Subjectivity, self and personal agency in learning through and for work

Abstract

The central role and significance of the self and personal agency is now being accounted for within explanations of workplace learning. Here, these contributions to understanding workplace learning are identified and discussed. In particular, this chapter elaborates a view of learning premised upon individuals' construal (i.e. perception or making meaning of) and construction of (i.e. generating knowledge) what is afforded them in workplace settings. This process is explained as comprising a relational interdependence between personal and social factors and contributions. This elaboration is aimed to inform both workplace pedagogies and personal epistemologies at and for work. The key argument is that what constitutes work is negotiated between institutional facts (Searle, 1995) and other social forms (Valsiner, 1998) that constitute the social experience (Harré, 1995), on the one hand, and individuals 'cognitive experience' on the other. Given this, it is necessary to identify and elaborate the bases of these negotiations and their role in what constitutes learning through work and the remaking of that work. So, these personal-social processes have both personal and social legacies: individual development and cultural remaking and transformation. The processes are held to be interdependent: each requiring the other. However, rather than mutual or equally exercised in the negotiations the relationship is relational, with different emphases and contributions being afforded in different ways by the exercise of individual and social agency.