New forms of expansive learning at work: the landscape of co-configuration

A viable theory of work-related learning needs to be founded on an analysis of the historical development of work. A new landscape of learning emerges as work is transformed from mass production and mass customization toward co-configuration of customer-intelligent products and services with long life cycles. The purpose of this three-year project is threefold. First of all, the project aims at creating a conceptual and methodological framework for analyzing the learning demands and potentials of co-configuration work. Secondly, the project will produce a set of tools for the practical mastery and realization of these new learning demands and potentials in three different work settings. The theoretical foundation of the research is the theory of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987, in press). As the theory was created primarily to illuminate transformative learning in single activity systems, the inter-organizational and radically distributed nature of learning in coconfiguration work generates the third aim of the project: serious further development of the theory of expansive learning.