Getting value from workplace training & learning

THINK PIECE | Dr Laurie Field with Lynne Stallard, Coordinator VET Projects, ICVET presented at the Learning Powerhouse Conference 2006

This is one of two think pieces being released through the ICVET website during early 2007. These think pieces are comprised of recent research and practitioner led experiences in workplace learning and aim to trigger dialogue and reflection by VET practitioners and can be used as conversation starters. The blog provides an opportunity for you to challenge or comment on any of the issues raised, so have your say.

Summary

Learning at work has great potential - learning from workplace knowledge systems, from work or profession-based communities of practice and from up-to-the-minute systems and approaches. However, there are many factors limiting what’s possible.

Pushing the limits and exploiting the potential presents many challenges for the VET practitioner faced with assessing (and trying to influence) workplace and management support for learning.

More and more vocational education and training is happening directly in the workplace, a trend which most commentators expect to continue. TAFE teachers’ shift into the workplace has had considerable impact on pedagogy.

Consider the following list of differences in how apprentices learn at work compared with college, based on research into learning by electromechanical apprentices in Denmark [1]. For the apprentices studied (and in contrast with learning in a vocational institute), learning at work was:

not restricted to specific hours, locations or people
two-way and multi-way process—for example, the apprentice sometimes functioned as a teacher with a new apprentice
initiated by the apprentice, and conducted at a time when the apprentice faced some problem or felt the need to learn
a collaborative process involving many social relationships which extended well beyond the traditional master-and-apprentice diad
strongly linked with the apprentice’s future identity as a skilled worker
a process involving considerable admiration and identification

When you consider this and other research into workplace training and learning, it’s not so much that the basics—setting tasks and goals, offering guidance, giving feedback, motivating—are different from what would happen on campus. Instead, the main challenge of supporting learning at work is the number of new elements that you have to contend with—including work organisation, work roles and relationships, boundaries, politics, organisational concepts, business strategy and priorities.

As a result, TAFE teachers themselves (and, for that matter, managers and employees at the worksite) have much to learn. The neat dividing line between ‘pure’ pedagogy (that is, purely educational aspects of teaching and learning) and work context and culture starts to break down. What results is a mixing of individual VET pedagogy and organisational roles, processes and priorities.

This thinkpiece explores some of the resultant challenges that TAFE teachers in the workplace face, including:

surrendering control
dealing with different attitudes to learning
sidestepping learning’s political shadow
giving proper attention to theory
contributing to organisational competence
helping students develop workplace savvy
negotiating a huge learning curve

Surrendering control

One important aspect of the move from TAFE campus to workplace learning focus is that it represents a move from a controlled environment to one where you have limited control.

Unlike TAFE, learning within organisations is not the main game. Indeed, learning may not be something anyone has thought about very much. Teaching and learning usually play second fiddle to more pressing enterprise concerns.

In some work settings, managers or workmates may be negative about training and the work generally, resulting in a fairly uninspiring climate for learning. And all sorts of things can cut across a planned learning activity: management demands, technological hiccups, unequal access to learning opportunities, customer requirements, the organisation’s own need for meetings and training, and so on.

TAFE teachers who operate in the workplace can be called on to deal with a lot of challenges. Work may be occurring well outside normal office hours, in remote or uncomfortable environments. The organisations that a TAFE teacher is required to visit may involve considerable travel, not to mention arriving at a new organisation and quickly having to establish rapport.

And once in the workplace, the challenges continue. Workplaces themselves can be noisy, and work pressures can put a real limit on the amount of learning that’s possible.

There are many interpersonal challenges as well. For example, giving critical feedback to a mature-age trainee in his/her workplace may be much more difficult than on a TAFE campus. In some work settings, it can be risky and even dangerous to be frankly critical.

The result of factors like these is that in workplace training and learning, the organisational environment beyond the immediate teacher-learner relationship has far more impact (and is far more variable) than it is in the TAFE Institute. If you think of the whole range of factors and experiences that an employee learns from, the TAFE teacher can only directly influence a small proportion.

Some TAFE teachers try to blend in as best they can by acting like they themselves are a manager or employee. Unfortunately, the result may be that little learning occurs. The pedagogical aim is to fit in and gain credibility, while at the same time staying in the role of independent learning facilitator. It’s quite a challenge!

So in summary, in contrast with the view that workplaces represent rich, desirable learning environments, experience and research so far suggests that it’s a mixed picture. As a site for learning, the workplace can offer unique, and important, advantages. At the same time, it can represent some real challenges.

What’s your experience of supporting learning within the workplace been? Was it challenging, or straightforward? What about trying to fit in and maintain credibility – did it happen easily, or was it a struggle?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Dealing with different attitudes to learning

In some workplaces, there is an enlightened approach to learning. It’s seen in much the same way as ‘improvement’—as something going on all the time, to be encouraged because it’s a sign of the organisation staying flexible and responsive.

