ABSTRACT
Work can teach people a great deal about who they are, their relations with others and their place in the wider community. The analysis presented so far in this book has attempted to show that the individual has opportunities to learn and to influence others at each level. We now turn to consider what individuals can do to develop their employability skills and to take more control over their own working lives. Learning from experience is necessarily different from traditional academic learning. Consider, for example, the difference between learning about the British parliamentary system from books, articles, the media and archives and learning about Parliament through working as an intern or as a research assistant for a member of Parliament. Whilst both forms of learning are important, they will reveal different things. Reflecting on the experience of work is one way to facilitate learning and to provide the individual with a foundation upon which to develop further. We start on this journey by considering the nature of experiential learning, its relationship to reflection and the value of participating in communities of practice.
