Learning Between School and Work

While learning traditionally belongs to formal education, it has been widely recognized that it also takes place in the workplace. In this respect, there is also general agreement on the importance of the socio-cultural context in which the learning takes place (Tynjala, 2008). Sfard (1998) uses two metaphors — acquisition and participation — to indicate how research understands the concept of how people learn. In the first metaphor concepts “are to be understood as basic units of knowledge that can be accumulated, gradually refined, and combined to form ever richer cognitive structures” (Sfard, 1998, p. 5). In the second metaphor, learning as participation is “conceived of as a process of becoming a member of a certain community” (p. 6). Similarly, the theory of legitimate peripheral participation by Lave and Wenger (1991) emphasizes the knowledge embedded in communities of practice that one can learn through participation. Sfard (1998) contends that, while the two types of learning proposed are quite diverse, giving up one of the two is not possible, as they entail different kinds of learning as content or process. The first metaphor may be more appropriate to school learning, while the second appears to be more appropriate to workplace learning. The modern concept of competence attempts to bring together the different sources of learning that originate from a diverse range of environments.