But in other organisations, if training and learning is thought about at all, it’s as formal, structured training programs. In this kind of environment, it’s likely that day-to-day learning gets little or no attention.

If you operate in the workplace as a TAFE teacher, there is no guarantee of a match between your pedagogical views and those which dominate in the organisation you’re working in. This was an issue examined in recent research by Roger Harris, Michelle Simons and John Bone [2], which identified quite significant differences between the views of VET teachers, and the views of learners in the workplace about their preferred learning environment.

The VET teachers were more concerned with things like sorting out learning goals and arranging access to learning resources. The learners, on the other hand, were looking for opportunities to practice, encouragement to tackle more challenging jobs.

Another area where there tends to be attitudinal difference between TAFE teachers and trainees is in how members of each group think about being a ‘learner’. Researchers David Boud and Nicki Solomon [3], from UTS, found that in the workplace, the term ‘learner’ is often associated with having a deficit (eg being incompetent) and/or having low status and power. For example, one interviewee in their study commented:

I think sometimes when we say the term learning, we think of someone driving a car on ‘L’ plates. " I’ve still got my 'L' plates". [It suggests] you haven’t been in the job for too long…whereas you can be in the job 20 years and still be learning.

Learner driver The comment neatly juxtaposes two quite different views of being a learner. The first view is that it’s an inferior, temporary position, like a learner-driver beginning to learn to drive. Most young drivers would probably agree that the sooner they’re off their ‘L’ plates, the better.

The second view is about lifelong learning. From this viewpoint, one is always learning, and there is nothing inferior about it. Another of the employees quoted in the Boud/Solomon study acknowledged:

I do [learn], but I wouldn’t present myself as a learner, because that would suggest that you didn’t know what you were doing. You’ve always got to present with some kind of approach that’s got professionalism about it.

From these and other quotes cited in the Boud/Solomon study, it’s clear that there is a power dimension to being a learner. Learners can feel like L-platers, in a low-power, exposed position, and keen to leave the learner role as quickly as possible. In contrast, many TAFE teachers are keen on learning, but that’s unlikely to be the dominant view in many workplaces.

These are just some of the attitudinal challenges one faces when the locus of training and learning moves into the workplace. It’s possible that a TAFE teacher could find him or herself in a work environment where there is very little interest in learning, and where being a learner is considered shameful.

The central challenge in this kind of setting is, what can you do to facilitate learning in work contexts which are essentially anti-learning? What’s been your experience?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Sidestepping learning’s political shadow

One of the positives of training at a TAFE campus is that boundaries are relatively straightforward. It’s obvious what is/is not part of the TAFE Institute: it’s carried in the physical buildings, site boundaries, role definitions, and indicators of status like titles and style of offices. It is also obvious what property—including learning resources and information—belongs to TAFE. And hierarchies are fairly clear-cut—TAFE employees generally have an understanding of where they fit in, and it’s clear who is above and below.

But shifting learning to the workplace brings with it all sorts of challenges across the TAFE-company boundary. For example:

a teacher in the workplace may find it impossible to maintain credibility and still stay neutral in some work environments, such as when groups are in conflict. He or she may feel under considerable pressure to take sides
learning is enriched by incorporating real examples, data and protocols in training activities, but what are a teacher’s rights to use (and perhaps take elsewhere) material like this?
the same applies to situations that crop up within a company, which may seem very suitable for including in learning material but, at the same time, may be highly sensitive politically

Challenges like these relate to boundaries but are, at base, political in nature. They illustrate an important difference between teaching in a TAFE Institute and teaching in work settings.

In TAFE, when it comes to training, there is one dominant focus and shared interest—namely, in helping students learn. But when it comes to training in the workplace, interest differences abound.

In a recent paper on this topic, Griffith University’s Stephen Billett [4] describes in some detail the multiple interests (and resultant tensions) that can surround training and learning. Examples cited by Billet, drawn from his own and other investigators’ research, include:

full-time retail workers limiting development opportunities for young and/or part-time employees
demarcations and insistence on seniority being used as the deciding factor stopping young employees accessing development opportunities
coal miners providing access to development opportunities on the basis of industrial affiliations and seniority rather than need or youth

The kind of development opportunities referred to in these examples include not only formal training, but opportunities to learn new kinds of work, to broaden one’s perspective, or to take on traditional ‘management’ tasks. In each case, what makes training and development political and contested is that it has the potential to lead to more pay and better jobs. So, in each case, employees with more power, such as more experienced employees and those with the right kind of industrial affiliations, are well placed to monopolise these opportunities.

