ABSTRACT
Currently, there is great interest in and expectations for learning through work and throughout working life. As a consequence, the concept of lifelong learning has been recast. Its principal purpose has become the maintenance of individuals’ workplace competence (Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development 1996). Governments’ and employers’ initiatives to mobilize workers’ ongoing learning are attempts to realize national and enterprise competitiveness, in an increasingly globalized economy (Field 2000). The expectation is that by engaging workers in work-related learning throughout their working lives their workplace effectiveness will be sustained and their chances of redundancy will be reduced. This expectation includes developing the capacities to effectively respond to new workplace and occupational challenges as they arise and to adapt to new forms of work when occupational transitions are necessary. In part, government and enterprise interest is directed towards making lifelong learning occur through attendance in courses and programmes aimed to secure these outcomes. Yet, engaging in work learning, including that through and for work, occurs inevitably and continuously through workers’ engagement in their daily tasks and interactions, and often in the absence of anyone directly guiding that learning (Billett 2001b). There is no difference between the processes of everyday thinking and acting and the process of learning (e.g., Lave 1993; Rogoff and Lave 1984): it occurs continuously as we think and act. The process of learning occurring continuously throughout our lives has been described as microgenetic development (Rogoff 1990). It comprises the moment-by-moment learning occurring incrementally, continuously, and, sometimes, transformatively when contributing to individuals’ lifelong process of change: their ontogenetic development (Scribner 1985b).
