Learning / Work pptx

Learning/Work
Turning work and
lifelong learning
inside out
Edited by Linda Cooper
and Shirley Walters
Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.za
Published by HSRC Press
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© 2009 Human Sciences Research Council
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Contents
Acknowledgements v
Acronyms vi
Introduction ix
Linda Cooper and Shirley Walters
SECTION I CHALLENGING PERSPECTIVES 1
Challenging dominant discourses 3
1 Turning work and lifelong learning inside out: A Marxist-feminist attempt 4
Shahrzad Mojab
2 But what will we eat? Research questions and priorities for work and learning 16
Astrid von Kotze
3 Hard/soft, formal/informal, learning/work: Tenuous/persistent binaries in the
knowledge-based society 30
Kaela Jubas and Shauna Butterwick
4 Making different equal? Rifts and rupture in state and policy: The National
Qualifications Framework in South Africa 43
Rosemary Lugg
5 ‘Where can I find a conference on short courses?’ 61
Shirley Walters and Freda Daniels
Critiquing structural inequalities 73
6 Challenging donor agendas in adult and workplace education in Timor-Leste 74
Bob Boughton
7 University drop-out and researching (lifelong) learning and work 88
Moeketsi Letseka
8 Barriers to entry and progression in the solicitors’ profession in England
and Wales 106
Hilary Sommerlad with Jane Stapleford
9 Research on Canadian teachers’ work and learning 123

Paul Tarc and Harry Smaller
10 Migration and organising: Between periphery and centre 142
Anannya Bhattacharjee
11 Peripheralisation, exploitation and lifelong learning in Canadian guest worker
programmes 154
Peter H Sawchuk and Arlo Kempf
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SECTION II RECOGNISING KNOWLEDGES 167
12 Learning in emotional labour and emotion work 169
John Field and Irene Malcolm
13 Recognising phronesis, or practical wisdom, in the recognition of
prior learning 182
Mignonne Breier
14 Learning indigenous knowledge systems 194
Jennifer Hays
15 Domestic workers and knowledge in everyday life 208
Jonathan Grossman
16 The gender order of knowledge: Everyday life in a welfare state 220
Gunilla Härnsten and Ulla Rosén
17 Urban mindset, rural realities: Teaching on the edge 235
Barbara Barter
SECTION III EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES, CREATING CHANGE 249
Workers organising/learning 251
18 Learning democracy from North–South worker exchanges 252
Judith Marshall
19 The desire for something better: Learning and organising in the new world
of work 270
Tony Brown
20 A new perspective on the ‘learning organisation’: A case study of a South
African trade union 284

Linda Cooper
21 Learning at work and in the union 296
Bruce Spencer
22 Learning, practice and democracy: Exploring union learning 309
Keith Forrester and Hsun-Chih Li
Pedagogical innovations in higher education 323
23 Critical friends sharing socio-cultural influences on personal and
professional identity 324
Vivienne Bozalek and Lear Matthews
24 Towards effective partnerships in training community learning and
development workers 335
John Bamber and Clara O’Shea
25 Insights from an environmental education research programme in
South Africa 351
Heila Lotz-Sisitka
Contributors 364
Index 368
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v
Acknowledgements
The editors wish to thank:
Mary Ryan for her invaluable editorial assistance;
The Services Sector Education and Training Authority, the South African
Qualifications Authority, the University of the Western Cape, and the University of
Cape Town, for their support in the publication of the book;
Shahrzad Mojab for the inspiration leading to the sub-title of the book;
Malika Ndlovu for permission to use her poem, Singing at the Centre, Dancing at the
Periphery, commissioned for the 5
th
International Conference on Researching Work

and Learning hosted by the University of the Western Cape and the University of
Cape Town, 3 December 2007 in Stellenbosch, South Africa;
The external reviewers of the manuscript for their helpful comments.
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vi
Acronyms
ANC African National Congress
CEO Chief Executive Officer
CHE Council on Higher Education
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
DoE Department of Education (South Africa)
DoL Department of Labour (South Africa)
ETQA Education and Training Qualification Assurance body
HSRC Human Sciences Research Council
ILO International Labour Organization
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NEPI National Education Policy Investigation/Initiative
NGO Non-Governmental Organisation
NQF National Qualifications Framework
NSB National Standards Body
NSFAS National Student Financial Aid Scheme
OBE Outcomes-Based Education
RPL Recognition of Prior Learning
SAQA South African Qualifications Authority
SETA Sector Education and Training Authority
UK United Kingdom
ULR Union Learning Representative
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
US United States

