Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work: Survey and Case Study Findings

Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work

Lifelong learning is essential to all individuals and in recent years has become a guiding principle for policy initiatives, ranging from national economic competition to issues of social cohesion and personal fulfilment. However, despite the importance of lifelong learning there is a critical absence of direct, international evidence on its extent, content and outcomes. Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work provides a new paradigm for understanding work and learning, documenting the active contribution of workers to their development and their adaptation to paid and unpaid work. Empirical evidence drawn from national surveys in Canada and eight related case studies is used to explore the current learning activities of those in paid employment, housework and volunteer work, addressing all forms of learning, including formal schooling, further education courses, informal training and self-directed learning, particularly in the context of organizational and technological change. Proposing an expanded conceptual framework for investigating the relationships between learning and work, the contributors offer new insights into the ways in which adult learning adapts to and helps reshape the wide contemporary world of work throughout the life course. D.W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work at the University of Toronto, and Professor and Head of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). His books include The Education–Jobs Gap (2004) and Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps (2009).

Lifelong Learning in Paid and Unpaid Work

Survey and case study findings

Edited by D.W. Livingstone

First published 2010 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2010 D.W. Livingstone for selection and editorial material; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright owners, but the author and publisher would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to their attention so that corrections may be published at a later printing. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lifelong learning in paid and unpaid work: survey and case study findings / edited by D.W. Livingstone. – 1st ed. p. cm. 1. Adult education–Canada–Case studies. 2. Continuing education–Canada–Case studies. 3. Working class–Education– Canada–Case studies. I. Livingstone, D. W. LC5254.L54 2010 374'.971–dc22 2009042299 ISBN 0-203-85316-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0–415–56564–2 (hbk) ISBN10: 0–203–85316–4 (ebk) ISBN13: 978–0–415–56564–6 (hbk) ISBN13: 978–0–203–85316–0 (ebk)

Contents

List of figures List of tables Notes on contributors Preface 1 Introduction: a framework for exploring relations between lifelong learning and work in the computer era

vii ix xi xvii

1

D.W. LIVINGSTONE

PART I

13

Surveys 2 Work and learning in the computer era: basic survey findings

15

D.W. LIVINGSTONE AND ANTONIE SCHOLTZ

PART II

Case studies of unpaid work and learning 3 Odd project out: studying lifelong learning through unpaid household work

57 59

MARGRIT EICHLER

4 Volunteer work and informal learning: exploring the connections

79

DANIEL SCHUGURENSKY, FIONA DUGUID AND KARSTEN MÜNDEL

PART III

Case studies of paid work and learning 5 Revisiting Taylorism: conceptual implications for studies of lifelong learning, technology and work in the public sector PETER H. SAWCHUK

99 101

vi Contents

6 Women’s experiences of the good, the bad and the ugly of work in a ‘knowledge-based’ society: learning the gender politics of IT jobs

119

SHAUNA BUTTERWICK AND KAELA JUBAS

7 Beginning from disability to study a corporate organization of learning

137

KATHRYN CHURCH, CATHERINE FRAZEE AND MELANIE PANITCH

8 Teachers’ learning and work relations: (shifting) engagements and challenges

155

PAUL TARC AND FABRIZIO ANTONELLI

PART IV

Case studies of transitions between education and work 9 Challenging transitions from school to work

173 175

ALISON TAYLOR

10 Biographical transitions and adult learning: reproduction and/or mobilization

193

PIERRE DORAY, PAUL BÉLANGER, ELAINE BIRON, SIMON CLOUTIER AND OLIVER MEYER

PART V

Concluding reflections

215

11 Reflections on results of Canadian studies and German perspectives on work-related learning

217

BERND OVERWIEN

12 ‘Not just another survey’: reflections on researchers’ working and learning through investigating work and lifelong learning

222

STEPHEN BILLETT

13 Reflections on the WALL research network and future studies of work and learning

234

D.W. LIVINGSTONE

Index

241

Figures

2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7

7.1 7.2 10.1

Distribution of hours of all informal learning, respondents reporting participation in any informal learning, 1998–2004 Informal learning topics related to household work, eligible respondents, 1998–2004 Volunteer work-related informal learning topics, eligible respondents, 1998–2004 General interest informal learning topics, all respondents, 1998–2004 Organizational change over last five years, employed respondents, 2004 Topics of job-related informal learning, employed respondents participating in informal learning, 1998–2004 Age and participation in past year in further education course, learning about computers, and any informal learning activities, all respondents, 2004 Interrelations of human activity The dynamic context for relations of work and learning Age and participation in further education, 2004

21 29 30 30 34 38

45 147 150 202

Tables

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16

2.17 2.18 2.19

Forms of activity and learning Computer use in paid workplaces in Canada, employed labour force, 1989–2004 Participation in any further education courses in past year, all respondents, 1998–2004 Participation in further education by schooling, 1998–2004 Total informal learning (average hours per week), all respondents, 1998–2004 Incidence of informal learning by level of schooling, 1998–2004 Participation in and duration of general housework, all respondents, 1998–2004 Performance of housework by sex, couples employed full-time compared with all other couples, 2004 Unpaid childcare, all respondents, 2004 Unpaid eldercare, all respondents, 2004 Volunteer work in organizations, all respondents, 2004 Unpaid help friends and neighbours, all respondents, 2004 Participation rates in informal learning related to paid and unpaid activities, eligible respondents, 1998–2004 Average (mean) hours of informal learning by activity, all respondents, 1998–2004 Usual weekly paid hours, 1976–2004 Employment status, all respondents, 1998–2004 Economic class distribution, employed respondents, 1983–2004 Schooling, further education and participation in job-related informal learning participation rates by economic class, employed respondents, 1998–2004 Employer support for courses by economic class of employees, 2004 Computer skills match with requirements of job, employed respondents, 18 to 65, 2004 Credential match, employed respondents, 1983–2004

1 3 19 19 20 22 24 24 25 26 26 27 28 31 32 32 35

36 37 40 41

x Tables

2.20 2.21 2.22 3.1 4.1 7.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5 10.6 10.7 10.8 10.9 10.10 10.11 10.12 10.13

Proportion underutilizing educational credential by economic class, employees, 1983–2004 Credential underutilization by age, employed respondents, 1998–2004 Economic class and job experience by credential underutilization, non-managerial labour force, 2004 Major life changes of participants in the past five years Dimensions and categories of volunteer work Forms of activity and learning Incidence of transition and gender, 2004 Types of transitions and prior formal schooling, 2004 Participation in further education and informal learning by type of transition, 2004 Participation in further education and transitions, 2004 Participation in formal adult education according to level of former schooling and occupational transitions, 2004 Participation in further adult education and retirement, 2004 Participation in formal adult education according to gender and retirement, 2004 Participation in further education according to retirement and health, 2004 Participation in further education according to retirement and level of schooling, 2004 Participation in further education according to birthplace and immigration, 2004 Participation in further education according to level of education and immigration, 2004 Participation in further education according to occupational status, birth place and immigration, 2004 Migration and perception of education–job match, employed labour force, 2004

42 43 43 61 81 147 198 198 199 200 200 203 203 204 204 206 206 207 208

Contributors

D.W. Livingstone is Canada Research Chair in Lifelong Learning and Work at the University of Toronto, Head of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT), and Director of WALL (see www.wallnetwork.ca). His recent books include The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives (Sense Publishers, 2008) (edited with K. Mirchandani and P. Sawchuk) and Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps (University of Toronto Press, 2009). Fabrizio Antonelli is a doctoral student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He works with university, government and federation partners in areas of research that include teachers’ work and learning, work education and curriculum studies. Originally trained as a secondary school teacher, Fabrizio is currently completing his thesis entitled ‘Workplace Learning in Secondary Schools: An Examination of Ontario’s Venture into Formal Career Education’. Paul Bélanger, after directing research centres on education and work in Canada, became Director (1989–2000) of the UNESCO Institute for Education in Hamburg, Germany. He is now Professor at University of Quebec at Montreal (UQAM) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Lifelong Learning (CIRDEP). He has published books and articles on lifelong learning, adult education participation, transnational analysis of policies, on work-related learning and on adult literacy. He is President of the International Council for Adult Education. Stephen Billett is Professor of Adult and Vocational Education at Griffith University, Australia. He publishes in the fields of vocational learning, workplace learning and learning for vocational purposes. His books include Learning through Work (Allen and Unwin, 2001) and Work, Change and Workers (Springer, 2006), and edited books include Work, Subjectivity and Learning (Springer, 2006) and Emerging Perspectives of Work and Learning (Sense, 2008). He is founder and editor-in-chief of Vocations and Learning: Studies in Professional and Vocational Education (Springer).

xii Contributors

Elaine Biron is Professor of Sociology in CEGEP Saint Laurent in Montréal. She was a research assistant in the Inter-university Research Center on Science and Technology (CIRST) in the Department of Sociology of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), where she did her doctorate. She is now conducting a project on peer tutoring in the human sciences. Shauna Butterwick is Associate Professor of Adult Education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. She has focused much of her research on women’s learning, particularly in informal/non-formal learning contexts. She was the project leader on the WALL case study exploring women’s alternative and informal pathways to information technology jobs. Kathryn Church is Associate Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University, where she also directs the research programme for the Ryerson-RBC Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education. Her research practice is an experiment in fusing ethnographic studies of ruling with arts-informed methods of writing and representation. Kathryn is among a handful of academics who have documented the activist work of the Canadian psychiatric survivor movement. She is co-editor of Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices (Springer, 2008). Simon Cloutier is a doctoral student at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and a member of the Work and Lifelong Learning research network. His master’s thesis, using both quantitative and qualitative data, studied the relations between professional transitions and participation in adult education. He has also contributed to various qualitative research projects and is currently a teaching assistant at the UQAM and a research assistant at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute. Pierre Doray is Director of the Inter-university Research Center on Science and Technology (CIRST) in the Department of Sociology of the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Within the domain of educational sociology, his current research is focused on post-secondary student pathways, on adult education participation, and on regulation and mode of governance in the domain of work-orientated education and training. He is a member of the Conseil Supérieur de l’Éducation of Québec and President of its Adult Education Commission. Fiona Duguid is a policy and research analyst in the Co-operatives Secretariat with the federal government. In this capacity, she provides advice on policy and programme issues at national and sectoral levels, as well as coordinates the cooperative research agenda for the federal government. She is also a sessional lecturer at Carleton University in the Sociology and Anthropology Department. Margrit Eichler is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT). Her many

Contributors

xiii

publications deal with feminist and other social justice issues. Her most important concern at present is the climate crisis we are facing, and to conceptualize how it relates to social justice issues. She is Vice President of BIAS FREE Inc., a workers’ co-op, that utilizes an integrative analytical approach to deal with all types of hierarchy problems. Catherine Frazee is Professor of Distinction in the School of Disability Studies at Ryerson University, and Co-director of the Ryerson-RBC Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education. As a writer, educator and activist with particular interests in disability culture and resistance, her work is informed by life experience as a disabled woman and by varied and long-standing involvements in the equality struggles of marginalized groups in Canada. Kaela Jubas is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary. As a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia, she was a research assistant on the case study, ‘Women’s Informal and Alternative Lifelong Learning for Jobs in the IT Sector’. Interested in the pedagogical importance of popular culture, she now explores how identity, ethics and pedagogy are represented in two television shows set in teaching hospitals (Grey’s Anatomy and Scrubs), and how consumption of the shows fosters informal, work-related and social learning among undergraduate nursing and medical students. Oliver Meyer graduated with a BA in sociology from the University of Montreal, which included a certificate in conflict studies from the University of Colima, Mexico. He is currently a graduate student at University of Ottawa in the School of Translation and Interpretation. His research includes studies of students in post-secondary education, e-learning and assessment of immigrant workers’ integration. He is a member of the Work and Lifelong Learning research network. Karsten Mündel is Assistant Professor in the Global and Development Studies programme at the Augustana Campus, University of Alberta. He also directs Augustana’s Learning and Beyond Office, which supports experiential learning in off-campus settings internationally, in the outdoors and in communities. His research areas include sustainable agriculture, the social economy in rural communities, learning through volunteering, and place-based learning. Bernd Overwien is Professor at Universität Kassel in Germany. His main fields include civic education/citizenship education, global education and informal learning. His English publications include ‘Informal Learning and the Role of Social Movements’ (International Review of Education, 46(6), November 2000) and ‘Informal Learning and the Role of Social Movements’ (in M. Singh (ed.) Meeting Basic Learning Needs in the Informal Sector: Integrating Education and Training for Decent Work, Empowerment and Citizenship, Dordrecht: Springer, 2005). Melanie Panitch is Director of the School of Disability Studies, a position she has held since the School was founded in 1999, and Co-director of the

xiv Contributors

Ryerson-RBC Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education. Drawing on her deep roots in the disability rights movement, she has recently published a history of activist mothering in the Canadian Association for Community Living, titled Disability, Mothers and Organization: Accidental Activists (Routledge, 2007). Peter H. Sawchuk is Professor of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He specializes in the area of work, learning, resistance and technological change. His authored, co-authored and co-edited books include Adult Learning and Technology in Working-Class Life (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Workplace Learning: A Critical Introduction (University of Toronto Press, 2004), Hidden Knowledge: Work and Learning in the Information Age (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), Critical Perspectives on Activity (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work (Sense Publishing, 2010). Antonie Scholtz is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), and a member of the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) research network. He has co-authored a number of publications, including ‘Knowledge Workers and the “New Economy”: Facts and Myths’ (in L. Teperman and H. Dickinson (eds) Reading Sociology: Canadian Perspectives, Oxford University Press, 2007). His doctoral research uses qualitative and quantitative methods to study the relationship among specialized knowledge, changing organizational forms and class. Daniel Schugurensky is Associate Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), and Coordinator of the Adult Education and Community Development Program. His research and teaching interests include lifelong learning, popular education, citizenship learning, participatory democracy, and comparative and international education. Among his recent publications are Four in Ten: Spanish-Speaking Youth and Early School Leaving in Toronto (Latin American Research Education and Development Network (LARED), and the Transformative Learning Centre, OISE/UT, 2009), ‘The Learning Society in Canada and the USA’ (in M. Kuhn (ed.), New Society Models for a New Millennium: The Learning Society in Europe and Beyond (Peter Lang, 2007, pp. 295–334), and ‘ “This Is Our School of Citizenship”: Informal Learning in Local Democracy’ (in Z. Bekerman, N. Burbules and D. Silberman (eds), Learning in Hidden Places: The Informal Education Reader (Peter Lang, 2006). Paul Tarc is Assistant Professor in Education at the University of Western Ontario. His research in the area of teachers’ work and learning is informed by his experiences as a K-12 classroom teacher in Canada and internationally. Other research interests include international education, globalization and education, pedagogy, media education and teacher education.

Contributors

xv

Alison Taylor is Director of the Work and Learning Network and Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Alberta. Recent publications related to high school apprenticeship and school-to-work transition appear in the Journal of Youth Studies, Journal of Education and Work and Journal of Vocational Education and Training. She is also the co-editor of Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work (Sense, 2010) and author of The Politics of Educational Reform in Alberta (University of Toronto Press, 2001).

Preface

In advanced market societies, many aspects of life have been converted into monetized vendible commodities and most others are prone to conversion (e.g. Slater and Tonkiss 2001). This continuing commodification centrally includes work, which is commonly portrayed in terms of payments received for selling one’s labour or the fruits of one’s labour. It also includes learning, which is often seen in terms of credentials and financial benefits that might be gained through formal education. A very common focus in studies of relations between work and learning is on investment in formal education as human capital and on income gains in the sphere of paid work (e.g. OECD 2007). The basic purpose of this book is to suggest ways of going beneath and beyond apparently simple commodified measures of formal educational credentials and paid labour to comprehend relations between work and learning much more fully. The movement of most married women with children into paid employment and the political influence of the women’s movement since the 1960s have stimulated growing numbers of studies in advanced market societies of unpaid household work that resists commodification. Now human capital theories predicting growing wealth from more investment in formal education have reached their limits with the emergence of chronic overeducation or underemployment; hence, greater attention is being devoted to informal learning in paid workplaces. Widespread accessibility of personal computers may also stimulate informal learning projects. There have been some surveys to ‘monitor’ some basic features of lifelong learning (e.g. OECD 1998) and there is a growing research literature on informal learning in paid workplaces (e.g. Rainbird, Fuller and Munro 2004). But, to date, there have been very few studies of relations between work and learning that have considered both unpaid work and informal learning, or their relations with paid work and formal education. This book suggests a conceptual framework for conducting such expansive studies of work and learning, and applies it to do empirical research. The Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW) at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) was founded over a decade ago (see www.learningwork.ca) and is sponsored by the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education and the Department of

xviii Preface

Adult Education and Counselling Psychology at OISE/UT. The CSEW mission is to pursue investigations of all aspects of learning that may be relevant to work. ‘Learning’ includes both formal and informal aspects, and ‘work’ includes paid employment, household work and community volunteer activities. The research activities of CSEW have been funded primarily through research network grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). The New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) network was funded by the SSHRC between 1998 and 2002. The NALL research developed an expansive framework for (paid and unpaid) work and (formal and informal) learning studies, and conducted the first national survey in the world of these forms of learning and work in 1998, as well as a series of over 30 exploratory case studies (most now available through the NALL website: www.nall.ca). The Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) research network was subsequently funded by the SSHRC from 2003 to 2008. WALL further explored the array of learning activities of adults, relations between work and learning practices, and differences in these learning and work relations between socially disadvantaged groups and others. The WALL research team addressed these issues by conducting a large-scale, country-wide 2004 survey and 12 related case studies to provide unprecedented documentation of lifelong learning and work relations (for further information, see www.wallnetwork.ca). Many members of CSEW assisted in the research reported in this book. CSEW coordinator D’Arcy Martin and CSEW secretary Rhonda Sussman, as well as NALL research coordinator Reuben Roth and WALL research coordinator Ilda Januario, played key roles in organizing the various activities in these networks. Both the NALL and WALL networks contained large teams of academic researchers, community partners and graduate students, most of whom are identified on the respective network websites. Thanks for technical assistance are due to Doug Hart and Milosh Raykov, who conducted most of the statistical analyses for both the survey and the case studies, as well as to Fabrizio Antonelli and Susan Stowe. Antonie Scholtz deserves particular recognition; in addition to collaborating on the basic survey findings chapter, he assisted in reviewing and formatting other chapters. The WALL international advisory committee included workplace learning researchers from several countries (Elaine Bernard, Stephen Billett, Keith Forrester, Veronica McGivney, Bernd Overwien and Kjell Rubenson), who offered valuable guidance throughout the project. We are most grateful to the many people who gave of their time to discuss their work and learning with us in the surveys and case studies. The major financial market meltdown beginning in 2008 and the burgeoning threat of global environmental degradation should provoke realization of how fragile human societies preoccupied with commodity exchange can be, and of how narrow conceptions of work as paid employment and learning as formal education are implicated in this preoccupation. This book may make a small contribution to the recognition and valuing of the paid and unpaid labours and the continual learning in these labours that working people actually do – and hopefully can continue to do – to underpin and sustain human societies.

Preface

xix

The book is dedicated to the memory of Karl Marx, who inspired researchers to look beneath the surface of labour market exchanges to comprehend actual labour processes, and to our late colleague and NALL project leader, Alan Thomas, who consistently urged looking beyond formal education. DWL September 2009

References Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (1998) ‘Lifelong learning: A monitoring framework and trends in participation’, in Centre for Educational Research and Innovation Education Policy Analysis 1998, Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2007) ‘Lifelong Learning and Human Capital’, Policy Brief, July. Paris, France: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Rainbird, H., Fuller, A. and Munro, A. (2004) Workplace Learning in Context, London, ON: Routledge. Slater, D. and Tonkiss, F. (2001) Market Society: Markets and Modern Social Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press/Blackwell.

Chapter 1

Introduction A framework for exploring relations between lifelong learning and work in the computer era D.W. Livingstone

Appeals for lifelong learning are a common response to the apparently increasing demands of work in advanced market societies. Growing information content of jobs, proliferation of information technologies based on micro-electronics and small computers, and widening global competition to produce more informationladen goods and services more efficiently are presumed to require greater learning efforts from both the current labour force and prospective workers. This book questions this widespread presumption and offers extensive empirical assessments of relations between work and learning. The basic question is: ‘What are the actual learning responses of adults to the demands of work in contemporary advanced market societies?’

A wider conceptual framework The book is distinctive in basing its assessments on a more inclusive framework than prior studies for understanding relations between learning and work. The conceptual frame includes a continuum of formal and informal learning, and considers unpaid household work and volunteer work as well as paid employment. Prior research has ignored learning in household work and volunteer work, and has also given little attention to relations between formal education and informal learning in paid work. An adequate understanding of contemporary relations between learning and labour requires careful consideration of both unpaid as well as paid forms of work, and of informal as well as formal learning activities. As Table 1.1 suggests, in advanced market societies there are at least four conceptually distinguishable forms Table 1.1 Forms of activity and learning Basic forms of activity

Forms of learning

• • • •

• • • •

Paid employment Unpaid household work Community volunteer work Leisure (sleep, self-care, hobbies)

J I

Formal schooling Further education Informal education Self-directed learning

2 D.W. Livingstone

of basic activity (paid employment, household work, community volunteer work, and leisure including hobbies, self-care and rest) and four forms of learning (informal training, self-directed informal learning, initial formal schooling, and further or continuing adult education). ‘Work’ is now commonly regarded as synonymous with ‘earning a living’ through paid employment in the production, distribution and exchange of goods and service commodities. But most of us still must also do some household work, and many need to contribute to community volunteer work in order to reproduce ourselves and society. Both household work and volunteer work are typically unpaid and underappreciated, but they remain essential for our survival and quality of life (see Waring 1988). Household work, including cooking, cleaning, childcare and other often complex household tasks, has been largely relegated to women and gained some public recognition only as women have gained power through increased participation in paid employment. As community life has become more fragmented with dual-earner commuter households, time devoted to community work to sustain and build social life through local associations and helping neighbours has declined, and the productive importance of this work has been rediscovered as ‘social capital’ (Putnam 2000). All three forms of labour should be included in any careful accounting of contemporary work practices. Leisure refers to all those activities we do most immediately for ourselves, albeit often out of necessity, including sleep, self-care and various hobbies. ‘Learning’, in the most generic sense, involves the gaining of knowledge, skill or understanding anytime and anywhere through individual and group processes. Learning occurs throughout our lives. The sites of learning make up a continuum ranging from spontaneous responses to everyday life to highly organized participation in formal education programmes. The dominant tendency in contemporary thought has been to equate learning with the provision of learning opportunities in settings organized by institutional authorities and led by teachers approved by these authorities. Formal schooling has frequently been identified with continuous enrolment in age-graded, bureaucratically structured institutions of formal schooling from early childhood to tertiary levels (see Illich 1971). In addition, further or continuing adult education includes a diverse array of further education courses and workshops in many institutionally organized settings, from schools to workplaces and community centres. Such continuing education is the most evident site of lifelong learning for adults past the initial cycle of schooling. But we also continually engage, as we always have, in informal learning activities to acquire knowledge outside of the curricula of institutions providing educational programmes, courses or workshops. Informal education or training occurs when mentors take responsibility for instructing others without sustained reference to a pre-established curriculum in more incidental or spontaneous situations, such as guiding them in learning job skills or in community development activities. Finally, all other forms of explicit or tacit learning in which we engage either individually or collectively without direct reliance on a teacher/mentor or an externally organized curriculum can be termed self-directed or collective informal learning. As Allen

Introduction

3

Tough (1971, 1978) has observed, informal learning is the submerged part of the iceberg of adult learning activities. It is likely that, for most adults, informal learning (including both informal training and self-directed learning activities) continues to represent our most important learning for coping with our changing environment. No account of lifelong learning can be complete without considering people’s informal learning activities as well as their initial formal schooling and further adult education courses through the life course. As will become evident in the following chapters, all of these basic activity and learning distinctions are relative and overlapping. For example, volunteer work may be done as preparation for paid work and also be paid (see Chapter 4). Among leisure activities, sleep may involve thinking about paid or unpaid work, hobbies such as making crafts may become works sold for pay, and self-care can be seen as work particularly when needed to prepare for paid work (see Chapter 7 and Matthews forthcoming). Most pertinently, virtually all other activities involve learning. To distinguish basic forms of activities, and even more so to distinguish different forms of learning, is primarily a means to emphasize the expansive character of both work and learning. The conceptual frames of many prior studies of work and learning have been preoccupied with paid employment and formal education and are far too narrow. Virtually all forms of human activity and learning are relational processes rather than categorical ones. Valuable flows of knowledge may occur among these four basic forms of learning and the other forms of our activities. The basic assumption in this book is that in information-rich societies all forms of work and learning are implicated in each other and cannot be effectively understood unless their interrelations are investigated.

General perspective We can begin with two evident social facts. First, there has been a very rapid widening and deepening of use of computerized information technologies since the invention of small personal computers in the late 1980s, a period that may be termed the ‘computer era’. For example, Table 1.2 shows the growing prevalence of computer use among the employed Canadian labour force. In 1989, fewer than 40 per cent of workers were using computers in their paid workplaces; by 2004 over 80 per cent were. A greater amount of information is accessible to more people than ever before. Second, whereas the majority of married women with children in prior generations had devoted themselves largely to unpaid work, most now re-enter paid Table 1.2 Computer use in paid workplaces in Canada, employed labour force, 1989–2004

Use computer N

%

1989

1994

2000

2004

38 5332

51 6134

77 24,130

85 1741

Sources: Statistics Canada 1989, 1994, 2000; WALL survey 2004.

