Workplace Learning for Changing Social and Economic Circumstances

At the heart of this book is the rapid pace of change, the need to invest in and create good jobs and support the learning that this entails. It brings together a range of socio-cultural perspectives to examine the hard issues in relation to digitalisation, identity, work design and affordances for learning, mediated by the ecosystems within which work, and the workplace is positioned. The contributors take a strong social justice perspective that seeks to uncover commonly held assumptions about where the responsibility for workplace learning lies, how to understand workplace learning from a range of different perspectives and what it all means for practitioners and researchers in the field. The first section sets the scene in its theorisation of the role and place of workplace learning in the context of changing circumstances. The second section brings together a rich collection of investigations into workplace learning that address the challenges of rapidly changing circumstances. In the final section, the authors consider what workplace learning in changing circumstances means for change practitioners, the changing roles of human resource practitioners, and for workers and quality work. This volume will appeal to graduate and post-graduate students, and academics as well as practitioners such as adult educators, and human resource personnel.

Section 1: Theoretical framing1. Complexity theory: a key to understanding emergent learning and judgements in workplacesDavid Beckett and Paul Hager2. Liminality, uncertainty and troublesome knowledge in learning at workKaren Evans3. Datafication of work and learning: what it is, why it matters and how we can deal with itArthur Chia4. New interpretations of class and power in work and learning: contributions of a mind, culture and occupation perspectivePeter H. Sawchuk5. Cultural-historical understandings of transitions in changing workplacesAnne Edwards and Dorothy Sutherland Olsen6. Socratic ignorance in processes of learning with technologyCathrine HasseSection 2: Investigating workplace learning for changing circumstances7. Utilising pedagogically rich activities to meet emerging workplace learning challengesStephen Billett8. Shaping the relationship between working and learning in digitalised working environmentsDaniela Ahrens and Michael Gessler9. Equipping and assessing learners for the ever-changing workplace: practices, assessment and evaluative judgementDavid Boud10. Vocational teachers’ identity construction at the interface of work and education: workplace-oriented VET teacher trainingJiri Vilppola, Maarit Arvaja, Katja Vähäsantanen and Raija Hämäläinen11. Meaning-making in a trial of sector-wide changeHelen Bound12. Workplace learning for fair work on digital labour platformsLaura Seppänen, Hanna Toiviainen and Mervi HasuSection 3: Implications for practice13. How do public policy professionals work and learn? Exploring a missing dimension in workplace learning researchLorna Unwin14. Problem identification in Change Laboratories: workplace learning to eradicate homelessnessAnnalisa Sannino15. Working and learning in client-facing interprofessional project teams as 'fractional ontological performance': insights from consulting engineeringDavid Guile and Rachel J. Wilde16. Innovations and learning at work: local factors and contributionsStephen Billett, Silin Yang and Arthur Chia17. Leadership in crisis: learning to lead beyond command and controlChristine Owen

Helen Bound is Associate Professor, Institute for Adult Learning at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. Anne Edwards is Professor Emeritus, Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen Evans is Professor Emeritus, Institute of Education at University College London. Arthur Chia is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Ageing Research & Education at Duke-NUS Medical School.