UWC University of the Western Cape
Wits University of the Witwatersrand
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vii
Singing at the Centre, Dancing at the Periphery
Malika Ndlovu
Even from the centre
Where a song of 360º can be sung
Where for half the planet a dawn is beckoning
Precisely at the moment
The other surrenders to a setting sun
Even here
At an axis from which much can be seen and shown
There co-exists a different song, a slower dance
Perhaps even in reverse
Holding the secret to myriad perspectives
From which we have yet to converse
And if our song lengthens
If we deepen our dance
There’s a chance
We can penetrate the surface of assumptions
Scatter the shadows of doubt and cynicism
Hanging in our skies
Expanding our viewpoints
Our definitions
Liberating a vertical and horizontal mind’s eye
Is your centre aware of mine?
Who drew these polarities, these lines?
If I am your periphery
Are we not both at the mercy of gravity?

We do not seek confusion
We are the seekers of knowledge and clarity
Merely releasing illusions
Of authority
Of superiority
Of certainty
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viii
Opening ourselves to the endless fields of possibility
Planting the seeds of questioning
Into the fertile soil of this gathering
Seeking the meeting of visions
Listening deeply for the resonance
The hidden harmonies
Dance with me
I bring my mountain to your shore
Together we manifest more and more
Listen to my story
Buried in this song
There is a place for each of us in it
A space for all voices
To belong
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ix
Introduction
Linda Cooper and Shirley Walters
Every 12 years UNESCO hosts a world conference on adult education known as
CONFINTEA. A key message for the 2009 conference is that we know what policies
and actions are needed for adult learning to make an impact on growing poverty and
inequality worldwide. What is required now is action, with the necessary political and

community will. The scholarship presented in this book feeds into these global debates
and discussions by challenging dominant perspectives and providing illustrations of
action located in a range of contexts in the South, North, East and West.
Background to the genesis of the book
This book has its genesis in the Fifth International Conference on Researching Work
and Learning (RWL5), which was held in Cape Town, South Africa, in December
2007. The conference, which was co-hosted by University of Western Cape (UWC),
the University of Cape Town (UCT), the South African Qualifications Authority
(SAQA) and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), attracted 330 scholars
from 30 countries and provided the space for rethinking ‘work’, ‘knowledge’ and
‘learning’ within a context in which the global economy increasingly challenges the
accepted dichotomies between home life and work life, between employment and
unemployment, and between paid work and unpaid work.
The conference took place against a background where globally and locally, in
both the North and South, the social and economic impacts of globalisation have
been uneven and contradictory, drawing new lines of inequality between core and
periphery, between insiders and outsiders – those at the centre and those at the
margins of contemporary society. As Bauman (1998) has noted, despite the new
freedom of mobility at the centre of globalisation, this freedom to move is a scarce
and unequally distributed commodity: ‘[b]eing on the move’ has a radically different
sense for, respectively, those at the top and those at the bottom of the new hierarchy
(1998: 4). Since the conference, the financial turmoil in the world has exacerbated
these levels of poverty and insecurity.
There is also a new diversity of work, with growing flexibilisation, virtualisation
and rationalisation; blurring of boundaries between work and non-work; and an
increasing spread of non-standard forms of work. Some developments, which at first
glance might seem remote from the labour market (such as ecological changes), will
be of great significance for the future of work (Beck 2000).
The conference posed the question, What theoretical perspectives and evidence from
empirical research might allow us to think more inclusively about work, knowledge