4 D.W. Livingstone

employment to continue their careers and/or make household ends meet. Between 1976 and 2003, the participation rate for Canadian women with children aged 6 to 15 grew from 47 to 77 per cent; for women with children under 6, it doubled from 31 per cent to 66 per cent. As a consequence, women’s general participation rate in paid employment reached 62 per cent by 2003. Whereas women made up only 31 per cent of the employed labour force in 1971, by 2003 they constituted 47 per cent (Statistics Canada 2004). While men’s labour force participation rate has declined marginally, the overall participation rate of the working-age population has reached the highest ever recorded level, with over two-thirds of all adults involved in paid employment. So, there has been a very rapid computerization of paid work at the same time as the performance of unpaid work has become increasing problematic as the women who had previously done the bulk of it moved into paid employment. In this context, research attention to the lifelong pursuit of information and knowledge beyond formal educational institutions and particularly in both paid and unpaid work is very timely. The general theoretical perspective used in the present studies posits an intimate connection between the exercise of workplace power and the recognition of legitimate knowledge, with greatest discrepancies between formal knowledge attainments and paid work requirements for the least powerful, including members of lower economic classes, women, visible minorities, recent immigrants, older people and those identified as disabled (Livingstone 2004). The present studies have been inspired by contemporary theories of adult learning that focus on the learning capacities of adults outside teacher-directed classroom settings, such as Malcolm Knowles’ (1970) work on individual self-directed learning and Paolo Freire’s (1974, 1994) reflections on his initiatives in collective learning through dialogue. Both theorists stress the active practical engagement of adult learners in the pursuit of knowledge or cultural change. General theories of learning by experience, emphasizing either the development of individual cognitive (Dewey 1916) or tacit (Polyani 1966) knowledge, also inform these studies. Other theories of cognitive development take more explicit account of subordinate groups’ sociohistorical context (Vygotsky 1978). All of these approaches to adult learning encourage a focus on informal learning practices situated in the everyday lives of ordinary people. The studies of work and learning included in this book can be seen as contributing to increasing attention to this perspective (see Lave and Wenger 1991; Engestrom, Miettinen and Punamaki 1999; Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004). All of these learning processes occur within advanced capitalist market economies, the most distinctive features of which continue to be: (1) inter-firm competition to make and sell more and more goods and services commodities at lower cost for greater profits (see Brenner 2000); (2) negotiations between business owners and paid workers over the conditions of employment and knowledge requirements, including their relative shares of net output (see Burawoy 1985); and (3) continual modification of the techniques of production to achieve greater

Introduction

5

efficiency in terms of labour time per commodity, leading to higher profits, better employment conditions or both (see Freeman and Soete 1994). These features lead to incessant increases in the types of commodities for sale, and shifts in the number of enterprises and types of jobs available. At the same time, popular demand for general education and specialized training increases cumulatively as people seek more knowledge, different specific skills, and added credentials, in order to live and qualify for paid jobs in such a changing society. Technological change, including tools and techniques and their combination with the capacities of labour, has experienced extraordinary growth throughout the relatively short history of industrial capitalism. Technological developments from the water mill to the steam mill to interconnected mechanical and electronic networks continually serve to expand private commodity production and exchange, while also making relevant knowledge more widely accessible. The microelectronic computer era and the rise of global financial circuits have almost certainly contributed to the acceleration of these change dynamics of capitalist economies (Harris 1999). In rapidly globalizing markets, more and more people are drawn into the pursuit of waged labour, with an educational ‘arms race’ for formal credentials and consequent growth of underemployment (Livingstone 2009). Most notably for the current research, these dominant features of advanced capitalist economies drive workplace learning to become increasingly linked to computerization and unpaid work to become increasingly drawn towards paid work. The empirical studies presented in this book emphasize different aspects of work and learning practices. But all studies address a wide array of adult learning responses to the demands of computerization, the redistribution of paid and unpaid work or other recent workplace changes in contemporary advanced market societies; and all address connections between workplace power and recognition of knowledge.

Research methods All studies include theoretically informed decisions in the selection and interpretation of evidence. Ensuring both representative selection and valid interpretation in the same study is extremely difficult – some would say impossible. In survey research, representativeness is typically considered to require random selection of a large number of respondents from a population. In interpretive case study research, more open conversation between the researcher and the researched is deemed necessary to reach valid understanding. Generally, survey researchers do not have the time, resources or disposition to achieve interpretive validity; interpretive researchers do not have the time, resources or disposition to achieve representative samples. Yet, surveys’ statistical profiles cannot tell compelling human stories; case study stories cannot address the question of the extent of the human conditions to which they speak; hence, the continuing quest to combine statistics and stories effectively. The empirical studies reported in this book are based on a research design that attempts to combine survey and case study methods. Building on prior case

6 D.W. Livingstone

studies of self-directed informal learning (Tough 1978), a large-scale Canadian national survey was conducted by the New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) research network in 1998. This survey included mostly pre-coded questions about formal and informal learning in both paid and unpaid work. Over 30 related open-ended case studies focused on varied work and learning contexts were also completed in the 1998 to 2002 period (see www.nall.ca). On the basis of the NALL research, the Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) research network was developed. The WALL research network was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from 2003 to 2008. The WALL network involved a 2004 national survey of work and learning, and 12 related case studies conducted during the 2004 to 2008 period (see www.wallnetwork.ca). All of these studies included data on paid and unpaid work as well as formal and informal learning. The initial designs of the WALL survey and case studies were developed with dialogue and meetings including the survey and case study research teams. The results of the 2004 national survey were provided to identify some specific questions for further case study inquiries, and preliminary case study reports were shared with the survey research team to assess the consistency of some findings. However, as will become apparent in reading the following chapters, WALL researchers have combined quantitative survey and qualitative case study methods in diverse ways. Of course, there was substantial debate within the WALL network about the feasibility of incorporating the insights of these two quite different research traditions (see Jackson 2005). This debate involved the problem of relying on simple prior definitions of types of learning, the quite different ways of seeing and understanding through survey research and more interpretive methods, and the extent to which specific findings gathered by largely pre-coded survey questionnaires could be reconciled with those generated through more open and intensive engagement with participants in some case studies. As Nancy Jackson (2005: 22) observed midway through the research activities of the WALL network: [Ideally] survey questions mostly build directly upon and thus extend the indepth knowledge already gained in each of the case studies. Done this way, the surveys would add detail about the ‘extent’ of the activities, circumstances or relationships already outlined in the case study. In my view, this is an excellent – perhaps the best? – way to combine these two research methods. The interpretive case studies ‘explore’ for depth and comprehension, on a small scale, and the survey comes along behind and ‘counts’, on a larger scale. It is a winwin situation. But in the work of the WALL network, we have not had this luxury. For a variety of institutional reasons, the timing and staging of different kinds of work has meant that the case studies findings did not come first, and so they could not strongly feed and inform the WALL national survey. Furthermore, the survey is strongly influenced by the need to be ‘cumulative’ in relation to past and future research in the survey tradition. Thus, advantages

Introduction

7

to being ‘guided’ by the kinds of questions and answers found in interpretive research are counterbalanced by other considerations. In some respects, it remained true throughout the life of the WALL network that the survey cart was in front of the case study horse. The WALL survey research did draw on the prior NALL case studies and was also somewhat informed by a deepening array of interpretive case studies of workplace learning (e.g. Billett 2001). Both types of WALL studies continued to exchange and discuss each other’s growing evidence; some studies made concerted attempts to use both types of evidence interactively (see, e.g., Chapters 3 and 8 in this book). Further studies in this field should make concerted research design efforts to place the case study horse before the survey cart, while retaining some linkage to basic survey findings.

Basic survey findings Data from the 1998 NALL and 2004 WALL national surveys provide the main sources of evidence on patterns and trends in work and learning. These data provide the only known estimates to date of the extent of self-reported informal learning1 in relation to unpaid work, as well as evidence on employment conditions, formal education and socio-demographic background based on national population surveys. Some of the general findings of these surveys are: • •

• •

•

a substantial amount of complex learning occurs in household work and volunteer work; self-reported informal learning generally exceeds and is more important to adults than further formal education; Tough’s (1978) metaphor of informal learning as the submerged part of the ‘iceberg’ is confirmed; substantial informal learning continues through the life course into old age, as well as among the least schooled and the chronically unemployed; economic class positions are fairly closely related to schooling, less closely related to further education participation and very little related to informal learning; formal educational attainments increasingly exceed educational requirements for jobs; with increasing levels of underemployment (i.e. surplus of attainments to requirements), especially among industrial and service workers.

The survey findings on the changing relations of formal and informal learning with paid and unpaid work are discussed in more detail in Chapter 2. These findings are intended to provide some general contextual evidence for the following case studies into the complexity of workplace learning in contemporary advanced market societies.

8 D.W. Livingstone

Case studies The WALL case studies investigated learning and work relations in three basic learning contexts: unpaid work, paid work and transitions through the life course. All of these studies provide new insights into little explored dimensions of work and learning.2

Unpaid work and learning In the first ever substantial case study on unpaid household work and learning, Margrit Eichler describes the difficulty in studying learning related to household work: first, there is a near absence of research on the topic; and, second, many people often don’t think about their activities in the home as ‘work’ and therefore have difficulty in identifying learning related to this work. Using interviews with a range of participants, Eichler finds that, contrary to widely held assumptions, household work frequently involves complex tasks, challenging arrangements of child- and adult care, and changes in the type and performance of household tasks through the life course. These and other conditions like disability and immigration lead to learning that is intensive, sustained, usually informal, and often unrecognized even by the individuals engaged in it. Echoing Eichler, Daniel Schugurensky, Fiona Duguid and Karsten Mündel’s study of learning related to volunteer work finds that little research exists on the topic, that such labour is rarely considered work, and that the learning related to it is frequently informal and therefore not captured in research that emphasizes formal learning. Drawing on available definitions of volunteer work, Schugurensky, Duguid and Mündel propose a typology that recognizes the variation and complexity of volunteer labour. Through the different case studies examined in this research, they find volunteer learning is in most cases context specific and involves a diversity of abstract and concrete knowledge. They also find that the type and amount of learning is largely related to the personal histories and motivations of the volunteers, and to the activities and organizational culture of the volunteer organizations. They observe that voluntary organizations provide few opportunities for volunteers to reflect individually and collectively on their learning experiences, and argue that volunteers in community organizations are more likely to affect long-lasting social change when they can reflect on their informal learning, draw explicit lessons and act upon them.

Paid work and learning The case studies focused on paid work and learning examine ways in which recent reorganization and computerization are related to workplace learning strategies from the standpoints of workers coping with these changes. In the first case study, Peter Sawchuk argues that Fredrick Taylor’s Scientific Management approach remains highly relevant for understanding technological and organizational

Introduction

9

restructuring. In examining downsizing of the public sector, where social workers use ‘workarounds’ to cope with wholesale computerization of their relations with clients, Sawchuk finds that Taylorist impulses continue to animate change but there is no clear trend to deskilling (or upskilling). Instead, Taylorism in practice is characterized by worker resistance, the formation of new skills and persistent contradictions. In the second case study on paid work, the learning strategies women use to enter, survive and navigate in the rapidly changing information technology (IT) sector are illustrated. Here, Shauna Butterwick and Kaela Jubas find women’s experience in the IT sector to be diverse and often paradoxical. Participants reported ‘good’ outcomes such as more opportunities to access well-paid jobs, recognition of skills and a lack of gender-based discrimination. Further exploration, however, reveals that gender discrimination was operating when participants identified ‘bad’ outcomes, including heavy workloads that made balancing work and family difficult, and more vulnerability during times of rationalization because of women’s perceived lack of ‘hard’ IT skills. Finally, the authors, in keeping with their ‘Wild West’ theme (with research based in western Canada), identify the ‘ugly’ side of IT work where, for some participants, patriarchal practices continue to shape the way women are perceived as IT workers. Third, Kathryn Church, Catherine Frazee and Melanie Panitch have identified a number of learning strategies created by people with disabilities in the context of employment by a large corporation. The study challenges the organization of a literature base that keeps disability, work and learning as separate rather than relational categories. It proceeds across ‘silos’ to grasp what is going on for disabled employees who are learning in mainstream paid employment. Church and her team found that disabled workers are busy as both learners and informal teachers on the job. Study participants were enthusiastic about the ways that computer technology facilitates their employment – it has created previously unimaginable possibilities for communication – but they worry about the extent to which the ‘invitation’ of computer technology also translates to new demands that are difficult to meet. In either case, technology does not resolve the persistent complexities of social interaction that disabled employees experience in relation to their co-workers and managers. Such difficulties go to the heart not just of their job performance but to their sense of belonging to the socio/cultural world of paid work. This case study points to layers of disability-related tasks located in the mix of work/home/community that, while not job-related, are essential to success at paid work. Of particular significance is the complex relation between disabled employees and support workers in the interweaving of paid work with care work. The final case study on paid work and learning is reported by Paul Tarc and Fabrizio Antonelli. The WALL teachers’ study presents the findings of the first national surveys of Canadian teachers’ formal and informal learning practices, also conducted in 1998 and 2004, and of further focus groups and time diaries. This evidence provides unprecedented insights into the learning activities and changing working conditions of a professional group responsible for guiding effective tran-

10 D.W. Livingstone

sitions of the next generation to adulthood. Key findings suggest that teachers are acutely aware of the value of informal learning and collaborative learning with colleagues, and they have embraced the idea of lifelong learning. However, their educational institutions and professional development regimes have not adapted very effectively to support teachers’ learning needs. The paid work studies collectively show not only the extent of workers’ learning activities but the ways this learning can challenge and reshape official organizational objectives, received technologies and entrenched prejudices. These findings also illustrate how workers’ learning efforts sometimes function to enable and sustain organizational strategies that intensify effort, reduce job security and legitimize socio-technical restructuring that degrades the quality of work.

Transitions The third set of case studies examines transitions from formal education to paid employment, and between education and work through the life course. Three major learning and work transition points have been widely presumed in past generations: school entry, school to employment, and retirement from employment. But the majority of students leaving secondary schools now move back and forth between the labour market and post-secondary and further education programmes, and may continue to do so through much of their careers to enhance their job prospects. As noted above, married women with jobs and with children to care for also increasingly move back and forth. Retirement from paid employment now comes in many forms from early or partial to late or never, while unpaid volunteer work by older people is increasingly being recognized as a valuable and necessary activity. Virtually all attempts to construct distinctive transition points, maturation stages or life passages are revealed on close examination as ideal types with many variants modified through active work and learning choices. First, Alison Taylor offers critical analyses of conventional notions of linear transitions from school to paid work, of formal schooling as primarily instrumental investment in human capital, and of the merits of corporate partnerships. Her study then shows the limitations of the public–private efforts through analyses of recent national survey data on transition patterns, as well as the personal experiences of teachers and students in different trade apprenticeship programmes. Taylor finds that school-to-work (STW) programmes rarely account for inequalities that make linear progress difficult and that, in fact, concerns with efficiency and industry involvement in STW programmes often mean that social inequalities are perpetuated. The second transitions study examines the types and intensity of learning during different kinds of life transitions. Pierre Doray, Paul Bélanger, Elaine Biron, Simon Cloutier and Oliver Meyer trace this transition-initiated learning through the life course on the basis of questions in the 2004 national survey and follow-up interviews with people who indicate major transitions in later life. The team finds that intentional learning is not universal during transitions but instead depends on a

Introduction

11

complex set of structural and personal factors tied to educational attainment, immigration, and if the transition is to a new job or into retirement. In summary, the various WALL case studies draw on the profiles found in the WALL national survey to varying extents. Taken as a whole, they show in substantially more depth that workplace learning is more complex and extensive than normally thought. For example, substantial informal learning related to household work and volunteer work is transferable to paid employment but virtually all of it is currently ignored. The paid work case studies reveal that there is continual learning and job reshaping among even the least formally educated (Livingstone 2009). Similarly, the widely presumed transition points of school entry, school to employment, and retirement from employment are now more diffuse and complex.

Concluding reflections The final part of the book offers brief general reflections from members of the WALL research network’s international advisory team (Stephen Billett and Bernd Overwien)3 and the network leader, Livingstone, on the relevance of this research and implications for future studies of learning and work. If further studies widen their conceptions of work and learning somewhat and attend more fully to relations between different forms of each, the efforts of this network will have been worthwhile.

Notes 1 See Chapter 2 for further discussion of the limits of survey measures of informal learning. 2 Four other WALL case studies were conducted. These focused on: at-risk, low-income manufacturing and nursing home workers (Verma); marginalized immigrant workers (Shragge); pharmaceutical workers (Belanger); and workers involved in union-sponsored anti-racism education programmes (Ng and Jackson). Reports on these projects may be found on the network website: www.wallnetwork.ca. 3 Two other members of this advisory committee (Keith Forrester and Veronica McGivney) retired prior to the preparation of this publication.

References Billett, S. (2001) Learning in the Workplace: Strategies for Effective Practice, Sydney, AU: Allen & Unwin. Brenner, R. (2000) Turbulence in the World Economy, London: Verso. Burawoy, M. (1985) The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism, Brooklyn, New York: Verso Books. Dewey, J. (1916) Democracy and Education, London, UK: Macmillan. Engestrom, Y., Miettinen, R. and Punamaki, R.L. (eds) (1999) Perspectives on Activity Theory, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Freeman, C. and Soete, L. (1994) Work for All or Mass Unemployment?, London, UK: Pinter Publishers.

12 D.W. Livingstone Freire, P. (1974) Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York, NY: Herder & Herder. Freire, P. (1994) Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum. Harris, J. (1999) ‘Globalization and the Technological Transformation of Capitalism’, Race & Class, 40(2/3): 21–35. Illich, I. (1971) Deschooling Society, New York: Harper & Row. Jackson, N. (2005) What Counts as Learning? A Case Study Perspective. Paper presented at the Second Annual WALL Network Members’ Conference, ‘Discovering the Terrain of Learning and Work: Preliminary Analysis’, Toronto, 19–20 June. Online: available at http://www.wallnetwork.ca (accessed 30 September 2010). Knowles, M. (1970) The Modern Practice of Adult Education, New York: Association Press New York. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2004) The Education–Jobs Gap: Underemployment or Economic Democracy (2nd edn), Aurora, ON: Garamond Press. Livingstone, D.W. (ed.) (2009) Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Livingstone, D.W. and Sawchuk, P.H. (2004) Hidden Knowledge: Organized Labour in the Information Age, Aurora, ON: Garamond Press. Matthews, A. (forthcoming) ‘Encounters with the Self: Disability and the Many Dimensions of Self-Care’, in E. Eichler, P. Albanese, S. Ferguson, N. Hyndman, L.W. Liu and A. Matthews (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Polyani, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension, Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Putnam, R. (2000) Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon & Schuster. Statistics Canada (1989) General Social Survey. Cycle 4: Education and Work (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer)/Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (1994) General Social Survey. Cycle 9: Education, Work, and Retirement (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer)/Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (2000) General Social Survey. Cycle14: Access to and Use of Information Communication Technology (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer)/Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (2004) Women in Canada: Work Chapter Updates 2003. Catalogue no. 89F0133XIE, Ottawa, ON: Ministry of Industry. Online: available at http://www.statcan. gc.ca/pub/89f0133x/89f0133x2003000-eng.pdf (accessed 17 September 2009). Tough, A.M. (1971) The Adult’s Learning Projects: A Fresh Approach to Theory and Practice in Adult Learning, Research in Education Series No. 1. Toronto, ON: Institute for Studies in Education. Tough, A. (1978) ‘Major Learning Efforts: Recent Research and Future Directions’, Adult Education, 28: 250–263. Vygotsky, L. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Waring, M. (1988) If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.

Part I

Surveys

Chapter 2

Work and learning in the computer era Basic survey findings D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

Introduction ‘Lifelong learning’ is now a mantra invoked to address changing conditions of work and a widening array of other challenges in the contemporary world, but little quantitative research attention has been devoted to estimating the extent of this phenomenon. This chapter reports the findings of the first Canadian survey of formal and informal learning practices in 1998 by the New Approaches to Lifelong Learning research network, the NALL survey. These findings are compared with those from the 2004 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey of the formal and informal learning activities of Canadian adults. The NALL and WALL surveys address adults’ formal educational attainments, enrolment in further education courses, and participation in informal education and self-directed informal learning activities related to paid and unpaid work and general interests, as well as various questions about paid and unpaid working conditions and social background. The evidence offers some empirical basis for more substantive discussions of dimensions of and trends in lifelong learning. Before the survey findings are presented, a few limitations on estimating learning activities should be noted. Learning is a continual process with moments of greater intensity and identifiability. Empirical identification of forms of learning depends on conceptual distinctions that suggest discrete categories for a process that often occurs in and across a variety of contexts. The distinctions between formal education, further education courses, informal education and self-directed informal learning as defined in Chapter 1 continue to be actively debated and also contrasted with more implicit and reactive forms of learning (see Smith 2000). But for purposes of these survey we assume: (1) that formal and informal learning are best understood as a continuum with interplay and overlap between different learning activities (Colley, Hodkinson and Malcolm 2003); (2) that informal learning activities have tended to be ignored or devalued by researchers and policy makers (Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004); and (3) that survey methods that necessarily rely on respondents’ self-reports can only begin to comprehend the extent of informal learning by documenting self-consciously registered informal education and self-directed learning that respondents recognize (Livingstone 2005). To

16 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

study informal learning using the sample survey techniques normally required for representative readings of human behaviour, we have to focus on those things that people can identify for themselves as deliberate learning activities beyond prescribed curricula and without externally authorized instructors. Tacit or latent informal learning is increasingly recognized as substantial and significant (e.g. Marsick and Watkins 2001) and the following WALL case studies attempt to identify less explicit aspects of informal learning through more in-depth interviewing or other more sensitive methods. But the focus of short surveys of adult informal learning is necessarily on self-reported learning that ignores the depths of everyday tacit learning. In addition, the NALL and WALL surveys focus on adults’ postcompulsory formal education, with ‘adult’ defined in both national survey samples for practical selection criterion as those over age 18. A few other surveys have included informal learning and will be referred to where relevant.1 Again, we remain under no illusion that such survey questionnaires are capable of uncovering deeper levels of either individual or collective knowledge gained in informal learning practices. But, together, the 1998 and 2004 surveys offer fuller empirical evidence than prior research of basic patterns of continuity and change in dimensions of self-reported informal learning, their associations with levels of formal education and further education, as well as their relations with paid and unpaid work.

The 1998 and 2004 Canadian surveys of work and learning practices The 1998 NALL survey of adults’ current learning was the first large-scale survey in Canada and the most extensive one anywhere to attend to the array of adults’ self-reported learning activities, including informal learning as well as schooling and further education courses, and also to address paid and unpaid work. The 1998 survey included 1562 Canadian adults. Detailed information on the NALL survey was reported in Livingstone (1999) and is now available through the WALL website at <www.wallnetwork.ca>. Given greater funding, the 2004 WALL survey, conducted in 2004, includes 9063 adults aged 18 and over, who speak English or French, and reside in a private home (not old age/group homes/penal or educational institutions) with a telephone.2 All households and individuals within households were given an equal chance of selection using random-digit dialling. The average telephone interview time was around 30 minutes. Again, the limits of a short self-report survey to comprehend the extent of informal learning should be registered. The general response rate was 51 per cent of the eligible households – 58 per cent if we exclude the households whose eligibility was not determined. The NALL survey was identical in most respects, interview time was very similar, and the response rate was slightly higher at 60 per cent. The data presented here are weighted by known population characteristics of age, sex and educational attainment to ensure profiles are representative for Canada as a whole. A summary of the basic 2004 findings follows, with comparisons to the 1998 NALL survey as well as

Work and learning in the computer era

17

to the few other relevant surveys. It should be noted at the outset that there is no statistically significant difference in the two surveys between actual participation rates in further education or in the general types of informal learning. The NALL and WALL national surveys document changes in work conditions over this six-year period, provide profiles of workers’ perceptions of conditions and changes in paid and unpaid work, and generate the first systematic empirical assessments of changing work conditions in relation to the continuum of adult learning practices. WALL survey questions were constructed to be comparable to many other surveys. These include the 1982–83 Canadian Class Structure (CCS) survey (Clement and Myles 1994), the 2001 Canadian Census (Statistics Canada 2003a), the Canadian General Social Surveys (Statistics Canada 1989, 1994, 2000, 2003b), the 1999 Workplace and Employee Survey (Statistics Canada 2001b), and the 1998 and 2003 Adult Education and Training Surveys (AETS) (Statistics Canada 1999; Peters 2004). Comparable items were also drawn from international surveys such as the 2002 United States General Social Survey (Davis, Smith and Marsden 2003), the 1997 UK Skill Survey (Felstead, Gallie and Green 2002), and the 2000 Third European Survey on Working Conditions (Paoli 1997; Paoli and Merllié 2001).3 We know of no other surveys that have covered such a wide array of learning and work activities. Analyses of these national-level findings include associations among all of these aspects of learning and work, as well the influences of age, sex, economic class, race and disability. The WALL case studies have conducted special focused analyses of the WALL survey data and some have completed their own follow-up surveys in conjunction with their in-depth interviewing. Some of the findings are cited in this chapter, some in the case study chapters. As discussed in Chapter 8, a country-wide 2004 survey of teachers’ learning practices was also conducted that links to a prior survey of teachers conducted by NALL in 1999. Further relevant findings can be found at . The NALL and WALL surveys not only provide extensive estimates of learning and work activities in Canada, but offer interested researchers an opportunity to conduct comparative and longitudinal analyses.4 There are benchmarks here for future large-scale studies of learning and work in advanced market economies. The following sections of this chapter first present general profiles of adult learning, followed by analyses of unpaid work, the relation of unpaid work to learning, then analyses of paid work, the relation of paid work to learning, and finally the incidence of learning through the life course. A short summary of the findings concludes the chapter.

A learning society in practice Much public discourse assumes that most adults are not orientated to learning and need to be motivated into joining the ‘learning society’ so that they can become productive members of a ‘knowledge-based economy’ where skill demands are increasing rapidly. A central objective of the NALL and WALL surveys has been to estimate the range of adults’ recognized learning activities. The results in this

18 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

section are presented in terms of formal schooling, further adult education (or continuing education) and self-reported informal learning generally. Later sections address learning in relation to work.

Formal schooling The NALL and WALL surveys confirm that Canada is one of the most highly schooled societies in the world. Participation in post-secondary formal education has expanded rapidly over the past two generations.5 In 1961, the proportion of the 25 to 34 age cohort that had completed a university degree was less than 4 per cent. By 2001, the completion rate had increased to 28 per cent. The increase in completion of community college diplomas was also rapid, with rates rising from about 4 per cent in 1961 to 21 per cent in 2001. In addition, 12 per cent were qualified in a trade through some form of apprenticeship in 2001. So, by 2001, over 60 per cent of Canadian adults aged 25 to 34 had credentials beyond the secondary level. Of all the advanced market economies, Canada had attained the highest cumulative level of university and college completions by 2002, with 21 per cent of those in the ‘working-age population’ from 25 to 64 having a university degree and 22 per cent having a college credential. Only the USA had significantly higher cumulative university completion rates (29 per cent) but much lower college completion rates. From a small minority in the 1960s, a growing majority of young Canadians are now completing post-secondary schooling. The rapid expansion of post-secondary formal education is a very important contextual feature for understanding the growth of further education.

