Interdependencies at work : reflection , performance , dialogue and reward

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the relationship between the social and the individual as it is enacted in personal learning and the remaking of cultural practices through work. It discusses progress in a two-year study of the work, working lives and learning of twelve workers. They comprise four groups of three workers in an emergency service, gymnasium, restaurant and IT help desk work settings. The concept of relational interdependence between individual and social agency (Billett 2006), is used to understand how their participation, learning and remaking of cultural practices that comprises their work progresses. In identifying and elaborating bases of these interdependencies and their consequences for changes to individuals’ cognitive experience and sense of self (i.e. learning), and the remaking of cultural practices (e.g. workplace practice), four linked and overlapping bases for understanding the processes of interdependencies emerge. These bases are: (i) reflection and review (i.e. reflection); (ii) performance roles (kinds of selves developed in the workplace); (iii) prospects for dialogue (i.e. opportunities for interpersonal interactions); and (iv) how conceptions of rewards and recognition are constructed. In different, but distinct, ways these four bases provide a means to elaborate interdependencies at work, thereby providing a platform to analyse processes of individual learning and the remaking of work practices and concepts throughout working life. Work, learning and the remaking of work There is enduring interest in the relationship between the social and the individual within the major disciplines of psychology (Rogoff, 1995; Scribner, 1997/1990; Valsiner, 1994), philosophy (Archer, 2000; Bhaskar, 1998) and sociology (Fenwick, 1998; Giddens, 1991) in understanding how people engage in social practices and learn through these experiences. Although different in emphasis, much of the deliberations in these disciplines are focused on the prominence of the contributions of either social structures or individual agency to cultural activity. Such debates address important issues associated with the origins of the knowledge required individually and societally required for participation in cultural activity, such as work. In addition, is the issue of whether and in what ways the individual or the social predominates in the formation (including its remaking and transformation) and learning of knowledge about and for work. These perspectives offer different responses to the question: do individuals bring about personal and cultural change, or is that change dependent upon social forms and structures (Ratner, 2000; Valsiner, 2000)? Here, we propose that the answer is to be found in the dualities comprising relationship between the two. Workplaces provide a useful test bench to investigate and appraise this proposition because they are environments where the diversity of contributions necessary to the production of goods and services witness and manifest the enactments of knowledge that is socially-structured and individually-engaged. In considering the dualities that comprise workers’ personal engagement in work and the transformations of learning and cultural practice that arise from this interactivity, this paper proposes some bases to identify how these dualities play out, can be illuminated and elaborated and understood further. These bases emerge from an ongoing investigation and analysis of groups of three workers each engaged in each of four distinct kinds of work and workplaces. Progressing from the conceptual positions outlined above, the paper is structured as follows. Firstly, the complex relational interdependence central to the dualities comprising the relationship between the social and the individual (or ontogenetic) contributions to individual learning and the remaking of practice are elaborated as the conceptual premises of this paper. Following this, the procedures adopted in the research project are described. Then, using an initial analysis of the data of just three workers, four bases for illuminating and elaborating both the relational interdependence and also the learning and remaking of practice are proposed. These comprise: (i) reflection and review (i.e. reflection); (ii) performance roles (kinds of selves developed in the workplace); (iii) prospects for dialogue (i.e. opportunities for interpersonal interactions); and (iv) how conceptions of rewards and recognition are constructed. Finally, some tentative propositions about the efficacy of these bases are advanced. Interdependencies at work Fundamental to the dualities involved in individuals’ participation and learning through work are those comprising the affordances of the workplace, on the one hand, and individuals’ engagement in the workplace, on the other (Billett, Barker and Hernon-Tinning 2004). Central to these dualities is the relational interdependence that arises between these affordances and individuals’ engagement with them. This is because they interdependent in ways that are relational, rather than mutual or reciprocal. The social experience -the social press -does not and cannot exercise its suggestion comprehensively or unequivocally. As Newman, Griffin and Cole (1989) note, if the social suggestion was clear, unambiguous and potent, there would be little need to communicate because socially sourced and transmitted meaning would be understood unequivocally. It is proposed here that