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LEARNING/WORK
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and learning, and in ways that are able to capture the diversity of experiences that
constitute work and learning internationally?
South(ern) African context
The context within which the conference took place inevitably infused the shape and
content of the conference, and this book. South Africa is the dominant economic power in
southern Africa, a region consisting of 14 countries with a wide spread of developmental
needs and great polarities between rich and poor. The countries of southern Africa are
peripheral capitalist economies and their development has been shaped very directly by
this fact, by colonialism, by the macro policies of international development agencies and
by their socio-economic, environmental and cultural realities.
Most of the countries of the region have experienced major political and economic
upheavals in the last 50 years. During this time all of them have been through
more or less traumatic processes of decolonisation. The last five countries to gain
independence or liberation were Mozambique (1975), Angola (1975), Zimbabwe
(1980), Namibia (1990) and South Africa (1994). All five have experienced extended
liberation struggles and subsequent processes of reconstruction and development
towards building new nations. The approaches adopted by the different countries
were shaped strongly by dominant development theories of the time which reflect
particular ideologies and material interests (see, for example, Youngman 2000), and
since then the political and economic upheavals have continued to varying degrees,
with ongoing contestations by citizens in response to the failures of governments to
deliver ‘a better life’ for the majority.
That 10 of the chapters in this book centre on South or southern Africa reflects
the fact that the conference was held in that region. In addition, the contexts of
the region provide a very useful lens to refract global phenomena, as migration of
workers or employers is widespread in the area, and the economic North and South
are intertwined in complex ways. The conference, and now the book, poses questions

on the most useful understandings and approaches to work and lifelong learning in
the interests of the majority of people who are engaging, most often at great personal
and collective cost, in a wide spectrum of economic and social activities to sustain
themselves and the environment. The collection of chapters challenges any simplistic
understandings and argues that multiple viewpoints must be taken into account to
understand learning/work, both locally and globally. However, this does not imply
that a political and moral stand on the side of the majority of girls, boys, women and
men throughout the world should not be taken. Implicit within many of the chapters
is an argument for the promotion of what Prozesky (2007) refers to as ‘citizens of
conscience’ who are concerned with ‘greater, sustainable well-being for all’.
In several of the chapters, the attempts by South Africans to democratise and rebuild
their economic and social lives after the devastating effects of years of legalised racial
oppression (apartheid) and patriarchy are revealed in their diverse and textured
ways. While the South African context is very specific, in many ways it also mirrors
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INTRODUCTION
xi
dominant global/local relationships, and many chapters based in a range of countries
of the world illustrate similar concerns.
Organisation of the book
The book consists of 25 chapters contributed by 34 authors from 10 different
countries. While many of the chapters report on empirical research, others are
sustained reflections on research and theorising of work, knowledge, learning and
power. The chapters have been grouped into three main thematic sections, two
of which are divided into sub-themes, in order to help readers navigate the text.
However, the chapters could easily have been ordered differently, as many of them
address a range of themes, and there is much overlap in terms of thematic focus.
We support strongly the notion that learning/work can be envisaged as a continuous
spiral of pedagogy, politics and organisation – viewed most accurately as concentric
circles rather than discrete activities. The use of the spiral as a metaphor for the

organisation of this book not only signals the iterative relationship between pedagogy,
politics and organisation, but also echoes popular education approaches: starting with
the known, then moving to systematic investigation – adding new information and
theory – then strategising and planning for action, returning once more to interrogate
what has been done, and so deepen possibilities for creating positive change.
With the popular education learning spiral in mind, the first section, or whorl
of the spiral, is titled ‘Challenging perspectives’. The first five chapters make up
the subsection titled ‘Challenging dominant discourses’, with the following six
chapters comprising the subsection headed ‘Critiquing structural inequalities’. All
the chapters in the first section suggest the need to challenge dominant, hegemonic
frameworks for locating and analysing learning/work. The second whorl of the
spiral, ‘Recognising knowledges’, contains chapters that question what and whose
knowledge counts. It broadens understandings and deepens critiques of accepted
assumptions of whose worldviews matter. The third whorl of the spiral is titled
‘Exploring possibilities, creating change’ and focuses on thoughtful action. Here
there are two subsections: the first is a clutch of chapters on the sub-theme ‘Workers
organising/learning’, and the second subsection highlights ‘Pedagogical innovations
in higher education’. All of the chapters are infused in various ways with imaginings
of alternative futures that prioritise social justice and sustainability for the majority
of the world’s people.
Critical contributions of the book
This book aims to make a contribution to the critical literature on lifelong learning
and work. Fenwick (2005), in a review of research on learning and work between
1999 and 2004, notes that although the field of work and learning has ‘expanded
in an unprecedented volume of publication and diverse perspectives’ (2005: 1),
nevertheless ‘[a]n overall impression is that power and politics is not a topic that
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LEARNING/WORK
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is receiving much attention in research on workplace learning’. If it is taken into

