Can anyone be a trainer?: towards a more

embedded role for vocational trainers

Professor Lorna Unwin

Institute of Education

University of London

For more information seehttp://learningaswork.cardiff.ac.uk

Research Methods

• Multi-sector study of relationship between learning in the workplace, the organization of work and performance

• Qualitative methods – interviews, ‘work shadowing’, observation, photo elicitation Quantitative – surveys of employees, ‘learning logs’, development of ‘better’ survey questions

Importance of Context for Learning

• Learning in the workplace arises from everyday workplace activity plus specific need (e.g. technological change)

• Learning can be deliberate, unplanned, individual or collaborative, incidental, productive, subversive

• Workplace context shapes the learning environment

Worlds within Worlds: Locating Work within its Productive System

• Organisations operate within productive systems

• External regulation from government, EU, professional bodies, owners

• Ownership - foreign, stock market, family, self-employed

• Role of customers and supply chains

The Workplace as a Learning Environment

• Workplaces are structured environments – can be analysed on an ‘expansive-restrictive continuum’

• Learning treated as homogenous ‘good’ - subversion, complacency, bad practice ignored

• Learning anchored in and manipulated by context

• Managers crucial to supporting and sustaining learning

Software Company – Managers as ‘Teachers’

• HQ is ‘mother ship’ - all training in-house and largely ‘on-the-job’ - rotating teams

• Intensive performance review process - 3, 6 and 9 months for newcomers - every 9 months for all

• After first year, an engineer becomes mentor for newcomer, demonstrates ‘teaching’ skills and progresses to managing up to 5 people

Using Artefacts to Stimulate Learning in an Automotive Plant

• Large group of production Operatives selected to act as ‘tutors’ to new employees

• Designed a ‘live’ tutor pack – available across the factory -workers added new information/ideas to packs

• Built on shared occupational/organisational language

• Artefacts generated as part of everyday activity to stimulate and expose/illuminate learning

Implications for Policy and Practice

• Role of the ‘trainer’ increasingly fluid

• Employees assist each other as part of everyday work activity – young people (e.g. apprentices) can help older workers

• Pedagogical techniques need to be part of every employee’s skill set

• employers need help to create more effective learning environments