Presentation by Stephen Billett (Griffith University) in the Research seminar "Learning at Work in the Future Economy" on 7 October 2016 at the University of Turku, Turku School of Economics. The seminar was organised by Turku Centre for Labour Studies and Academy of Finland Strategic Research Council consortium SWiPE - Smart Work in Platform Economy, University of Turku.

1. Learning at work in the future economy
Stephen Billett, Griffith University, Australia

2. Progress
Learning and change at work
• strengths and limitations
Changing nature of work
• work being undertaken
• ways of participating in work
• composition of paid work force
• requirements for performance at work
Future of work: requirements
• Conceptual and digital work
Learning at work for the future economy
• Practice curriculum
• Practice pedagogies
So what?

3. Learning and change at work
No separation between participation in practice and learning
... Also, remaking of cultural practice (e.g. occupational practice) – innovative practices
These changes occur interdependently: i) individuals’ learning and ii) the
transformation of workplace practices (i.e. innovation)
They co-occur - they are interdependent – reliant on one another
Innovations at work central to sustaining enterprise viability in times of constant
change in work requirements and client needs
So, there are legacies associated with the work being undertaken: learning, remaking of
the work and innovation

4. Learning through work
Most common and sustained mode of learning occupations and
onnovation across human history
Central to humanity and human progress
Similar processes in Europe and Asia
Family and local workplaces sites for learning in Europe (Grienhart
2002), India (Menon & Varma 2010), Japan (Singleton 1989) and
China (Ebrey 1996)
Engagement with ‘master’, little evidence of teaching
Vast majority appears based on mimesis (i.e. observation, imitation
and practice)
That is - a learning process - not being taught
But what do we know about that process of learning?

5. Learning through everyday practice
Contributions to learning through everyday occupational practice include:
i) engagement in work tasks (“just doing it”) – legacies of goal-directed activities
(cognitive & socio-cultural constructivist accounts);
ii) indirect guidance provided by the setting (“just being there”) – observation
and imitation (cognitive & neuro-science accounts);
iii) practice within that setting – practise, rehearse, refine and associate
(cognitive accounts of procedural & conceptual development); and
iv) close guidance (proximal) by other practitioners and experts – assisting
develop knowledge that cannot be learnt through discovery (Billett 2001).
Notes:
1. key contributions are individuals’ intentionality, agency and interdependence
(i.e. not just self-direction)
2. Will these contributions remain important in the future?

6. Limitations of learning through everyday work activities
• learning that is inappropriate (i.e. bad habits, unhelpful, wrong)
• lack of access to activities and guidance
• not understanding the goals for workplace performance
• reluctance of experts to provide guidance
• absence of expert guidance
• limits in developing understanding in the workplace
• reluctance of workers to participate (Billett 2001)
So, how will these limitations play out in future work and workplaces?

7. Changing nature of work: pathways to the future
Changes to the:
1. work being undertaken
2. ways of participating in work
3. composition of paid work force
4. requirements for performance at work (from Billett 2006 –
Work, change and learning)

8. 1. Changes in the available work
• Predictions of a shift to high discretionary, high skill and high paid work not generally
upheld
• Shift towards professional, technical and service work and away from manufacturing
and agriculture, in many countries
• Realignment and/or reclassifications of categories of work(e.g. technical and agricultural
work)
• Burgeoning service sector the antithesis of high paid and discretionary work (US, UK,
Australia and Singapore)
Let us look at some of the changing trends

9. Category 1950 1960 1970 1980 1991 Net Change
Farm workers 12 6 3 3 3 - 9
Professional/Technical 8 10 14 15 17 + 9
Craft and kindred 14 14 14 12 11 - 3
Operatives/Laborers 26 24 23 18 15 - 11
Clerical and kindred 12 15 18 17 16 + 4
Service 11 12 13 13 14 + 3
Managerial/Administrative 9 8 8 10 13 + 4
Sales workers 7 7 7 11 12 + 5
Occupational categories as a percentage of the labor force, US 1950-1991 (Source US Department of Labor)
Note changes to farm, craft and manual work compared to professional, technical and service work

