The significance of the relationships among work, subjectivity and learning is proposed here as a means to understand how individuals are motivated to and direct their learning throughout working life. This, it is proposed, stands as a timely and necessary activity required to inform policy and practice, and also identify the kinds of conceptual premises that are needed to advance our understanding about learning through work and throughout working life. In this chapter, some premises for the discussion within this book are elaborated. These include the centrality of subjectivity in understanding the relations between the individual and the workplace in work and learning related activities, and the relationships among them. These terms are also elaborated from the author's perspective and discussed in terms of how they are represented across and within perspectives that inform considerations about work and learning. In concluding, a typology of conceptions of self are advanced as a way of illuminating different disciplinary conceptions and evolution of the concept of self. These different conceptions of self are intended to open out, rather than constrain, the important emerging discussion about the relations among subjectivity, work and learning.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Allan, J. K. (2005). Farmers as learners: Evolving identity, disposition and mastery through diverse practices. Rural Society: The journal of research into rural and regional social issues for Australia and New Zealand, 4-21.
Bauer, J., Festner, D., Gruber, H., Harteis, C., & Heid, H. (2004). The effects of epistemological beliefs on workplace learning. Journal of Workplace Learning, 16(5), 284-292.
Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1967). The social construction of reality. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Bhaskar, R. (1998). The possibility of naturalism. London: Routledge.
Billett, S. (2006a). Relational interdependence between social and individual agency in work and working life. Mind, Culture and Activity, 13(1), 53-69.
Billett, S. (2006b). Work, change and workers. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
Billett, S. (2003). Sociogeneses, activity and ontogeny. Culture and Psychology, 9(2), 133-169.
Billett, S., & Pavlova, M. (2005). Learning through working life: self and individuals’ agentic action. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 24(3), 195-211.
Billett S., Barker, M., & Hernon-Tinning, B. (2004) Participatory practices at work. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 12(2), 233-257.
Billett, S., Smith, R., & Barker, M. (2005). Understanding work, learning and the remaking of cultural practices. Studies in Continuing Education, 27(3), 219–237.
Billett, S., & Somerville, M. (2004). Transformations at work: Identity and learning. Studies in Continuing Education, 26(2), 309-326.
Bourdieu, P. (1991) Language and symbolic power J. B. Thompson (Ed.), G. Raymond and M. Adamson (Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Church, K., & Luciana, T. (2004). Dancing lessons: A choreography of disability in corporate culture. Paper presented at the WALL Annual Meeting, Toronto.
Cottingham, J. (Ed.). (1996). Western philosophy: An anthology. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cronick, K. (2002). Community, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. American Journal of Community Psychology, 30(14), 529-547.
Du Gay, P. (1996). Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage.
Edwards, R. (2002). Mobilizing lifelong learning: Governmentality in educational practices. Journal of Educational Policy, 17(3), 353-365.
Engestrom, Y. (1993). Development studies of work as a testbench of activity theory: The case of primary care medical practice. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding Practice: perspectives on activity and context (pp. 64–103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eteläpelto, A. (2004, October). Developing subjective identities of teachership through participation. Paper presented at EARLI conference on Professional Development, Regensburg, Germany.
Ezzy, D. (1997). Subjectivity and the labour process: Conceptualising ’Good Work’. Sociology, 31(3), 427-444.
Fenwick, T. (2004). Learning in portfoliowork: Anchored innovation and mobile identity. Studies in Continuing Education, 26(2), 229-246.
Fenwick, T. (2002). Lady, Inc.: Women learning, negotiating subjectivity in entrepreneurial discourses. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 21(2), 162-177.
Fenwick, T. (2001). Tides of change: New themes and questions in workplace learning. In T. Fenwick (Ed.), Sociocultural perspectives on learning through work (pp. 3-18). San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Fenwick, T. (1998). Women’s development of self in the workplace. International Journal of Lifelong Learning, 17(3), 199-217.
Field, J. (2000). Governing the ungovernable: Why lifelong learning promises so much yet delivers so little. Educational Management and Administration, 28(3), 249-261.
Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punishment. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, M. (1986). The care of the self: The history of sexuality, Vol. 3 (R. Hurley, Trans.). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Foucault, M. (1992). Afterword: The subject and power. In H. F. Dreyfus & P. Rainbow (Eds.), Michel Foucault: Beyond structuralism and hermeneutics (pp. 208-226). Brighton: Harvester Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Goffman, E. (1990). The presentation of self in everyday life. London: Penguin Books.
Grey, C. (1994). Career as a project of the self and labour process discipline. Sociology, 28(2), 479-497.
Heidegger, M. (1975). The basic problems of phenomenology (A. Hofstadter, Trans.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hey, V. (2002). Horizontal solidarities and molten capitalism: The subject, intersubjectivity, self and the other in late modernity. Discourse, 23(2), 227-241.
Hodkinson, P., & Hodkinson, H. (2003). Individuals, communities of practice and the policy context. Studies in Continuing Education, 25(1), 3-21.
Hodkinson, P. H., & Hodkinson, H. (2004). The significance of individuals’ dispositions in the workplace learning: A case study of two teachers. Journal of Education and Work, 17(2), 167-182.
Hull, G. (1997). Preface and Introduction. In G. Hull (Ed.), Changing work, changing workers: Critical perspectives on language, literacy and skills. (pp. 3-39). New York: State University of New York Press.
Lave, J. (1993). The practice of learning. In S. Chaiklin & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 3-32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leontyev, A. N. (1981). Problems of the development of the mind. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Luke, C., & Gore, J. (Eds.). (1992). Feminisms and critical pedagogy. New York: Routledge.
Knight, D., & Willmott, H. (1989). Power and subjectivity at work: From degradation to subjugation in social relations. Sociology, 23(4), 535-558.
Mansfield, N. (2000). Subjectivity: Theories of the self from Freud to Haraway. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
McLaren, M. A. (1997). Foucault and the Subject of Feminism. Social Theory and Practice, 32(1), 109-128.
Newton, T. (1998). Theorising subjectivity in organizations: The failure of Foucauldian studies? Organization Studies, 19(3), 415-449.
Noon, M., & Blyton, P. (1997). The realities of work. Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan.
O’Doherty, D., & Willmot, H. (2001). The question of subjectivity and the labor process. International Studies of Management and Organisation, 30(4), 112–133.
Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. (2000). Economics and Finance of Lifelong Learning. Paris: Author.
Orner, M. (1992). Interrupting the calls for student voice in "liberatory" education: A feminist post structuralist perspective. In C. Luke & J. Gore (Eds.), Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy. London: Routledge.
Pusey, M. (2003). The experience of middle Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ratner, C. (2000). Agency and culture. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 30, 413-434.
Rogers, C. (1969). Freedom to learn. Columbus, Ohio: Charles F Merrill.
Rogoff, B. (1990). Apprenticeship in thinking – cognitive development in social context. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rousseau, J. J. (1968). The social contract. London: Penguin.
Rose, N. (1990). Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Routledge.
Salomon, G. (1997). Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sarup, M. (1989). Post – structuralism and Postmodernism. Athens, GA: University of Georgia.
Scribner, S. (1985). Vygostky’s use of history. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), Culture, communication and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives (pp. 119-145). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. London: Penguin.
Smith, R. (2005). Epistemological agency and the new employee. Australian Journal of Adult Learning, 45 (1).
Somerville, M., & Abrahamsson, L. (2003). Trainers and learners constructing a community of practice: Masculine work cultures and learning safety in the mining industry. Studies in the Education of Adults, 35(1), 19-34.
Taylor, C. (1985). Human agency and language: Philosophical papers 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Valsiner, J., & van der Veer, R. (2000). The social mind: The construction of an idea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weedon, C. (1997). Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Billett, S. (2007). Work, Subjectivity and Learning. In: Billett, S., Fenwick, T., Somerville, M. (eds) Work, Subjectivity and Learning. Technical and Vocational Education and Training: Issues, Concerns and Prospects, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5360-6_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5360-6_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-5359-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-5360-3
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawEducation (R0)