individuals have to engage in the process of remaking culture because they actively negotiate meaning and construe and construct what they experience, drawing upon their cognitive experience, which is in some ways unique to them (Billett 2003). So, neither the social suggestion nor individuals’ agency alone is sufficient to understand learning and the remaking of the cultural practices that constitute work (Billett, Smith & Barker 2005). Hence, both the social and personal are essential in terms of their contributions and how they mediate the agency of the other. Indeed, the social suggestion or press comprising societal norms, practices and values, and their enactment in instances of social practices such as workplaces, is never complete or comprehensive enough to secure socialisation. Here, socialisation is defined as the unquestioned and comprehensive passage of knowledge from the social world to the individual and enculturation as the thorough and unequivocal induction into the particular practices that constitute that knowledge. The terms press and affordances are used here to indicate still other complexities such as the compelling and yet invitational qualities respectively of the cultural enactment of the social suggestion. Yet, as Berger and Luckman (1967) and others propose, the social suggestion is not projected in a way that is likely to lead to socialisation. This is because individuals will engage with the suggestion with greater or lesser reception, and greater or lesser fidelity in its appropriation. Because of limits in the social suggestion and the cultural practices into which they translate, individuals necessarily have to be agentic and active in the construction of meaning, if for no other reason than socially-sourced knowledge requires interpreting and construing to understand what is being suggested. Yet, even beyond simply attending to, engaging with and comprehending what is being suggested, individuals brings a possibly unique base of conceptions, procedures and values to their engagement with social forms and practices. This is because the processes and outcomes of engaging in work activities is more than the completion of tasks and interactions. For many, and perhaps most adults it is the means through which their identity is shaped and exercised (Noon & Blyton, 1997; Pusey, 2003). Therefore, and given the role that individuals’ existing conceptions and processes play in the construal and construction of what they encounter, this process comprises a negotiated relationship arising through participation, with the process and outcomes of that engagement likely to be, in some ways, person dependent (Billett 2006). One way of understanding the learning that occurs through the processes of individuals’ engagement with the social experience they encounter is to use concepts from the socio-cultural project, in particular the inter-psychological processes attributed to Vygotsky (1978): comprising those between the personal and social world. Links between self and work through inter-psychological processes of knowledge formation by individuals can be apprehended through understanding their engagement in ongoing and moment-by-moment individual learning or microgenetic development (Rogoff, 1990). Yet, on the cultural plane, another kind of development occurs. When individuals engage in work tasks and interactions, they are also actively participating in the remaking of those practices (Billett 2006). These conceptual premises seem particularly salient for understanding the learning of the cultural practices that constitute paid work, through practice. Much of what needs to be learnt for vocational practice, has its origins in cultural practices and historical precedents (Scribner, 1985). Consequently, to access this knowledge with its important historical and cultural legacy requires engaging with the social world, because this knowledge does not arise from within the individual. Yet, when individuals engage with this knowledge and reconstruct it, in addition to their individual development, they are remaking these cultural practices at a particular point in time and under particular access to the social suggestion. Their enactment is not through faithful and mechanical enactments of the social suggestion that results in its reproduction. Instead, it is through individuals’ engagement, construal of and construction of those practices, albeit mediated by the exercise of social and cultural norms and practices. The exercise of personal agency, with its varying intensity and focus, is essential in transforming cultural practices because new cultural needs arise, such as those brought about by changing times or technologies. Wertsch (1998) distinguishes between compliant learning (i.e. mastery), which is superficial and may well be the product of forceful or compelling social suggestion of the kind which Valsiner (1998) identifies, and learning in which individuals engage willingly (i.e. appropriation) to a concurrence between what is experienced and individuals’ values and beliefs. Richer or deeper kinds of learning requires effortful engagement buoyed by individuals’ interests and intentionality (Malle, Moses, & Baldwin, 2001). Such learning is most likely to occur when individuals are engaged actively in the process of remaking practices. So, there is an inevitable interdependency between the agency of social world in projecting its suggestion and the agency of individuals in making sense of what is suggested to or afforded them by the particularities of their immediate work