consideration, ‘power can best be likened to a backpack that sits outside the study
and never really becomes an intricate part of it’ (2005: 7).
This book departs from some of the mainstream literature on work and learning
reviewed by Fenwick. First, power relations are central to the key issues and themes
of the book. Many of the chapters draw on the perspectives of the radical adult
education tradition, which foregrounds critiques of social relations and practice
rather than ‘how to do workplace learning better’. Second, instead of interrogating
learning/work processes per se, the book critically explores how the global political
economy and policy contexts have shaped social relations and impacted on learning
processes, knowledge hierarchies, and educational policies and practices. The critical
roles of women at work in the factories, fields, streets and homes foreground the
importance of a feminist framing both to understand learning/work and to explore
possibilities for creating positive change.
Shahrzad Mojab of the University of Toronto, and one of the conference keynote
speakers, invited the research community to ‘turn work and lifelong learning inside
out’. There are two key dimensions to this notion of turning work and lifelong
learning inside out. The first is that we cannot understand the significance of
current conceptions of knowledge and learning, or current practices of work-related
education and training, unless we are able to uncover and critically analyse the
social relations that underpin these conceptions and practices. Sometimes this is
possible only by turning current conceptions of learning on their head. For example,
it is widely accepted that the current era of globalisation has hastened the process
of commodification of learning – that is, transforming learning into a possession,
something to be traded for gain in the marketplace; occurring simultaneously –
although less visible – is the parallel process of ‘learning as dispossession’, where
people are stripped not only of their individuality, but also of their very understanding
of their own exploitation.
There is another dimension to the notion of turning work and learning inside out,
one which was richly illustrated in the address by a second keynote speaker at the
conference, Anannya Bhattacharjee, International Organiser for Jobs with Justice.

She argued that in order to transform ‘workplaces of dislocation’, workplace struggles
have to be ‘fought from the inside out’: those at the heart of the system of exploitation
but on the periphery of the international labour market in terms of social power –
migrant workers, contract workers, women workers – have to lead in forging new
ways of organising towards a more just and fair system of work. Thus it is not enough
to research work and learning to support work as it is, but rather there is a need to
research ways in which we can learn to work and learn differently.
Authors in this book share a common starting point: they are critical of (in the sense
of questioning as well as criticising) globalisation’s impact on education and training,
learning and knowledge. Implicitly or explicitly, they set themselves apart from those
who argue that globalisation has been beneficial in a number of ways: for example,
that globalisation has upset old hierarchies of knowledge (Gibbons et al. 1994) and
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INTRODUCTION
xiii
created new status for forms of knowledge associated with the workplace (Barnett
2000); that it has multiplied and diversified sites of, and opportunities for, learning
(Marsick & Watkins 1999; Mathews & Candy 1999; Fenwick 2001); and that it has
created the necessity for education providers to be much more responsive to market
and social needs (Gibbons 2005).
The arguments in this book are premised on the critiques of the new shape of the
labour markets and new forms of work associated with globalisation, put forward
by sociologists such as Castells (2001) and Beck (2000). Castells (2001) shows how
the last two decades have seen increasing polarisation between the new economy
and survival activities, with the labour market becoming unevenly divided into a
globalised, high-skilled labour market on the one hand, and local, ‘generic labour’
in the service sector, and informal and survival sectors on the other. Beck (2000)
writes of the new diversity of work – jobs that are increasingly flexible, virtual,
individualised and temporary, and without social obligations. He points to the
blurring of boundaries between work and non-work, and notes that unemployment