Further education Participation in all types of further education also expanded rapidly from about 4 per cent in 1961 to 35 per cent in the early 1990s, according to Statistics Canada surveys (Livingstone 2002). The NALL and WALL surveys asked about participation in all types of further education courses in both 1998 and 2004. As summarized in Table 2.1, these surveys found further education rates for the 18 and over population increasing to over 40 per cent by 2004. The available evidence suggests that Canadian further education participation has grown over the past two generations to more than ten times the 1961 rate. But participation remains lower than that of most Nordic countries with more fully developed institutional provisions (Statistics Canada 2001a; Desjardins, Rubenson and Milana 2006). The Canadian further education system still suffers from significant accessibility barriers, most notably inconvenient times and places, as well as the high cost of courses (Livingstone, Raykov and Stowe 2001; Myers and de Broucker 2006). The available evidence suggests that, especially for those with limited formal education, many who are capable of benefiting from advanced schooling and would like to participate in further education face the most substantial barriers (Livingstone and Myers 2007).

Work and learning in the computer era

19

Table 2.1 Participation in any further education courses in past year, all respondents, 1998–2004 Year

1998 2004

Taken any further education (including current students)

Taken any further education (AETS – excluding most current students)*

%

%

43 45

40 42

N

1565 9026

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004. Notes * This is the measure used by Statistics Canada in the AETS up to 1997. This indicator excludes fulltime students under 20 years of age in high-school diploma programmes or under 25 years of age in post-secondary programmes, unless their education is supported financially by an employer (Statistics Canada, 2001a).

Schooling and further education The most consistent finding in research on education has been the strong association between greater formal schooling and participation in further education. Table 2.2 once again confirms that these two forms of education continue to be mutually reinforcing. With increasing educational attainment, the likelihood of participating in further education courses increases. Both forms of formal education have made huge gains since 1960 and the participation gap in further education may be narrowing. But participation still tends to reproduce prior differences in educational attainments, with university graduates about three times as likely to participate as high-school dropouts. So, in terms of formal education, Canada is now the most highly schooled society in the world; over 40 per cent of adults are now participating in further education courses annually. Other advanced market societies have seen similar growing trends in formal schooling in recent generations. In this formal sense, both Canada and most other advanced market societies can increasingly be described as ‘learning societies’. Table 2.2 Participation in further education by schooling, 1998–2004 Taken any further education (including current students)

No diploma High school diploma Community college University degree Total

% % % % % N

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004.

1998

2004

18 53 58 70 43 1548

23 48 52 63 45 8863

20 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

Informal learning The design of the NALL and WALL surveys drew on many prior case studies and several prior international surveys of informal learning (see Livingstone 2001). Most research on informal learning has focused on self-directed activities. Selfdirected informal learning is surely a major component of all informal learning since the individual is the final agent, and self-reports naturally will be self-referential. However, informal education by more experienced mentors is also likely to be an essential element in acquisition of basic knowledge on most topics. These social relations of learning processes are inherently difficult to assess through individual survey questionnaires; while some surveys have touched on aspects of informal education with a mentor, informal education and self-directed informal learning are rarely distinguished. The NALL and WALL surveys only begin to address informal education. Respondents were asked if they learned informally over the past year about several topics in relation to respective types of work or to general interests. General interest topics closely paralleled those used by Tough (1978), with the notable addition of computer learning. Work-related learning topics were generated through review of prior case studies of paid and unpaid work, as well as NALL pilot studies. The limited survey administration time allowed only brief responses to general pre-coded topics. The WALL survey repeated the same basic set of questions. The comparative findings are summarized here for informal learning overall. Later sections address informal learning in relation to unpaid and paid work. Tough’s (1978) array of primarily Canadian case studies and a 1976 US national survey (Penland 1977) found that the vast majority of adults reported significant involvement in self-directed learning projects and that the average time involvement was estimated at around ten hours per week in all informal learning activities. The NALL and WALL surveys are not fully comparable with prior research as they are not limited to self-directed informal learning projects, and they inquire about work-specific as well as general interest learning. In any event, as Table 2.3 summarizes, when these different aspects of informal learning are considered in aggregate, the participation rate of Canadian adults in some form of intentional informal learning is very high (92 per cent in 1998 and 91 per cent in 2004). Considering Table 2.3 Total informal learning (average hours per week), all respondents, 1998–2004 Year

1998 2004

Do any informal learning

Average hours per week*

%

%

92 91

16 14

Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 1565); WALL survey 2004 (N = 9024). Notes * Average hours per week are calculated as the mean of only those doing informal learning.

N

1565 9024

Work and learning in the computer era

21

all forms of self-reported informal learning for all respondents, the time devoted averaged around 14 hours per week. These time estimates are of similar magnitude to earlier case studies and the few generally comparable prior country-level surveys.6 These estimates can also be considered in the context of available estimates of overall time use based on detailed diaries of daily activities. The most recent Canadian General Social Survey on Time Use (Statistics Canada 2005) found that, based on time diaries covering a 24-hour period in 2005, only 10 per cent of those aged over 15 had participated in educational activities, for an average of half an hour a day. However, the general population also registered over five hours per day of free time beyond paid and unpaid work, sleeping and eating. This translates into over 30 hours per week that could be devoted to intentional informal learning, among other activities. Much informal learning is likely to be interactive with work and other activities, and difficult to distinguish from them. In terms of detailed estimates of general time constraints, the NALL and WALL estimates of informal learning appear plausible. There is wide variation in self-reported time devoted to informal learning. This variation is reflected in Figure 2.1. About a third claimed to spend less than five hours per week in all informal learning, a quarter spent between six and ten hours, a fifth spent 11 to 20 hours, and the remaining fifth spent over 20 hours per week. These are rough estimates. But the overwhelming majority of adults report that they are now spending significant and recognizable amounts of time regularly in intentional informal learning pursuits.

40 33 30 26

25

26

26 23

21

% 20

20

10

0 1/2 to 5 hours

6 – 10 hours 1998

11 – 20 hours

More than 20 hours

2004

Figure 2.1 Distribution of hours of all informal learning, respondents reporting participation in any informal learning, 1998–2004 Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 1443); WALL survey 2004 (N = 7423).

22 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

Statistics Canada estimates of time devoted to further education courses in both 1997 and 2003 averaged around 150 hours per year (Peters 2004: 12), less than three hours per week – or close to one hour per week if averaged over the entire adult population. NALL and WALL survey estimates for further education time are very similar. Estimates of time spent in self-reported informal learning activities are much more approximate, given their more seamless, less discrete character. But the NALL and WALL results are well over ten hours per week on average, so the analogy of the iceberg to compare adults’ formal and intentional informal learning activities (Tough 1978) remains quite apt.

Formal education and informal learning Tough’s (1979) studies found no significant relationship between levels of schooling and the incidence of self-directed informal learning. As Table 2.4 shows, the NALL and WALL surveys also find that respondents at all levels of schooling report 80 per cent or greater participation in and similar amounts of time devoted to intentional informal learning. This is not a remarkable finding if one considers that humans inherently cope with their changing environment by learning, and that informal learning can be done anytime, anywhere, whereas higher levels of schooling involve both sustained effort and substantial access barriers. However, the huge, hidden informal part of the iceberg of adult learning should have some further connections with the more visible and easily measured ‘cap’ of formal education above it. A few recent surveys focused on intentional informal learning activities to develop specific competencies have begun to identify some relations with school attainment. The 2003 AETS finds an association between higher school attainment and a few specific job-related informal learning activities over a month-long period (Peters 2004: 17, 44). The 2003 international ALLS Table 2.4 Incidence of informal learning by level of schooling, 1998–2004 Level of schooling

1998 Do any informal learning

No diploma High school diploma Community college University degree Total

% 81 % 97 % 97 % 99 % 92 N 1548

2004 Average hours per week*

Do any informal learning

Average hours per week*

16 15 14 13 16 1407

80 94 96 96 91 8861

15 15 13 12 14 7423

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004. Notes * Average hours are calculated as mean of those reporting any informal learning.

Work and learning in the computer era

23

(Desjardins et al. 2006: 54–56) finds that those with higher levels of formal education more commonly use computers and the internet, and depend on reading and scientific education, when engaging in informal learning. Longitudinal research in 2004 with the continuously employed sub-sample from the 1998 NALL survey finds that those who did not participate in adult education courses during this period tended to reduce their participation in job-related informal learning over time (Livingstone and Stowe 2007). As Table 2.4 suggests, there may be a tendency for early school leavers to be somewhat less involved in general self-reported informal learning. But the vast majority of school dropouts remain actively engaged in informal learning and devote similar amounts of time to it as more highly schooled people. Further analysis of the WALL survey has found that, regardless of level of schooling, unionized employees involved in organizational and job-design decisions in their workplaces tend to be more involved in informal learning in some areas, such as keeping up with new knowledge in their job fields (Livingstone and Raykov 2008). Recent case studies find that many workers with limited schooling are achieving high levels of competency through informal mentoring and their own informal learning efforts (Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004). Subsequent research on relations between level of schooling and different types of informal learning may reveal other significant patterns. As advanced market economies become increasingly information-based, lifelong learning in all of its aspects is frequently heralded as very important. The NALL and WALL surveys confirm that a very large part of adults’ learning is done informally. The most important point to register here is that a very large part of adults’ intentional learning is done informally and, regardless of their formal schooling, most adults should be recognized as continuing, actively engaged informal learners. The failure of much research and policy making to recognize the significant amount of learning that occurs outside of formal contexts is consequential for all less credentialed people, but in particular it marginalizes the work and learning of those performing unpaid labour.

Unpaid work Both household work and community volunteer work are typically unpaid and underappreciated, still suffering the legacy of marginalization as ‘women’s work’, but they remain essential for survival and quality of life in contemporary societies. Household work is differentiated from and includes ‘housework’. Household work includes not only such housework tasks as cooking, cleaning and managing schedules but also other complex tasks like childcare and eldercare. Volunteer work includes support activities through diverse community organizations as well as assistance to neighbours. Here we estimate the current extent of these types of work based on self-reports, before going on to assess the learning activities associated with unpaid work in the following section.

24 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

Household work: housework, childcare and eldercare Housework According to the 1998 and 2004 surveys, virtually all women and men did some general housework (including cooking, cleaning, shopping, home budgeting, yard work, home maintenance) on a weekly basis in both years. As Table 2.5 summarizes, over 95 per cent of both women and men claimed to have done such work. But, as the table also shows, women still devote substantially more weekly time to housework, an average of 20 hours versus 12 hours for men. The 2005 General Social Survey, with more detailed estimates, found averages of 23 hours and 14 hours per week, respectively (Statistics Canada 2005). The gender gap in general housework may be narrowing but it is still very substantial. Changes in the division of power and labour within the home are complex phenomena, affected by participation rates in paid work, employment hours, earnings, and beliefs regarding gender roles and family, to name just some factors. While

Table 2.5 Participation in and duration of general housework, all respondents, 1998–2004 Housework

1998

Do unpaid housework Average (mean) hours per week*

% Hours N

2004

Men

Women

Men

Women

97 12 1507

99 21

97 13 8508

97 21

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004. Notes * Includes only those performing unpaid housework.

Table 2.6 Performance of housework by sex, couples employed full-time compared with all other couples,* 2004 Couples’ job status

Always you

Usually you

Shared equally

Usually someone else

Always someone else

%

%

%

%

%

N

Both work full-time

Male Female Total

2 13 8

5 38 21

61 46 54

28 3 16

4 <1 2

859 867 1726

All other couples

Male Female Total

2 25 13

4 34 19

47 37 42

37 3 20

9 1 5

1703 1636 3339

Source: WALL survey 2004. Notes * ‘Couples’ includes both married and common-law.

Work and learning in the computer era

25

there has been a general trend towards greater equality, many studies show that the great majority of household labour continues to be performed by women (Coltrane 2000; Crompton 2006). Table 2.6 compares full-time employed couples to assess the extent to which shared employment responsibility has translated into a sharing of general housework duties. This table suggests that, where partners are both employed full-time, males and females are slightly more likely to report a more equitable division of housework than other couples. But around half of women employed full-time indicate they still always or usually do most of the housework, while only a handful of full-time male partners do so.

Childcare The above estimates exclude the essential and substantial labour of childcare. In 2004, according to the WALL survey, over a third of Canadian adults reported some involvement in unpaid childcare, for an average of over 30 hours per week (see Table 2.7). Again, while general participation rates are fairly close between males and females, the bulk of unpaid labour continues to be performed by women. The respective averages were almost 40 hours per week for women and just over 20 hours per week for men; the majority of women caregivers devoted over 30 hours per week, while the majority of men spent less than 20 hours per week in childcare duties.

Eldercare Eldercare is also becoming a more prominent form of unpaid work in ageing societies, with about 15 per cent of adults now engaged in such caring activities for an average of about 12 hours per week (see Table 2.8). Women appear to devote only slightly more time to eldercare than men. Even excluding child- and eldercare, if we express labour expended in terms of the total amount of paid employment time and general housework time done by all Canadian adults, the averages, according to the 2004 WALL survey and the 2005 General Social Survey, are between 25 and 28 hours of paid employment and 15 to

Table 2.7 Unpaid childcare, all respondents, 2004 Sex

Male Female Total

Do unpaid childcare

Average hours per week*

%

Mean hours

36 39 37

21 39 31

Source: WALL survey 2004. Notes * Includes only those performing childcare.

N

4329 4696 9025

26 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Table 2.8 Unpaid eldercare, all respondents, 2004 Sex

Male Female Total

Do unpaid eldercare

Average hours per week*

%

Mean hours

15 16 16

10 14 12

N

4330 4696 9026

Source: WALL survey 2004. Notes * Includes only those performing eldercare.

20 hours of housework per week in recent surveys. The point of such estimates is simply to establish that unpaid housework is a very substantial portion of the work that most of us do and that it deserves to be consistently recognized on its own merits. But, as yet, discussions of productive labour and economic value largely ignore this work, still mainly done by women.

Volunteer work Voluntary organizations, including neighbourhood associations, cultural, political and religious groups, sports clubs and many others, play vital roles in sustaining community life. Over the past decade, the Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP) (see Hall et al. 2006) has begun to estimate the extent of volunteering through organizations (see Table 2.9). The most recent CSGVP survey found that in 2004 about 45 per cent of those over 18 had volunteered during the previous year. The WALL survey found a rate of 42 per cent. Estimations of time devoted to organization-based volunteering differed in these surveys: a detailed set of items about time devoted to specific organizations over the past year in CSGVP with continual checks for overestimation, compared to a single item on overall hours per week in the WALL survey with no further probe. The estimates, expressed in average hours per week for those who did volunteer, differed from three hours to eight hours. In both instances, the distribution was highly skewed, Table 2.9 Volunteer work in organizations, all respondents, 2004 Survey

CSGVP WALL

Volunteered

Average hours per week*

%

Mean hours

45 42

3 8

Sources: Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating 2004; WALL survey 2004. Notes * Includes only those performing volunteer work.

N

20,832 9026

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27

Table 2.10 Unpaid help friends and neighbours, all respondents, 2004 Sex

Male Female Total

Help friends and neighbours

Average hours per week*

%

Mean hours

70 63 66

5 6 5

N

4145 4462 8607

Source: WALL survey 2004. Notes * Includes only those who help friends and neighbours.

with the top 10 per cent of volunteers contributing more than 50 per cent of the volunteer hours. Other unorganized work of helping out friends and neighbours in one’s community was more widespread and probably as time-consuming. According to the CSGVP, 83 per cent of Canadians over 15 helped friends and neighbours directly on their own over the prior year. As noted in Table 2.10, the WALL survey found that over 65 per cent of those over 18 did so over the past week, and estimated that they spent an average of five hours per week over the past year. Unpaid work is much less precisely measurable than the employment for which most people are paid on a distinct time schedule. While both household work and community volunteer work have been increasingly constrained by paid employment, they do not obey the same rhythms (Sorokin 1943). Most obviously, childcare responds to the needs of the child. For many mothers this is a constant labour of varying intensity, but it is inherently different than the time measured by a plant or office time clock. Even in terms of clock-time measures, mothers with small children are among those who work the longest hours. If they also happen to be employed, clock-time fails utterly to grasp the extent of their labours. The massive increase in the participation of married women with children in the paid labour force in recent generations has put growing pressure on their households to reorganize domestic labour to ensure it gets done. Longer and less defined paid work hours, facilitated by the long arm of computer-aided job tasks, have also generally increased the time squeeze on unpaid work. The extent and importance of organized and unorganized volunteer work in communities is also increasingly recognized, partly because a declining proportion of adults now have much discretionary time to donate to it. Both household work and community volunteer work should be included in any fair and effective accounting of what counts as ‘labour’ in advanced market societies. Even by crude estimates, it is likely that around half of all the work that adults now do is unpaid work.

Unpaid work and learning Research on job-related informal learning remains underdeveloped, but study of informal learning related to household work and volunteer work has scarcely

28 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Table 2.11 Participation rates in informal learning related to paid and unpaid activities, eligible respondents,* 1998–2004 Sex

Area of informal learning Paid work

Male Female Total N

% % %

Household work

Volunteer work

General interest

1998

2004

1998

2004

1998

2004

1998

2004

86 85 86 962

88 86 87 5734

80 77 79 1436

83 82 82 8607

78 83 81 795

79 74 76 3745

82 84 83 1565

83 80 82 9024

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004. Notes * Only those currently working are included in the ‘Paid work’ total, and only those performing household work or volunteer work were asked questions about related informal learning related to those activities.

begun. The NALL and WALL surveys were the first to examine informal learning related to household work and volunteer work, and to do so in conjunction with case studies. In each survey, respondents who indicated they did household work or volunteer work were asked whether they engaged in any of a variety of related informal learning topics, and then asked to estimate the amount of time they devoted to these learning activities on a weekly basis. All respondents were also asked whether they engaged in any other informal learning in their generalinterest pursuits (such as leisure time hobbies) not directly related to either paid or unpaid work. The summary findings on participation rates for intentional informal learning in relation to both paid and unpaid work and general interests appear in Table 2.11. The vast majority of participants in household work, volunteer work and general interest activities indicated that they engaged in some types of related informal learning. The participation rate was around 80 per cent in all of these unpaid activities in both 1998 and 2004. Some idea of the content of intentional informal learning in each of the unpaid activity areas is provided by the following figures, which summarize the frequency of informal learning involvement in different topics. Since more people do household work than any other form of work, and since participation rates in informal learning are similar for participants in all forms of work, household work-related informal learning may be the most widespread type of work-related learning, as well as the least studied. In terms of basic household work activities, as Figure 2.2 shows, more people indicated involvement in informal learning related to home renovation/gardening and cooking than related to other basic tasks that may involve less discretionary choice. Compared with paid work and household work, volunteer work is the most discretionary type of labour, except for younger people in mandatory volunteer programmes and recent immigrants who are compelled to volunteer in order to gain

Work and learning in the computer era

Home renovations and gardening

48

Cooking

50

Home maintenance

45

Home budgeting

39 0

51

43

40 %

20

57

42

32

Cleaning

60

43

37

Child- or eldercare

29

1998

60

80

2004

Figure 2.2 Informal learning topics related to household work, eligible respondents,* 1998–2004 Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 1129); WALL survey 2004 (N = 7087). Notes * Only those who reported doing some informal learning related to household work were asked questions about topics.

‘Canadian’ work experience. In the main, then, those who engage in volunteer work are also freer than those who do household work and paid work to choose the content of their related learning. Figure 2.3 summarizes topical frequencies. The majority of volunteer learners said they have learned about interpersonal and communications skills in this work. When all respondents were asked about doing any informal learning related to their general interests, topical frequencies were widely varied. As Figure 2.4 indicates, the most popular topic was health and well-being. The only other specified area in which a majority consistently engaged in self-reported learning was in pursuit of their hobbies. The areas in which people in general were least likely to engage in independent informal learning were sciences and languages, forms of knowledge that are most likely to require a disciplined approach for effective learning. The average estimated duration of time devoted to recognized informal learning in relation to each of these unpaid activities is summarized in Table 2.12. The participation rates in these unpaid activities, as well as paid work, vary greatly: from a minority in volunteer work, to over 60 per cent in paid work, to virtually everyone in some form of household work and general interest activities. But the amount of time given by those who participate in related informal learning appears to be quite similar in all of them, averaging around five hours per week in each instance. Such

30 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

62

Interpersonal skills

56 58 59

Communication skills

51

Social issues

44 43

Organizational / managerial skills

36 0

10

40

30

20

50

60

70

% 1998

2004

Figure 2.3 Volunteer work-related informal learning topics, eligible respondents,* 1998–2004 Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 655); WALL survey 2004 (N = 2839). Notes * Only those who reported doing some volunteer work-related informal learning were asked questions about topics.

Health and well-being

63

Finances

58

44

Leisure / hobby

53

Social / personal skills

47

Public and political issues

74

58

55

51 48

Computers

50

44

Sports and recreation

43

49

42 40

Cultural traditions Intimate relationships

41

33

Religion and spirituality Science and technology

40 38 35 32

Language skills

23 0

28

20

40 % 1998

60

80

2004

Figure 2.4 General interest informal learning topics, all respondents,* 1998–2004 Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 1297); WALL survey 2004 (N = 7363) Notes * All survey respondents were asked questions about general interest learning topics.

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Table 2.12 Average (mean) hours of informal learning by activity, all respondents, 1998–2004 Year 1998 2004

Hours Hours

Job

Household work

Volunteer work

General interest

7 5

6 6

4 4

6 5

Sources: NALL survey 1998 (Job, N = 825; Household work, N = 1129; Volunteer, N = 655; General Interest, N = 1297); WALL survey 2004 (Job, N = 4978; Household work, N = 7087; Volunteer, N = 2839; General Interest, N = 7363).

averages mask a wide range of variation and the respondents’ estimates themselves are merely rough approximations. We can at least conclude that in relation to each of these adult activities there is very substantial intentional informal learning that warrants further consideration in a learning society.

Paid work In comparison to unpaid work, paid work has been studied in great detail. In this section, we begin by estimating changes in the time devoted to paid work. Then, the extent of recent changes in organizational patterns and the distribution of economic classes in paid employment are summarized. These profiles provide a context for examining learning related to paid work in the following section.

Employment time Paid employment time has been documented for over a century. The normal paid work week of the employed Canadian labour force dropped from 60 hours in 1900 to around 40 hours in 1960 (Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work 1994: 13). There have been only minor fluctuations since then in the overall average hours of paid work per week for the entire employed population. As Table 2.13 summarizes, the major distributional shifts since the 1970s have been the continuing decline of standard 40-hours-a-week jobs and a more recent increase in the proportion who work over 50 hours a week. This pattern reflects the shift to more contingent part-time and temporary jobs with a corresponding intensification for the shrinking ‘core’ of permanent full-time workers (Cranford, Vosko and Zukewich 2003; Kalleberg 2003). By some measures, actual annual employment hours appear to have declined slightly since the 1970s (Galarneau, Maynard and Lee 2005). But the NALL and WALL surveys found that average usual employment hours for the entire labour force increased from 38 to 40 hours per week during the 1998–2004 period. Other, more detailed, time use surveys have also found increases in weekly employment hours since the mid-1980s (see Statistics Canada 2005). The decline in the normal paid work week has ceased and the distribution of paid work has become more polarized.

32 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Table 2.13 Usual weekly paid hours, 1976–2004 Year

<20 hrs

20–29 hrs

30–39 hrs

40 hrs

41–49 hrs

50+ hrs

1976 1993 2004

7 11 7

5 8 8

25 27 24

50 40 31

7 6 10

6 8 20

Sources: 1976 and 1993: Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work (1994: 17), all figures drawn from Statistics Canada Labour Force Surveys; WALL survey 2004.

The overall participation in paid employment has reached the highest recorded level ever: around two-thirds of the working age population. Women now constitute nearly half of the employed population, compared to less than a third in 1971. Growing proportions, especially women, are in part-time statuses (Statistics Canada 2004). Table 2.14 shows the distribution of employment statuses of those over the age of 18 in 1998 and in 2004. Slightly less than half of all respondents were employed full-time (defined as over 30 hours per week) and around 15 per cent of adults in 2004 were employed only part-time and/or were also registered students in degree/diploma programmes. About a third of the adult population does not appear to be working for pay. Estimations of who should be counted as ‘unemployed’ are controversial. They definitely include the officially unemployed who are actively seeking paid employment and have recently registered for unemployment benefits. They could also Table 2.14 Employment status, all respondents, 1998–2004 Employment status

1998

2004

Employed full-time Employed part-time Employed student Total employed

% % % %

46 7 8 61

45 8 10 64

Non-employed student Unemployed* Homemaker Retired Permanently disabled Other Non-employed, status unknown Total not employed

% % % % % % % %

2 8 5 19 1 >1 3 39

2 8 4 19 >1 >1 3 36

Total all adults

%

100

100

1565

9026

N Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004.

Notes * Unemployed category includes active unemployed, discouraged unemployed and those who are temporarily out of paid work.

