ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies several settings in which a social ecological approach can help to elucidate the dynamics of learning in, through, and around workplace environments and work-related experiences. Ways in which ordinary workers might act in pursuit of various learning interests have been documented. These interests find their expression as part of a wider dynamic, including the macro-organizational and policy environments and the interdependencies set up within and beyond the workplace and development. A view of learning as integral to practice pays attention to the whole environment and all the proximal processes that generate human development within and beyond the work environment. Keeping in view the many dimensions of workers' learning environment—organisational, political, regulatory, cultural—and how they change over time enables us to see social ecological possibilities for development.