too ‘is becoming invisible, as it seeps away in the no-man’s land between employment
and non-employment’ (2000: 78).
The chapters in the book make a specific contribution to these debates, as
summarised below.
Building a more inclusive definition of work
The polarisation between the ‘new economy’, on the one hand, and ‘generic’ or
‘low-skills’ labour, and work in the informal or survival economies, on the other,
means that large areas of work are devalued and rendered invisible. One of the key
objectives of a number of chapters is to make these forms of majority work visible,
and to point to their essential role in the reproduction of society. For example,
Von Kotze argues for a shift in our views of work as pure commodity production,
to seeing work as the ‘production of life’; with more than 50 per cent of working
people not employed in the formal economy, the informal sector needs to be taken
seriously as a site of research into work and learning. Grossman turns our attention
to the numerous roles played by domestic workers in South Africa, whose work
sits at the intersection of multiple forms of oppression based on gender, race and
class. Sawchuk and Kempf, in their study of guest workers in Canada, argue that
these ‘peripheral transnational labour markets’ are increasingly central to the labour
and learning of the twenty-first century, while Hays’s chapter proposes that the
traditional subsistence practices of San communities in southern Africa need also to
be viewed as forms of ‘knowledge work’.
Illuminating enduring social inequalities
New labour market divisions and new forms of work are associated with more
intense forms of social inequality. Bauman (1998) argues that globalisation ‘divides
as much as it unites’, while Castells (2001: 15) refers to the ‘double logic on inclusion
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and exclusion’, where ‘the global economy is at the same time extraordinarily creative
and productive and extraordinarily exclusionary’.

What implications do these developments have for education and training? From the
outset of the Researching Work and Learning conferences in 1999, participants have
raised critical questions about who benefits educationally in the global economy.
Since 1999, numerous publications have also addressed this question in a critical
vein (for example, Jackson & Jordan 2000; Mojab 2001; Cruikshank 2002; Mojab &
Gorman 2003; Bierema 2006; Maitra & Shan 2007).
In this book, chapters explore how the essential fault lines of global capitalism are
reflected in shifting but enduring inequalities. Letseka shows how the historical legacy
of apartheid in South Africa continues to impact on university students’ chances of
completing their studies as well as finding employment. Boughton examines how
300 years of colonialism and 30 years of oppression under Indonesian rule have left
Timor-Leste the poorest country in Asia, and poses the question of what work skills
people need to find their way out of poverty. Sommerlad focuses on the structural
and cultural barriers to entry to the legal profession in Britain, particularly for the
growing number of students in the ‘new universities’ who are generally from ethnic
minorities and/or lower socio-economic groups. Boughton’s chapter, as well as the
chapters by Von Kotze, Walters and Daniels, and Spencer, critique education and
training policies which, rather than addressing enduring structural inequalities
linked to race, class, gender and ethnicity, may well act to reinforce the historical
exclusion of large numbers of people from access to quality education and training
opportunities. Walters and Daniels illustrate how the discourse of ‘short courses’
naturalises the commodification or ‘take-away’ notion of education and training,
The issue of citizenship is an implicit thread running through several of the chapters.
In his seminal work, Mamdani (1996) provides a rich analysis of the complexity of how
‘citizen’ and ‘subject’ have been constructed in post-colonial states in Africa. While this
book does not deal directly with post-colonial states in Africa, chapters such as those
by Barter, Hays, Härnsten and Rosén, and Boughton echo the themes of the bifurcated
state which reproduces the unequal and highly gendered power relations between
urban and rural, between modern and customary, and between North and South.
Ong (1999, 2006) extends the discussions of differentiated notions of citizenship

by arguing that citizenship is a social process. She develops the concept of ‘flexible
citizenship’ to explain how individuals as well as governments develop flexible notions of
belonging, citizenship and sovereignty as strategies to accumulate capital and power:
[Flexible citizenship] refers to the cultural logic of capitalist accumulation,
travel, and displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and
opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions. (Ong 1999: 6)
The chapters by Sawchuk and Kempf, Marshall, Grossman, Mojab, Härnsten and Rosén,
and Bhattacharjee illustrate these differentiated notions by showing how citizenship is
exclusionary through migration of different kinds, between and within countries.
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INTRODUCTION
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Gaventa (2007) points to the fact that there is a growing crisis of legitimacy in the
relationship between citizens and the institutions that affect their lives. In countries
both in the North and the South, citizens speak of mounting disillusionment
with governments, based on concerns about corruption, lack of responsiveness
to the needs of the poor and the absence of a sense of connection with elected
representatives and bureaucrats. The rights and responsibilities of transnational
corporations and other global actors are being challenged as global inequalities
persist and deepen. Organisations such as trade unions and social movements,
within and across national borders, are rethinking their responses within these
contexts, which are complex and often contradictory. Several of the chapters that
focus specifically on trade union organising, including those by Marshall, Brown,
Cooper, and Forrester and Li, contribute to debates on these issues.
Recognising and challenging continuing hierarchies of knowledge
Contrary to claims that the reorganisation of work under globalisation has led to
significant new demands for skills and knowledge, Livingstone and Sawchuk (2004)
point to the opposite conclusion. They show that in the US and Canada over the
past few generations, there has been only a very gradual net upgrading of the actual
skill requirements of jobs (2004), and that working people are far more likely to be

