Situated learning - a workplace experience

Abstract

INTRODUCTION This article describes the procedures and findings of a study of workplace learning arrangements in a mining and secondary processing plant. The evaluation was conducted on-site between July and October 1993, and involved 15 employees of the plant as participants. The study examined the nature and outcomes of workplace learning arrangements, which comprise formal structured learning arrangements and informal learning arrangements experienced as part of everyday work practice. The article commences by outlining the basis for situated learning. The nature of the research method and sample is described next. Three types of formal findings are subsequently reported, through perceptions of the utility of different components of the learning arrangements, providing a comparative analysis among these arrangements and a basis to speculate how types of knowledge are likely to be generated within these arrangements. These findings are then discussed, along with concerns about the development of conceptual understanding through workplace learning and some observations about the role of personal values and epistemologies associated with engaging in learning arrangements. SITUATED LEARNING Situated learning has been defined as a learner executing tasks and solving problems in an environment which reveals the various intended uses of the knowledge (Brown, et. al. 1989). During the last decade there has been an unprecedented interest in situated learning within the educational research community. This interest appears to be the result of developments in theoretical understanding, which includes the acknowledgment of domain-specific knowledge' role in complex thinking, the social basis of learning and the role that activity plays in cognition. These factors are elaborated below. A sustained research effort, over the last twenty years, within cognitive psychology has revealed the significance of domain-specific knowledge to expert performance (Glaser, 1989). A number of studies provided evidence that the presence of a comprehensive and well-structured knowledge base distinguished experts from novices. Views of instruction and learning, which emphasised the development of generally 1 . This article has been developed from the conference paper -Situating learning in the workplace, presented at the After Competence Conference in Brisbane, December 1993. 2 applicable forms of knowledge, are being challenged by this theoretical advance. With the acknowledgment of the role of domain-specific knowledge, has emerged a view that knowledge is