not necessary. An organization that forbade learning at work is logically impossible – it could not exist. However, we now need to address the next issue. The leadership of a business could say that they don’t forbid learning but that they will not invest in it. So let’s see how this organization would fare.

If we go back to the new recruit the organization would not provide any induction into the new job. They would also not allow more experienced members of staff to waste time coaching the person or even explaining any of the organization’s rules and procedures. Because, if a more experienced person were to take time out from their work to brief or coach someone, that would constitute an investment in learning. The experienced person would, for that time period, be unproductive, so there would be a real cost to the business.

If a new piece of machinery were to be introduced into the company no coaching would be provided. The leaders of the business might expect people to read a manual to learn how to use it. However, the time that the person takes to read the manual is unproductive time and constitutes a cost to the business, that is, there is a real investment in learning even if the company does not recognize it. If no manual was provided and the person was told to learn by trial and error the chances are that there would be at the very least poor productivity and most likely actual damage or safety problems.

Again we could go on with ever more absurdities. We hope the point is made. Organizations invest in work based learning whether they recognize it or not. And the organization that did not would be impossible to imagine. We may, though, need to take the issue beyond reductio ad absurdum into the real world of organizations. If all organizations have to invest in learning then are their current investments wise? The muddling-through mode seems to be very wasteful. Relying on learning to take place by happenstance looks pretty inefficient.

To go back to the organization that claims not to invest in learning but is actually doing so, we could make the case for a more effective investment. When new machinery arrives people could learn to use it more efficiently if they were, say, coached in its use. The investment in a coaching session is likely to be less than the investment in happenstance learning. Unproductive time wading through a manual or learning by trial and error could be reduced greatly. All of this is basic stuff and hopefully does not need labouring.

To put some hard evidence on this, a Scientific American study reckoned that the cost of a computer terminal could be doubled if one took into consideration learning costs (IT people’s time in advising people, colleagues providing informal coaching, and so on).

So why do organizational leaders make critical remarks about investing in learning? The main reason seems to be that they (and many HR professionals) equate learning with training and education. The government does not help when it talks about people not in education or training as ‘non-learners’. So when the notion of investing in learning is mooted the image for many business leaders is one of increased spend on training or sending more people on educational courses. And the education and training establishment has a vested interest in promoting this view – this is how they make their money after all.

But all of this is totally wrong headed. Most learning that goes on in organizations has nothing to do with education or training. It is work based – as it should be. However, one major point we want to make is that the cost effectiveness of work based learning could be improved in most organizations.

DEFINING WORK BASED LEARNING

Having made the case for learning at work, we now need to say how we intend to use the term ‘work based learning’.

The first issue is to distance this handbook from the use of ‘Work-Based Learning’ as an approach purely designed for school children to learn outside the classroom for part of their time. Naylor (1997) says that work based learning ‘is part of a three-pronged approach to school-to-work transition that also includes school-based learning and connecting activities’. This is not how we use the idea. We are interested here more in adults in work rather than school children learning about work prior to leaving school. (This doesn’t mean that many of the approaches we describe later could not be used with children. Rather we want to establish a specific focus for this handbook.)

When we refer to ‘work’ we do not just mean paid employment in organizations. Many people, for instance, work in the home or are self employed or do unpaid voluntary work. We are therefore interested in work in its broadest sense, though our examples will be drawn primarily from organizational life.

We also focus on learning linked to real work. We therefore distinguish our approach to work based learning from the way some writers use the term ‘workplace learning’ (for example, Matthews, 1999). Workplace learning may include a university or training organization running a standard course in the workplace but primarily using standard teaching methods such as case studies, lectures, simulation exercises and role plays. Such activity could just as easily take place in the univers...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part 1 The Rationale for Work Based Learning
• Part 2 Strategies for Work Based Learning and Development
• Part 3 Tactics for Work Based Learning and Development
• Part 4 Methods for Work Based Learning and Development
• Part 5 Conclusions and Directions
• Appendix I A Declaration on Learning – A Call to Action
• Appendix II A Work Based Model for Gaining Qualifications
• Appendix III Why Isn't Work Based Learning More Supported?
• Bibliography
• Index