Epistemological agency: a necessary action-in-context perspective on new employee workplace learning

Abstract

This paper discusses research premised on the view that new employees' necessary learning actions may be said to constitute a socio-cultural constructivist epistemology of necessity. It examines the work and learning activities of three new employees during their first months at a wholesale fruit and vegetable company. It proposes that what new employees must 'do' is engage in a range of working and learning activities, epistemic actions, that may be conceptualized as their exercising epistemological agency. That is, they are necessarily engaged in the practice of personally managing the diversity of factors that mediate their construction of knowledge. In doing so, they control the social suggestion of their workplace within their need to learn what is necessary for work. The paper further suggests that these mediating factors constitute a workplace learning agenda that comprises the priorities of the new employees' actions at work. This agenda is identified across five interrelated action sets. These sets emerge from data analysis as major mediators of the new employees' learning. Additionally, it suggests that change in this agenda may indicate what learning is being undertaken and how the development of workplace intersubjectivities or shared understandings may subsequently occur. These suggestions place new emphasis on the individual in determining their contribution to the social nature of learning. They begin to more fully account for the personal purpose and consequence of learning at work. Necessity and workplace learningThe socio-cultural constructivist theories of learning and development (e.g. Vygotsky, 1978;Leontev, 1981;Rogoff, 1990;Wertsch, 1998) that are the conceptual basis of the research this paper presents attribute the individual with the role of constructor of their own knowledge. This role is necessarily active*/ the individual is more than a passive recipient of knowledge that is external to them. Individuals are therefore actively engaged in the process of their self-development as they construct the knowledge that makes sense of and gives meaning to their

Learning through work: Exploring instances of relational interdependencies

“…It was through these earlier or pre-mediate experiences that ''sense of personal actuation -'projective agency''' is formed. This process is analogous to that described as microgenetic development (Rogoff, 1990;Scribner, 1985), exercised through what contemporary accounts propose as individuals' epistemological beliefs and agency (Smith, 2006) and intentionality that directs the focus and effort of their conscious thinking and acting. Indeed, from observations of his own children, Baldwin (1898) noted that children come to exercise their private judgement, fight their own battles, and exercise both independence and the vice of obstinacy.…”

Making a sales advisor: the limits of training ‘instrumental empathy’

“…Similarly, the 'matching and mirroring' tactic was rejected in favour of being 'natural' (Goffman 1959). Overall, if we are to view learning as the interaction between individual dispositions and the affordances and the contextual requirements of the workplace (Billett 2004), the data support the agentic role of the MSAs in making decisions about how they learn their role and what kind of knowledge is relevant (Smith, 2006). It is through participation in practice that MSAs learned to reject managerial stipulations of how their work ought be carried out.…”

“…The paper concludes by offering an explanation of the contrast between what management advocates in formal training and how this is enacted in practice. We argue that this is to be found in individual dispositions, on the one hand, and the local context where sales work takes place, on the other (Tsoukas 1996, Smith 2006. This suggests that sales workers are not passive recipients of codified knowledge embedded in sales scripts, but that such scripts are subject to individual and ongoing modification.…”

Clarifying the subject centred approach to vocational learning theory: negotiated participation

“…They bring this experience, their ontogenetic development, including needs and aspirations, to their learning (Billett 2006). They enact personal agenda that prioritise their concerns and preferences (Smith 2006) as they make choices and take decisions about what is important and worthy of the personal investment their efforts represent (Archer 2000;Goodnow 1994). In these ways of understanding learners, learning and instruction are seen as beginning with the learner and progressing to build on their particular needs and circumstance.…”

“…For example, Smith (2006), through an examination of new-comers' initial working and learning practices in unfamiliar work, presents vocational learners as epistemic managers. As such, workers are necessarily and purposefully organising and controlling the diversity of personal and contextual resources that mediate their work practices.…”