underemployed in their jobs than to be under-qualified for them (2004). Elsewhere,
Livingstone (2003) concludes that we will find
[the] highest levels of underutilisation of working knowledge in the jobs
held by those in lower occupational class positions, as well as among
those job holders whose general subordination in society has put them
at a disadvantage in negotiations over working conditions, especially
women, younger people, ethnic and racial minorities, recent immigrants
and those labelled as ‘disabled’. (2003: 6)
These findings – specific to Canada but, Livingstone and Sawchuk argue, confirmed
by studies elsewhere – are echoed and expanded upon in a number of chapters in
this book. For example, Mojab argues that when we present accounts of knowledge
that is excluded and/or denigrated, we need to take into account that ‘the waste of the
skilled labour force is endemic to the dynamics of the capitalist society’; for example,
‘immigrant women’s lives are not abnormalities produced by inadequate policies;
rather, these policies are adopted in order to reproduce conditions in which capital
can thrive at the expense of labour’.
Other chapters highlight the underutilisation of many people’s knowledge, due to the
continuing hierarchies of knowledge linked to class, urban–rural divides, gender and
cultural inequalities, and the way these subjugated knowledges challenge hegemonic
conceptions of knowledge. Grossman points to domestic workers as a rich source
of intellectual life that remains unrecognised and under-researched. Breier’s chapter
focuses on the difficulty encountered in an RPL (recognition of prior learning)
process, in making visible the ethical knowledge that underlies the pastoral role
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of teachers, a particularly important role in the current South African context.
Härnsten and Rosén critically examine how the domestic knowledge of women
gained through ‘daily life issues’ has been marginalised in the Swedish welfare state
because of the gendered nature of social citizenship. Jubas and Butterwick draw on

feminist epistemology to challenge knowledge and social binaries that tend to leave
unacknowledged women’s informal learning pathways in the information technology
(IT) field. Hays argues for the value of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) to
humanity, and holds that bringing such knowledge into the formal education system
will undermine its existence and reproduction. Barter’s research shows that rural
teachers feel that their knowledge, and rural knowledge generally, is undervalued
compared to ‘urban’ knowledge, and that there is a need for ‘rural as a concept rather
than rural as an urban problem’.
In their study of ‘hidden knowledge’, Livingstone and Sawchuk (2004) argue that
rather than workers being reluctant to learn, there has been significant growth in
all spheres of learning over time, but particularly in informal learning. They suggest
that ‘adult learning is like an iceberg, with most of it submerged informal learning’
(2004: 11). The chapters in this volume not only play an important role in making
‘subjugated knowledges’ visible, but also show that in the absence of teaching,
learning still happens – even for those in the ‘hidden economy’ and in ‘hidden work’,
who are excluded from the mainstream of education and training. In pointing to
these ‘subjugated knowledges’ and to the rich ‘curriculum of experience’ (see the
chapters by Grossman, Sawchuk and Kempf, and Tarc and Smaller), and in putting
forward alternative epistemologies (see the chapter by Jubas and Butterwick), authors
are not asking for the ‘margins’ to be mainstreamed, but rather for researchers and
practitioners to reposition themselves vis-à-vis the mainstream – that is, to view the
margins as the mainstream.
Reconfiguration and contestation
The needs of the global capitalist economy are not totally determining, however.
Agency at the local level reconfigures the impact of globalisation, and can disrupt
and destabilise it. Policies that are dominant at a global level can be contested and
reconfigured at the regional or local level, and we need to be alert not only to the
‘symmetries’, but also to the ‘tugs and pulls’ between the global and the local. For
example, in her analysis of South Africa’s adoption of a national qualifications
framework (NQF), Lugg shows that however networked our society has become,

