Context variety means four stories Understanding learning in work Gerhard Smid Published in: Working Knowledge Conference proceedings december 2000 Sydney. Introduction It is not wise to organize the advanced learning of higher educated people like professionals in external or off -the-job learning arrangements (Van der Krogt 1998), because this consumes too much time. In order to enhance learning and innovation nevertheless, providers of advanced education like universities have to develop strategies to diminish the time one needs for learning. One possibility is to integrate work and learning. To support this integration we have to rethink the relation between work and learning. This paper contributes to this. I work towards a model that considers other aspects than the job control-job demand model (Karasek & Theorell 1989) and the individual and organizational factor model (Karakowsky & McBey 1999). It was inspired by the sociological view on learning as expressed by Lave & Wenger (1991) and Brown & Duguid (1996). Their attention for learning as a social activity is a good start. I add attention for patterns and mechanisms that derive from the wider context that influence these activities. The aim of this paper is to introduce some aspects of these patterns. My question is here: how do context and transactional environment influence or produce the articulation of the demand for learning. I end this introduction with one remark on the terms. I prefer the more generic terms ‘higher educated people/ instead of the more common ‘professionals’. I use the word ‘professionals’ only when people are a member of a group that really controls an occupation with e.g. accreditation and a related professional education (Ross, 1996). This is in fact a special case.
The learning of higher educated people & the challenge for designers Most higher educated people learn frequently in their work, because their work has a good balance of job demands and possibilities for control (Karasek & Theorell 1989). They work on a large variety of tasks in varying situations and these are also conditions that enable learning (Karakowsky & McBey 1999). Their learning is largely implicit, but also explicit: they plan new developments in their work and organize informal learning projects (Tough 1971; Price 1997). After some years of working experience, they nevertheless seek extra opportunities for learning. They enter into learning programs offered by their employer or by colleagues, and/or participate in external learning arrangements with a varying learning demand. Because they learn from a combination of activities (in daily work and in formal arrangements on-thejob and off -the-job), the arrangements that support these learning activities must be mutual complementary. Designers of formal (in- or external) learning arrangements must try to fulfill this requirement of complementarity (instead of only the requirements of academic quality). We (corporate
trainers, managers of corporate universities, providers of executive management education, postexperience professional programs, work-based-learning alliances) must be well informed on the learning activities in work and their outcome. I think these produce the learning demands (the concept of ‘demand’ is here used to describe the fact that some people contact providers of education and express their wish to cooperate with the aim of learning. They have a problem or a goal, and they think a provider can deliver them a solution to solve the problem or a path to reach the goal). And I think they are a fruitful starting point for formal learning.
The learning curriculum in work How can we look at these learning activities? We can learn from psychology (Karaksek & Theorell 1989; Karakowsky & McBey 1999) that learning is enhanced or constrained by the design of the workplace and by other organizational patterns: certainly not all jobs or occupational roles offer an equal amount of learning opportunities. However, this angle reduces our view to individuals as learners and to a small number of organizational characteristics. This angle implies also a concept of knowledge and experience that will not help us to make proper designs for learning. I prefer to look at work as a curriculum. I take this from Brown and Duguid (1996). They make in their ‘Stolen Knowledge’ the distinction between the ‘teaching curriculum’ and the ‘learning curriculum’. This distinction is closely related to distinct concepts of the meaning of knowledge, experience and learning: "The difference may be at heart a very deep epistemological one, between a view of knowledge as a collection of real entities, located in heads, and of learning as a process of internalizing them, versus a view of knowing and learning as engagement in changing processes of human activity. In the latter case knowledge becomes a complex and problematic concept, whereas in the former it is learning that is problematic" (Lave 1993:12). With this distinction we can to free ourselves from the centrality of the a-contextual knowledge and the related (psychological) individual conception of learning in the educational practice. This makes room for a systematic attention to the social practices of learning in work of highly educated people, and their outcomes, and also provides a base for experiments with new approaches, like designing learning arrangements with a minimal centrality of the content or knowledge (Ballou, Bowers, Boyatzis & Kolb 1999; Smid 1999a).