This is not to suggest that all workplaces operate like this, but only that there is far more likelihood of training and learning within the workplace having this kind of political dimension.

Overall, it’s quite a contrast with TAFE. While on the TAFE campus, pedagogy is relatively non-political. The focus is simply on how best to support learning.

But at work, established workers may restrict or oppose access to learning by juniors, and learning may be compromised in the process. TAFE teachers can find themselves treading warily, keen to support learning but, at the same time, wanting to stay clear of the politics.

Do you agree that there is far less politics surrounding learning within TAFE Institutes than there is around workplace learning? What’s been your experience? And what about the political challenges that you face when you move into the workplace?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Giving proper attention to theory

Work environments can be a great place to learn practical skills, but they’re not so good when it comes to theory. In one recent study [5], a quarter of the trainees surveyed said that they would have learnt a lot more if theory had been taught in a traditional classroom. Many described having to study the theory themselves, often at lunchtime or when they had a spare minute during work or at home.

So an important pedagogical challenge for TAFE teachers supporting learning at work is to make sure that trainees learn the necessary theory. An important consideration here is space—not only suitable physical space, but mental space away from work pressure—to learn theory.

Let’s consider an example. During the last few years, the wool harvest industry has put quite a bit of effort into improving training for shearers and wool handlers (see shearer training – link below). When it comes to learning practical shearing and wool handling skills, a fully operational shearing shed provides excellent opportunities to learn.

However, the scope to learn theory in a working shed is very limited. In a typical shed, work is high-pressure, it’s noisy and dusty, and physical space is very limited. For wool handlers in particular, it’s like a production-line—if you step away from your post to do some theory training, the wool piles up waiting to be sorted.

A number of TAFE trainers working in this industry have found ways to cover some of the theory, but all involve finding a space away from the fully operational shed. For example:

making sure that training is live-in, so theory can be covered at night
arranging for part of the shed to be dedicated to training, so the pace can be slowed down
requiring trainees to come for some on-campus training at a TAFE Institute, before attending in-shed training

Despite worthwhile strategies like these, however, there is a widespread perception amongst those involved in wool harvest training that practical skills are often better handled than theory in training conducted in working sheds.

In the kind of traditional, ‘expert centred’ training approaches that have tended to be the norm in TAFE, at least until the last decade or so, theory was given a lot of emphasis, so much so that some students longed to spend more time doing ‘prac’.

But has the pendulum now swung too far the other way? Most work-based trainees certainly have plenty of opportunities to develop their practical skills but, when it comes to theory, coverage is often patchy. Assessment plays a part here as well, because it puts so much emphasis on ‘doing’ rather than real ‘understanding’.

Do the comments made here—that basic theory and background knowledge tends to be neglected in workplace training, compared with practical skill—apply in your teaching area? And if so, do students get the theory in some other way that’s effective, or does theory get overlooked? Tell us what you think!

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Contributing to organisational competence

The focus of the VET sector tends to be on individuals. Admittedly, we may try to accommodate what ‘the industry’ wants, and we may emphasise group tasks and skills when dealing with topics like teamwork. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, what matters is that each individual can perform observable, measurable, assessable tasks to the same level. Moreover, the level that’s set reflects minimum satisfactory performance, not excellence.

The VET concept of competence is very different from the one that is dominant in many organisations, particularly those where success is tied to knowledge and innovation. In these cases, the focus is well captured by the term ‘core competence’. As used by it’s originators [6], ‘core competence’ refers to a unique bundle of skills, technology, information and management that enables a business to benefit its customers. This bundle typically represents knowledge that applies across a number of teams and organisational units, rather than being product-specific.

Consider companies like Casio and Panasonic. One of the core competencies of both companies is expertise in micro-electronics. In recent times, they’ve used this expertise to become leading players in camera manufacturing. They’ve done so despite having limited expertise in cameras or lenses. Instead, they’ve combined their micro-electronics core competence with other company’s lens design core competence. Result: high-quality digital cameras.

The key point here is that in many business contexts, the ways in which expertise is combined matters much more than the competence of any one individual employee or manager.

For the VET practitioner, it represents a very different way of thinking. While the VET-sector emphasis is on getting everyone to at least the same minimum skill level, what matters most in business is getting groups of highly skilled and knowledgeable people together—a kind of collective competence—with the right mix of information, technology and processes when and where you need them.

None of this is much cause for concern if your teaching is limited to TAFE campuses. From enrolment to Training Packages, learning materials and assessment, most of the focus is on helping individual students achieve minimum acceptable standards. However, when you’re involved in workplace training, the contrast between TAFE’s individual, minimum-competence focus, and the focus in many businesses on individuals working together and helping each other, and on excellence, is much more marked.

