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Curriculum Journal
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The fundamentals of workplace
learning: understanding how people
learn in working life
Alison Fox
a
a
School of Education, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
Version of record first published: 12 Dec 2011.
To cite this article: Alison Fox (2011): The fundamentals of workplace learning: understanding how
people learn in working life, Curriculum Journal, 22:4, 604-605
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2011.627709
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Christy M. Moroye
Regis University, Denver, CO, USA
cmoroye@regis.edu
2011, Ben Ingman and Christy M. Moroye
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2011.627707
The fundamentals of workplace learning: understanding how people learn in
working life, by Knud Illeris, London, Routledge, 2011, 179 pp., 22.99
(paperback), ISBN 978-0-415-57907-0
This book, as stated by the author, is the result of a lifes work and
presents the authors considered view of how workplace learning might be
conceptualised. Its strengths are in its presentation of a coherent
theoretical perspective, which is built up in a well-structured way across
the book. Its weakness is perhaps the lack of exemplication or lack of
connection with an empirical basis for this framework. This is not to
doubt that the book is indeed grounded in extensive empirical research.
Illeris refers to work covering the period 19862009 and regularly
acknowledges the contributions of his peers to his thinking. Rather, I
suggest that some connection with real-world examples might have
expanded the issues discussed and illuminated the complexities of
workplaces in dierent contexts.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I develops a triangular
model rst of individual learning in workplace settings, then of workplace
learning in a way which captures the situated nature of such learning.
This leads, in chapter 4, to what the author calls an advanced model of
workplace learning, conating the former two. While in part I Illeris
relates his study to a wide range of international work in the eld, such
links are often made only in passing and are not explored in depth. For
example, while the work of Evans et al. (2006) is referred to, their notions
of a continuum of expansive and restrictive workplace learning
environments are not explored. Similarly, the underlying alternative
metaphors for learning alluded to on pages 1112 could have taken in the
debate in the Educational Researcher journal (19967) and, in particular,
the work of Sfard (1998) pertaining to these metaphors. Similarly the idea
of place bound up in the term workplace learning and notions of
learning space (chapter 3) were also not linked in depth to substantive
literature and could have made links to works such as those by Felstead
et al. (2005) and Macpherson et al. (2003).
Part II is entitled Workplace learning in practice and again maps
the territory as the author sees it. In doing so, again each issue is only
604 Book reviews
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able to be allocated a brief word count and so is arguably short on
detail. However, the summary of thinking surrounding distinctions
between informal, non-formal and formal learning is helpfully concise
and supports subsequent sections well. The chapters within part II
cover a range of workplace learning in practice, as the title suggests,
although the reader needs to have absorbed the rationale for the
content of each chapter before embarking on it, as signposting between
the chapters is largely missing. Mentoring/coaching, for example, is
allocated a separate section entitled Sparring and support schemes,
which explains why it appears to be missing from the accounts
in chapter 7. Chapter 9, entitled Job transcending learning initiatives,
is particularly thought-provoking through reference to alternative
ways of thinking about and operationalising workplace learning
opportunities.
Part III is where exemplication might have been expected and,
apart from an interesting focus on special learner groups, this section
oers further discussion of what the author terms cross-cutting
perspectives. This is wholly theoretical and poses questions about
the challenges and tensions inherent in thinking about workplace
learning. It did not directly build on the earlier models as it might
have done. The discussions became particularly interesting when, late
in the book, the author turns to consider the future and the reader is
left hungry for further consideration about the implications for both
the younger (termed generation Y), in relation to developments in
ICT, and older (termed after the life turn) generations of workplace
employee.
References
Evans, K., P. Hodkinson, H. Rainbird, and L. Unwin. 2006. Improving workplace
learning. Abingdon: Routledge.
Felstead, A., N. Jewson, and S. Walters. 2005. The shifting locations of work: New
statistical evidence on the spaces and places of employment. Work, Employment and
Society 19, no. 2: 41531.
Macpherson, A., O. Jones, M. Zhang, and A. Wilson. 2003. Re-conceptualising learning
spaces: Developing capabilities in a high-tech small rm. Journal of Workplace
Learning 15, no. 6: 25970.
Sfard, A. 1998. On two metaphors for learning and the dangers of using just one.
Educational Researcher 27, no. 2: 413.
Alison Fox
School of Education, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
af173@le.ac.uk
2011, Alison Fox
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2011.627709
The Curriculum Journal 605
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