Work and learning in the computer era

33

include those who are out of paid work temporarily, in various circumstances, who have not qualified for benefits. Third, there are ‘discouraged workers’ who would pursue employment if they thought there were real prospects of a job but do not report actively seeking it. Only minorities of the small numbers of permanently disabled (around 1 per cent of the population), larger numbers of those who define themselves as homemakers (about 4 per cent of the population) and the very large number of retired people (around 20 per cent of the population) are not primarily orientated to paid work. But significant numbers in these groups would also take paid work if they could get it. For example, around 10 per cent of retired people indicated in 1998 that they were likely to seek jobs in the next year (Livingstone 2002). The proportions of the ‘not employed’ who seek paid work are likely to increase in the near future in response to continuing affirmative action measures, declining family wages, welfare and disability benefits, and the relaxation of mandatory retirement provisions. Unknown numbers among the ‘not employed’ are also employed in the underground economy. The basic point here is that a large majority of the adult population is either actively engaged in or orientated to paid employment. The core labour force employed in permanent, full-time work is shrinking proportionally; the numbers of non-standard, part-time, temporary jobs are growing; and the use of outsourcing and offshoring are becoming more widespread (Kalleberg 2003; Chaykowski 2005). Some workers do choose temporary and part-time arrangements, but recent research indicates that many of those in nonstandard jobs are not there by choice and often experience high levels of job insecurity and low pay (Cranford et al. 2003). This finding is supported by the WALL survey finding that almost half of temporary or seasonal workers want more permanent jobs.

Organizational change Intensified competition between growing numbers of profit-seeking organizations provokes more frequent changes in products, labour processes and organizational structures (Kenney 1997; Kleinman and Vallas 2001). There are several notable recent trends in the organization of paid work. As Figure 2.5 shows, almost 40 per cent of WALL survey respondents indicated that over the past five years there had been: a reduction in the number of employees in established firms; a greater reliance on part-time or temporary workers; and/or a greater reliance on job rotation and multi-skilling in their place of work. While larger firms appear to have relied more on downsizing and increased overtime for remaining employees, small firms have been more likely to depend on more part-time workers and multiskilling (Statistics Canada 2001b: 10). But there is clearly a general trend in existing employment organizations to downsize their numbers of permanent employees while relying on greater overtime hours from remaining employees, more part-time and temporary workers, and greater multi-skilling and job rotation from all types of employees.

34 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

Reduction in the number of employees

39

Reduction in the number of managers or supervisors

23

Greater reliance on parttime or temporary workers

39

33

Increase in overtime hours

Greater reliance on job rotation and/or multi-skilling

39 0

10

20

30

40

50

%

Figure 2.5 Organizational change over last five years, employed respondents, 2004 Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 5733).

Distribution of economic classes Knowledge-based economy advocates have predicted and empirical studies have documented increases in both managerial and professional occupations (Lavoie and Roy 1998; Baldwin and Beckstead 2003). Lavoie and Roy’s general analysis of census-based occupational distributions over the 1971–96 period in Canada found significant redistribution of jobs from manufacturing to services, data processing, and especially to management and knowledge work. The proportion of people in management occupations nearly quadrupled to 10 per cent of the labour force. People in knowledge-based occupations that mainly involve the generation of ideas or the provision of expert opinion – such as scientists, engineers and artists – grew from 5 per cent to 8 per cent of the labour force. The changing distribution of economic classes (as distinct from occupational categories) over the past generation in Canada, based on the 1983 Canadian Class Structure Survey (Clement and Myles 1994) and the 2004 WALL survey, is shown in Table 2.15.7 Large and small employers (all those owning companies that have any hired employees) now account for about 7 per cent of the labour force. The selfemployed, including consultants, freelancers and those owning businesses with no employees, are more than twice the size of the two employer categories combined. Comparison of the 1983 and 2004 data indicates that there have been small increases in the self-employed labour force over the past generation. Intermediate or middle-class positions of managerial and professional employees increased from around 15 per cent to over 25 per cent of the total employed labour force.

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Table 2.15 Economic class distribution, employed respondents, 1983–2004 Economic class Large employers Small employers Self-employed Managers Supervisors Professionals Service workers Industrial workers Total N

% % % % % % % % %

1983

2004

<1 4 11 5 4 11 42 23 100 1758

1 6 15 11 5 16 27 19 100 5437

Sources: Canadian Facts survey 1983; WALL survey 2004.

Conversely, the working class, composed of industrial workers and service workers, declined significantly from about two-thirds to under half of the employed labour force. The decline of manufacturing workers has been widely documented (Weir 2007; Statistics Canada 2008). The apparent decline of non-managerial service workers may be related to the simultaneous rapid rise of automated self-service and quasi-managerial administrative staff functions in an ever-expanding array of service industries (Huws 2003). The apparent doubling of the general proportion of managers during this period is consistent with workers’ own impressions of relatively smaller reductions of numbers of managers in established organizations compared to general employee reductions, as noted in Figure 2.5. Given this context of a growing majority of all adults participating in paid work, increasing incidence of temporary employment, a declining working class and extensive changes in organizational structures, we now turn to relations between paid work and learning.

Paid work and learning This section looks at the relations of economic class with: formal schooling and further education; the incidence of job-related informal learning; and the extent of matching between workers’ educational qualifications and the requirements of their jobs. Finally, the effects of economic class position and job experience on the extent of matching of workers’ qualifications with their job requirements are estimated.

Economic class and schooling School success has long reflected the occupational and family-centred transmission of cultural codes (Bourdieu 1984), as well as class-based access to adequate funds. Canadian research has found that children from families in higher economic class locations have been much more likely to gain university credentials and better jobs

36 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

(Curtis, Livingstone and Smaller 1992). Table 2.16 shows that economic classes in the current labour force continue to be quite highly differentiated in terms of the proportion attaining a university degree: about half of professional employees and around a third of all large employers and managers, contrasted with 10 per cent of service workers and 4 per cent of industrial workers. But, as noted previously, completion of some form of post-secondary certification has grown very rapidly in recent decades. Consequently, the long established association between school attainment (including all forms of tertiary education) and participation in further adult education may be playing a somewhat diminishing role in the cycle of class reproduction. Table 2.16 shows that the differences in further education participation between large employers, managers and professionals, on the one hand, and service and industrial workers, on the other, appear to have decreased in recent years, partly because the latter have significantly increased their post-secondary education attainments, especially through community colleges. Two-thirds of employers, managers and professionals have taken further education, but around 40 per cent of industrial workers have as well. This is not to suggest that service and industrial workers’ participation in further education can overcome prior exclusion from post-secondary schooling but rather that more of these workers are completing some form of post-secondary schooling, whether or not they have been able to use it to get jobs. Further course participation does continue to be highly differentiated in terms of employer-sponsored further education courses. While demand for further education courses appears to be similar between occupational classes, employer contributions differ widely. As Table 2.17 summarizes, in 2004 employers provided, paid for or facilitated half of all managers to receive formal training. Over a quarter

Table 2.16 Schooling, further education and participation in job-related informal learning participation rates by economic class, employed respondents, 1998–2004 Economic class

Large employers Small employers Self-employed Managers Professionals Supervisors Service workers Industrial workers Total N

% % % % % % % % %

University degree

Further education participation in past year

Participate in informal job-related learning

1998

2004

1998

2004

1998

2004

33 33 22 25 49 10 9 4 18 950

35 23 22 34 46 14 10 4 21 5366

55 52 47 71 73 50 59 35 56 953

67 46 46 68 67 54 52 41 53 5436

100 87 83 96 88 95 83 83 86 940

87 88 87 92 92 88 84 84 87 5428

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004.

Work and learning in the computer era

37

Table 2.17 Employer support for courses by economic class of employees, 2004 Economic class

Employer support

N

% Managers Supervisors Professionals Service employees Industrial employees Total

50 26 29 16 13 18

567 279 833 1424 1021 5227

Source: WALL survey 2004.

of all professional employees and supervisory employees received support. Only around 15 per cent of service workers and industrial workers were given any such assistance. This is presumably one factor accounting for persistent differences in course participation rates (see Peters 2004).

Job-related informal learning Recent survey research has found the vast majority of job training to be done informally through the mentoring of more experienced co-workers and relatively little through formal courses (Betcherman, Leckie and McMullen 1998; Center for Workforce Development 1998). The results for both 1998 and 2004 confirm that workers’ informal learning is far more likely than employer training programmes to be regarded as the most important source of knowledge to do one’s job. While over 40 per cent of workers give priority to their own independent efforts, over a quarter recognize co-workers as the major source of their specific job knowledge, and others see this mentoring as most important in combination with themselves; only about 15 per cent regard employer training programmes as most important. Both the 2003 Adult Education and Training Surveys (AETS) and the 2004 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey asked employed workers about the frequency of mentoring. Both found that around a third of all workers had sought advice within the past month from other knowledgeable colleagues to develop their job skills, 32 per cent in AETS8 and 39 per cent in WALL, using exactly the same question. These responses at least hint at the general importance of mentoring to employment-related learning. The 2003 AETS asked a specific set of questions about job-related informal learning activities. The overall finding was that about 80 per cent of all employed workers had engaged in some of these job-related informal learning activities in the past year (see Peters 2004: 16, 32). The NALL and WALL surveys referred to a wider array of learning topics and found that over 85 per cent were engaged in such informal learning. As Table 2.16 indicates, while those in lower economic class positions may have been slightly less likely to participate, there has been very high participation in job-related informal learning across all economic classes.

38 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

The employment-related informal learning topics used in NALL and WALL are summarized in Figure 2.6. The learning frequencies for the respective topics were very similar in 1998 and 2004, with over half of all workers indicating informal learning about new general knowledge, new job tasks, computers, general problem solving, and health and safety. The 2003 AETS found that the most highly educated workers were significantly more likely than those with the least formal schooling to participate in a small set of job-related informal learning activities over the past four weeks (16 per cent for those with high school or less versus 50 per cent for university graduates [Peters 2004: 17, 44]). But, as Table 2.16 indicates, general informal learning participation rate differences between those with differing educational attainment levels over the

71

New general knowledge

62

Teamwork, problem solving, or communication skills

55

New job tasks

56

Computers

55

Health and safety

55 56

63 63 61

1998 2004

52

New equipment

58

Employment conditions or worker’s rights

43 43

Organizational or managerial skills

38 42

Politics in the workplace

32

Budgeting or financial management

31

Language and literacy

19 0

20

40 %

60

80

Figure 2.6 Topics of job-related informal learning, employed respondents participating in informal learning, 1998–2004 Sources: NALL survey 1998 (N = 940); WALL survey 2004 (N = 5428).

Work and learning in the computer era

39

course of a year and the wider array of informal learning activities addressed by the NALL and WALL surveys are quite small. It is clear that participation in job-related learning is much more prevalent than participation in further education courses, and does not appear to be generally linked to formal credentials. As Table 2.16 shows, the vast majority of Canadians in all economic classes are lifelong informal learners regardless of their formal educational attainment. These findings suggest that the continuing acquisition of skills and knowledge is more prevalent than often assumed among lower economic classes. Similar patterns of active engagement in informal learning have been found among more specific marginalized groups, including working-class women, recent immigrants of colour and disabled people with limited formal educational attainment (Livingstone 2002; Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004).

Job requirements and workers’ qualifications At the heart of the debate on the changing nature of work and lifelong learning is the question of the extent of correspondence between job requirements and workers’ skill and knowledge qualifications. Dominant views assume that people generally need to make greater learning efforts, either in terms of skill deficits in the wake of an emerging knowledge-based economy (OECD 1996) or necessary education investment to restore economic growth. Empirical studies have found various ‘mismatches’ between job requirements and workers’ qualifications (Livingstone 2004, 2009; Felstead et al. 2007). A companion study to this book addresses this issue extensively by reviewing prior theoretical and empirical literature, analysing relevant data from the NALL, WALL and other surveys, presenting the findings of case studies of specific groups of professional employees, industrial and service workers as well as disabled workers, and proposing a new approach to learning and work studies that recognizes the import of learning by experience (see Livingstone 2009). That book addresses multiple dimensions of education–job matching, including credentials, performance, relevance of training, general qualifications and general knowledge (cf. Kalleberg 2007). That study finds a prevalent trend towards a surplus of formal qualifications compared to job requirements, and reveals many ways in which workers with different matching statuses engage in continual learning and modification of their jobs. We will first look at the match between attained computer skills and those required for jobs, and then focus on the general match between formal educational credentials attained and those required for job entry. Innovations in information technology, especially computers, are widely regarded as intimately related to changing technical skill requirements for the labour force (Autor, Levy and Murnane 2003; Machin 2003). The rapid dissemination of computers in workplaces was registered in Chapter 1, but assessment of how much workers know compared to the increasingly computer-related skill demands of their jobs is often missing from studies of technological change. Table 2.18 shows that, in 2004, less than 10 per cent of all workers reported that their

40 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Table 2.18 Computer skills match with requirements of job, employed respondents, 18 to 65, 2004 Age

18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 Total

Higher

Same

Lower

Computer skills not required

%

%

%

%

70 59 54 38 37 51

26 32 39 44 58 39

3 8 6 15 6 9

2 1 1 3 0 1

N

95 219 316 254 83 967

Source: WALL survey 2004. Notes * The section of the WALL survey on computer use and skills was asked only of one-sixth of respondents, leading to the relatively small but still random sample.

computer-related skills were lower or much lower than they needed for their job, while over half of all workers reported higher or much higher skills than they needed. This pattern of computer-related underutilization of skill is particularly pronounced among workers aged 18 to 34, as might be expected since they have grown up in the computer era and their participation in formal education is highest. The pattern of underutilization persists among workers aged 35–44, with over half answering that they have a higher level of computer-related skill than required by their job. The extent of underuse of computer skills is lower among those over 45, but even among older workers very few have less computer skill than their types of job need. At least in subjective terms, the employed labour force would appear to be keeping ahead of computer-related increases in skill requirements for their jobs. Comparison of the 1983 Canadian Class Structure survey (Clement and Myles 1994) and the 2004 WALL survey indicate increasing reliance on advanced formal educational entry credential requirements for jobs. In 1983, about 40 per cent of all wage and salary jobs in Canada had no credential requirement for entry. By 2004, this proportion had dropped to less than a quarter. At the same time, the proportion of jobs requiring a post-secondary credential grew from 28 per cent to 45 per cent. When these proportions are compared with earlier research on entry credential requirements in North America (e.g. Collins 1979), it is clear that the job entry requirement of a post-secondary educational credential has continued to increase. However, there is a growing tendency for educational attainments to exceed job entry credential requirements. During the same 1983–2004 period, post-secondary credential attainment more than doubled, from 22 per cent to 56 per cent. Clearly, more people completed post-secondary education during this period than needed it to get their jobs. But it is also clear that these credentials, as well as high school credentials, were increasingly required for entry to all manner

Work and learning in the computer era

41

of jobs. Some who entered employment prior to 1983 with lower formal education may have found that entry requirements increased while they continued to perform their job adequately without them. But generally, as with computer skills, workers are keeping up with or ahead of required credential levels. Table 2.19 summarizes the extent of match with reference to levels of credential attainments and requirements for all employees. The overall change from 1983 to 2004 was an increase in credential underemployment and an equivalent decline in matching credentials and attainments of about 6 per cent. The general credential underemployment rate increased from 25 per cent to 31 per cent, while matching dropped from 57 per cent to 51 per cent. So, with educational credential attainments of the labour force increasing rapidly but credential requirements increasing more gradually, overall credential underemployment has also increased. As the underemployment of credentials grows, service and industrial working-class employees, with the least formal education, continue to experience the greatest underemployment in relation to the credentials they do have (Livingstone and Raykov 2009). Taking the underemployed and the underqualified together, nearly half of all employees’ educational attainments are now mismatched with the credentials required for entry to their jobs. It should be noted here that there are frequent inferences, based on recent literacy surveys, that over a third of adults have inadequate literacy skills to cope with the demands of a knowledge-based economy (Statistics Canada and OECD 2005). Both NALL and WALL surveys found that less than a quarter of adults rate their reading skills as only moderate or poor. More significantly, the vast majority of these people rate themselves as at least adequately qualified for available jobs, are increasingly participating in further education and continually engaged in jobrelated informal learning. This contradiction is born out of very different approaches to measuring literacy and other skills, but nevertheless reinforces the point that conclusions by the OECD, Statistics Canada and other organizations about the adequacy or inadequacy of workers’ skills are seriously limited by inattention to actual job demands. Finally, in terms of matching qualifications and requirements, few surveys have assessed the more general connection between workers’ job knowledge and what is needed to do a job. Such a question encourages workers to think beyond specific qualifications and credentials to the types of knowledge and the capabilities they really need to do their jobs. A related 2004 Ontario survey of wage and salary Table 2.19 Credential match, employed respondents, 1983–2004 Year

1983 2004

Underemployed

Matched

Underqualified

%

%

%

25 31

57 51

18 18

Sources: CCS Survey 1983; WALL survey 2004.

N

1461 3844

42 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

earners found that nearly three-quarters of workers in all economic classes expressed the view that they have more job-related knowledge than is needed to perform their current jobs (Livingstone and Raykov 2009). Most of the remaining workers say their knowledge matches their job. Hardly any say they have less knowledge than their job requires. Of those workers who indicate underemployment, most say that they have substantially greater knowledge than their current jobs require. These findings are consistent with experiential learning theorists’ suggestion (Polanyi 1966) that workers’ learning from experience generates reserves of knowledge they may rarely use on the job. The case studies that follow this chapter illustrate learning processes generating such reserves in paid and unpaid work, and the use of these reserves in particular conditions.

Economic class, job experience and credential match Those in lower economic class positions have less power to decide what forms of knowledge are seen as legitimate and rewarded in the context of workplace relations. Those who have been employed longer have had more opportunity to locate suitable jobs, develop their working knowledge and adapt their jobs. Higher economic class position and longer extent of job experience may be expected to significantly increase the extent of correspondence between workers’ recognized knowledge and the requirements of their jobs. Table 2.20 summarizes the rates of credential underutilization for different economic classes in 1983 and 2004. The credential gap was greater in lower economic classes and also increased within most employee classes. For the expanding numbers of managerial and professional employees, there was little change in general educational entry requirements but increases in the proportions with post-secondary attainments and hence increases in underutilization. But underutilization continued to be greater for the declining numbers of service and industrial workers.

Table 2.20 Proportion underutilizing educational credential* by economic class, employees, 1983–2004 Economic class position Managers Supervisors Professional employees Service employees Industrial employees All employees N

% % % % %

1983

2004

15 21 17 25 33 25 1461

25 43 20 36 33 31 3844

Sources: Canadian Class Structure Survey 1983; WALL survey 2004. Notes * Credential underutilization is calculated by comparing educational attainment with respondents’ estimation of the amount of education normally required for entry to their job.

Work and learning in the computer era

43

While post-secondary entry requirements may have doubled for their jobs, their post-secondary attainments tripled. Even with substantial inflation of credentials required for their jobs, working-class people have been keeping ahead in the educational arms race and their qualifications are becoming increasingly wasted in formal terms. As Table 2.21 summarizes, the level of underutilization of credentials did decline somewhat with age in both 1998 and 2004. Around 40 per cent of workers aged 18 to 24 were underutilized. The 1998 NALL survey findings suggest a fairly pronounced decline in underutilization to around 10 per cent of those aged 55 to 64, with the vast majority of this age cohort preparing to leave the active labour force. The 2004 WALL survey, however, suggests a more gradual decline, with around 30 per cent of these older workers still found to be underutilized. Underutilization in these terms may be becoming a more sustained condition throughout the life course of employment. But is workers’ learning experience on the job sufficient over time to overcome different economic class position effects on the extent of credential mismatching? Table 2.22 illustrates the basic pattern in terms of credential match, comparing professional employees with industrial and service workers combined. Credential underemployment decreases with employment experience in all employee classes. Table 2.21 Credential underutilization by age, employed respondents, 1998–2004 Age

Credential underutilization 1998

18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 Total

% % % % % %

N

2004

44 36 28 21 12 25

48 35 35 28 32 31

881

5018

Sources: NALL survey 1998; WALL survey 2004.

Table 2.22 Economic class and job experience by credential underutilization, nonmanagerial labour force, 2004 Years of job experience

<10 years 10–19 years 20+ years N

Underutilized Professionals

Industrial and service workers

36 26 14 315

57 42 27 776

Source: Education–Jobs Requirement Matching Survey (Livingstone 2009) (N = 1290).

44 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

However, among employees with over 20 years of experience, credential underemployment among industrial and service workers remains twice as high as among professional employees (27 per cent versus 14 per cent). Both employee class position and employment experience, when considered together, retain their effects on credential matching. Further multivariate analyses confirm that employee class and employment experience effects on the credential match remain significant when other factors are considered. Industrial and service workers remain twice as likely to experience credential underemployment (adjusted odds ratio = 2.056, p<0.001) as professional employees.9 Workers with fewer than ten years of work experience are approximately four times as likely to experience credential underemployment (adjusted odds ratio = 3.969, p<0.001) as workers with more than 20 years of experience. In sum, the independent effects of employee class and employment experience on measures of education–job matching both remain strong in comparison to virtually all other demographic and organizational factors identified in the research literature to date. However, it must immediately be added that there is serious underutilization related to race and immigration status (see Galabuzi 2006). Recent immigrants are predominantly of colour and they have the highest credential underemployment of all social groups. Credential underutilization is much higher among recent immigrants than in the Canadian-born population or among earlier immigrants (crude odds ratio = 3.661, p<0.001). This association does not remain significant in multivariate analysis because recent, largely non-white immigrant status is so closely related to lack of (Canadian) employment experience. Nonwhites and females, as well as disabled people, also experience high rates of underutilization. Some mismatches in terms of both underutilization and underqualification are to be expected in the dynamic labour markets of advanced market economies. Both chronic and more temporary shortages of qualified workers do occur, especially in specialized areas such as skilled trades. But a growing research literature in Canada and internationally using various criteria (e.g. Statistics Canada 1999; Felstead et al. 2002; Li, Gervais and Duval 2006) finds that educational attainments increasingly outpace rising skill demands. Credential matching offers only one measure. But, in general, underutilization of workers’ learning and skills appears to be more widespread than underqualification (see Livingstone 2009 for an overview). Persistent underqualification is a serious problem that affects some of the unemployed and others excluded from the active labour force through low literacy skills and other social disadvantages. But, underqualification is a relatively minor and temporary condition that usually can be and is overcome by continuing formal and informal learning. Underutilization, or underemployment, is a more enduring and growing issue that calls for sustained address to job redesign and economic reforms even more than for more coherent education and training initiatives (see Livingstone 2004).

Work and learning in the computer era

45

Learning in transitions throughout the life course As the findings for job experience and the matching of educational attainments and job requirements in the prior section suggest, maturation is likely to have substantial effects on relations of work and learning. Prior research on adult learning has consistently found declining engagement in further education courses as people age. As Figure 2.7 shows, the WALL survey again confirms this pattern to some extent. The majority of those 18 to 24 participated in at least one adult education course in the past year. But this rate now declines more gradually than in prior generations, with 45 per cent of those in their early fifties also taking a course. The rate then drops more rapidly to 30 per cent for the 65 to 69 cohort, and under 10 per cent for those over age 75. While comparable historical figures are not readily available for older adults, it is safe to assume that all of these age-specific participation rates are higher than previously. Not only do people go to school for longer than ever before but the long established association between schooling and further education draws evermore older adults into continuing formal educational activities. Since substantial numbers of older people have been enrolling in higher education programmes, their capability to perform well in such programmes has become a revelation to some researchers (e.g. Johnson 1995). But direct studies of Taken a course in past year

Learning about computers

Any informal learning 100 90 80 70 60 % 50 40 30 20 10

9

+ 80

4

–7 75

9

–7 70

4

–6 65

9

–6 60

4

–5 55

9

–5 50

4

–4 45

9

–4 40

4

–3 35

9

–3 30

–2 25

18

–2

4

0

Age

Figure 2.7 Age and participation in past year in further education course, learning about computers, and any informal learning activities, all respondents, 2004 Source: WALL survey 2004 (Taken a course, N = 8757; Learning about computers, N = 8771; Any informal learning, N = 8774).

46 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

older people’s cognitive functioning discovered decades ago that conceptual models focused on older people’s less efficient recall of details had obscured the more efficient selection and distillation of usable knowledge associated with their maturity (see Labouvie-Vief 1990). With all due respect to estimates of the current doubling of the quantity of knowledge within a matter of years, the wisdom that older people typically gain through the life course surely diminishes their need to attend to a ‘required curriculum’ of practical knowledge with the intensity of younger people. The primary motivations for most people to take further education courses during their middle years are job-related. Once older people leave paid employment, other motives assume priority but with less urgency, hence the declining adult education participation rates now beginning in the over-50 age cohorts. One of the most pertinent insights from the NALL and WALL surveys is that most people appear to be actively involved in informal learning throughout their lives. The vast majority in all age groups are engaged in some form of informal learning activity. There is some evidence of declining involvement by those over 70, but two-thirds of those over 80 still report active engagement in informal learning activities. These surveys also suggest that the youngest adults, as well as being the most involved in completing formal education, are the most involved in extensive informal learning. This is predictable since they are most likely to be experiencing multiple transitions: from living with their parents to establishing independent living situations and forming their own households, from initial schooling to starting careers, and otherwise establishing new lifestyles (Livingstone 1999). But the extensiveness of informal learning activities appears to remain fairly constant throughout later adulthood, at least as indicated by participation rates and time devoted to it. The main contents of informal learning do shift markedly from preoccupation with job-related matters prior to retirement to ‘post-occupation’ focus on general interests including health issues. Informal learning is much more extensive than formal adult education for most people after they complete their initial period of intensive schooling, but the hidden part of the iceberg of adult learning is even greater for older people who in a real sense have less to learn from most available formal curricula about coping with life. Figure 2.7 also summarizes the proportions of each standard age cohort that have engaged in informal learning about computers over the past year, in relation to either paid work, unpaid household work or community volunteer work or general interest. The majority of adults have been involved in learning about computers in this period when personal computers have been making their way into most schools, most paid workplaces and the majority of households. Majorities in all age cohorts up to age 60 engaged in such learning. Participation then drops rapidly in post-retirement dominated cohorts but remains detectable even in those over 80. Given the active continuing involvement in general informal learning for the majority of those over 80, this drop in learning about computers is probably an effect of older cohorts’ formative years occurring in the historical period prior to the onset of the computer era.