An overview of literature Studies provided by Orr (1996), Lave & Wenger ( 1991), Wenger (1998), Chaiklin & Lave (1993), show a rich landscape of social practices of learning in various occupations (like midwives, navigators, maintenance technicians, claims processors, blacksmiths) and of useful concepts and models to analyze other situations. The focus is mainly on skilled labor and on the immediate or transactional environment of the workers. Studies on work based learning like Boud & Garrick (1999) provide us insight in the attempts to relate the learning outcomes of learning in work to formal accreditation. In these studies the large industrial organization is the (implicit) context. The focus is on
the education prior to a first degree. The findings of these studies cannot be generalized to higher educated people with at least a first degree and a considerable work experience. I know only a few systematic and specific studies on the learning practices in work of highly educated people with a first or higher degree. There is literature on the learning of managers. These studies provide some insight, but are more prescriptive than empirical and/or de-contextualize the learning. In fact they use the individual model of learning. In a recent study on learning in projects (Lundin & Miller 1998) more attention is spent to the learning as a social practice. Most projects were found only in an industrial context. Studies by e.g. Schön (1987), Latour (1987), Engeström & Middleton (1996), Price (1997) are rich in information at the micro level: e.g. architects, musicians, researchers, pilots. For a lot of other occupations and occupational roles of higher educated people such information is not available. This overview of literature learns us: •
the learning of higher educated people is often not touched
•
often the large industrial organization is the (implicit) context
•
some literature is more prescriptive than empirical.
•
one uses the individual model of learning and de-contextualizes the learning
•
literature on learning of higher educated people is focused at the micro level
Research strategy How can we increase our knowledge on learning in work as a social activity? The ‘learning curriculum’ in work is constituted by the practices in and around the workplace itself. The design of the workplace, the design of the organization, but also patterns and /or mechanisms that are embedded in the wider contexts and the transactional environments of higher educated people, produce effects on learning dispositions, learning activities and the expression of the demand. I use here this model of ‘context’ and ‘transactional environment of worker’ as a start. The area where one has a degree of control is ‘transactional environment’, and the area where one has insignificant control is ‘context’ (Van der Heijden 1996: 155). My question is here: how do context and transactional environment influence or produce the articulation of the demand for learning? I use as leading sub questions: in what 'worlds' or 'frameworks' actors play while organizing, what 'strategies' they use to improve their 'positions' in the plays, what 'script' or course in time they are running, what intra personal 'hurdles' they have to take, what strategy one uses to develop knowledge and competencies and what this all means for their articulation of the demand for learning. These questions showed me the way to rich sources in studies by Storper & Salais (1997) on four economic action frameworks, Abbot (1988) and Fincham (1996) on professionals, Kanter (1989) and Arthur & Rousseau (1996) on at least four types of careerscripts, Bourdieu (1990), Windolf (1981),
Nicholson & West (1989) on work role transitions, Schön (1987) and Van Strien (1994) on knowledge and Weick (1989; 1996) on the relation between organizational design and learning. I want to present the information here in a form that is congruent with the situation I write for. Distinctions from narrative theory like ‘text’, ‘story’, ‘fabula’ and ‘generating mechanism’ (Pentland 1999; Bal 1990; Zeeman 1991), although not unambiguous, help me to produce a representation. A person who expresses his learning demand speaks a ‘text’, this is a version of his or her ‘story’. This story can be related to more ‘objective stories’ or the level of the ‘fabula’. In the fabula we can find mechanisms, underlying structures that enable or constrain the fabula (and the stories and text). The information I gathered can be located at the level of the generating mechanisms. I present it in the form of a ‘fabula’. Who tells those ‘objective stories’? Journalists do. May I present to you John Hunter in a meeting, briefing some designers? He will introduce “Salty”, ”Mark”, “Prof” and “Zigzag”, and will tell about them. The ‘character’ Salty works in a world of industrial conventions, Mark in a world of the ‘market’, Prof in the world of intellectual resources, and Zig-zag in a world where interpersonal conventions are leading.The ‘characters’ are all male, this is congruent with the fact that most literature on careers I have found is on men and ignore specific patterns of women or part-timers.