When you’re operating as a TAFE teacher, your role includes championing learning and encouraging competence-building. Given that, how much effort should you put into helping companies enhance their collective competence, by sharing what you’ve learnt from other companies and from students and teaching colleagues? To what extent should you encourage trainees to strive for excellence that goes well beyond what’s specified in Training Packages?

Or is that moving too far away from TAFE’s rightful focus and getting too caught up in business priorities?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Helping students develop workplace savvy

Think about when you first started work, and some of the things you learnt that were most significant. Research into workplace learning by Macquarie University’s Laurie Field [7] suggests that some of the most significant things learnt by managers and employees are not so much the technical aspects of work, but personal and political issues like:

how to get others to do things you want done
how to protect one’s workmates
learning about the informal power network
learning who holds what information and the general importance of ‘being in the know’
learning the uses and abuses of sensitive information
learning how to manage upwards (and get your manager’s support) and across (getting the support of workmates)
learning how much factors outside the organisation effect what happens

Research into related areas by David Boud and Heather Middleton, from UTS, identifies three areas of workplace learning by groups of employees within the public sector educational organisation they studied:

Mastering organisational processes	Keeping pace with new administrative requirements Becoming familiar with computer-based programs and processes
Negotiating the political	Negotiating relationships within the everyday workplace Positioning oneself to ensure a successful future career path
Dealing with the atypical	Dealing with issues for which there are no set procedures or agreed processes

What both of these studies emphasise is that a great deal of learning at work is not related to job-skills or technical, job-related knowledge. Instead, it relates to such basics as:

protecting and, if possible, extending one’s patch
being prepared to cope with the unexpected
developing a deep understanding of what the real power relationships are that affect one’s job and security

Findings like these raise important questions about the role of TAFE teachers in the workplace. What role, if any, should VET practitioners play in helping students reflect on and integrate these kinds of insights? On the one hand, you might feel that these are internal work matters, best learnt from direct observation and from managers and other employees.

On the other hand, if these are the important work-related lessons we all want to learn, shouldn’t TAFE teachers help? And, if so, to what extent and in what ways?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

Negotiating a huge learning curve

Recent research conducted by Roger Harris, Michele Simons and Julian Moore from University of South Australia [8] concludes that when VET professionals get involved in workplace training, they often have to move well beyond their traditional roles. After interviewing those involved in workplace learning in a variety of companies, the researchers were struck by how much learning was involved.

For all concerned, TAFE staff and enterprise personnel, the experience of working together constitutes 'a huge learning curve'. The TAFE practitioner needs to learn about company environment and culture, that linkages take time and energy, and that often, timing of learning cannot be determined by them. For their part, enterprise staff need to learn that training can be an investment, that accredited training is important, that gaining a certificate for learning is worthwhile, and to be patient with TAFE procedures [9].

As the above quote makes clear, the learning is two-way—not only do TAFE staff have to learn and adjust, but so do enterprise personnel.

The University of South Australia study describes in detail what’s involved in negotiating this ‘huge learning curve’. For the TAFE teachers studied, the change involves moving into (and learning about) some or all of the following roles:

Bearer of glad tidings	Injecting new dimensions of learning arrangements into companies
Raiser of standards	As the acknowledged training expert, sharpening and focusing training
Builder of learning culture	Beyond providing ‘content’, performing functions which build culture
Coach	Adding value by transmitting knowledge and skill one-to-one
TAFE-company bridge	Linking the two cultures in ways that benefit both
Model of lifelong learning	Influencing and inspiring others to become lifelong learners and, in the process, enhance their own credibility

What makes taking up roles like these particularly challenging is that at the same time many TAFE teachers involved in workplace training have to straddle two quite different requirements. On the one hand, there are the requirements of TAFE as a large, public-sector bureaucracy; on the other, in many cases the organisations they’re working in are smaller scale, more responsive private sector companies, with very different norms, expectations and cultures.

The research by Harris and his associates describes in detail the challenges involved. For example, they have to learn how to adapt learning materials to local requirements, how to establish and maintain credibility, how to motivate worker-learners without upsetting them and how to understand the internal workings of the company and locate what they want and need. As the study’s authors observe:

TAFE practitioners…needed to be responsive to the practicalities of the workplace, and to demonstrate ways of working that resonated with both the expectations of the companys’ personnel and [its] work. To be able to do this required an appreciation that they had a considerable amount of learning to do themselves. [10]

If you’ve been involved in workplace learning, why not share the roles you had to take up in order to straddle the TAFE context and the organisational one. In the process of working across TAFE and the workplace, what did you learn?

What do you think about these issues? Do you agree or disagree with the comments made? Click on the blog icon to have your say!

ICVET Promoting Emerging Practice, TAFE NSW International Centre for VET Teaching and Learning

February 2007 Headlines

Getting value from workplace training & learning