Work and learning in the computer era

47

The major adult transition points presumed in recent generations (i.e. school to employment, and retirement from employment) are becoming more complex and less linear (see Sawchuk and Taylor 2009). With the increasing duration of schooling, most people are combining post-secondary completion with forms of paid employment and may continue to do so for credential upgrading purposes throughout much of their careers. A common retirement phase emerged in industrial societies over the past century as a consequence of a more capital-intensive production of subsistence, widening provision of retirement benefits and extended longevity because recent generations did not have to work themselves into the grave. A retirement phase became close to universal, with paid employment becoming a minority status for those between 60 and 64 and a tiny number of those over 65, a common legislated age for retirement benefits to begin. But the normative age of retirement is becoming more diffuse, coming in forms from early or partial to late or never. Early retirement provisions have become more common as the baby boom generation has marched through the paid employment, and mandatory retirement provisions diminish as they prepare to leave it. As previously noted, paid employment is now a primary status for at least 10 per cent of those between 65 and 74. Without drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of adult education courses or the quality of informal learning, the current survey analysis simply underlines the extensive involvement of older people generally and working-class employees in particular in both types of learning activity. However, we can conclude the following: •

•

•

•

Older people in all walks of life typically remain active informal learners, and warrant greater respect for their learning capacities and rights than has been generally accorded in advanced market societies where they have been commonly regarded as cognitively deficient and socially disengaged. Older people tend to be wiser than younger people in the ‘required curriculum’ of life and have less related need for formal instruction. Elders in every society are capable of providing vital mentoring instruction to younger people. In advanced market-orientated societies, they tend to be a wasted resource. The underutilization of employees now includes around a quarter of those in their fifties. Underutilization is now a sustained problem that cannot be resolved by the maturation of workers through their employment careers. Much further research attention to the actual learning capacities and accomplishments of older people and working-class employees is needed to overcome persistent assumptions about their inferiority and irrelevance in societies in which formal education remains hegemonic.

The WALL survey tried to identify significant transition events in respondents’ recent lives (including in job, health or family changes). Chapter 10 probes the identified changes through the results of a follow-up interview. But one should be

48 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

under no illusion that these brief queries can shed much light on the depth of learning that is likely to occur in such major moments of our lives – what Spear (1988) called ‘organizing circumstances’. Nevertheless, these preliminary inquiries suggest that such heightened moments of learning continue at high frequency and intensity throughout our lives.

Concluding remarks The 1998 NALL and 2004 WALL surveys are distinctive in providing general profiles of both paid and unpaid work as well as formal and informal learning activities of adults. Major findings include those noted below.

Paid work •

•

•

•

There was a significant shift in the distribution of economic classes between 1983 and 2004, with increases in managerial and professional employees and decreases in both industrial and non-managerial service workers. There was extensive organizational restructuring over the past decade, most notably downsizing of established enterprises, increasing use of part-timers and overtime, and multi-skilling. Labour force participation may be at unprecedented high levels, but at least a quarter of the employed are in part-time or employed student statuses while many others are oriented to legitimate paid employment but cannot find it. The permanent, full-time core labour force may be shrinking and the typical 40-hour week declining, but there are also growing numbers working more than 50 hours a week.

Unpaid work •

•

• •

Some form of housework is almost universal, but women remain responsible for most of it even though their participation in paid work has continued to increase relative to men. Childcare remains a large and incalculable responsibility, mainly for women. Fewer people perform eldercare but those who do spend an average of over ten hours per week on it. Over 40 per cent of adults participate in community volunteer organizations, while two-thirds are involved in helping friends and neighbours. Overall, time devoted to unpaid work is comparable to paid work.

Formal education •

Higher education has grown massively since the 1960s; around half of all adults have completed post-secondary schooling.

Work and learning in the computer era

•

•

49

Participation in further adult education has grown greatly since the 1960s, with over 40 per cent of adults taking courses in 2004; employer support remains much greater for managerial and professional employees than for service workers and industrial workers. Those with higher education continue to have higher participation rates in further education but the gap is closing as the general level of educational attainment rises.

Informal learning •

•

•

•

•

Over 80 per cent of the employed respondents report involvement in some form of job-related informal learning – including, most commonly, new general knowledge in their field, new job tasks, computers, general problem solving, and health and safety. Those pursuing job-related informal learning average over five hours per week. Around 80 per cent of those who do either household work, volunteer work or general interest activities are involved in informal learning related to the unpaid activities they perform. For household work, survey respondents indicate that learning most commonly relates to home renovation, gardening and cooking; for volunteer work, interpersonal and communication skills; for general interest activities, health matters.10 In each instance, the respondents report spending, on average, approximately five hours per week. Total self-reported time devoted to informal learning averages around 14 hours per week, with around a third of respondents spending fewer than five hours a week and 20 per cent spending over 20 hours. Informal learning is only roughly estimated by survey methods; however, the estimates from the NALL and WALL surveys confirm that informal learning is more extensive than adult course participation and not strongly related to the latter.

Paid work and learning •

• •

• •

Economic classes remain highly differentiated by formal educational attainments, less so by adult education participation and very little by incidence of job-related informal learning. Job requirements have increased since the 1980s in terms of formal education levels required for entry. Computer use has increased greatly since the 1980s, but a majority of the employed respondents report that their computer skills exceed those required by their jobs. Increases in the educational attainment of the employed respondents since the 1980s exceed increases in the educational requirements of jobs. In terms of the match between educational attainments and job entry requirements, the general rate of underutilization has increased to over 30 per cent.

50 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz

•

Underutilization of formal education exceeds underqualification in the employed respondents. Underutilization is a more enduring condition and has the greatest incidence among service and industrial workers – groups who have made the greatest relative gains in formal educational attainments since the early 1980s.

In sum, the NALL and WALL surveys provide an unprecedented glimpse at the wide array of work and learning activities of adults in an advanced market economy. These surveys suggest that unpaid work is probably as extensive as paid work and that self-reported informal work-related learning is much more extensive than participation in further education. Extensive economic class redistribution between increasing numbers of managerial/professional employees and decreasing numbers of industrial and service workers is occurring in a context of widespread organizational restructuring towards contingent use of employees. In spite of documentation of the extensive nature of unpaid work, it continues to be ignored in studies of work and learning. Not only do most adults do household work, around half participate in organized volunteer work. Unpaid work also involves continual informal learning. If we are living in a ‘learning society’, much of this learning is related to unpaid work and the benefits of such learning remain almost completely unfathomed. Post-secondary educational attainment levels and further education participation have both grown rapidly since the 1960s but unmet demand persists. Informal learning is still the submerged part of the learning iceberg. In addition to the NALL and WALL surveys, a few other surveys have begun to document the extent of self-reported informal learning. But attention to informal aspects of lifelong learning remains largely rhetorical in policy and programme terms, with little educational or employment benefit for the vast numbers who may have achieved advanced knowledge and competency through informal learning directly related to their jobs, and no recognition at all for learning related to household work and volunteer work. It may be inherent in a market-driven economy for the general supply of qualified workers to exceed the demand, as entrants continually try to prepare for competitive labour markets. But underutilization of the formal education, skills and knowledge of over a quarter of the employed labour force is now chronic. There are growing numbers with advanced education who are not able to find jobs that require such lengthy formal schooling. Working-class, recent immigrant and visible minority employees experience the greatest underutilization. The underutilization of those excluded from employment but desiring it is largely beyond the scope of these surveys but is even greater. For the vast majority of those experiencing underutilization, the problem is not a lack of relevant formal education, nor is it the failure to engage in continual job-related informal learning. More and more people are engaging formally and informally in an ‘educational arms race’. Continuing escalation per se will produce only greater underutilization of skills and knowledge. There is an ever greater prospect for

Work and learning in the computer era

51

reforms to redistribute work and design more decent jobs for an increasingly knowledge-based population. This report on the basic findings of the NALL and WALL surveys is intended primarily to provide some benchmarks for continuing studies of relations between work and learning activities. The findings provide a general context for presentation of the WALL network case studies in later chapters.

Notes 1 For a review of the origins and limitations of prior empirical research on informal learning see Livingstone (2006). 2 Both surveys were administered by the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at York University. The ISR technical report on the WALL survey sample, interview schedule and codebook are all available at www.wallnetwork.ca. Similar information for the NALL survey may be found at www.nall.ca. All differences reported in the text are statistically significant at the 0.01 level or greater level of confidence using Z tests for two independent proportions. 3 For a full list of the surveys and questions used to construct variables in WALL, please see the WALL survey codebook on the WALL website at: http://wallnetwork. ca/resources/WALLRB.htm. 4 In addition, reports on the directly comparable 1998 and 2004 responses of the longitudinal sample of 600 additional respondents drawn from the original NALL survey sample of 1565 people appear on the WALL website at: http://wallnetwork. ca/resources/WALLRB.htm. 5 These post-secondary completion statistics are drawn primarily from Statistics Canada and Council of Ministers of Education Canada (2003, 2006) as well as Livingstone (2002). 6 For an overview of other international surveys, including participation rate and time estimates, see Livingstone (2006). 7 For detailed discussion of definition and estimation of these economic class positions, see Livingstone (2009). 8 The AETS figure is computed from the original data file. A higher figure is quoted in Peters (2004: 17) with reference only to those who reported participating in specific types of self-directed informal job-related learning. 9 For the relative significance of multivariate relationships of independent variables with the dependent education–job matching variables, odds ratios are used. For explanation and illustrations, see Katz (2006). 10 This general finding contrasts with some of the case studies, where specific communities like recent immigrants spend more time learning skills related to interpersonal communication.

References Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work (1994) ‘Report of the Advisory Group on Working Time and the Distribution of Work’, Hull, QU: Human Resources and Development Canada. Autor, D.H., Levy, F. and Murnane, R.J. (2003) ‘The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, CXVIII: 1279–1333.

52 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Baldwin, J.R. and Beckstead, D. (2003) ‘Knowledge Workers in Canada’s Economy, 1971–2001’, Insights on the Canadian Economy, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Betcherman, G., Leckie, N. and McMullen, K. (1998) ‘Barriers to Employer-Sponsored Training in Canada’, Ottawa, ON: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, London: Routledge. Center for Workforce Development (1998) ‘The Teaching Firm: Where Productive Work and Learning Converge’, Newton, Mass.: Education Development Center. Chaykowski, R.P. (2005) ‘Non-Standard Work and Economic Vulnerability’, Vulnerable Workers Series, Ottawa, ON: Canadian Policy Research Networks. Clement, W. and Myles, J. (1994) Relations of Ruling: Class and Gender in Postindustrial Societies, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Colley, S., Hodkinson, P. and Malcom, J. (2003) Informality and Formality in Learning, London: Learning and Skills Research Centre. Collins, R. (1979) The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification, New York: Academic Press. Coltrane, S. (2000) ‘Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work’, Journal of Marriage and Family, 62: 1208–1233. Cranford, C.J., Vosko, L.F. and Zukewich, N. (2003) ‘Precarious Employment in the Canadian Labour Market: A Statistical Portrait’, Just Labour, 3: 6–22. Crompton, R. (2006) Employment and the Family: The Reconfiguration of Work and Family Life in Contemporary Societies, New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Curtis, B., Livingstone, D.W. and Smaller, H. (1992) Stacking the Deck: The Streaming of Working-Class Kids in Ontario Schools, Toronto, ON: Our Schools–Our Selves Education Foundation. Davis, J.A., Smith, T.W. and Marsden, P.V. (2003) General Social Surveys, 1972–2002 (computer file), Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor). Desjardins, R., Rubenson, K. and Milana, M. (2006) ‘Unequal Chances to Participate in Adult Learning: International Perspectives’, Fundamentals of Educational Planning, 83. Felstead, A., Gallie, D. and Green, F. (2002) ‘Work Skills in Britain 1986–2001’, DfES Publications, Nottingham, UK: Department for Education and Skills. Felstead, A., Gallie, D., Green, F. and Zhou, Y. (2007) ‘Skills at Work, 1986 to 2006’, University of Oxford, SKOPE. Galabuzi, G.-E. (2006) Canada’s Economic Apartheid: The Social Exclusion of Racialized Groups in the New Century, Toronto, ON: New Scholars’ Press. Galarneau, D., Maynard, J.-P. and Lee, J. (2005) ‘Whither the Workweek?’, Perspectives on Labour and Income, 6. Hall, M., Lasby, D., Gumulka, G. and Tryon, C. (2006) ‘Caring Canadians, Involved Canadians: Highlights from the 2004 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating’, Ottawa, ON: Ministry of Industry. Huws, U. (2003) The Making of a Cybertariat: Virtual Work in a Real World, New York: Monthly Review Press. Johnson, M. (1995) ‘Lessons from the Open University: Third Age Learning’, Educational Gerontology, 21(5): 415–427. Kalleberg, A.L. (2003) ‘Flexible Firms and Labor Market Segmentation: Effects of Workplace Restructuring on Jobs and Workers’, Work and Occupations, 30: 154–175.

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Kalleberg, A.L. (2007) The Mismatched Worker, New York: Norton. Katz, M. (2006) Multivariable Analysis: A Practical Guide for Clinicians (2nd edn), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Kenney, M. (1997) ‘Value Creation in the Late Twentieth Century: The Rise of the Knowledge Worker’, in Davis, J., Hirschl, T.A. and Stack, M. (eds) Cutting Edge: Technology, Information Capitalism and Social Revolution, New York: Verso. Kleinman, D.L. and Vallas, S.P. (2001) ‘Science, Capitalism, and the Rise of the “Knowledge Worker”: The Changing Structure of Knowledge Production in the United States’, Theory and Society, 30: 451–492. Labouvie-Vief, G. (1990) ‘Wisdom as Integrated Thought: Historical and Developmental Perspectives’, Wisdom: Its Nature, Origins, and Development: 52–83. Lavoie, M. and Roy, R. (1998) ‘Employment in the Knowledge-Based Economy: A Growth Accounting Exercise for Canada’, Ottawa, ON: Applied Research Branch of Human Resources Development Canada. Li, C., Gervais, G. and Duval, A. (2006) ‘The Dynamics of Overqualification: Canada’s Underemployed University Graduates’, Analysis in Brief Series, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Livingstone, D.W. (1999) ‘Exploring the Icebergs of Adult Learning: Findings of the First Canadian Survey of Informal Learning Practices’, Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education 13(2): 49–72. Livingstone, D.W. (2001) ‘Adults’ Informal Learning: Definitions, Findings, Gaps and Future Research’, NALL Working Papers No. 21, Toronto, ON: Centre for the Study of Education and Work, OISE/UT. Livingstone, D.W. (2002) Working and Learning in the Information Age: A Profile of Canadians, CPRN Discussion Paper, Ottawa, ON: Canadian Policy Research Network. Livingstone, D.W. (2004) The Education–Jobs Gap: Underemployment or Economic Democracy (2nd edn), Toronto, ON: Garamond Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2005) ‘Exploring Adult Learning and Work in Advanced Capitalist Society’, PASCAL Hot Topic, Glasgow, UK: PASCAL Observatory. Livingstone, D.W. (2006) ‘Informal Learning: Conceptual Distinctions and Preliminary Findings’, in Z. Bekerman, N.C. Burbules and D. Silberman-Keller (eds) Learning in Places: The Informal Education Reader, New York, NY: Peter Lang: 202–226. Livingstone, D.W. (ed.) (2009) Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Livingstone, D.W. and Myers, D. (2007) ‘“I Might Be Overqualified”: Personal Perspectives and National Survey Findings on Prior Learning Assessment and Recognition in Canada’, Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 13: 27–52. Livingstone, D.W. and Raykov, M. (2008) ‘Workers’ Power and Intentional Learning: A 2004 Benchmark Survey’, Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations, 63: 30–54. Livingstone, D. and Raykov, M. (2009) ‘Education and Jobs Survey Profile I: National Trends in Employment Conditions, Job Requirements, Workers’ Learning and Matching, 1983–2004’, in D.W. Livingstone (ed.) Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Livingstone, D.W. and Sawchuk, P.H. (2004) Hidden Knowledge: Organized Labour in the Information Age, Aurora, ON: Garamond Press. Livingstone, D.W. and Stowe, S. (2007) ‘Work Time and Learning Activities of the Continuously Employed: A Longitudinal Analysis, 1998–2004’, Journal of Workplace Learning, 19: 17–31.

54 D.W. Livingstone and Antonie Scholtz Livingstone, D.W., Raykov, M. and Stowe, S. (2001) ‘Interest in and Factors Related to Participation in Adult Education and Informal Learning: The AETS 1991, 1993 and 1997 Surveys and the 1998 NALL Survey’, Report to Applied Research Branch, Human Resources Development Canada, Toronto, ON: Centre for the Study of Education and Work. Machin, S. (2003) ‘Skill-Biased Technical Change in the New Economy’, in D.C. Jones (ed.) New Economy Handbook, San Diego: Elsevier. Malcolm, J., Hodkinson, P. and Colley, H. (2003) ‘The Interrelationships between Informal and Formal Learning’, Journal of Workplace Learning, 15: 313–318. Marsick, V. and Watkins, K. (2001) ‘Informal and Incidental Learning’, in S. Merriam (ed.) The New Update on Adult Learning Theory: New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Myers, K. and De Broucker, P. (2006) ‘Too Many Left Behind: Canada’s Adult Education and Training System’, CPRN Research Report W/34, Toronto, ON: Canadian Policy Research Networks. OECD (1996) ‘The Knowledge-Based Economy’, 1996 Science, Technology and Industry Outlook, Paris: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Paoli, P. (1997) Second European Survey on Working Conditions in the European Union, Dublin, Ireland: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Paoli, P. and Merllié, D. (2001) Third European Survey on Working Conditions 2000, Dublin, Ireland: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. Penland, P. (1977) Self-Planned Learning in America, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh. Peters, V. (2004) ‘Working and Training: First Results of the 2003 Adult Education and Training Survey’, Education, Skills and Learning: Research Papers, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Polanyi, M. (1966) ‘The Logic of Tacit Inference’, Philosophy, 41(155): 1–18. Sawchuk, P.H. and Taylor, A. (eds) (2009) Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work: Perspectives on Policy and Practice, Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishing. Smith, M. (2000) ‘Informal Learning’, Encyclopedia of Informal Learning. Online: available at http://www.infed.org (accessed 30 November 2009). Sorokin, P. (1943) Sociocultural Causality, Space, Time, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Spear, G. (1988) ‘Beyond the Organizing Circumstance: A Search for Methodology for the Study of Self-Directed Learning’, in H.B. Long and associates (eds) Self Directed Learning: Application and Theory, Athens, GA: Dept of Adult Education, University of Georgia. Statistics Canada (1989) General Social Survey. Cycle 4: Education and Work (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer), Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (1994) General Social Survey. Cycle 9: Education, Work, and Retirement (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer), Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (1999) Adult Education and Training Survey 1998, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2000) General Social Survey. Cycle 14: Access to and Use of Information Communication Technology (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer), Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor).

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Statistics Canada (2001a) Adult Education Participation in North America: International Perspectives, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2001b) Workplace and Employee Survey Compendium, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2003a) 2001 Census Handbook. Catalogue no. 92–379-XIE, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2003b) General Social Survey. Cycle 17: Social Engagement (computer file), Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada (producer), Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Data Library (distributor). Statistics Canada (2004) Women in Canada: Work Chapter Updates 2003. Catalogue no. 89F0133XIE, Ottawa, ON: Ministry of Industry 2004. Online: available at http://www. statcan.gc.ca/pub/89f0133x/89f0133x2003000-eng.pdf (accessed 17 September 2009). Statistics Canada (2005) General Social Survey on Time Use: Overview of the Time Use of Canadians, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada (2008) The Daily (9 May) Online: available at www.statcan.ca/english/ Subjects/Labour/LFS/lfs.pdf (accessed 25 October 2008). Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (2003) Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program: 2003, Ottawa and Toronto, ON: Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada and the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (2006) Education Indicators in Canada: Report of the Pan-Canadian Education Indicators Program 2005, Toronto, ON: Canadian Education Statistics Council. Statistics Canada and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2005) Learning a Living: First Results of the Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey, Ottawa, ON/Paris, France: Statistics Canada and OECD. Tough, A. (1978) ‘Major Learning Efforts: Recent Research and Future Directions’, Adult Education, 28: 250–263. Tough, A. (1979) The Adult’s Learning Projects: A Fresh Approach to Theory and Practice in Adult Learning, Toronto, ON: Ontario Institute for Studies in education. Weir, E. (2007) The Manufacturing Crisis, Ottawa, ON: Social and Economic Policy Department, Canadian Labour Congress. Online: available at http://canadianlabour.ca/ updir/03-27-07ManufacturingCrisisNote.pdf (accessed 25 October 2008).

Part II

Case studies of unpaid work and learning

Chapter 3

Odd project out Studying lifelong learning through unpaid household work Margrit Eichler

Introduction Our project1 was different from all the other WALL projects: they could all assume that their participants knew that they worked, and that they had a fairly clear idea of what their work involved.2 The researchers could therefore concentrate on studying the learning that occurred through this work. They could also draw upon a literature on the topic. By contrast, we started from the assumption that our participants might not be aware of much of the unpaid household work they perform, and that, even if they were aware of it, they might not define it as work. We also assumed that the existing empirical literature on housework does not adequately represent the range of the work performed. These assumptions turned out to be correct. In addition, we realized to our chagrin that there is almost no empirical literature on learning through household work (Eichler 2005: 1023–4). Our task, then, could be described as follows. First, surface the invisible work that the people who performed it were largely not aware of performing. Second, critically evaluate the housework literature to identify those aspects that prevent researchers from incorporating the entire range of activities that actually comprise unpaid household work. Third, devise an alternative definition of household work that adequately represents the full range of activities performed. Fourth, find out what people’s definition of work is and thereby answer the question why they did not define much of their household work as work. Fifth, find out what people learned through doing this work, even while they were largely not aware of doing it. Sixth, place this within the context of a literature that basically ignored the subject matter: lifelong learning theory.3 Our project therefore had two distinct aspects: first, we needed to establish the nature of household work; and, second, study the learning that occurred through the performance of this work.

Methods 4 Data collection proceeded in four phases. The first phase involved distribution of a questionnaire to women in various women’s groups, and in the case of our

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community partner, Mothers Are Women (MAW), to their legal or common-law spouses (all of whom turned out to be males). In Phase 1, we asked two sets of questions. We provided people with openended questions of what household work and carework they had done within the past week and year, and what they had learned through performing these tasks. By avoiding spelling out various functions that are part of housework (the most common approach), we aimed to explore two things: first, to what degree women were aware of the full range of tasks that are involved in running a household; and, second, to what degree their listing matched that contained in the housework literature. In other words, we were not interested at this stage to find out what people actually did, but what they believed they did, and how this matched the prevailing view in the sociological literature. In addition, for MAW members only, we included a separate sheet on which we asked people whether what they had learned through their household work was useful for paid work. Given that MAW was5 a feminist group that focused specifically on motherwork, we assumed (correctly) that these women would have a fairly sophisticated understanding of their work. Phase 2 consisted of focus groups in which we probed for the entire range of activities and why people did, or did not, define these activities as work. This method elicited an extraordinarily rich set of data, because participants stimulated and reinforced each other to recognize the type of work they performed, although we made it clear that we were not looking for consensus, but simply for the range of experiences and opinions. In all, we held 11 focus groups across three cities: one group of white women who were mixed in terms of age, including two women over 80 who had various disabilities, one group of older white women, one group of mostly younger white women, one group of Aboriginal women, two groups of black women, one group of white women all of whom were disabled, one group of women of colour who were mostly disabled, one group of recent Chinese immigrant women, and two groups of men. In addition, Barbara Anello, from DAWN (Disabled Women’s Network), organized an online focus group involving 20 disabled women. In some ways, there was great diversity across, and to some degree within, focus groups, but they were mostly homogeneous with respect to those variables along which people are primarily stratified in our society: sex, race, disability, Aboriginal status and age. We attribute part of the richness of the data to the social homogeneity within groups. The frankness with which the Aboriginal and black women spoke about their complicated familial situations and the work this generated, or the way in which the women with disabilities provided positive feedback to each other when they described their struggles would, we are certain, not have emerged had there been only one or two Aboriginal or black women or one or two women with disabilities in a mixed group. It was after this phase that we were able to devise a new definition of household work that is based in empirical research and that takes into account the understanding of the nature of the work of people in the centre as well as on the margins of society.

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Table 3.1 Major life changes of participants in the past five years Life change event

Accepted a new job Lost a job Welcomed a new child (through birth, adoption, new partner with child, etc.) Lost a partner (through separation, divorce or death) Disability (self-identified) Recently immigrated from China Total

Female

Male

N

N

5 5 5

5 5 5

5

5

10 14 44

5 6 31

Source: WALL survey 2004.

Phase 3 consisted of 75 individual interviews with people who had previously participated in the large WALL survey6 and had indicated that they were willing to be contacted for another interview. This phase concentrated on what people learn through their household work, using our enlarged definition of it. Given that people learn when they are confronted with changes (Jarvis 2006), participants (see Table 3.1) were selected according to the nature of a major life change within the past five years (although by the time we interviewed them, it was in the past six years) (see Table 3.1). The advantage of this approach was that we already had some information about these participants because of their previous participation in the WALL survey. The disadvantage was that they had not been part of the focus groups in which people were able to progress in their understanding of the nature of household work because of interaction between participants. Were I to start another project of this type again, I would have individual interviews with people only after they had participated in a group interview that allowed them to reflect within a social setting of peers about the scope of the unpaid household work they actually perform. Phase 4 introduced a new variable: it involved people who did some of the same unpaid work that everyone does for pay – we interviewed ten nannies and ten house cleaners. Here our intent was to see whether the pay made a substantial difference in the nature of the work and the learning through it. We also produced a DVD about the project, to bring the findings to a nonacademic audience (Eichler and Sky 2007).

Findings The nature of household work As noted, much household work is invisible to policy makers, the public at large, the beneficiaries of the work, and even to those who perform it (DeVault 1991; Butler 1993; VanEvery 1997; Folbre 2001; Gerzer-Sass 2004). We therefore

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needed to bring the full range of activities performed to the level of awareness of participants, so that we could discuss it with them. For a description of how we did this, see Eichler and Albanese (2007). We then compared our data to assumptions underlying much of the empirical housework literature.