The stories of John Hunter Hello, I am John Hunter I am a journalist with a special hunch for educational affairs and I love to perform in this meeting. Are you the ones that must design proper learning arrangements for people with at least a degree from university and a considerable work experience? What a job! Nice and challenging! Well, I have been doing a lot of talking with these people in various contexts, on learning, their work, their careers etcetera., so my insights might be useful for you. It is funny, when I listen carefully to the voices of the people I have interviewed on my tape recorder and I connect this to what I have seen of their work, their business, the building etc., I hear really different stories. In fact I hear at least four! What I want to do now is stressing these differences. Of course I can make also other stories out of the tapes, but I think these differences are most interesting for you now. I will be talking about ‘persons’. Of course these do not exist in reality, but, since you work with persons you can imagine better. The first story is about Salty, the second one on Mark, the third one on Prof and the fourth on Zig-zag.
Salty Salty works within a company. They standardize their outputs, they compete on the basis of price and are keen on economies of scale. Of course they stick to quality standards. You know, this is the real world of production. They are in a business cycle, the demand can fluctuate, and they try to forecast this so they can handle their uncertainty. They will loose their job when the company cannot sell the products and the future is uncertain.
Salty lives in a strong hierarchy, in a rather closed world, the internal labor market is very important. All have their own workstation, the work is described. The quality of work is measured by this description, the wage is determined by hourly rates by workstation. These conventions also apply to Salty, one of the people with a degree or even a higher degree. The description of their work is never complete. They have what one calls an “incomplete contingent claims“ contract: not all of their work is described but their activities must match to what have been described. Salty is a member of a professional association, but I do not think this helps him very much in making more money. It is OK for information and networking, but he does not need it for his job as such. In fact many of his colleagues in the same function do not meet the criteria of the association. To improve his position Salty advances in the hierarchy. He is in a vertical script - designed by the organization and managed by committees- from job to job, from rank to rank, all formally defined and related to other positions. Compensation, formal training and development and responsibilities are tied to the rank. He does not attach too much to tasks or persons, because "movement is the name of the game". He invests quite some time in organization politics. Of course he is strongly attached to the organization. Some of his colleagues had to wait until a post became free, or until new posts had been created or even got "stuck". But not Salty, he advanced. At every next step in his career he had some stress, you know, leaving a position that was safe and entering a new field. I do not think that he learns so much in his work, but his political skills sure develop! Taking risks is discouraged so he has become a bit passive in his learning. When he enters a separate learning arrangement within the company or outdoors, he goes on to perform as he is used to in his daily work. He is a bit stiff then, one can feel that. He always has to invest in his learning attitude, he has to find a better internal balance that is needed for learning. Of course he studies a bit, to be informed about new developments in his specialty. But for Salty it is far more important to be informed about what is going on in the company, not only about the ’politics’, but the more on the way things are done. Someone else decides about his participation to education. He participates in education and training when he has to improve the fulfillment of his function, when he has to prepare himself for a new, higher position or as what they call a “rite of passage”. I see others participate in education because they did not understand the career game: this is often a tournament with a lot of players that do not know the rules and have a wrong perception of their possibilities. I hope for them the course provides them a better understanding of it and helps them to migrate to another function.
