Varieties of Workplace Learning: An Introduction

Despite twenty years of training reform's in Australia, there are widespread concerns about a ‘skills crisis'. This raises the question: to what extent is this a training crisis, and to what extent is it a crisis in the retention of skilled workers, exacerbated by the new relationships of the workplace? In assembling two quite distinct sets of viewpoints, this symposium invites readers to adopt a broad view of worker education. It includes voices who argue that skills training is but one element of workplace learning, the other being the acquisition of contextual knowledge, formal or tacit, about the employer-employee relationship. The first perspective is a critique of a recent attempt to train managers in the efficient use of ‘relationship’ skills. From here, a longer-term perspective demonstrates how the narrow skills approach can be traced to diffusion of Taylor's educational theory through formal and community-based vocational education systems in NSW. A new perspective is then introduced by a conversation among adult educators, who take the view that workplace learning inevitably involves learning about employer/employee relations. Contributions from South Africa, Canada and Australia consider the relationship between practical activity and the gaining of two aspects of this awareness — union activism and class consciousness. They explore approaches to union renewal and employee participation in shaping learning. Noting the decline of working class communities and of working class education movements, the symposium ends with a suggested explanation for the fluctuating class awareness of those whom the Australian labour movement is currently addressing as ‘working people’.