Skip to main content
Log in

Analyzing learning at work: an interdisciplinary framework

  • Published:
Learning Inquiry

Abstract

Experience in the workplace represents a significant domain for the analysis of learning. Based on many years of research on high-school and college interns, the article proposes a set of interdisciplinary ideas and strategies for conducting such an analysis. The core argument is that learning is the construction, enhancement or reorganization of knowledge and knowledge-use in an activity system, and that it happens through an interactional process involving participants, their joint actions and their material and informational resources. Understanding learning as a situated process requires an investigation of the way activities are established, accomplished, and processed, and of the social, cultural, political, and technological factors that shape them. The analyst must examine the ways knowledge is defined, distributed and used in the setting; learning, or the ways that knowledge-use changes over time; and pedagogy, or the social organization of the process by which learning is made possible.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Applebaum, H. (1984). Work in market and industrial societies. Albany NY: SUNY Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bailey, T. R., Hughes, K. H., & Moore, D. T. (2004). Working knowledge: Work-based learning and educational reform. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bernstein, B. (1975). Class, codes and control: Volume 3: Towards a theory of educational transmission. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruner, J. (1975). Beyond the information given. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaiklin, S. (1993). Understanding the social scientific practice of Understanding Practice. In S. Chaiklin, J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 377–401). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M., Hood, L., & McDermott, R.P. (1978). Ecological niche-picking: Ecological invalidity as an axiom in experimental cognitive psychology. Unpublished manuscript, The Rockefeller University.

  • Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Collier Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum. (Originally published 1970.).

  • Goodenough, W. (1957). Cultural anthropology and linguistics. In P.L. Gavin, (Ed.), Report on the 7th annual roundtable meetings on linguistics and language study (Vol. 9, pp. 167–173). Georgetown University Monograph Series on Language and Linguistics. Washington DC: Georgetown University.

  • Hamada, T., & Sibley, W. E. (Eds.). (1994). Anthropological perspectives on organizational culture. Lanham MD: University Press of America.

  • Hutchins, E. (1993). Learning to navigate. In S. Chaiklin, & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: Perspectives on activity and context (pp. 35–63). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (1983). Talks to teachers and students about psychology. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keller, C., & Keller, J. D. (1993). Thinking and acting with iron. In S. Chaiklin, & J. Lave (Eds.), Understanding practice: perspectives on activity and context. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential learning. Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in practice: Mind, mathematics and culture in everyday life. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Leont’ev, A. N. (1981). The problem of activity in psychology. In J. V. Wertsch (Ed.), The concept of activity in Soviet psychology (pp. 37–71). Armonk NY: M.E. Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luria, A. R. (1976). Cognitive development: Its cultural and social foundations. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, D. T. (1981). Discovering the pedagogy of experience. Harvard Educational Review, 51(2), 286–300.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moore, D. T. (1986). Learning at work: Case studies in non-school education. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 17(3), 166–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, D.T. (2004). Curriculum at work: An educational perspective on the workplace as a learning environment. The Journal of Workplace Learning, 16(6), 325–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Moore, D. T. (2005a). Workplace learning and the micropolitics of knowledge. Paper presented at the Second Expert Meeting on the Learning Potential of the Workplace. University of Twente, The Netherlands, March 3–5, 2005. Also in W.J. Nijhof (Ed.), The learning potential of the workplace. Amsterdam: Nieman (in press).

  • Moore, D. T. (2005b). Teaching from practice: Pedagogies in experience-based programs. Paper presented at the Third International Conference on Practice-Oriented Education (and the annual meeting of the World Association for Cooperative Education), Boston MA, June 17, 2005.

  • Piaget, J. (1967). Six psychological studies. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Resnick, L. (1991). Shared cognition: Thinking as social practice. In L. Resnick, J. M Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition. Washington DC: American Psychological Association.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simon, R. I., Dippo, D., & Schenke, A. (1991). Learning work: A critical pedagogy of work education. New York: Bergin and Garvey.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stanton, T. (1981). Field study exercises. In L. Borzak (Ed.), Field study. Beverly Hills: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). In M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner & E. Souberman (Eds.), Mind in society. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Wallace, A. F. B. (1970). Culture and personality. New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wertsch, J. (1991) Voices of the mind: A sociocultural approach to mediated action. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Thornton Moore.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Moore, D.T. Analyzing learning at work: an interdisciplinary framework. Learn Inq 1, 175–188 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-007-0020-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11519-007-0020-2

Keywords

Navigation