Mark Mark is different. He is not so much attached to an organization, he is into the market place. Always busy with this questions:” What are our competitors doing? Can we make a good price for our stuff? Do we have enough in stock to please our customers? Do we meet their standards, of course given a price?” His organization is a collection of individuals. They work quite autonomous, the quality of their work is judged by the criterion of availability. The level of their wage is based on their task and
time spent. When the company is not sure about the future they just reduce the task. Mark is a member of a professional association, but not for making more money. It is for his kudos, information and networking. Mark advances in his career by creating new value or new organizational capacity. He must be creative, innovative, he must distinguish himself and gain successes. He is really into in achievement. There is a lot of open and direct competition. Once at the desired place he simply stays in place. He works hard to let the territory he is covering grow. So: not 'up' but 'under' is the device here. Every commercial success is translated into a higher income. But every year is a fresh start, last year’s success does not count any longer. His business must grow, otherwise he gets stuck. One says: entrepreneurs are born. But not entirely in this case. Mark had a fast but gradual development. He started as an assistant within a marketing department, busy with the execution of marketing actions and delivering support for the design of marketing plans. The he designed such plans, and stepped then into a more strategic arena: he had to integrate marketing, media and communication strategies. Then he became responsible for strategy: corporate brand management, corporate strategy for product development, and he was leading a team with product managers, marketing managers/assistants, communication- and media experts and/or direct marketing experts. He seems to learn everyday. Designing and selling products or providing services means: working together with clients, listen to them, analyze their problems, their deeper demands, prototyping, testing etc. Mark has knowledge on integrated marketing, media and-communication strategies, product development, knowledge on target groups. As a strategist he is a team leader, trans-disciplinary, and has a broad vision on developments in society with possible effects on the behavior of consumers, to spot possible competitive advantages. Sometimes his learning is obstructed because he has to write these marketing plans. The plan seems to provide certainty but what is a plan: a tool that prevents from dealing with future uncertainty. He really is into quick results, so he repeats a lot. Sales, sales, sale, tempo, speed, speed. Of course he is stressed, but he feels this only after a week holidays. One of my informants, a woman, told me that this stress conflicts with rest and patience needed for learning. She said Mark and his mates are very impatient, restless, critical. She thinks they feel pressure to achieve. She thinks they are verbally strong and creative. She thinks that they are only into cognitive content, not into the process, but externally oriented and not into self-reflection. Well, she was well informed, she worked more than two years with people like Mark. Mark is not a reader. No books. But of course he is informed about new developments in markets, marketing and product design. He has good knowledge of these themes but mainly related to his present field. He participates in education to enlarge the availability of his competencies. He takes the decision to participate in education himself because learning is considered to be his own responsibility. Mark will be the client of the provider, but of course also others in the company are relevant. Quite different, is he?
Prof But now the third one, Prof. He hates standardization. Prof is really fond of variety. He and his colleagues all have their specialization. They compete via learning and reputation. They never know for sure that the path of knowledge development they have chosen will be fruitful. They discuss the choice with others with some reputation, and this might provide them some confidence. If this does not give them confidence they start a new path of development. They see themselves as experts, they judge the quality of their work by scientific and ethic standards. They always work alone or in a small group. They feel their wage is an investment in themselves. Prof does his work already a very long period. It is interesting. He is really good in his field, he gained a considerable reputation. He always gets more demanding or rewarding assignments. In each assignment he seems to learn because he gets greater exercise of his kills. Some of his colleagues get "stuck" because their specialty is no longer wanted and they fail to develop a new one. Prof is certainly not an organization man, I do not think he is very loyal to it. He is more interested in what other professionals do at other places. Some say: "have reputation, will travel". He invests some time in networking but anybody can see he hates exposure and maintaining weak ties. Some of his colleagues want to restructure their network into some sort of a professional association. I guess they want to make others more dependent of them. But I am not sure whether this will work. A sociologist told me once that only a few associations manage to develop into strong professional bodies with substantial power and legitimacy. Only a few of