The scope of household work 7 When we conceived the project, we started with a critical perspective on the existing housework literature. In general, there are four implicit assumptions underlying empirical studies of housework. On the basis of Phases 1, 2 and 3 we demonstrated that each of these assumptions is unwarranted, as noted below. ASSUMPTION 1: HOUSEWORK IS PERFORMED EXCLUSIVELY BY WIVES AND HUSBANDS (WOMEN AND MEN) WITHIN THEIR OWN HOMES

We found that household work is performed by adults and children within their own homes. Additionally, adults perform household work in other people’s homes, including grandparents babysitting their grandchildren, adult children helping their older parents, adult siblings and friends and neighbours helping each other. Of course, some people also receive a considerable amount of paid help, e.g. through house cleaners, snow shovellers, window cleaners, gardeners, babysitters (Eichler and Albanese 2007). We also found a significant amount of long-distance care provision, by telephone, email, occasional visits and other means (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming; Hyndman forthcoming; Liu forthcoming). ASSUMPTION 2: HOUSEWORK CONSISTS PRIMARILY OF A SET OF REPETITIVE PHYSICAL TASKS

While household work undoubtedly includes physical aspects, mental and emotional aspects are at least as significant. We do not generally consider surgeons to be manual labourers, although the use of their hands is a constant and important aspect of their work. So it is with much of household work. While some of it is repetitive and relatively simple, much of it involves very complex timing and organizational aspects, e.g. when getting a meal on the table, coordinating complicated schedules, planning special events, handling crises (Eichler and Albanese 2007). In addition, much of the work involved is emotion work (Liu 2009; Matthews forthcoming b). We were not surprised by these findings, since our questions, especially in Phase 2, were orientated towards eliciting information on these aspects of household work. We were, however, surprised to identify yet another dimension of household work that we had not anticipated and about which we had not originally asked questions, namely a spiritual dimension. We define spirituality not as synonymous with religiosity, but with reflecting upon the meaning of one’s life. English (2000: 30) identifies three different aspects of spirituality in informal learning: (1) a strong

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sense of self; (2) care, concern and outreach to others; and (3) the continuous construction of meaning and knowledge. We found many examples of all three. Since the spiritual dimension emerged so strongly during Phase 2, we added questions to this effect in Phase 3. This generated further considerable evidence of the importance of this dimension. ASSUMPTION 3: HOUSEWORK INCLUDES CHILDCARE, BUT DOES NOT INCLUDE CARE OF ADULTS

About half of the empirical housework studies we surveyed included questions on childcare, but none included questions on adult care, with the sole exception of the NALL and WALL surveys. Indeed, usually the subject is treated in a different literature altogether: the carework literature. The separation of household work into housework that includes unpaid childcare and housekeeping functions, and into carework that focuses largely on paid and unpaid care for adults seems deleterious to understanding the integrated nature of the household work that is actually performed. We found that housework and carework involve exactly the same types of tasks, but that the former focuses on the type of work performed, while the latter focuses on the recipient of the work. For example, if someone cooks a meal for her or his family, it would normally be counted as housework, but if she goes to her parents’ home and cooks the meal for them, it would usually be counted as part of carework. The artificial separation of housework and carework therefore hides a fair amount of the work that is actually performed (Eichler 2008a). As the reader may have noticed, in this section I switched from talking about housework to household work. This is how we resolved the dilemma: we understand household work to include all those aspects that are currently included under the term housework, plus all those aspects that are currently included under the term of carework, provided it is unpaid and performed in a private household. In addition, self-care is not usually included in either the housework literature or in the carework literature. We included a question about self-care assuming that it would turn out to be of particular importance for people with disabilities, which, indeed, turned out to be the case (Matthews forthcoming b). It adds another, so far largely ignored, aspect to the household work people are performing. ASSUMPTION 4: HOUSEWORK REMAINS LARGELY STABLE OVER THE LIFE COURSE

Some housework is, indeed, unchanging: people need to live in a somewhat clean shelter; they need to be clothed, fed, etc. However, change takes place constantly in at least two ways. First, although the tasks of cleaning, doing laundry and preparing meals need to be done by someone, how they are performed may vary dramatically, depending on the life stage and circumstances of the person performing these tasks. We found many examples where people described how they had drastically changed the way in which they did such routine tasks: because they had acquired a

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disability, because their own set of priorities changed, etc. Such (admittedly small, but nevertheless important) changes remain invisible if researchers ask only what household work people do, rather than also inquiring how they do it (Eichler 2008b). The larger changes occur because, typically, the composition of households shifts substantially during a lifetime. Single adults move in together with roommates, lovers, common law or legal spouses – which results in major changes in their household work. Children arrive, through birth, adoption or union with a partner who is already a parent, and eventually they leave. Adult children, sometimes with their own children, move back in with their parents. Each of these events results in major shifts in household work. Beyond that, the simple ageing process occasions change: caring for a toddler is very different from looking after a teen, and of course people’s own needs change as they age, as do those of their friends. Other changes are introduced through changes in the larger society, be they environmental, technical, social, political or economic. To treat household work as unchanging, then, is a significant error.

A new definition of household work Having demonstrated that the manner in which household work is usually implicitly defined is inadequate (it is rarely explicitly defined), we devised – based on our data – a new definition: Household work consists of the sum of all physical, mental, emotional and spiritual tasks that are performed for one’s own or someone else’s household and that maintain the daily life of those for whom one has responsibility. (cf. Eichler and Albanese 2007: 248) This definition avoids all four implicit assumptions and provides a significantly expanded understanding of the scope and nature of household work. It also allows for the inclusion of self-care, which is almost completely ignored in the housework literature as well as in the carework literature.

Understanding how people understand work 8 Once we had established what activities people saw as part of their household work, we asked them whether they did or did not consider these activities ‘work’ in the sense that they generally used this word, and why or why not. We were particularly interested in the reasons provided by respondents. We found that they identified four axes that determined whether people understood particular activities to constitute work or not: 1 2

The closer an activity was related to money, the more clearly it was seen as work. The less enjoyable an activity was, the more likely it was to be seen as work.

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3 4

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The more remote an activity was from directly benefiting the self or one’s family, the more likely it was to be seen as work. The more energy was expended, the more likely an activity was seen as work.

Drawing on these four dimensions, we arrived at four distinct ways in which people understood the meaning of the word ‘work’: 1

2

3

4

Most agreed that if activities are closely related to pay, they are work. This means that the activities are either directly paid for, or, if unpaid, someone else could do them for pay (the third-person criterion), or the husband holds a paid job and the wife is expected to contribute unpaid work to the husband’s job, such as the wife of an ambassador (the two-person career) or it involves preparation for a paid job, e.g. particularly careful grooming. Others saw as the most important aspect whether an activity was enjoyable or not. If it is enjoyable, it is not work (unless it is paid, in which case people inconsistently regard it as work). If it is not enjoyable, it is work. Another set of people saw as primary the question on whose behalf an activity is performed. A line separating work from non-work was variously drawn around the self or the self and the immediate family, and sometimes the family and close friends. The further removed the activity was from profiting oneself, one’s family and one’s friends, the more likely it was to be seen as work. Self-care, therefore, for most people was not seen as work, although preparation for self-care was sometimes seen as work, as was minimal selfmaintenance, which included activities that are needed to maintain one’s health and well-being, regardless of whether they were enjoyable or not. Examples people cited included yoga, which was enjoyable, but getting to it was not, while going to doctors’ appointments was seen as necessary, but not enjoyable. Finally, some people defined work as anything that takes time and energy – which is the definition usually provided by social scientists (Reskin 2000: 3261), although typically they then proceed to ignore it and deal with paid work only.

At this point we realized why so much of household work is invisible (Albanese forthcoming b). It is not just because it represents work done primarily by women, and because much of it is unpaid, and hence seen as valueless, but because the very understanding of what the term ‘work’ means to people challenges our capacity to see it – even if we are the ones who actually do the work. Some of the aspects may be experienced as pleasurable – and they are promptly excluded by those who define unpaid work as necessarily unpleasant. Much (although not all unpaid household work) is performed for oneself, one’s family and close friends – which again means that it is excluded from people’s definition of work. Only the energy expenditure definition was inclusive, but since it tends to be coupled with the notion of pay, it again leads to the exclusion of unpaid household work.

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Having reached this point, we felt that we understood not only the scope and nature of unpaid household work, but also the reasons why it is treated the way it is both in social science and by ordinary people in their daily lives. We felt ready to tackle the question of what learning occurs through unpaid household work.

Learning through household work We started our investigation of the scope and nature of household work with a critical perspective of the existing literature. When searching through the lifelong learning literature, we were not as critical of the theoretical frameworks or implicit assumptions underlying the literature, but we noted an almost complete absence of empirical studies of learning through household work. In a sense, that was an easier position to be in than the one we occupied in our relationship with the housework literature, which is voluminous but problematic. We found that many concepts in learning theory were applicable to unpaid household work. Nevertheless, our study is unusual for lifelong learning studies in so far as it views learning through the lens of unpaid household work, as well as largely through the perspective of people on the margins: people with disabilities, recent Chinese immigrants, nannies who work for pay, as well as others. We found that most of the approaches to lifelong learning share the following traits (see Eichler and Matthews forthcoming): • • • • • •

They are addressed to the educator, not the learner. They deal with paid work, not unpaid work. They focus on formal or non-formal education, rather than self-initiated informal learning. They largely understand lifelong learning as consisting of educational opportunities which are created or fostered by the state. They recognize lifelong learning as being of prime importance for the state and corporations to become or remain competitive in a global market. In general, they all see learning as positive.

By contrast, we started with an opposite approach. We started from the experiences of the learner, not from what educators should do, and we dealt with learning through and for unpaid work, not paid work. Once the research was under way a number of other key findings emerged: • •

• •

Learning is self-initiated and usually informal, rather than formal or non-formal. Lifelong learning through household work consists of learning opportunities that arise out of people’s lives and for which people have to find their own resources. Lifelong learning is invisible to the state, corporations and people in general, including those who engage in the learning. Some things are learned that people should not have to learn.

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We looked for the same four dimensions of learning that we had found constituted household work: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual learning (meaning making). All four are well-established categories of learning in lifelong and adult learning theory (Illeris 2002, 2003; MacKeracher 2004; Jarvis 2006). Although cognitive learning tends to receive the greatest share of attention, the other dimensions are certainly not new. In real life all four dimensions tend to intermingle, but for analytical reasons we found it useful to separate them. Here I am presenting our findings according to the way in which we explored them: by focusing on the learning of people not in the mainstream – people with disabilities, recent immigrants from China, immigrant nannies – and by examining learning through carework, and the effect of learning through unpaid household work on paid work. We also investigated how people learn, and I end with a critical reflection on lifelong learning by considering what people learn that they should not have to learn.

Learning through and with a disability 9 All of our participants engaged in self-care, and they were more or less aware of this fact. For people with disabilities, self-care became a very conscious matter that at times required a great deal of energy, and necessitated strenuous physical, mental, emotional and spiritual learning. People with disabilities learned a variety of things, as noted below. THEY LEARNED TO PERFORM UNPAID HOUSEHOLD WORK TASKS DIFFERENTLY

Respondents learned to work within the parameters prescribed by the physical abilities of their bodies. Which self-care tasks could or could not be performed varied from respondent to respondent. When they learned that there were tasks they could no longer do, respondents learned to do things differently – to slide the pot across the counter, rather than lift it, to drink from a cup with a straw rather than try to lift it, to dress oneself with the left hand rather than the non-functioning right one, etc. The also learned to conserve energy by doing less, avoiding certain tasks, such as snow-shovelling, altogether, by delegating, and by planning and prioritizing differently. THEY LEARNED TO CREATE SPACE THAT IS USER-FRIENDLY FOR THEM

The difficulties disabled persons faced in their own homes and in their external environment highlight the ways in which public and private space is constructed for an able-bodied world. Many had to modify their homes so that they could use appliances, work on counter space, improve health by removing their carpets, etc. Some simply could not use certain appliances. For instance, Debbie, who is blind, could not use her oven because it has a digital dial.

68 Margrit Eichler THEY LEARNED TO ASK FOR AND ACCEPT HELP

Asking for help means knowing what help to ask for and where to get it, which is difficult because many people with disabilities have low incomes and cannot always pay for the resources that are not funded by government. Having to ask for help can also negatively affect a person’s self-esteem. As Christina commented: ‘You have to swallow a lot of pride, especially in the beginning.’

THEY LEARNED TO MAINTAIN SOME ELEMENT OF CONTROL OVER THEIR LIVES

Given that a disabled person had to learn to accept help from others and learn to live with a restricted set of capacities, the critical issue became: what areas of my life can I control and how do I do it? Self-care, for many respondents, became a matter of making choices and setting priorities. It also meant learning to tactfully direct caregivers and to be very careful in how they expend their time and energy.

THEY LEARNED HOW TO WORK WITH THEIR EMOTIONS

Emotions are an integral part of people’s being, feelings, thoughts and actions (Goleman 1995; Ahmed 2004). They directly influence well-being. The need to change and adapt requires emotion work to reduce the frustration entailed in the process. Respondents learned to create emotional well-being for themselves, for instance by purposefully reducing stress and learning not to worry.

THEY LEARNED TO NURTURE THE SPIRITUAL ASPECTS OF THEIR LIVES

People who acquired disabilities in their adulthood had to deal with the tension between what they were and what they are. This led to the question of how to make life meaningful for themselves. It included no longer seeking approval from others, and seeking peace and balance through such activities as meditation, Tai Chi, yoga and communing with nature – all of which are responses our non-disabled participants also named as being helpful in reflecting on the meaning of their lives.

Learning of recent Chinese immigrants through unpaid household work 10 For the Chinese, food and eating is an important part of their culture. The great preoccupation with food in Chinese culture is reflected in the most popular Chinese greeting, ‘Have you had your meal yet?’, which is equivalent to ‘How are you?’ in English. Learning to use different kitchens and utensils, different ways of shopping for and storing food therefore requires major learning for Chinese immigrants, especially since most of them were professionals in China who did little cooking themselves but now find themselves with lower-paying (or no) jobs, which makes eating out most of the time prohibitive in terms of cost. Consequently, they learn to cook, women as well as many men, Western dishes as

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well as traditional Chinese dishes that they either used to buy ready-made or that someone else prepared for them within the home. The things they learned through cooking extend well beyond just the simple preparation of the food, as noted below. LEARNING TO COOK AS A WAY OF ADAPTING TO CANADA

Although some of our male Chinese participants also learned to cook, it was, not unexpectedly, the women who did most of it. Cooking was a strategy to cope with a deteriorated social and economic situation: it saves money, but they also want to have their own ethnic food, and to eat healthily. LEARNING TO INCORPORATE WESTERN FOODS INTO THEIR DIET

Western cuisine is quite different from Chinese cuisine. Participants talked about learning to like and prepare salads with raw ingredients, sandwiches, pizzas, cookies and cakes. LEARNING TO COOK WITHIN A CANADIAN KITCHEN

When asked if there were any changes in the way they cook and prepare their food, several respondents replied immediately, ‘In China, we use gas, here we use electricity.’ ‘Here they don’t have the big fans in the kitchen to pump out the smoke,’ they said. ‘We don’t use the oven to bake things in China.’ Accommodating to such different appliances made up an important part of the cooking experience and learning in the host country. Even when preparing their own food, such as stirfries, they had to modify the way they prepared them because otherwise the smoke alarm would be set off. LEARNING TO SHOP CANADIAN STYLE

Shopping is an integral part of food preparation. While in China people used to shop daily, because the shop was on their way home from their paid work, here they had to learn to shop weekly, which requires an entirely different way of planning, budgeting and organizing of meals. In addition, because many of the immigrants did not have their own car, this involved coordinating schedules with friends and colleagues who might drive them. Shopping changed from being easy, convenient and quick, to a chore that is difficult and requires careful management. LEARNING TO USE FOOD AS A MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION WITH CO-WORKERS

One of our participants noted that in the workplace, it is easier for the smokers to make new friends. He said: ‘I think Chinese food is my cigarette. Although I don’t

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smoke cigarettes, I “smoke” Chinese food.’ He exchanges food with his co-workers from Europe and Africa. ‘Food is a medium,’ he says, that helps him to get along with his co-workers.

Learning through unpaid carework 11 Our definition of household work includes carework. Most of our respondents both provided and received some care. We are therefore not dealing with a dichotomy of care provider/care recipient but an exchange of services that involves family, friends, neighbours, co-workers and pets, plus, of course, self-care. Caring is a social activity, and despite commonsensical notions regarding the naturalness of care, people in fact learn a great deal through their carework, in order to be able to do that carework. A considerable amount of carework was provided long distance. For many immigrants much care was delivered transnationally. For instance, when Speranza was arranging to have her daughter immigrate to Canada, she arranged the medical exam, the interview with the school principal, and the interactions with the Canadian embassy, as if she had been in Kenya – only with considerably more difficulty (Eichler and Sky 2007). Long-distance care was also a reality for Canadians whose children, parents, siblings or friends lived far away. LEARNING A ‘HUGE TREASURE CHEST OF COPING SKILLS’

People, in particular parents, talked about the need to develop a large range of skills to care effectively. This was particularly challenging when they were committed to parenting differently from the way they themselves had been parented. ‘How can I do it better? How can I not hit?’ mused one of our Canadian participants. Chinese immigrants, who come from a culture that accepts physical punishment and puts a greater emphasis on parental control, struggled to learn to adapt to Canadian ways of raising their children. Carework can also lead to reciprocal learning between parents and children. For example, parents learned to do new things at their children’s request. A considerable amount was learned when people needed to care for someone (including themselves) who was ill, from cooking food for special diets to dealing with health bureaucracies and providing emotional support. EXTENDING CAREWORK INTO THE COMMUNITY

Carework not only leads to learning by individuals in their home setting. A number of people described learning new skills, or further developing existing ones, through the community work they performed as an extension of their parenting and childcare responsibilities. This included learning about environmental problems, learning how to successfully advocate for a French-language school, fighting for resources for their children who have various illnesses and impairments, or

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learning how to become a Boy Scout leader. It is in accord with the findings of Schugurensky et al. in this book (Chapter 4), who also found that ‘volunteers acquire a great amount of knowledge and skills that relate to their specific contexts’ (see p. 90). LEARNING HOW TO MAINTAIN RELATIONSHIPS

People also learned to maintain their relationships in different ways, developing valuable emotion work skills that were often transferable across different contexts and situations. This might happen because someone moved away and they needed to find a different mode to keep in touch – via telephone, email and through visits – or it might be that someone went through an experience himself (these examples were provided by men) that made him more sensitive to the needs of others in similar circumstances. Learning to do emotion work involved skills and knowledge that varied, depending on people’s particular context, experience and access to resources. LEARNING SPIRITUAL SKILLS

Miller (2002: 89) has argued, ‘When we view life from a spiritual perspective, we see ourselves connected to something larger than ourselves.’ Through their engagement with others – supporting, caring for, witnessing, talking with them – people learned a great deal about themselves. For the most part, this learning was expressed as a source of strength amidst complex lives and situations.

Learning through paid carework: the case of nannies 12 We included nannies, who do some of the household work for pay that most of us do for no pay, in order to see whether the learning varied when pay was present. What we found was that the learning was very similar, but that the pervasive invisibility that surrounds the unpaid household work extended to the paid version, and thus made the learning also invisible. Nannies come with considerable formal learning, but they are treated by the state as if they were unskilled workers, thus obliterating the fact that they now often have a university education with a diploma. Even as unskilled workers they are discriminated against, through the Live-In Caregiver Program, which requires them to live with their employer for at least two years, thus exposing them to potential abuse and exploitation. Their work – and their skills – are thus as little regarded as those of a mother. And just as for a mother, the lines between work and leisure are blurred. Once they have started their jobs, the learning is very similar to those of other immigrants and Canadian mothers in general. They need to learn about Canadian ways of cooking and of interacting with children, and they talk about learning patience, disciplining children in a non-violent manner and learning to engage in educational play with them.

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Like other immigrants, they learned how to maintain family relationships transnationally, tragically often including, for those who were mothers, their own children, who are cared for by others while the nannies are looking after the children of their employers.

The utility of learning through unpaid household work for paid work 13 Mostly, sociologists tend to think about the relationship between ‘family and work’14 in terms of conflict, the one affecting the other in a negative way. However, we have seen that people learn a lot through performing unpaid household work. Is any of it useful for paid work? We asked this directly in Phase 1 when we appended a sheet with this question to the questionnaires sent out to MAW members. Everyone who filled out this sheet answered positively, and more evidence to this effect emerged in Phase 2, although we did not ask specifically about this issue. We received a long list of things learned through unpaid household work that are directly useful for paid work. What is remarkable about this list is that the skills identified could be summarized under human relations skills, organizational skills and management of self/work ethic. With one exception (‘price comparing’, mentioned once) none of them is task specific. In other words, the majority of respondents viewed as the most important skills those that are clearly transferable from one set of circumstances – or type of work – to another, and they were emphatic about their importance. Of course, the relationship is most likely two-way: people are likely to apply skills they learned at their paid work to their unpaid work, but this was not an issue we examined. One interesting comment in Phase 3 came from a man who defined himself as a ‘househusband’. Mithrael, who has worked professionally in the field of conflict resolution, said: ‘When I try to do it on my family I don’t use all the skills I have. I just forget about them in the panic of the situation.’ This speaks to the fact that, very often, unpaid household work may be more demanding, more emotionally involving and require more multi-tasking than paid work.

How people learned We found that people learned a large number of skills through their unpaid household work. Getting them to talk about what they learned was significantly easier than having them verbalize how they learned. One thing became clear very soon: They used multiple methods, from taking informal classes to reading, thinking, searching the internet, listening to TV and radio, talking with friends, colleagues, professionals, family members and others. Many used a trial-and-error method, and learned by doing. A paragraph from another publication provides a brief summary of how people learned: In the context of unpaid household work, learning is largely informal and starts with an experience; it happens usually after an experience of disjuncture

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in the person’s environment – something has changed. The learning process is self-initiated and most often self-directed. Respondents used a variety of resources when learning. These were both internal and external to the self. The former involves the use of explicit as well as tacit knowledge that has been generated throughout the individual’s life course. While it is the individual who learns, learning always happens in a social context and is socially constructed within the normative demands and values of different cultures (Jarvis 1987, 2006). We interact with other people and with the material world when we learn. In some instances learning is a necessity but it may also be a choice of what and how to learn or even not to learn. (Eichler forthcoming b, manuscript pp. 25–6, emphasis in the original) We did encounter a few instances in which people realized they should learn something but did not. They knew they had the intellectual capacity to learn what they needed to learn in order to survive, but decided not to learn it. This was, for instance, the case for a widower whose long-term wife had suddenly died. He refused to learn to cook and to do his own laundry, and he died shortly thereafter, probably still heartbroken. This underlines the fact that self-initiated learning is a choice that people need to make, regardless of the form the learning takes.

What people should not have to learn Lifelong learning theory tends to stress the acquisition of skills that are useful for paid work. Similarly, we have so far looked at learning as a positive outcome – emphasizing the many important and useful skills people learn through performing unpaid household work. However, the notion of lifelong learning has been severely criticized as having been co-opted by neoliberalism (Eichler and Matthews forthcoming) by blaming individual workers for having no paying jobs because they did not learn enough (Cruikshank 2002), in spite of evidence that Canada does not have a shortage of skilled workers, but instead a shortage of skilled jobs for workers (Livingstone 2004). In spite of this critique, we opted to use lifelong learning theory anyhow, because it claims to be about ‘learning for life’ (Grace 2004: 391), which certainly encompasses household work as a very major aspect. However, the critiques alerted us to look for negative aspects of learning as well as positive aspects, and we found many instances in which people learned to adapt to unjust and injurious situations, which is something that in a just and equitable society people would not have to learn. •

People learned to cope with sexism, both by dealing with overt and gross forms of sexism as well as with the more subtle but pernicious acceptance of a division of labour by gender that makes it feel ‘natural’ for women to do the major bulk of household work (Eichler and Matthews forthcoming; Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming; Hyndman forthcoming; Liu forthcoming).

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• •

•

• •

•

People learned to cope with a healthcare system that does not provide sufficient care and resources to patients (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming). People learned to cope with ableism – with a social environment in which their abilities are ignored and with a physical environment that is not sensitive to their needs, indeed that puts physical obstacles in their way (Matthews forthcoming b); they learned to fight to access (insufficient) resources for their children who were disabled (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming), and to adjust to social isolation (Eichler and Sky 2007). They learned to make-up for the inefficiencies of the transportation system by allowing huge margins of error in their timetables (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming). People learned to deal with racism that discriminates against immigrants (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming). All of our Chinese immigrants had experienced downward social mobility (Liu forthcoming), as had other immigrants. People learned to cope with stark poverty in creative ways (Ferguson and Eichler forthcoming; Matthews forthcoming b). Some of the nannies who were mothers had to learn to cope with separation from their own children, and from the rest of their families, while minding the children of others (Hyndman forthcoming). Housewives and nannies alike learned to deal with the devaluation of their work (Eichler and Sky 2007; Hyndman forthcoming).

Overall, a host of problems emerged that should have no role in a fair and equitable society. They call for major policy changes (Albanese forthcoming a).

Conclusion In this study, we looked at unpaid household work and lifelong learning. We found that a tremendous amount of learning takes place, much of which is of direct use to the learner, and it addresses the issues that have been defined as core issues of lifelong learning, namely concerns of ‘people engaged in day to day situations and interventions; people trying to make sense of their lives’ (Garrick 1996: 25). Unpaid household work has been almost ignored in lifelong learning, yet: . . . learning [through unpaid household work] is an everyday activity for many. And this learning is important because it sustains life and contributes to the quality of life. Furthermore, it is learning to cope with, manage, and live within the constraints of a society’s culture, policies, and ideological beliefs. It is about finding and establishing one’s place in the lifeworld that surrounds you. It is finding out about, understanding, and nurturing the self. (Matthews 2009) Besides these positive forms of learning, we also found that people learn about adjusting to and coping with injustices and inequities – alerting us to the fact that not all learning is necessarily good or desirable. We found instances where people

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refused to learn when they would have benefited from it, underlining the fact that self-initiated learning must, in fact, be initiated. But, above all, this study has demonstrated that looking at unpaid household work is a tremendously rich and fertile ground for research that has long been ignored to the detriment of our understanding of lifelong learning.