it is necessary to maintain a focus on the national state in analyses of education
policy: ‘[i]n a globalising world, the state retains power to fix meanings for education
and training’. She shows how although NQFs have been implemented throughout
the world, they are increasingly taking regionalised forms: ‘local concerns remain
significant as borrowed policies become embedded in local contexts’. Lugg’s chapter
is juxtaposed with that of Jubas and Butterwick, as it describes the NQF as an
ambitious attempt to create a non-binary education/training ladder that merges
education and training.
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The global capitalist economy does not simply impose its footprint on everything,
and its hegemony is never smooth and uncontested. Several authors show that the
global order can be and is being challenged in a variety of ways. A significant cluster
of chapters focuses on the expression of local agency through workers’ education
or popular education initiatives. For example, Bhattacharjee focuses on organising
and learning in migrant/immigrant working-class communities in the US and
India. Trade unions are engaging with workplace training, and contesting the limits
and constraints of work-based learning: Spencer’s chapter focuses on the role of
unions in democratising education in the workplace; Forrester and Li document
campaigning and critical union dimensions to national policy initiatives in work-
based learning; and Cooper alerts readers to the need to keep trade unions and other
popular organisations in mind when discussing the ‘learning organisation’.
New ways of organising and networking – including renewing connections between
the workplace and community – are being forged for the advantage of the working
poor. Marshall explores workers’ exchange programmes as powerful learning tools in
changing workers’ perspectives, and shows how the historic ideological hegemony of
North over South (described in Boughton’s chapter, for example) can be challenged.
Borders/boundaries – or the terms and conditions of borders/boundaries – are being
challenged, and new spaces for learning opened up, as Brown shows through his

discussion of new global union federations, international campaigns to support global
organising and bargaining, and legal efforts that include cross-border litigation.
What is the role of adult educators in these times? A cluster of chapters focusing on
the learning and development of professionals in higher education shows that there
is also considerable room and necessity for the exercise of pedagogic agency, and for
the development of innovative approaches to learning and teaching. Bozalek and
Matthews show how e-learning can be used to build trans-institutional and cross-
continental collaborative learning between social work students in South Africa and
the US focusing in particular on ethical practices; Bamber and O’Shea discuss the
university training of community learning and development workers in partnership
with employees, and argue that conditions of success depend on ‘responsive
academics’, ‘expansive workplaces’ and ‘active learners’; and Lotz-Sisitka continues
the argument for mutual responsiveness from workplaces and the academy if
sustainable development practices are to have effect in countering the negative
outcomes of ever-more-obvious global climate change. Each of these pedagogic
innovations is a carefully crafted illustration of how lifelong learning approaches can
be oriented towards developing ‘citizens of conscience’.
Capturing complexities
As noted previously, authors in this book share a common starting point that is
critical of globalisation’s impact on education and training, and the learning and
knowledge of the majority of citizens. However, they are also mindful to avoid
oversimplification, and concerned to capture the contradictions and nuances of the
real world.
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LEARNING/WORK
xviii
Recent literature has emphasised the specificity of knowledge to context. As Farrell
(2005: 3) has suggested, ‘Time and space still matter, now, perhaps, more than
ever…a single, uniform global context doesn’t really exist.’ Just as there are differential
relationships of people to the global circuits of capital, so the literature points to the

increasingly differential nature of learning and knowledge and its specificity to
context – hence the value of case studies as a means of research. This is the dominant
methodological approach in this book. However, Grossman raises a question about
the robustness of our own methodologies of research – their potential and their
limitations in terms of being able to capture the rich and varied forms of intellectual
life found among ordinary people.
Several chapters try to capture the intricate and often contradictory dimensions of
knowledge. For example, Mojab points to the ‘dual characteristic’ of learning: while
learning produces skill and knowledge, at the same time it perpetuates capitalist
social relations. Field and Malcolm examine some of the particularities of emotional
work, and argue that while it is subject to management control, scripting and
surveillance, it can also express worker agency and identity.
A number of chapters also address dimensions of social relations in different
contexts: power relations do not simply exist between ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed’,
but also pervade relations between different groupings among the oppressed. For
example, as Marshall notes of the labour-exchange programmes that are the focus of
her chapter: ‘Working the global dynamics is not easy. Each union is embedded in
a particular social context, and the North–South power relations do not cease to be
operative simply because all those involved are trade unionists.’
Furthermore, there are always elements of both accommodation and resistance in the
strategies adopted, as shown by Spencer’s study of unions’ responses to management’s
work-based learning initiatives; but valuable understandings and knowledge can be
found precisely in the acts of ‘collaboration’ in which they participate. As Sawchuk
and Kempf argue, ‘[W]orkers understand the game, and…their willingness to play
should not be confused with an endorsement of the rules.’
Limitations and caveats
This book in no way attempts to be comprehensive and we recognise a number of
glaring omissions and limitations. Firstly, the logic of the argument that context
matters implies that insights from the range of examples with very different socio-
economic backdrops cannot simply be transferred. However, they can shed light.