them can determine who is entitled to work on the profession’s problems and can define what knowledge one must have to become a professional. To entry one must follow a long educational path. This all depends on the professions’ ability to gain trust and protection by the state. Only then they acquire better wages and other material benefits, respect, status and other forms of influence. It is the trick the medical doctors are very good in. The sociologist told me that this varies from country to country. But having a professional association does not mean that it works like in medicine. This is easy to see in the ICT business. The need for IT personnel is so booming, that employers do not demand more credentials than a first degree. The kind of knowledge one needs is continuously under negotiation. Participation in long educational programs does not meet any interest, though a first degree in engineering is common. But: IT people who do not have such a degree can be very successful. So I am not sure Prof will follow his colleagues and invest in a professionalization strategy. Prof seems to have a hybrid role, like a lot of other professionals. He is not only expert but also does other things. He has to change gear frequently. That is not easy for him, because he is very much into his specialty. But he has to. A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting discussion with an academic on this issue, and w could compare both patterns of development. Prof started his career with ‘doing neat work’ you know, standard problems; the academic started with a PhD, learning to do neat research. Prof then got more complex problems and started to talk with clients; the academic then
started to teach. Both then became the leader of a couple of projects with all sort of members in the group. The next step: the academic wants to become really senior, I guess a professor, doing research, writing papers, a lot of teaching, management and of course helping others with their research. In the near future Prof will deal with the clients in the boardroom, have influence in complex situations. He will be responsible for quality, and also for the policy of the firm. I guess both have to get used to this ‘change of gear’. Prof is a learner. His work is learning. His knowledge deepens and extends. He sees his career as a permanent invitation to learn new skills (learning to do research, learning to write articles and books, learning to teach, learning to lead projects, to manage a group, a chair, a faculty, to network). But Prof must be really keen to develop new skills for the new task, and not stick to his previous developed competencies. This is essential, I think. The academic I talked to had the same opinion. He was used to write a paper in his research practice, and then thought that teaching was the same as reading from the paper. He found out that this was a teaching style that was not correct with his mature students. So he entered into a course on teaching and developed new skills. Of course Prof studies every now and then. You know, new books but also good articles in scientific journals. They have a lot of subscriptions to journals at his work. It is mainly to benchmark himself, only sometimes he reads something really new. He participates in education to improve his knowledge of the standards, or to learn to manage a small group or inter group networks. I know some professional associations also play a role in the definition of the education. But not in the case of Prof. He once took the advice of a mentor and entered into a course that also provides a good network. This has been a great help for his career. He has learned a lot about himself, about his learning style etc. Prof is really into content, and not into process. That is his weak point and he knows it!. In one of those courses he met another guy who was not as successful as Prof. He was really frustrated and disappointed, and even sometimes aggressive. He was busy to make a career track towards an entirely different area, but it was quite difficult for him.
Zig-zag The last ‘character’ I will describe I have called Zig-zag. He works with a lot of parties close together, they depend on each other. They are co-producers. They (and ‘they’ is: designers, constructors, providers and clients) communicate intensively to make the right design. They never are certain about the quality of the others. So they have to stimulate the mutual comprehension. Competition is based on quality, price is immediate related to that. Zig-zag is not a member of an organization, he is into networks. Zig-zag is a member of a temporal work community, his quality is judged on the bases of the market price of the products. The level of his wage is related to output. Zig-zag is responsible to adjust to unknown factors. He must have excellent communicative skills and a strong expertise. One can see him being really proud of the technical or intellectual results of the intense cooperation between coproducers.