Notes 1 The core team involved was Patrizia Albanese, Susan Ferguson, Nicky Hyndman, Lichun Willa Liu and Ann Matthews. I thank them for their comments on this paper. Students who participated at some point were: Robyn Bourgeois, Alexia Dyer, Lingqin Feng, Young-Hwa Hong, Gada Mahrouse, Carly Manion, Tracey Matthews, Gayle McIntyre, Thara Mohanathas, Sam Rahimi, Susan Stowe, Carole Trainor, Natalie ZurNedden. 2 Chapter 4 details that the meaning of volunteer work is also not as straightforward as often thought – however, it is more structured and better recognized than unpaid household work since it is attached to some organization independent of the person who performs the work. 3 The theoretical case for examining lifelong learning through household work has been made by Gouthro (2000, 2005) and Hart (1992). The empirical exceptions with respect to empirical investigations are Butler (1993), Gerzer-Sass (2004), Hasselkus and Ray (1988), and Livingstone (2005). 4 For more details see Matthews (forthcoming a). 5 MAW has since ceased to exist. See ‘Appendix 3: Mothers Are Women’ in Spracklin (forthcoming) for a short description and history of the group. 6 Some of the Chinese participants had not been part of the WALL survey (see Liu 2008). 7 This section is based on Eichler (forthcoming b). Rather than paraphrasing everything, I occasionally cite a sentence or a passage verbatim without indicating this with quotation marks, in order to keep the chapter readable. 8 This section is based on Eichler (forthcoming b). My understanding of this issue has developed over time. For a somewhat different interpretation see Eichler and Matthews (2005), and Eichler and Matthews (2007). 9 This section is based in its entirety on Matthews (forthcoming b). 10 This section is based on Liu (forthcoming). 11 This section is based on Ferguson and Eichler (forthcoming). 12 This section is based on Hyndman (forthcoming). 13 This section is based on Eichler (forthcoming a). 14 I have put the terms in quotations marks, because this common expression implies that all work is paid and that family does not encompass any work.

References Ahmed, S. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion, New York, NY: Routledge. Albanese, P. (forthcoming a) ‘Conclusion’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Albanese, P. (forthcoming b) ‘Introduction’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press.

76 Margrit Eichler Butler, L. (1993) ‘Unpaid Work in the Home and Accreditation’, in Thorpe, M., Edwards, R. and Hanson, A. (eds) Culture and Processes of Adult Learning. A Reader, London and New York: Routledge (in association with the Open University). Cruikshank, J. (2002) ‘Lifelong Learning or Re-Training for Life: Scapegoating the Worker’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 34: 140–155. DeVault, M.L. (1991) Feeding the Family: The Social Organization of Caring as Gendered Work, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eichler, M. (2005) ‘The Other Half (or More) of the Story: Unpaid Household and Care Work and Lifelong Learning’, in Bascia, N., Cumming, A., Datnow, A., Leithwood, K. and Livingstone, D. (eds) International Handbook of Educational Policy, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. Eichler, M. (2008a) ‘Integrating Carework and Housework into Household Work. A Conceptual Clarification’, Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 10: 9–19. Eichler, M. (2008b) ‘Just Women’s Stuff: Lifelong Learning through Unpaid Household Work’, in Livingstone, D., Mirchandani, K. and Sawchuk, P. (eds) The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Rotterdam: Sense Publ. Eichler, M. (forthcoming a) ‘“I Am the Patient and Compassionate Cashier”: Learning through Unpaid Household Work for Paid Work’, in Krull, C. (ed.) Demystifying Family/Paid Work Contradiction: Challenges and Possibilities, Vancouver: UBC Press. Eichler, M. (forthcoming b) ‘What is Housework?’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Eichler, M. and Albanese, P. (2007) ‘What is Household Work? A Critique of Assumptions Underlying Empirical Studies of Housework and an Alternative Approach’, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 32: 227–258. Eichler, M. and Matthews, A. (2005) ‘Was Ist Arbeit? Eine Betrachtung Aus Der Perspektive Unbezahlter Hausarbeit’, in Ernst, W. (ed.) Leben Und Wirtschaften – Geschlechterkonstruktionen Durch Arbeit, Münster: LIT Verlag. Eichler, M. and Matthews, A. (2007) ‘What is Work? Looking at All Work through the Lens of Unpaid Housework’, in Tepperman, L. and Dickinson, H. (eds) Sociology in Canada: A Reader, Toronto: Oxford University Press. Eichler, M. and Matthews, A. (forthcoming) ‘Learning through Household Work’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Eichler, M. and Sky, L. (co-producers) (2007) Household Work: More Than It Seems (DVD), Toronto: VTape. English, L.M. (2000) ‘Spiritual Dimensions of Informal Learning’, in English, L.M. and Gillen, M.A. (eds) Addressing the Spiritual Dimensions of Adult Learning: What Educators Can Do, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Ferguson, S. and Eichler, M. (forthcoming) ‘Choreographing Care: Learning through Unpaid Carework’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Folbre, N. (2001) The Invisible Heart. Economics and Family Values, New York: New Press. Garrick, J. (1996) ‘Informal Learning: Some Underlying Philosophies’, CJSA/RCEEA, 10: 21–46. Gerzer-Sass, A. (2004) ‘Familienkompetenzen Als Potential Einer Innovativen Personalpolitik’, in Hungerland, B. and Overwien, B. (eds) Kometenzentwicklung Im

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Wandle. Auf Dem Weg Zu Einer Informellen Lernkultur?, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag fuer Sozialwissenschaften. Goleman, D. (1995) Emotional Intelligence, New York, NY: Bantam Books. Gouthro, P.A. (2000) ‘Globalization, Civil Society and the Homeplace’, Convergence, 33: 57–76. Gouthro, P.A. (2005) ‘A Critical Feminist Analysis of the Homeplace as Learning Site: Expanding the Discourse of Lifelong Learning to Consider Adult Women Learners’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 24: 5–19. Grace, A.P. (2004) ‘Lifelong Learning as a Chameleonic Concepts and Versatile Practice: Y2K Perspectives and Trends’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 23: 385–404. Hart, M.U. (1992) Working and Educating for Life: Feminist and International Perspectives on Adult Education, London: Routledge. Hasselkus, B.R. and Ray, R.O. (1988) ‘Informal Learning in Family Caregiving: A Worm’s Eye View’, Adult Education Quarterly, 39: 31–40. Hyndman, N. (forthcoming) ‘The Case of Nannies: Shifting Unpaid Work onto Paid Work’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Illeris, K. (2002) The Three Dimensions of Learning, Copenhagen: Roskilde University Press. Illeris, K. (2003) ‘Towards a Contemporary and Comprehensive Theory of Learning’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 22: 396–406. Jarvis, P. (1987) Adult Learning in the Social Context, Beckenham, United Kingdom: Croom Helm. Jarvis, P. (2006) Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Human Learning, New York, NY: Routledge. Liu, L.W. (2008) ‘New Home, New Learning: Chinese Immigrants, Unpaid Housework and Care Work’, in Livingstone, D.W., Mirchandani, K. and Sawchuk, P.H. (eds) The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Rotterdam/Taipei: Sense Publ. Liu, L.W. (2009) Learning to Do Emotion Work: Recent Chinese Immigrants’ Perspective, Toronto: University of Toronto, unpublished paper. Liu, L.W. (forthcoming) ‘“Have You Had Your Meal Yet?”: Chinese Immigrants, Food Related Household Work and Informal Learning’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2004) The Education–Jobs Gap: Underemployment or Economic Democracy (2nd edn), Garamond Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2005) ‘Expanding Conception of Work and Learning: Recent Research and Policy Implications’, in Bascia, N., Cumming, A., Datnow, A., Leithwood, K. and Livingstone, D. (eds) International Handbook of Educational Policy, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer. MacKeracher, D. (2004) Making Sense of Adult Learning, Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Matthews, A. (2009) Bringing the Obscure to Light: How People Learn, unpublished paper, Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Matthews, A. (forthcoming a) ‘Appendix 1: Methodological Overview’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press.

78 Margrit Eichler Matthews, A. (forthcoming b) ‘Encounters with the Self: Disability and the Many Dimensions of Self-Care’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Miller, J.J. (2002) ‘Learning from a Spiritual Perspective’, in O’Sullivan, E., Morell, A. and O’Connor, A.-M. (eds) Expanding the Boundaries of Transformative Learning, New York: Palgrave. Reskin, B.F. (2000) ‘Work and Occupations’, in Montgomery, R.J.V. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Sociology (2nd ed), New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Spracklin, K. (forthcoming) ‘Appendix 3: Mothers Are Women’, in Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (eds) More Than It Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. VanEvery, J. (1997) ‘Understanding Gendered Inequality: Reconceptualizing Housework’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 20: 411–420.

Chapter 4

Volunteer work and informal learning Exploring the connections Daniel Schugurensky, Fiona Duguid and Karsten Mündel 1

Introduction Every day of the year, everywhere on the planet, millions of people do volunteer work. True, voluntary organizations have existed for centuries in many societies, often in connection to self-help and mutual solidarity, religious pursuits, social movements, cultural initiatives, altruism, and also in response to gaps in state provision in areas such as health, education, housing, environmental protection and human rights. However, the growth in the number and variety of organizations since the last decades of the twentieth century is so impressive that some researchers have noticed a ‘global associational revolution’, a phenomenon that emerged partly from dramatic breakthroughs in information technology and literacy that have ignited people’s awareness and willingness to change their circumstances and improve the social world, partly from the increased capacity of voluntary organizations to translate those dispositions into social action, and partly to the retreat of the state from providing services such as health- or eldercare (Salamon, Sokolowski and List 2003: 3; Lacey and Ilcan 2006). Today, the current size of the volunteer sector is impressive. In Canada alone, it includes approximately 12 million people. This means that 45 per cent of the population aged 15 or older volunteer every year through organizations. These volunteers contribute an average of 168 hours per year. When aggregated, their contributions amount to almost 2 billion hours, which is equivalent to 1 million full-time jobs (Hall et al. 2006: 31). It is pertinent to note that these figures reflect only formal volunteering, and do not include the vast amount of informal volunteering through daily interactions. In the course of their volunteer activities, people learn a great deal in a variety of areas. Some of this learning is acquired through participation in workshops, courses, seminars and conferences, but most is acquired informally, through the very act of volunteering itself. Although this informal learning results in significant changes in knowledge, skills, dispositions and practices, little empirical research has been conducted on the connection between volunteer work and informal learning. Two main reasons may account for this. First, while an abundant research literature exists on work, volunteer work is marginalized. Despite the significant

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contributions of volunteer work to the economy and to societal well-being, and while in theory all work is deemed important, in practice only paid work tends to be considered ‘real work’, and thus it is most often publicly recognized, valued and given top priority in today’s culture (Eakin 2009). Second, only a small fraction of the vast research literature on education explores the dynamics of informal learning. The low attention paid to informal learning by educational researchers is probably related to conceptual factors (education is usually equated with educational institutions) but also to the methodological difficulties in uncovering informal learning. Moreover, the relatively small body of literature on informal learning pays little attention to volunteer work, and the relatively small literature on volunteer work pays little attention to informal learning. The dearth of research on this topic, then, can be largely explained by the combined marginal status of volunteer work in the literature on work, and of informal learning in the scholarship on education. This is compounded by the fact that, traditionally, both voluntary organizations and volunteers themselves have paid little attention to issues of learning, because their main focus is on ‘doing stuff ’, usually with time pressures and a scarcity of resources. Given this situation, and despite incipient scholarship on the topic, not much is known about the learning dimension of volunteer work. This project was conceived precisely as a modest contribution to shed more light on these dynamics. This chapter provides an overview of the project; it is organized in six sections. In the first three we examine issues related to volunteer work, informal learning and the connections between them. Then we describe our research, share some of the main findings emanating from the case studies and offer preliminary conclusions.

Volunteer work The concept of volunteer work evokes a great variety of images that relate to a wide range of activities, from delivering food and clothes to organizing and supervising events, serving on boards and committees, rescuing victims, fundraising, teaching, tutoring, coaching, campaigning, firefighting, building and repairing schools, writing books and computer software, performing arts, caring for children, elders, homeless and sick people, and so on. Volunteers are active in rural and urban areas alike, and are involved in local, regional, national and global causes. The array of work undertaken by volunteers every day is impressive, to the extent that the vibrancy of our cultural, economic, political and social world would be significantly diminished if one day they suddenly decided ‘to quit’ (Hall et al. 2006). Human beings have always helped others in a variety of ways and forms, but for many centuries this was not known as ‘volunteerism’. The term ‘volunteer’ started to be used in the seventeenth century to refer to someone who willingly served in the military without being paid. Later on, the term was used to refer to those who rendered aid, performed a service or assumed an obligation voluntarily. In the twentieth century, with the growth and institutionalization of the non-profit

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sector, volunteer work became generally understood as work that has four distinctive features: it is freely chosen, unpaid, part of an organization (normally nonprofit) and benefits others. From this perspective, only if an activity fulfils all four characteristics can it be considered a true and full expression of volunteer work. This approach is appealing due to its clarity and simplicity, but its binary categorization constitutes a weakness because it ignores the many shades of grey that occur in the real world of volunteerism. To overcome this limitation, Cnaan, Handy and Wadsworth (1996), after an exhaustive analysis of the multiple definitions used by organizations, policy makers and researchers, conceptualized volunteering as a series of four interrelated dimensions, each one with internal categories organized as a continuum in descending order (see Table 4.1). This conceptualization of volunteer work addresses some of the limits of the traditional definition by offering a more subtle elaboration that acknowledges the different degrees of volition, remuneration, structure and potential beneficiaries that can be present in a given volunteer activity. According to Table 4.1, the further down it falls in each category, the less likely that such activity will be considered ‘true’ volunteerism in the strict sense. These gradations are important because a yes/no test to the four dimensions is insufficient to capture the complex reality of volunteer work. Indeed, in real life a particular volunteer activity may have a high score in some categories and a low score in others. In the last decades, a shift in volunteering practices has taken place in many societies. One of the features of this shift is a change in the demographic profile of volunteers. Whereas the traditional volunteers were full-time homemakers, now there are increasing numbers of senior citizens, students in service learning projects, Table 4.1 Dimensions and categories of volunteer work Dimension

Categories

Volition

1. 2. 3. 4.

Free choice Relatively uncoerced Relatively coerced Mandated

Remuneration

1. 2. 2. 3. 4.

Non-reimbursed expenses None at all None expected Reimbursed expenses Stipend/low pay

Structure

1. Formal 2. Semi-formal 3. Informal

Intended beneficiaries

1. Benefit/help others/strangers 2. Benefit/help friends or relatives 3. Benefit oneself (as well)

Source: adapted from Cnaan et al. 1996, p. 371 (categories in bold are our own additions).

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full-time professionals, people with disabilities and recent immigrants. Another feature is the decline of long-term, regular volunteer work and the increase in short-term commitments. This trend has resulted in the rise of ‘episodic volunteers’ – that is, those who engage only in short and occasional tasks. Whereas the classic volunteer used to make unconditional, regular and long-term commitments, the new volunteers are more likely to set conditions and to engage in a more irregular and erratic way. Another feature of this transition is that the classic volunteer was more idealistic, selfless and altruistic, and tended to put community service and organizational needs first. The new volunteer, instead, tends to be more pragmatic, is more inclined to do a cost–benefit analysis before volunteering, and believes in a balance between individual needs and organizational needs, although many times puts their personal interest first. In the traditional model, known as ‘collective’, volunteer work was regulated and supervised by groups regardless of the intentions or preferences of individual members. In the new model, known as ‘reflexive’, the focus shifts to the volunteer as an individual actor (Geber 1991; Hustinx 2001; Hustinx and Lammertyn 2003; Macduff 2004, 2005). Acknowledging the different expressions of volunteerism can help to recognize its multifaceted nature beyond its common base, and can also contribute to a better understanding of the links between volunteering and learning.

Informal learning and volunteer work: exploring the relationships Among the few pioneering studies on informal learning was the one undertaken in the 1970s in Canada by Allen Tough, who found that the typical person undertook about eight self-directed learning projects per year, devoting approximately 90 hours to each project, for a total of 700–800 hours per year. These learning projects covered a broad range of areas, including household, occupational and personal responsibilities, personal interest (leisure), improving a competence, or simple curiosity (Tough 1971, 1979). After many years of relative oblivion, towards the end of the twentieth century educational researchers began to systematically explore this field once again. In this context emerged the initiative undertaken by NALL (New Approaches to Lifelong Learning) at OISE/University of Toronto. Two findings from the NALL survey are particularly relevant to the informal learning of volunteer workers. One was that work-related informal learning was much more extensive than participation in adult education courses and programmes. The other was that there was a much stronger association between community-volunteer work time and community-related informal learning than there was between paid employment time and job-related informal learning. These findings support the hypothesis that greater discretionary control or self-management can lead to fuller use of work-related skills and knowledge (Livingstone 1999). A few years later, the 2004 Canadian Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP), one of the most comprehensive sources of information on volunteer work and voluntary associations, asked a question on motivations but,

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interestingly enough, did not include learning as a possible reason for doing volunteer work.2 Therefore, based on the data available from this survey, it is not possible to draw any conclusions about the significance of learning as a motivator for volunteering. Moreover, the 2004 CSGVP survey suggests that volunteers are more likely to perceive the opposite connection: in another item, 77 per cent of respondents felt that the volunteering experience let them apply previous learning to a concrete situation (Hall et al. 2006). Hence, for reasons probably related to the invisibility and tacit character of informal learning (as well as to issues of survey design), the connection between learning and volunteering is mostly perceived as a one-way street. The dominant perception is that we acquire skills and knowledge in educational institutions and to a lesser degree through our paid work, and then we can put our acquired knowledge and skills to social use through volunteering. It may also be the case that, with the exception of internships and young participants, learning is not perceived as an important motivation for volunteering. Indeed, younger volunteers are more likely than older volunteers to value the knowledge and career-related experience they acquired (Rumsey 1996). Voluntary organizations usually undertake a variety of education activities. Indeed, volunteers need initial and ongoing support to learn about the organization, to perform particular tasks and assume additional responsibilities. Workshops, seminars, courses, mentorship, apprenticeship, training manuals and other methods familiar to the adult education enterprise are integral to the mission of volunteer agencies. However, previous research has found that non-formal education is not the primary source of the most significant learning, and that much of that learning is beyond managerial control: volunteers frequently report learning by experience, interaction or observation (Fiset et al. 1987; Ross-Gordon and Dowling 1995). Likewise, Elsdon (1995) found that informal learning is an important part of the volunteer experience and produces significant changes among participants. He reported that, beyond some evident instances of deliberate learning, participants in volunteer activities experience unpremeditated changes in terms of personal growth, confidence, interpersonal skills, empowerment, organizational learning, and ability and willingness to shoulder responsibility. In many cases, this considerable informal learning is unrecognized by voluntary organizations and by volunteers themselves (Percy et al. 1988; Portelli 1997; Cox 2002). This should not be surprising: volunteering is usually seen as the business of doing, and learning is often perceived as a more passive/reflective activity or the result of courses and workshops. In this regard, Ilsley lamented that voluntary organizations do not pay much attention to the learning of their volunteers: Although most formal volunteer organizations offer training programmes, we found that much of the actual learning in volunteer organizations is unplanned. Perhaps relatedly, learning – especially forms of learning other than instrumental/didactic – appears to be undervalued in most volunteer programs. This is highly unfortunate. (Ilsley 1990: 71)

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Fortunately, in more recent times there has been increased awareness among researchers, voluntary organizations and volunteers themselves about the learning dimension of volunteer work, although admittedly it is still undervalued in comparison with other dimensions. For instance, Foley (1999) documented the informal learning that takes place among people involved in voluntary organizations and social movements in several countries, and Henry and Hughes (2003), in a study on volunteer firefighters in Australia, found that recruitment and retention are more effective when the lifelong learning outcomes of volunteers are valued, used and strengthened by the organization, and identified three learning environment characteristics: the knowledge and skills of volunteers are valued; there is an organizational culture that nurtures the valuing of those skills and knowledge; and individuals are motivated to volunteer. Our exploration of learning that results from volunteer experiences is a modest contribution to this collective research endeavour. Through different case studies, we covered many of the categories noted in Table 4.1. In our research we concentrated on exploring volunteer activities that included at least some degree of freedom and that occurred in the context of an organization, and therefore we consciously excluded mandatory volunteerism and informal volunteer activities.

The case studies During the last decade, first in the context of the New Approaches to Lifelong Learning research network (NALL) and subsequently as part of the Work and Lifelong Learning network (WALL), we undertook a series of case studies on the informal learning of volunteer workers. Most of them comprised focus groups and semi-structured interviews – often with the support of collaborating organizations in the non-profit sector. One of the methodological challenges was eliciting the tacit learning of volunteers. Often, when asked what they had learned from volunteering, respondents had little to say. When probed as to whether they had learned about specific areas, respondents realized that they had indeed learned a great deal from their volunteering – even if they were not initially aware of it.3 The case studies represent a broad mix of different volunteer situations and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore them in any detail. Each of the individual studies has been published in other venues and can be consulted for greater detail. In this section we provide a brief overview of the main case studies. The first of our case studies dealt with the informal learning acquired by members of the Toronto Seniors’ Task Force (Schugurensky and Myers 2008). This study started the process of developing the methodological approach to elicit tacit learning that would persist throughout the project. Our second case was conducted in conjunction with the Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition (OHCC) and explored the learning of volunteers throughout the province of Ontario who participated in one way or another under the auspices of this umbrella organization committed to a broad concept of community health – considering social, economic and environmental aspects (Mündel and Schugurensky 2005). Our third

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study considered the learning of volunteer board and committee members in housing cooperatives in the Toronto area. In this study, conducted in conjunction with the Cooperative Housing Federation of Canada (Mündel, Duguid and Schugurensky 2006), we identified 32 learning themes organized in six areas: selfgovernance; management; leadership; attitudes and values; political efficacy; and other competencies. Our next study took up the issue of recent immigrants who volunteer to get ‘Canadian experience’ in order to enter into the labour market.4 This case study was unusual because volunteering happened not only in non-profit organizations and public agencies but also in the for-profit sector. Our community partner for this project was ACTEW (A Commitment to Training and Employment for Women). Interviewees reported that these volunteering experiences made modest contributions to improve language skills and gain a better understanding of Canadian workplaces but seldom helped to improve their professional skills (Slade, Yang and Schugurensky 2005; Duguid, Slade and Schugurensky 2006; Schugurensky and Slade 2008). We also conducted a case study with the Canadian Red Cross to investigate the particularities of volunteer learning in a large nonprofit organization with an established training programme with regular and episodic volunteers (Akingbola, Duguid and Viveros 2007). Additionally, we undertook studies in several cities on learning acquired by residents who volunteer their time in participatory budgeting (Schugurensky 2006a; Lerner and Schugurensky 2007; Pinnington and Schugurensky 2009). There were also a series of theses that grew out of this research. Two of them explored informal learning within the Tenant Participatory System, a system implemented by Toronto Community Housing to promote tenant participation in decisions and broader governance issues in low-income housing (McCollum 2008; Foroughi 2009). Another one explored the learning of volunteers in Frontier College, where volunteer language instructors do farm work alongside migrant workers (Perry 2008). Additionally, four theses explored informal learning of volunteers in environmental movements: the WindShare, a green energy cooperative based in Toronto (Duguid 2007); a movement of sustainable farmers in Alberta (Mündel 2007); Frente Cívico in Mexico (Rogers 2006); and community gardens in Toronto (Barriga 2004). In most of the case studies, the procedures and dispositions learned by volunteers were related to the well-being of the organization and the accomplishment of its goals. In many cases, when the organization was thriving and able to commit support and resources to its volunteers, the volunteers in turn tended to pick up the energy and dispositions of the organization. In contrast, when support and resources were weak, or when the organization was in a period of decline or standstill, volunteers reflected this perspective. The degree of choice to volunteer differed greatly between the studies. In the majority of cases there was a large degree of individual choice. In other cases (like recent immigrants or housing co-ops, volunteering was connected to economic necessity or to a sense of collective duty.

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In general, the volunteers who participated in this study can be grouped into three categories. The first is involved in providing services, with positions often associated with specific tasks and timeframes attached to the tasks. The second group includes those who volunteer as representatives of their communities. These volunteers are often elected, appointed or self-appointed, and their tasks cover a wide variety of administrative duties and decision-making processes. The third group of volunteers include those engaged in activism for social change, and their tasks are often defined by the particular needs of their social movement at a given moment, but usually involve different ways of advocating effectively for a cause.

Findings Learning as a factor for volunteering In some of the case studies learning was mentioned recurrently as a motivator for volunteering. This was particularly evident among recent immigrants and adult educators, and to a lesser extent among tenants, cooperative housing members and social movement activists. Learning played a larger role as a motivator for the younger volunteers than their older or retired counterparts, which suggests the impact of life-cycle dynamics on motivations to volunteer. However, few volunteers referred to learning for its own sake. More frequently, the need for learning was connected to larger goals, be they (a) work-related (as in learning to acquire ‘Canadian work experience’ by newcomers); (b) for improvement of their own communities (e.g. public housing tenants, housing cooperative residents, healthy communities members); (c) to help more effectively a particular community (e.g. Red Cross, Frontier College) or (d) to aid social justice awareness and social change (participants in social and environmental movements).

The learning of volunteers: an overview One of the most rewarding aspects of this research was uncovering – together with research participants – the breadth and depth of their learning from volunteering. Once we probed a bit, we were able to elicit a great variety of learning. For the purposes of this chapter, we have organized the learning starting with the individual, moving to intrapersonal learning and then learning about the broader social context. Across all case studies, volunteers acquired learning on an individual basis and in collective situations. The informal learning of volunteers also often followed a cyclical pattern. Regardless of whether the learning was at the individual or collective level, this relationship was often mutually beneficial: the learning generated individual improvement and also strengthened the group. A good example of this can be found in the case study on tenants in public housing. We also noticed instances of horizontal social movement learning. This happened when the

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informal learning of one or more volunteers in one group became transferred later as ‘lessons learned’ to another group, as the learners became teachers. This was particularly evident in the case of social movements like Frente Cívico, the Green energy cooperative and sustainable farmers. Taking into account the intentionality and awareness associated with the learning experience, we identified different types of informal learning. Sometimes the learning process was intentional and conscious (self-directed), sometimes it was unintentional but conscious (incidental or, as one participant described it, ‘accidental’), and sometimes it was unintentional and unconscious (tacit). This understanding of informal learning went beyond the early characterization proposed by Tough (1971), who equated informal learning with self-directed learning. Indeed, the learning experiences reported by volunteers had different degrees of intentionality and awareness: in some cases the learning was the result of deliberate planning, in other cases it was largely unexpected, and in many cases it was not even recognized as learning until later, when another situation (such as our interviews) helped volunteers to realize that a learning experience had taken place.

