Self-constructed activity, work analysis, and occupational training: an approach to learning objects for adults

What do people learn in occupational education and training? This question expresses a major concern of instructors, but is not necessarily interesting to education scientists. For the latter, learning objects-what one learns-are independent of the learning process-how one learns-and the material to be learned is considered to depend on practical rather than scientific decisions. This is not the position defended in the activity-centered approach, developed in particular by French-speaking researchers. This chapter is devoted to presenting this approach. When we learn we are always learning something, and that something is related to social practices. For a

job-training instructor, this involves knowing these practices, particularly those serving as a reference for the training. This topic will be addressed in Section 1. In the scientific analysis of work, the theoretical object of study is activity, which is conceptualized differently in the various activity-centered theories. This topic will be addressed in Section 2. The activity-centered approach recommends not separating learning and work, and can be used to design fruitful new learning objects for training. This topic will be addressed in Section 3.