His career follows no special script. It is his own script while working in projects. With other self employed people he forms temporal organizations like an ad hocracy, or a multi firm network. Someone once said that his script is anarchistic, but this is wrong. Zig-zag’s career is really socially constructed, he always works with mutual shared definitions, development and progress. It is always something like: beginning, crafting, navigating, maintaining, and then start again. He advances by permanent development. He develops new skills in the area of content and in the area of organizational requirements. He understands the whole chain of processes he is working in better. Another good measure for development is the number of people he knows with good positions in networks. Each new project must contain a challenge on one or more of these dimensions. Zig-zag is keen to be asked for projects with a lot of complexity and uncertainty. This gives him prestige. The choices he makes are in his self interest. He is really committed to market discipline, always busy with networking, He loves collaboration and is proud of his resiliency. Learning is Zig-zag’s essence. He hops from project to project, each time exploring, advancing and then maintaining. He needs meta-analysis, and has to reflect on each project, not only on his own but with others in some social infrastructure, like the people in Silicon Valley. I think Zig-zag learns in cycles, short ones within a project, and longer ones consisting of a series of projects in a couple of years. His learning can be favoured by teambuilding and a good team leader. The leadership style must alter depending on the stage of team formation. His learning can be hindered by a team leader when he does not apply distributed leadership in a balanced, self managing team. Zig-zag has experienced that learning and living in projects does not produce a stable identity. His career generates “fragments in search of continuity”, as I have read in a text by Karl Weick. Zig-zag always tries to get a sense of continuity. He needs to reflect on his experiences and learning every now and then, as well as reflect on the strategy he uses in going from project to project. He described me his dilemma as follows: “Shall I take the gradual path with a lot of continuity or shall I be a 'jumper' with a lot of discontinuity. Some say that jumping will favor my learning the most, because this never will frustrate my need to explore and advance”. Zig-zag must have an open mind to the environment. He must get rid of all his filters. No one else can reduce his uncertainty. Without those filters he must deal fast with large amounts of information. Sometimes he feels overloaded and gets confused by this and feels a strong stress when incoming data do not fit in his mindset. He must be careful with this stress, because we all know it will narrow his view on his environment. He must cope in an adequate way. Zig zag must study to be able to understand his partners, to apply the latest techniques etc. But it is so much! But he needs to be well informed to keep his competencies at state of the art level. Zig zag participates in education for the maintenance of his skills and his expertise. Zig-zag decides himself about the participation. He also wants to use it for reflection on projects and his strategy, and sometimes he hopes he can find a bit more stability. And: strategies for coping.
Well folks, that will be all. Four stories, four male characters. I think nowadays you can get all these patterns within one group or course. And I think none of these patterns will vanish, the variety will increase! Go out now and draw your conclusions. Will it be the same negotiations, will it lead to identical learning contracts and learning plans? Will you make the same kind of exercises and instructions for Salty, Mark, Prof and Zig-zag? I doubt it…., but this is not my expertise.
Implication for negotiations I accept this invitation of John Hunter. Work, transactional environment and context produce variation in the demand for learning among the highly educated, as these four stories suggest. Each story seems to represent a different perception of an economic ‘game’. Each game produces a different player. This important when we have to negotiate about learning. We will have to deal with a different reason for participation in a learning arrangement and a different expectation of outcome of participation. In figure 1 summarize these differences. Figure 1
The game they are in
Salty Business cycle, prices, position
Mark Success, market share, price, velocity Mixed
Key role
Sponsor. Learner = consumer
Why go to a course?
Better functioning Preparation to new function; Rite of passage; Support for migration
Outcome expectation
Guarantee for better Better functioning understanding of clients & markets Better positioning
Improve competencies; Support for migration
Professional Learning, reputation Ruler: professional body. Or: mentor Learning of standards; Preparation to new tasks; Support for migration Content, credentials, Networks
Zig-zag Quality, cooperation, prestige of projects Learner = Client
For new content and improvement of communicative competencies; Support for migration Reflection, identity, networking
Any conversation to clarify the demand for learning and the negotiation on participation has to deal with the differences. Negotiating a course within the story of ‘Mark and his mates’ will be an entirely different discussion than a course for ‘Prof’ and his colleagues. Mark wants a quick decision, he wants to be sure about the speed of learning and be sure about profitable outcomes. Prof is relative slow in his decision and wants to be sure about the level of the content. A discussion on arrangements that must be complementary to the practices of ‘Zig-zag’ will be something else than a discussion on arrangements for Salty and his fellow functionaries. Zig-zag will be an experienced negotiator and understand that he has to adjust to the learning arrangement. Salty will be more instrumental: someone else will negotiate his learning opportunities.