Secondly, various critical areas of concern have not been covered. Some examples
of these are the lack of debate about learning/work for children who are workers
(see Qvarsell 2007); the lack of any systematic discussion of the impact of different
aspects of people’s lives, such as violence, sexuality and spirituality, on learning/
work; and the lack of deeper discussions on identity and community and how these
understandings shape learning/work.
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INTRODUCTION
xix
Words about words
A number of terms used are contentious. We have not tried to standardise their use
across chapters but have left authors to speak from their own contexts. For the sake of
clarity we have avoided using inverted commas around certain terms. In some contexts
it is the convention to refer to race in this way to signal that the term is understood as
not natural but as a socially constructed category. While we share this understanding,
we have not used the convention. However, given the legacy of apartheid in South
Africa, racial groupings remain significant, and we use ‘African’, ‘coloured’, ‘white’ and
‘Indian’ to refer to these. Unless otherwise stated, the term ‘black’ refers collectively
to all three formerly disenfranchised groups. We also use the terms ‘North’, ‘South’,
‘East’, ‘West’ and ‘Third World’ with some reservation, because of the way such terms
can homogenise those regions and implicate all the inhabitants in the politics of
imperialism, obscuring class, racial or ethnic differentiation. We understand these
terms as designating constructs referring to degrees of relative poverty or affluence
rather than to geographic regions. We also support Jubas and Butterwick’s argument
in this volume that binary conceptualisations are both persistent and tenuous, and
we move from an either/or to a both/and understanding of them. In the title of the
book we have tried to capture this by linking learning/work in order to encourage a
different way of talking about how these processes are observed and experienced.
Building capacity for researching learning/work in South(ern) Africa
In South Africa, after 15 years of implementing bold new education and training

strategies to enhance learning at work and realise a more equitable and just society,
there is growing realisation that it is time to pause and investigate systematically
what works, what does not work, and why. It is time to turn work and lifelong
learning inside out, in order to re-examine understandings of work, knowledge and
learning. The chapters in this book help to do this.
Never before in the history of the country have so many resources been made available
to enhance workplace learning, but on a daily basis there are still discussions in the
popular media on ‘the skills crisis’ or ‘skills shortages’. As we see from the chapters
in this book, these are not peculiar to South Africa but must be understood within
the global capitalist economy. Therefore, we are required to challenge perspectives;
to recognise multiple knowledges across social class, gender, race, geography, ability
and age; and to explore transformative possibilities for environmental and human
sustainability. As Lotz-Sisitka states in her chapter:
Sustainable development issues…impact on households at every level of
the social strata, and on all sectors of society. Small and large production
systems are implicated and affected, as are service providers and the social
sectors including the health care sector…Change-oriented workplace
learning processes across the sectors…are necessary for sustainable
development…
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LEARNING/WORK
xx
In summary, the authors in this book argue that power relations are key to
understanding learning/work processes, and that the global political economy and
policy contexts have shaped social relations and impacted on learning processes,
knowledge hierarchies, and educational policies and practices. Therefore work and
lifelong learning need to be turned inside out in order to uncover and critically
analyse the social relations that underpin the conceptions and the practices.
In order to move from where we are to where we aspire to be, researching
learning and work ‘as it is’ is not enough; we need also to be researching how to

learn to learn/work differently. Part of this is to develop scholarship differently,
through encouraging intellectuals within civil society, workplaces, government
and the academy to work together across institutional boundaries to co-create new
understandings and knowledge. The participants in the RWL5 Conference, who are
academics, trade unionists, employers and activist/scholars, have made a significant
contribution to this undertaking, for which we are very appreciative.
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1
Section I
Challenging perspectives
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3
Challenging dominant
discourses
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