WORKPLACE LEARNING

Theories of Workplace learning

Theories of Workplace learning

Introduction

Work-based learning needs to be distinguished from workplace learning, that form of learning that occurs on a day-to-day basis at work as employees acquire new skills to develop new approaches to solving problems. The paper covers compare and contrast the features of the theory of Communities of Practice as it applied to learning in the workplace with that of Learning Network Theory. Later part of the paper discuss how useful are these two theories that mentioned above in offering an understanding of workplaces as learning sites.

Compare and Contrast the theories of COPs and LNT

The learning- network perspective rejects both a functionalist tool of management approach and a context independent organizational learning view. Instead, it demonstrates how learning networks reproduced by interactions among employees, managers, training consultants and other actors, who have their own theories and strategies in organizing work related learning. Learning networks can thus take various shapes depending both on actor dynamic and work characteristics. Whereas the theory, of communities of practice offers a theory of learning that comes from the following hypothesis: the commitment to a social practice is the fundamental process by which we learn and we evolve as a human being that could have a great impact on the learning process in the working environment (Hawke, 1998, 45).

Communities of practice function in a professional environment and are as such linked to professional practice. A CoP situated within a larger collective that can be understood as a work-based activity system. One example of such a work-based activity system is the workplace. The workplace ordinarily presumed to be an inherently powerful environment for learning.

Where learning Network theory describes the way learning organized in the context of work organizations. According to the LNT, a learning network is operating in every organization. Learning networks are not limited to network-type organizations, or to matrix organizations, or to team-based organizations. People learn in every organization, even in a hierarchical one or a chaotic one, and the learning network merely represents how the learning organized (Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry & Business Council of Australia, 2002, 1).

This concept of a learning network, by the way, has nothing to do as such with computer networks, nor with inter-organizational networks. In the LNT, a learning network consists of the various learning activities organized by the members in the organization. As, communities of practice theory, function in a professional environment and are as such linked to professional practice. A CoP situated within a larger collective that can be understood as a work-based activity system (Harris, 1998, 56).

CoPs are self-directed in that governance is internal, and members, not outside forces such as management, regulate learning needs. These two aspects make up the greatest difference between CoPs and self-directed work teams. As far as learning concerned, in a CoP it is a social collaborative process, not an individual one. Learning stimulated because the equilibrium in the group's social and social-cognitive structure disturbed by the introduction of these new ...