Knowledge structures for integrating working and learning: A reflection on a decade of learning technology research for workplace learning

Abstract

Designing intelligent services for workplace learning presents a special challenge for researchers and developers of learning technology. One of the reasons is that considering learning as a situated and social practice is nowhere so important than in the case where learning is tightly integrated with workplace practices. The current paper analyses the experience of more than 10 years of research intending to offer intelligent services through capturing and leveraging knowledge structures in workplace learning. The reflection looks at results of several European research projects that have promoted this view. From this analysis, I arrive at a dichotomy of guidance versus emergence that describes how the technologies foregrounded one or the other, and what the effects of these design choices have been. I derive conclusions for dealing with this design trade‐off in terms of conceptual, technological and empirical research.

Mediating worklife learning and the digitalisation of work

“…Also, regardless of where the experiences occurring, explicit strategies may be required to assist accessing what learners will find is difficult to be learnt through discovery alone. So, strategies such as direct explanation, analogies, the use of artefacts, representations of concepts and procedures are likely be required to achieve these learning outcomes (Ley, 2020). Accessing this knowledge may also require support and guidance from more informed interlocutors.…”

“…Beyond their pedagogic imperatives, there are also pragmatic imperatives about the need for the capacities for digitalised work to be learnt in and through work. Workplaces and work practices are likely to be the key and only circumstances for developing much of this kind of knowledge across working life (Ley, 2020). This is because: (a) the kinds of knowledge needing to be developed are equipment, artefact and workplace‐specific, by degree and (b) that many workers will not be able to be released from work for this development, even if it were available through educational institutions.…”

“…This is because: (a) the kinds of knowledge needing to be developed are equipment, artefact and workplace‐specific, by degree and (b) that many workers will not be able to be released from work for this development, even if it were available through educational institutions. Increasingly, across a whole range of fields of practice there is a growing push for continuing education/professional development to be conducted within workplaces and through work‐related activities (Ley, 2020). The educative provisions supporting these developmental experiences need to arise through: (a) engagement in and responding to the imperatives of practice, (b) being situationally prescribed, by degree and (c) accommodating the breath of workers' readiness to access and engage in these kinds of experiences (Goodyear, 2021).…”

“…Nevertheless, simulations can provide access to understanding processes such as manufacturing which otherwise would be difficult to access (Hamalainen et al., 2018). As has been noted, the growing availability of on‐line technologically mediated processes provide a growing range of ways that electronically mediated means can assist the development of the knowledge required for digitalised work (Ley, 2020; Poquet & De Laat, 2021; Wallin et al., 2020).…”

A Knowledge Appropriation Model to Connect Scaffolded Learning and Knowledge Maturation in Workplace Learning Settings

“…Moreover, as ICT environments grow more and more "intelligent" and take over intellectual tasks, we will be evidencing a division of labor between those intelligent systems and human professionals. In a recent analysis, we used the knowledge appropriation model to explain how knowledge structures emerge and guide individual learning when such intelligent ICT tools are employed in work contexts (Ley 2019).…”