ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on learning discourses or the unspoken rules governing how learning is conceived, practiced, discussed, and valued in organizations. Dominant discourse is sneaky, often unnoticed, and taken for granted, where the oft-repeated becomes accepted as "truth" in some social circles. Dominant discourse can be painful and cause difficulties between groups with opposite views. Cunningham wrote, "When confronted with workplace learning, personnel in human resource development (HRD) tend to concentrate on internal processes, techniques to manipulate behavior (performance), and yield to pervasive and often pernicious accountability schemes that trivialize learning". Learning is dominant in adult education and HRD. Callahan argued HRD should reimagine its boundaries by considering the “spaces” where practice occurs since learning can occur anytime, anywhere, and often without the knowledge of management in the context of an organization. Learning is lifelong and life-based, although it is easy to forget that fact in HRD when the focus is on the workplace.