Implication for designs Designs of learning arrangements off-the-job must relate to the various games, different ideas about the outcomes, about the quality of a learning environment, differences in learning dispositions and in participative behaviours and must contain different opportunities for certain (sub)themes people want to work on. Figure 2 summarizes some key elements of the four stories. Figure 2
The game they are in
Salty Business cycle, prices, position
Mark Success, market share, price, velocity According to client standards
Prof Learning, reputation
Quality
According to general standards
Learning disposition
Often obstructed by organization
Agency disposition
Oriented to content
Behavior
Used to strict definitions, homogeneous roles Political games, perhaps waiting for new position
Used to autonomy, homogeneous roles
Used to autonomy, hybrid work roles
Success or exhausted
Situated, related to company
Situated, related to markets and development of products/services
Perhaps forced migration, redundant specialty; change gear between activities Refined set of competencies, dependant on discipline
Themes
Knowledge
According to scientific level
Zig-zag Quality, cooperation, prestige of projects Quality is judged with process categories and outcome Seeking identity, need for reflection Meta-analysis of projects Used to work in groups, hybrid work roles Volatility, too high speed learning, perhaps effects of too long same kind of projects Refined set of competencies, dependant on variety of projects
These criteria (relating and complementarity) might suggest that designs of learning arrangements must be 100% aligned with the work practices or even copy the culture of work: a typical design for Salty would be thoroughly constructed and instrumental to the goals set by the negotiations, a design for ‘Mark’ would be high speed, a program for Prof would be of high conceptual level and a Zig-zag program would consist of working in projects. This suggestion is not correct. We sometimes need to organize arrangements that do not align at all with the learning in work, like a transitory room, providing special opportunities to support transitions. Why? Behaviour at a certain stage in the career will not be productive in a next stage or in another work context. Also behaviour that seems to be productive in work can be counterproductive in the learning situation. The learners will need some time to recognize this and also to find a new approach. The learning arrangement must provide room for such behavioral experiments. We prefer to speak
about this in terms of invitations or affordances rather than as forced ‘unfreezing’. These invitations can be very different compared to the daily work practice in the four stories. Salty might get an invitation to reflect on his present behavior and to understand and experiment with behavior that he will need in his new work roles, like playing with political skills (Block 1990). The arrangement must provide surprises that suggest discontinuity and also encourage him to take risks. The arrangement must contain a lot of psychological safety to support this. Mark might get an invitation to free himself (temporarily) from his urge for individual achievement and experiment with communion. Mark might discover other ways of relating to clients than through the lens of ‘sales’. Not because those are better, but having access to other programs might provide him a better balance in his contacts with clients and markets. Prof might get an invitation to break loose temporarily from content and get more contact with process dimensions of interpersonal contact, engage with other actors like customers rather than with the content, the methods and quality criteria of his own discipline. Zig-zag will be invited to practice with frequent switching between communion and agency (Weick 1996; Marshall 1989; Bakan 1966), between discontinuity and continuity, to deal with stress and arousal as an effect of the lack of boundaries and filters, but maybe he will learn the most of developing his personal prominence (as a complement to his collaborative skills). Of course this is not a plea for a rigid (market) segmentation. Varying invitations can be organized as a program, but of course also within a program. A design that must fit to actors from within all four stories, will be a very rich learning arrangement. The participants certainly will need some support to find their way in such an abundance of learning opportunities to the ones that have been designed especially for their own demand.
Conclusion Providers of advanced education for highly educated people like universities develop new strategies to integrate learning and work. To gain success they have to free themselves from the domination of the discipline based programs and their underlying concepts like the standard definition of the users. To design complementary learning opportunities for people that already learn in work, designers must know the practices of learning in work very well. These practices of learning of higher educated people are largely a black box. In this contribution I used the model ‘context and transactional environment’ to open this black box. I used some sub questions. These form together a loosely coupled framework. This framework generated four stories of (male) higher educated actors. I described some implications of these four stories for the negotiation processes and the design of learning arrangements. This framework clearly needs further development. The political, technological and ecological dimensions (Van der Heijden 1996) related to learning in work and in formal settings will need more attention and must get a place in framework and the stories. It must be refined for the women and part-time workers (Sekaran & Hall 1989; Marshall 1989). We must also experiment with
other forms than stories like other genres or even non-sentential representations (Thagard & Shelley 1997). The stories we have here are an orientation base for designers, i.e. a tool that a person uses to fashion his or her own understanding of something, to evaluate it and to solve tasks connected with it (Engeström 1995:57). With these stories in mind it is hard to talk about learning in work anymore without asking: work in what context, what are the learning activities in work and how do these affect the demand for learning and the learning disposition? The use of the stories in their present state might prevent reductionism. This will become more important in the near future. Companies and with them work globalize. The force fields that surround learning activities in work change. Designers of learning arrangements cannot afford to stick to the assumptions of the industrial world that used to dominate the work systems. Neither they can go on within the assumptions of the world of intellectual resources that dominated the thinking about learning. They have to be very sensitive. Within one state, county, industrial district, city or even company, designers will come across considerable differences: learners from all kinds of ‘worlds’ will enter the system for formal education. Instead of reductionism, designers will have to make learning arrangements that comply to the criterion of requisite variety (Smid 1999a).
