Work as Social Practice: Activities and Interdependancies

Examining work as social practice offers a means of understanding relations between behaviour and the social world; or the mind in activity. Recent views have proposed that cognition is distributed (Hutchins 1991, Resnick, et al 1997) or stretched (Lave 1991) across the social partners and artifacts that comprise the social practice in which they act. Therefore, more than proposing social practice as a context for cognition, it seems necessary to understand the reciprocal, co-constructive nature of knowledge construction, its application and how judgements about its efficacy might arise. Emanating from these concerns, are important factors associated relations between individuals’ thinking, acting and knowing and how they act (Cobb 1998) (or are permitted to act) in social practice such as work (Darrah 1997, Hull 1997). The study of work as social practice may permit these relationships to be understood more clearly. From an investigation of emerging work practice, a basis for understanding work, the requirements for performance and the means for learning these requirements are presented. Based on a scheme comprising activities and interdependencies, it is proposed this work offers a tentative basis to understand relations between work, as a social practice, and individuals’ thinking acting and knowing. 1. Work, workpractice and change It is frequently claimed, the kinds of work, requirements for work performance and how individuals’ engage with work are changing. It follows that, clear understandings of these changes will make the goals and procedures of vocational education better informed and guided. However, identifying widely applicable prescriptions about what work comprises, its requirements or how individuals engage with work are likely be obscured by the way they differ across and within industry sectors. A review of recent studies of work (Billett 1999) provides a basis to consider the changes in the kinds of work taking place and what they mean for educational provisions. In America, for instance, there is an apparent shift away from manufacturing and agriculture, to professional, managerial and service work more generally. However, although, fewer workers are involved directly in agricultural production, more jobs are being created to distribute and transport food and food products. Barley and Orr (1997) noted that definitions of technical work and technical workers have become blurred by the widespread use of (electronic) workplace technology. So there are transformations in the kinds of work individuals do as well as how work is categorised within and across industry sectors. Yet, it would be incorrect to assume that work will become wholly technological or professional. Instead of a wholesale shift to so-called ‘knowledge work’ undertaken in high discretionary work practice, emerges the reality of growth of service sector work, much of which comprises routine tasks and contingent employment (Grubb 1996). Moreover, the concepts of industries or occupations fail to provide a uniform basis because of the diversity of