10. Industry 2000 2005 2009 2010
Total employed 136,891 141,730 139,877 139,064
Agriculture and related 2464 2197 2103 2206
Mining 475 624 707 731
Construction 9931 11197 9702 9077
Manufacturing 19644 16253 14202 14081
Retail 15763 16825 15877 15934
Transportation - Utilities 7380 7360 7245 7134
Finance 9374 10203 9622 9350
Professional – Business
services
13649 14294 15008 15253
Education 11255 12264 13188 13155
Health services 14933 16910 18632 18907
Leisure - Hospitality 11186 12071 12736 12530
Government 6113 6530 6875 6983
US labour force 2000 - 2010
Patterns of growth and decline continue

11. 1983 1988 1993 1997/98 Change
Agriculture, forestry, fishing hunting 6.6 5.8 5.3 4.9 - 1.7
Mining 1.5 1.3 1.2 1.0 - 0.5
Manufacturing 18.1 16.4 14.1 12.8 - 5.3
Electricity, gas and water 2.2 1.5 1.2 0.8 - 1.4
Construction 6.2 7.2 7.3 7.2 + 1.0
Wholesale and retail trade 19.5 20.4 20.9 20.7 + 1.2
Transport and storage 5.9 5.2 4.8 4.6 - 1.3
Communications 2.2 1.8 1.5 1.7 - 0.5
Finance, property, business services 9.2 11.0 11.2 14.6 + 5.4
Public administration and defence 5.0 4.4 5.1 3.9# - 1.1
Community services 17.3 17.8 19.4 16.7 - 0.5
Recreation, personal other services 6.3 7.2 8.0 6.2 - 0.1
Total 100 100 100 100
Labour force 6,241.1 7,353.4 7,621.0 8,555.0
Occupational categories as % of Australian work 1983-1997/8 (Source ABS)

12. Percentage 2007 2010 2011 2012
Legislators, senior officials and managers 0.60 0.90 1.10 1.05
Professionals 4.50 5.10 5.30 5.52
Technicians and associate professionals 2.90 3.70 3.60 3.48
Clerks 1.20 1.40 1.50 1.67
Service workers and shop and market sales workers 7.30 14.60 14.90 16.07
Skilled agricultural and fishery workers 5.70 15.50 13.90 12.74
Craft and related trade workers 12.50 12.60 12.10 11.96
Plant and machine operators and assemblers 3.30 7.10 7.00 7.27
Elementary occupations 61.70 39.10 40.40 39.98
Vietnam: Industrial structure of the labour force and its rate of growth (2007-2012)

13. Like many western countries, the portion of Korean workers in
agricultural, forestry and fishing jobs has declined significantly
in the period between 1970 and 1993.
Similarly, through the same period, Professional, Technical
and Administrative jobs, Service and Clerical jobs have also
increased significantly, while Sales jobs have enjoyed modest
increases.
Production jobs have experienced strong growth and
constitute the single largest portion (32%) of the Korean
labour market (Korean Economic Planning Board 2005).
Korea

14. China employment, by industry, 1980 -- 2001
1980 1990 1995 2000 2001 % change
(In millions, at the end of year)
Farming, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery 291.2 341.8 330.2 333.6 329.7 +13%
Mining and quarrying 7.0 8.8 9.3 6.0 5.6 - 25%
Manufacturing 59.0 86.2 98.0 80.4 80.8 +36%
Electricity, gas and water 1.2 1.9 2.9 2.8 2.9 +241%
Construction 9.9 24.2 33.2 35.5 36.7 +370%
Geological prospecting, water conservation 1.9 2.0 1.4 1.1 1.1 -72%
Transport, storage, Post and
telecommunications
8.1 15.7 19.4 20.3 20.4 +251%
Wholesale, retail trade and catering services 13.6 28.4 42.9 46.8 47.4 +348%
Bank and insurance 1.0 2.2 2.8 3.3 3.4 +340%
Real estate, social services, health and
education
18.5 26.3 27.0 30.7 31.5 +170%
Government, party agencies and social
organisations
5.3 10.8 10.4 11.0 11.0 +207%
Others 5.9 18.0 44.9 56.4 58.5 +991%
Total 423.6 647.5 680.7 720.9 730.3 +73%

15. Consequences for individuals, communities and countries
Kinds of work available
Growing distinctions between categories of work (e.g. pay, conditions, prospects)
Occupations in decline can impact upon entire communities (e.g. rural
communities, industrial towns)
Limits options for nations (e.g. range of activities to compete in a globalised
market place)
So what?