This means that we stop to mould all highly educated people in the forms that academia provides us. This is in the self-interest of the providers of learning arrangements. Learning curricula for participants with work experience and at least a first degree give access to the outcomes of the learning in work, e.g. to the ‘mode II knowledge’ (Gibbons et al 1994). Providers (like academics) and the learners (the practitioners) can cooperate to make situated knowledge explicit and develop it further for transfer. This can lead to more profound knowledge of practice and to the development of new research questions. If learning environments are places where experienced academics meet people from other ‘worlds’, we create an opportunity for an enrichment of the academic knowledge: it can be ‘tested’ in different contexts. Universities who go on with a definition of their students as not-having-the-right knowledge or as have-a-problem-with-learning cut themselves from this possibility.
15th of july 2000
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The author Gerhard Smid is consultant and director of studies at SIOO: Interuniversity Centre for Developments in Organizations and Change Management Admiraal Helfrichlaan 1 3527 KV Utrecht, The Netherlands Tel ++31 30 2913000 Fax ..31 30 2913013
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The paper This idea of this paper was inspired by an article by Van Reekum (1997). The research was facilitated by the hospitality of the Graduate School of Business of the UTS in Sydney. I thank Nicky Solomon of the UTS in Sydney for her very useful comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the CEDAR conference on Professional Learning: Professional Lives, March 2000 Warwick University and the 2000 Sioo Conference for Teachers in the Basic Course on Management Consulting.
ABSTRACT In our attempts to fund the practice of post graduate and post-experience education for organization professionals we face some difficulties: the way we think about work and the way we talk about learning. Stress-theory (Karasek & Theorell 1989) sensitized us about the relationship between jobs, job demands, job autonomy and learning. Work and learning seem to be interconnected. The problem with this theory is its object (the individual) and the reduction of ‘work’to a small number of characteristics. It helps us only to understand the occurrence or absence of individual learning.. The debate in organization science about learning has made important advances by the work of Lave & Wenger (1991), Brown & Duguid (1996), Wenger (1990;1998), Orr (1996). The turn towards learning as a social and organizational practice frees us from the (psychological) conception of learning in organizational and educational practice and the related centrality of a-contextual knowledge. It is also a turn towards microlevel. Unfortunately this produces a certain romanticism or better: disconnectednes from other levels. The ‘learning’ as a social practice at-the-workfloor, in informal settings and the communities-ofpractice (Wenger 1998), is also situated within a force field. This field consists of embedded action frameworks, factors at the level of organization, career scripts, group strategies, practices of knowledge development and formal learning, and factors at group level and individual level (behavior, learning disposition). This paper pays attention to this force field in the case of higher educated people (with a first degree or more), the category I work with in my practice of post graduate and post experience learning. The paper is based on my reading of research on action frameworks, on organizational level factors, on professionals, on careers, on work role transitions, on knowledge and on learning disposition. After a short description of the various resources and the methodology, the results are presented here in the form of four stories told by of a fictive person briefing some educational designers. I use this form as a strategy to reduce the large amount of information but also to be congruent with the situation I write for. I want to support designers or educators who faces unknown individuals and tries to understand them as an effect of various practices and as actors. The paper has implications for the debate on learning in work in the UK and Australia (Boud and Garrick 2000). Our findings suggest that this debate is built on specific assumptions about the nature of the jobs involved (especially about the job autonomy) and about in the organizational and economical contexts.