16. 2. Changing ways of participating in work
Contingent workers
Increasing percentage of worker are contingent (involuntary part-time,
contractual), particularly impacting women, migrants, non-native
speakers
Contingent work being sustained in countries experiencing high levels
of economic performance (US & UK)
Separation
Increase in workers who are home-based, part-time and isolated
Difficulties in participating fully in workplaces, being competent,
accessing opportunities for advancement etc etc

17. 3. Changing composition of paid work force
Women’s participation in the workforce (US – between 1970-2000 –
women 16+ from 43% to 61% participation, By 2000 women comprised 47%
of US workforce; Australia – between 1970 – 1996 – women aged 25-24
increased from 41 to 71%, UK - 1980- 2000 female participation in labour
force increased from 42% to 47%.
However, women comprise 82% of part-time workers in Britain - concerns
about ‘good work’ - women, more likely than males to be employed in low
paid and contingent work, and admin roles.
Older workers
Longer working life
Older workers suffer from privileging of youth

18. 4. Changing requirements for work performance
Little in the way of uniformity across enterprises, industries, countries
Darrah (1997:249) “jobs seem so diverse as to obviate the need for
generalisations about how people perform work”
Countries – can have quite different means of working (e.g. Japan)
Industries – different means across industries (e.g. garment manufacture,
retail)
Enterprises – different goals, procedures and outcomes (e.g. hairdressing)

19. Increasing intensity (e.g. nurses’ work)
Shorter production cycles (e.g. production, processing)
Enhanced complexity (e.g. broader range of tasks, more discretion)
Enhanced requirement for conceptual and symbolic knowledge (e.g.
requirements for contemporary work emphasizes need for
understanding)
Flatter organizational structures (e.g. – team member - broadening of
work role and enhanced responsibilities)
Both specialization and diversification (e.g. the particular is valued as
being able to perform a wider range of roles)
Despite the lack of uniformity it is possible to identify some emerging trends:

20. Future work requirements
Contemporary work is becoming more reliant on conceptual and
symbolic knowledge
It is important – Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, less dramatic
examples of banking, commerce etc
Scribner (1985: 138) – “hardly have we approached the problem of
understanding the intellectual impact of the printing press than we
are urged to confront the psychological implications of
computerisation”
CNC lathes – Martin and Scribner (1991) the integration of
traditional machining knowledge with symbolic knowledge and
logical skills involved in new informatics

21. Many domains of activity represent a mix of these two systems
Xerox technicians (Orr 1996) developed an understanding of
principles and then enriched with stories from practice
principled understanding and practices
then, development of strategic practices, heuristics and
problem-solving strategies
Symbolic knowledge also an important mediator of how we learn - become personal
tools that we use of mediate our work and learning.
One claim: adults acquire practical or everyday concepts through participation in
everyday activities; whereas scientific concepts are acquired through organised
instruction

22. Three key observations about learning conceptual and symbolic
knowledge:
1. can be hard to capture in written form;
2. difficult to learn and access; and
3. cannot easily be ‘taught’, needs to be learnt.
Provision of selected experiences and learner engagement essential

23. Learning at work for the future economy
Some considerations of curriculum and pedagogies of practice

24. Practice curriculum
Ordering of experiences
Sequencing of activities - from those of low error risk to where consequences of errors
are greater (Lave 1990)
Tailors – Hairdressers – Production workers – Room attendants -- doctors (Sinclair 1999)
1. Apprenticeship as a way of life - Lived experiences within a community (Jordan, 1989,
Rogoff 1990, Bunn, 1999)
2. Deliberate structuring of learning experiences (Bunn, 1999)

25. Curriculum models
Learning
curriculum
Accessing tasks of increasing demands and error cost (Lave 1990). Commence with
observations to understand goal states and progress through activities of increasing
error cost. Where each component of work has same salience - engage in a linear
order (Jordan, 1989)
Learning activities
as work conditions
permit
Stages of learning around work activities. (e.g. learning pottery based on access to
potter’s wheel: i) pre-practice observation as apprentices engage in menial activities;
ii) tentative experiments with wheel (when not being used); iii) assigned regular
practice at wheel; iv) assigned production tasks at wheel; and v) period of work to
repay training (Singleton, 1989)
Learning pathways Organising learning pathways for novices comprising specific work tasks (e.g. doctors –
taking patients’ histories and conducting examinations, often repeating registrars’
tasks (Sinclair 1997)
Parallel practice Individuals engaging in an occupational practice, and being monitored and checked by
a more experienced partner at key point in tasks completion (Billett & Sweet 2015)

26. Practice pedagogics
Story telling (Jordan, 1989)
Verbalisation (Gowlland, 2010)
Pedagogically rich activities (Billett 2010)
Guided learning/proximal guidance (Rogoff 1995 Billett 2001,
Gowlland, 2011)
Direct instruction and ‘hands on’ (Makovicky, 2010)
Indirect/distal guidance (Gowlland, 2011)
Heuristics (Billett, 1997) and mnemonics (Sinclair 1997)
Partially worked example (Makovicky, 2010)

27. Practice Description Purposes
Story telling Telling stories about work events and incidents (Jordan 1989) Illustrating or capturing concepts or hypothetical
formulations to assist in decision-making;
legitimate practitioner as expert
Verbalisation Talking aloud whilst performing a work task as a form of direct
guidance can be linked to ‘hands on’ engagement (Gowlland 2012)
Explaining thinking and acting being used whilst
performing work tasks
Pedagogically rich
activities
Workplace activities that are inherently pedagogically rich e.g.
handovers (Billett 2010) or mortality and morbidity meetings
Developing conceptual and specific and strategic
procedural capacities
Guided learning
(proximal guidance)
Direct guidance by more experienced co-workers: modelling,
demonstrating, guided practise, monitoring progress and gradual
withdrawal of direct guidance, placing hands on novices’ to assist
getting the ‘feel’ of pottery, guided discovery - placing novices in
situations where they can practice, hone skills, and gain experience
independently, yet still have direct guidance
Extending what individuals can learn through
discovery alone, by modelling of activities to be
learnt, guidance to assist achieve modelled
performance and providing opportunities to
refine and hone.
Partially worked
example/direct
instruction and hands
on
Combination of guidance and using a worked example. (e.g.
experienced lace-maker producing a small piece of simple lace,
showing novice how bobbins are held, and placing hands on novice’s
to assist learn hand movements to use the bobbins.
Provision of models for performance, ability to
engage in sub-skills associated with that
performance and build understanding about
procedural capacities.
Heuristics Tricks of the trade (i.e. procedures that will give you certainty) Procedural cues to perform work activities
Mnemonics Developing and using mnemonics (doctors’ use of 5 Fs, DANISH to
remember about cerebellar lesions) and actual patients to remember
conditions, other procedures
A means to remember and recall propositions
and secure procedural efficacy
Artefacts Artefact or notation system, assists by embedding the knowledge
required in a localised context and assists skill and proficiency
providing clues and cues on how to proceed
Workplace pedagogic practices

28. Learning digitised knowledge
Making accessible and able to understand conceptual and symbolic
knowledge
Stories, analogies, explanations, illustrations
Developing conceptual models of tasks provides learners with:
• an advanced organiser for attempting to execute the task
• bases to utilise feedback, hints and corrections during interactions
• an internalised guide for independent practice by successive
approximation
• a conceptual model that can be updated (Collins, Brown & Newman 1989)
Opportunities to apply knowledge in a variety of circumstances –
procedural development - successive approximation of mature practice,
Ways of indexing knowledge: mnemonics; concrete examples

29. So what?
Constant changes (occupational; situational; knowledge and knowing)
Ways of knowing and working are central to learning and remaking and
transforming work, including in the digital era
Greater challenges for the learning of knowledge that is difficult to secure and/or
comprehend
Much of that learning will need to occur through work so the work context can
assist with indexicality, etc
Importance of workplace curriculum and practice-based pedagogies
Also, importance of personal mediational processes (i.e. personal epistemologies)