Instrumental learning Many respondents spoke about acquiring a great variety of skills and knowledge that helped them to perform in the particular context of their volunteering work. The most mentioned instrumental skills involved organizational and managerial tasks. Among the vast and diverse amount of areas of learning mentioned by volunteers are finance and budgeting, office and clerical, computers, management, document writing and newsletter production, second language, research, disaster and emergency preparedness, regulations and by-laws, and government policies and politics. Volunteers who do advocacy reported significant learning on issues related to their area of intervention. In some cases the learning was totally new, and in others the volunteer experience provided an opportunity to deepen and expand existing knowledge and skills.

Interpersonal relations Volunteers reported learning skills, knowledge and attitudes related to working with others. Even the episodic volunteers in our research did their volunteering with others, so it was not entirely surprising that we found a great deal of relational learning. Enhanced communication skills formed the bedrock of most relational learning. Volunteers reported gains in social, interpersonal and intercultural communication, which was tied to more effective teamwork and to the development of leadership skills. Some volunteers spoke about their new-found ability to speak publicly and to present arguments effectively. Other volunteers spoke of improvements in their listening skills, and how this allowed them to hear better the various perspectives in the room. This in turn led to an increase in diplomacy and conflict resolution skills among the volunteers. The richer communication skills also led to

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an increased knowledge of how to connect with and affect wider communities. This networking was vital not only to understand the common issues among similar groups, but also to understand how groups could learn from each other to advocate for greater collective change. With the exception of immigrant volunteers, who aimed from the beginning at improving their communication skills in English and to learn how to relate to others in a Canadian workplace, most knowledge in this area was tacit, and was recognized only upon reflection of their volunteer experience. It is also relevant to note that this area included learning episodes that were not necessarily positive (also noted in Eichler’s work in this volume, Chapter 3). For instance, some volunteers learned that ‘certain people cannot be counted on’. We consider this a ‘negative learning experience’ as it does not contribute to community well-being.

Political efficacy Many volunteers reported increases in self-esteem, which in turn led to a greater political efficacy – that is, the feeling that one can effectively impact the social and political world. They also described changes in awareness. For instance, they realized that social change is possible, and that they can be an active part of it. Several volunteers mentioned learning about hope, and the role it plays in providing impetus to work towards change. Increases in self-confidence were paired with the courage and ability to talk with those in power (within and outside their organization) and in some cases with confidence and competencies to push, manoeuvre and advocate for change. As expected, increases in political efficacy were more likely to occur in environments where volunteers participated in civic or political activities. This happened, for instance, in organizations that held internal elections (like Toronto Community Housing and experiments of participatory budgeting) and in organizations aiming at policy changes (e.g. Frente Cívico, sustainable farmers). It may also be possible that these organizations tend to attract volunteers who are already inclined to be civically involved in the first place, and the more they participate the more politically efficacious they become. Conversely, it may be plausible that mainstream volunteer organizations (e.g. the Red Cross) tend to attract a different profile of volunteers, less inclined to participate in civic and political activities such as advocating for a cause or protesting a particular policy. In a different context, recent immigrants were less likely to learn political efficacy through their volunteer work, probably due to their eagerness to adapt to the new organizational culture and the pressures to perform well.

Advocacy Associated with gains in political efficacy were increases in advocacy skills, particularly among volunteers in the green energy co-op, public housing, sustainable farming and Frente Cívico. These cases, although focusing on different issues, within different organizational structures, and with different volunteer profiles,

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had several elements in common. First, volunteering involved intensive learning on issues that affected their communities, such as environmental impacts, land use, infrastructure deterioration, local development or community assessments. Second, volunteers reported learning on how to affect government and corporate actions, and how to apply both vertical and horizontal pressure on governments or corporations to promote change. Third, they learned to conduct public education on an issue, to involve the public in a campaign, and to engage candidates during elections. Finally, they learned to extract lessons from prior initiatives (including failed ones) and to share them with other groups. In some voluntary organizations (e.g. Frontier College) a friction was observed between the wish of the volunteers to push for more structural changes in society and the organization’s directives to instil change only at the personal level. Volunteers reported that these situations helped them to learn about themselves, their values and their capacity to compromise, and to gain mediation skills in their advocacy efforts (e.g. when to speak up, when to bear witness and when to listen to others).

Social context Volunteers across several case studies spoke richly about gaining a new understanding of broader social, economic, political, cultural or environmental dynamics. In some cases, volunteers expressed satisfaction for the strong correlation between the altruistic aspirations of volunteers and the mission of their organization, but they also learned about the limits of social interventions that do not consider or address systemic dynamics. These volunteers learned to connect individual issues to collective issues, and their particular setting to larger societal dynamics. For instance, several volunteers noted that they learned about issues related to government downloading services to their organizations. Awareness of power and politics were recurrent themes through the case studies. For example, Frontier College volunteers learned about the work experiences of temporary migrant workers, and this led them to learn more about the historical, social, economic and political dimensions of this labour arrangement. Similarly, volunteers in the healthy communities coalition were prompted to learn about broader dynamics that affected the success or failure of their local initiatives. Some volunteers related their learning about social reality with self-awareness of one’s own privilege, and with learning to respect and to develop solidarity with those whom one is serving.

Self-governance When opportunities for participation in decision making were available in their organizations, volunteers learned a great deal about self-governance and participatory democracy. Even when those opportunities were limited, volunteers learned how to include different voices and perspectives in their meetings and events. Volunteers developed these skills and attitudes – often equated with learning how

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to better work with diversity – within the microcosm of the group and often transferred to relations outside the organizations. Among the self-governance skills and attitudes identified by volunteers were learning how to chair and run a meeting effectively (giving everyone a chance to speak), to make sure that a few people ‘don’t steal the agenda’ and that the less powerful voices of the group are heard, and a variety of competencies related to diplomacy and conflict resolution. In some cases, participation in governance played an important role in volunteers’ learning to live by the ethos and goals of the organization.

Summary of findings on volunteer learning We found that volunteers acquire a great amount of knowledge, skills and values that relate to their specific contexts. Among other things, they develop instrumental skills, interpersonal and communication skills, advocacy skills, political efficacy, self-governance skills, institutional and political knowledge about their organizations and specific issues related to the mission of those organizations, and a broader understanding of social realities. This is consistent with the findings of the NALL and WALL surveys (see Chapter 2) and with prior studies on the topic (Percy et al. 1988; Ilsley 1990; Elsdon 1995; Elsdon, Reynolds and Stewart 1995; Kerka 1998; Andersen 1999; Mooney and Edwards 2001; Henry and Hughes 2003). Sometimes volunteers reported that they revisited their own assumptions and changed their perspective on a particular issue or their attitudes towards a particular population group, a shift known in the literature as ‘transformative learning’ (Mezirow 2000). Over time, they also developed and refined a variety of social and practical skills, as well as attitudes and dispositions that often were orientated towards the common good.

How volunteers learned ‘Learning by doing’ Most learning reported by volunteers was acquired informally. Self-directed, although easier to recognize, was only the tip of the iceberg of the informal learning acquired by volunteers. Throughout the case studies, volunteers recurrently used expressions like ‘learning by doing’ or through experience. Sometimes ‘learning by doing’ was a clearly conscious and demarcated informal learning experience, particularly in relation to technical skills or advocacy skills. At other times, learning by doing took a more tacit form, where words to fully describe what was learned fell short. Indeed, volunteers mentioned that much of their learning was often unplanned, and usually prompted by an urgency to solve a particular problem, by the need to change a particular way of doing things, or by the need to reflect collectively about a conflict (Duguid, Mündel and Schugurensky 2007). As noted above, one participant referred to this process as ‘accidental learning’, and mentioned that this was

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more likely to happen in group situations, when an unexpected comment by one member provided new insights to other members. Sometimes they were able to recognize at that very moment that a particular learning took place, but in other cases that recognition came later on (including the moment of our interviews, in which we used different elicitation strategies to prompt volunteers to identify learning episodes).

Formal and non-formal education Formal education (e.g. university courses) was rarely mentioned as a site of learning in connection to their volunteer activity. With few exceptions (e.g. the Red Cross and housing co-ops), participants seldom cited training programmes as important sites of learning. When mentioned, volunteers spoke about the problems of forgetting what was learned during the training sessions because it was not readily put into practice. Volunteers also made reference to workshops, conferences, seminars, courses and meetings, noting that often they learned as much during the ‘coffee breaks’ at these meetings than at the meetings themselves. Indeed, according to several participants, these sites of non-formal education generated a great deal of useful knowledge through personal or group interactions outside of the structured formats. This points to the importance of examining in more detail the informal learning that occurs in formal and non-formal education settings.

Mentoring Mentoring was seen as an important part of learning in several of the cases, although in few instances was it formalized. It is interesting to note that, in several of the cases, volunteers were not necessarily mentored by ‘employers’ or ‘staff’ but by their own peers. In most cases, the mentoring arose organically to fill the learning needs of the volunteers. This was often a process through which the past learning of one volunteer was passed on through mentoring to others, and seemed particularly important in volunteering that aimed to foster social change. Not all volunteers, however, benefited from a mentoring experience. Several of the immigrant volunteers noted that the absence of mentors reduced their learning opportunities.

Reflections Learning through experience was enhanced when volunteers had the opportunity to reflect on their learning. However, volunteers noted that often they lacked those opportunities, and some mentioned that this situation can stunt the learning taking place. The process of interviewing for the case studies, then, became in itself a valuable learning opportunity for reflection. Through this process volunteers often realized and came to appreciate just how much they had learned in their volunteer

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experiences, and also began to reflect on their own experiences. This has practical implications for organizations that wish their volunteers to get the most out of their experience, both for the benefit of the individual and the organization, in systematically providing opportunities to reflect on one’s experiences, and use the reflection to build momentum for action and social change.

Learning from experience vs ‘experiential learning’ Although participants mentioned that they learn from experience, this should not be confused with the classic model of experiential learning based on a permanent cycle that has four moments: experience; observation and reflection; formation of abstract concepts; and testing in new situations (action) (Kolb 1984; Mooney and Edwards 2001). A conceptual framework based on experiential learning was not particularly helpful to understand the learning acquired through volunteer work. At least in our case studies, the learning activity that takes place through volunteerism does not fit the framework provided by the experiential learning model. Since most volunteering activities are not conceived of as learning activities, it was not surprising that there were limited opportunities for reflection and analysis – key components of an experiential learning cycle – in the volunteer experience. This is not to say that theories of experiential learning are irrelevant to our study, but rather that we needed to pursue another framework for understanding volunteers’ learning. We have found the re-emerging field of informal learning to be a useful framework for analysing volunteers’ learning. Likewise, we found that theories of situated learning and social action, with their focus on context, communities of practice and transitions from the periphery to the core of a given community (e.g. Bandura 1971; Lave and Wenger 1990; Sawchuk, Duarte and Elhammoumi 2006) were appropriate to illuminate our understanding of learning through volunteer work. For some of the case studies, we found helpful the theories of social movement learning, a term used first by Paulston (1980) in relation to Scandinavian folk colleges, and recently revived in Canadian adult education circles (Hall 2006). Social movement learning has an internal dimension (learning by members of a movement), a horizontal one (learning among social movements) and an external one (learning by society at large). In our project we focused on the first two dimensions, and found evidence of significant learning occurring within and among social movements.

Discussion, summary and conclusions Through this study, we hoped to make a modest contribution to the collective understanding of the informal learning of volunteers. The predominant reference to learning in volunteer literature is about training programmes that, although important to volunteer success, represent only a small fraction of the learning activity of volunteers. This research helps to situate informal learning as a

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significant element of volunteer work. Although learning is a peripheral theme in the field of volunteerism, a few studies show that volunteers do acquire considerable knowledge and skills from volunteering. In our fieldwork, we learned that volunteer work comes in shapes and forms that go beyond the traditional definition of formalized, freely chosen and unremunerated. For instance, we were forced to push the boundaries of the original definition to include important insights from our case studies on immigrant volunteers and social movement members. Drawing on Cnaan et al. (1996), we identified a continuum of categories that reveal complex permutations that reflect both the agency of volunteers and recent changes in the world of work. We also found that, on first blush, many volunteers said that they were not engaged in an educational activity during their volunteer work, and most had difficulties identifying particular learning outcomes resulting from their volunteering activities. This can be explained by the difficulties of eliciting tacit knowledge. However, once we elicited different areas of learning through a series of questions asking about changes in knowledge, skills, abilities and values, many volunteers were able to recognize the amount of learning acquired in the different areas through their volunteering. Additionally, our research shows that the informal learning of volunteers is context-specific. But beyond the particularities of each context it is clear that most volunteers gain a great variety of abstract and concrete knowledge, instrumental, process and relational skills, and attitudes, dispositions and values. The type and amount of learning is largely related to the personal histories and motivations of the volunteers themselves, and the activities and the organizational culture of the volunteer organizations. In most cases, volunteers reported that they learned through individual activities (e.g. using a new computer program, preparing a report) but also through group activities (e.g. community gardening, attending committee meetings, discussing organizational strategies, solving a problem collectively, mentoring each other). Overall, we observed that voluntary organizations provide few opportunities for volunteers to reflect individually and collectively on their learning experiences. This is understandable – these organizations have limited resources and focus on action and results – but also unfortunate, because such reflective moments and spaces could greatly contribute to the improvement of the volunteer experience, the effectiveness of the organization and the democratization of decision making. Indeed, in terms of social action, we argue that exploring the tacit knowledge of volunteers involved in community-based organizations is not simply academic curiosity; it can also serve an emancipatory purpose. We argue that volunteers in community organizations are more likely to effect long-lasting social change when they are able to reflect on their informal learning, draw explicit lessons and act upon them. Among all our case studies, probably the most unusual one is the case of professional immigrants, because it deviates from traditional research on volunteer work in two ways. First, unlike the high degree of freedom and choice that characterizes

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volunteer work, the volunteer work of recent immigrants was highly coerced by pressures (in some cases discriminatory dynamics) of the domestic labour market. Second, unlike most volunteer work experiences (which take place in non-profit organizations, grass-roots organizations and public institutions) many immigrants did their volunteer work in for-profit companies. Although the overwhelming majority of immigrants interviewed rated their volunteer experiences positively – as these experiences allowed them to improve work-related language skills, to familiarize themselves with a new work environment and to expand their networks – at the time of the study only a small minority had been successful in finding a paid job in their fields. In most of the other case studies, participants often believed strongly in volunteering for its own sake, and traced that sentiment to their primary socialization. Based on our experience, we suggest that those who study the informal learning of volunteers face at least four challenges. The first is the conceptual challenge, which consists in better understanding the scope, significance, expressions and internal features of informal learning. The second is the methodological challenge, which relates to the need to develop creative research strategies to overcome the difficulties in eliciting informal learning. The third one is the challenge of recognition, which concerns the need to improve institutional mechanisms to assess and recognize informal learning. Finally, the pedagogical challenge refers to the need to purposefully design meaningful opportunities for relevant informal learning and for critical reflection on such learning, and to connect non-formal training programmes with informal learning. Finally, it is interesting to note that most volunteers acquired informally a great deal of knowledge and skills through their participation in their organizations, but they seldom recognized them and did not even consider a transference to paid work settings. The immigrant volunteers, instead, did recognize and value their informal learning from their volunteer placements, but it was the employers and regulatory bodies that devalued the learning gained from the volunteer placements. This study confirms that informal learning is not only difficult to identify and articulate by the individuals who acquire it, but frequently it is not valued by important players of the larger community and in the labour market.

Notes 1 We want to thank all our colleagues who collaborated with us on the studies referred to in this chapter: Kunle Akingbola, Behrang Foroughi, Megan Haggerty, Yang Luo, Erika McCollum, John P. Myers, Adam Perry, Elizabeth Pinnington, Kate Rogers, Bonnie Slade, Jorge Sousa, Susan Stowe, Gisela Vanzaghi and Marta Viveros. 2 In the question on reasons for volunteering included in the survey, respondents were provided with eight options: (1) to make a contribution to the community; (2) to use skills and experiences; (3) personally affected by the cause the organization supports; (4) to explore one’s own strengths; (5) to network with or meet people; (6) to join friends who are already volunteering; (7) to fulfill religious obligations or beliefs; and (8) to improve job opportunities.

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3 For a discussion of our methodological approach to elicit tacit learning, please see Schugurensky 2009 and 2006b. 4 The proportion of recent immigrants to Canada with university degrees is twice as high as that of Canadians, yet their unemployment rate is four times greater. Recent immigrants are often asked to have ‘Canadian experience’ in order to enter the labour market, which creates a ‘catch-22’ situation.

References Akingbola, K., Duguid, F. and Viveros, M. (2007) ‘Learning and Knowledge Transfer in Volunteering: Exploring the Experience of Canadian Red Cross Volunteers’, paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). Atlanta, November. Andersen, S.M. (1999) ‘Mandatory Community Service: Citizenship Education or Involuntary Servitude?’ Issue Paper, Denver, CO: Education Commission of the State. Bandura, A. (1971) Social Learning Theory, New York: General Learning Press. Barriga, M. (2004) ‘Transformative Learning and Informal Environmental Education: The Case of Community Gardens’, unpublished MA thesis, OISE/University of Toronto. Cnaan, R.A., Handy, F. and Wadsworth, M. (1996) ‘Defining Who is a Volunteer: Conceptual and Empirical Considerations’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 25(3): 364–383. Cox, E. (2002) ‘Rewarding Volunteers: A Study of Participant Responses to the Assessment and Accreditation of Volunteer Learning’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(2): 156–170. Duguid, F. (2007) ‘“Part of the Solution”: Developing Sustainable Energy through Cooperatives and Learning’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE, University of Toronto. Duguid, F., Mündel, K. and Schugurensky, D. (2008) ‘Volunteer Work, Informal Learning and the Quest for Sustainable Communities in Canada’, Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 20(2): 41–56. Duguid, F., Slade, B. and Schugurensky, D. (2006) ‘Significant Yet Unrecognized: The Informal Learning of Volunteers in Two Settings’, in L. English and J. Groen (eds) Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, Toronto: CASAE. Eakin, L. (2009) ‘The Invisible Public Benefit Economy: Implications for the Nonprofit Sector’, Beyond Numbers, Toronto: Non-Profit Sector Affairs, March. Elsdon, K.T. (1995) ‘Values and Learning in Voluntary Organizations’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 14(1): 75–82. Elsdon, K.T., Reynolds, J. and Stewart, S. (1995) Voluntary Organizations: Citizenship, Learning and Change, Leicester, England: NIACE (National Organization for Adult Learning) & Department of Adult Education University of Nottingham. Fiset, J.C., Freeman, D.J., Ilsley, P.J. and Snow, B.R. (1987) ‘Adult Learning in Volunteer Settings: A Neglected Connection’, Proceedings of the 28th Adult Education Research Conference, compiled by R.P. Inkster, Laramie: University of Wyoming, May. Foley, G. (1999) Learning in Social Action: A Contribution to Understanding Informal Education, London: Zed Books.

96 Daniel Schugurensky, Fiona Duguid and Karsten Mündel Foroughi, B. (2009) ‘Learning Democracy through Community Management: The Case of Toronto Community Housing Corporation’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE, University of Toronto. Geber, B. (1991) ‘Managing Volunteers’, Training, 28(6): 21–26. Hall, B. (2006) ‘Social Movement Learning: Theorizing a Canadian Tradition’, in T. Fenwick, T. Nesbit and B. Spencer (eds) Contexts of Adult Education: Canadian Perspectives, Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing. Hall, M., Lasby, D., Gumulka, G. and Tryon, C. (2006) Caring Canadians, involved Canadians: Highlights from the 2004 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating, Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Online: available at http://www.givingandvolunteering.ca/pdf/CSGVP_Highlights_2004_en.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006). Henry, J. and Hughes, L. (2003) Volunteers: Making the Most of Learning, Geelong, Victoria, AU: Research Institute for Professional and Vocational Education and Training. Hustinx, L. (2001) ‘Individualization and New Styles Of Youth Volunteering: An Empirical Exploration’, Voluntary Action, 3(2): 57–76. Hustinx, L. and Lammertyn, F. (2003) ‘Collective and Reflexive Styles of Volunteering: A Sociological Modernization Perspective’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 14(2): 167–187. Ilsley, P.J. (1990) Enhancing the Volunteer Experience: New Insights on Strengthening Volunteer Participation, Learning, and Commitment, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Kerka, S. (1998) Volunteering and Adult Learning. ERIC Digest No. 202. Kolb, D.A. (1984) Experiential Learning, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Lacey, A. and Ilcan, S. (2006) ‘Voluntary Labor, Responsible Citizenship, and International NGOs’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 47(1): 34–53. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1990) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lerner, J. and Schugurensky, D. (2007) ‘Who Learns What in Participatory Democracy? Participatory Budgeting in Rosario, Argentina’, in R. van der Veen, D. Wildemeersch, J. Youngblood and V. Marsick (eds) Democratic Practices as Learning Opportunities, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Livingstone, D.W. (1999) ‘Exploring the Icebergs of Adult Learning: Findings of the First Canadian Survey of Informal Learning Practices’, Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education,13(2): 49–72. Macduff, N. (2004) Episodic Volunteering, Walla Walla, WA: MBA Publishing. Macduff, N. (2005) ‘Societal Changes and the Rise of the Episodic Volunteer’, in J.L. Brudney (ed.) Emerging Areas of Volunteering, Arnova Occasional Paper Series, 1(2). McCollum, E. (2008) ‘Participatory Governance in Public Housing? Understanding Spaces for Participation and Empowerment Through the Tenant Representative Role’, unpublished MA thesis, OISE, University of Toronto. Mezirow, J. (2000) Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Mooney, L.A. and Edwards, B. (2001) ‘Experiential Learning in Sociology: Service Learning and Other Community-Based Learning Initiatives’, Teaching Sociology, 29(2): 181–194. Mündel, K. (2007) ‘“Walking through your old way of thinking”: The Learning Dimension of Farmers’ Transitions to Sustainable Agriculture’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, OISE, University of Toronto.

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Mündel, K. and Schugurensky, D. (2005) ‘The “Accidental Learning” of Volunteers: The Case of Community-Based Organizations in Ontario’, in K. Künzel (ed.) International Yearbook of Adult Education, 31/32, Cologne: Böhlau-Verlag: 183–206. Mündel, K., Duguid, F. and Schugurensky, D. (2006) ‘Learning From Each Other: Housing Cooperative Members’ Acquisition of Skills, Knowledge, Attitudes and Values’, Cooperative Housing Journal, Fall: 2–15. Paulston, R. (1980) Other Dreams, Other Schools: Folk Colleges in Social and Ethnic Movements, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Percy, K., Barnes, B., Graddon, A. and Machell, J. (1988) Learning in Voluntary Organizations, Leicester, England: National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. Perry, J.A. (2008) ‘Beyond the Bunkhouse: Exploring the Learning of Frontier College Volunteer Labourer-Teachers’, unpublished MA thesis, OISE, University of Toronto. Pinnington, E. and Schugurensky, D. (2009), ‘Civic Learning and Political Engagement through Participatory Budgeting: The Case of Guelph, Canada’, in K. Daly, D. Schugurensky and K. Lopes (eds) Learning Democracy by Doing: Alternative Practices in Citizenship Learning and Participatory Democracy, Toronto, ON: Transformative Learning Centre, University of Toronto. Portelli, P. (1997) ‘Self-Directed Learning Effects in Voluntary Associations Organizational Framework’, in H.B. Long and Associates (eds) Expanding Horizons in Self-Directed Learning, Norman, OK: Classic Book Distributors. Rogers, K. (2006) ‘Social Movement Learning: The Case of Frente Cívico’, unpublished MA thesis, OISE, University of Toronto. Ross-Gordon, J. and Dowling, W.D. (1995) ‘Adult Learning in the Context of AfricanAmerican Women’s Voluntary Organizations’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 14(4): 306–319. Rumsey, D. (1996) ‘Motivational Factors of Older Adult Volunteers’, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Idaho. Salamon, L., Sokolowski, S. and List, R. (2003) Global Civil Society: An Overview, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. Sawchuk, P., Duarte, N. and Elhammoumi, M. (eds) (2006) Critical Perspectives on Activity Theory: Explorations across Education, Work, and Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schugurensky, D. (2009) ‘Apprendre en faisant: démocratie participative et éducation à la citoyenneté’, in G. Brougere and A.L. Ulmann (eds) Apprendre de la vie quotidienne, Collection APPRENDRE, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schugurensky, D. (2006a) ‘“This is our school of citizenship.” Informal Learning in Local Democracy’, in Z. Bekerman, N. Burbules and D. Silberman (eds) Learning in Hidden Places: The Informal Education Reader, Peter Lang: New York. Schugurensky, D. (2006b) ‘Strategies to Elicit Informal Learning and Tacit Knowledge: Reflections from Practice’, paper published in the proceedings of the conference ‘Rethinking Work and Learning: Research Findings and Policy Challenges’. Research Network on Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE/UT), Toronto, June. Schugurensky, D. and Myers, J.P. (2008) ‘Informal Learning through Engagement with Local Democracy: The Case of the Seniors’ Task Force of Healthy City Toronto’, in K. Church, N. Bascia and E. Shragge (eds) Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices, New York: Springer.

98 Daniel Schugurensky, Fiona Duguid and Karsten Mündel Schugurensky, D. and Slade, B. (2008) ‘New Immigrants, Volunteer Work and Labour Market Integration: On Learning and Re-Building Social Capital’, in D. Livingstone, K. Mirchandani and P. Sawchuk (eds) The Future of Lifelong Leaning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Slade, B., Yang, L. and Schugurensky, D. (2005) ‘Seeking “Canadian Experience”: The Informal Learning of New Immigrants as Volunteer Workers’, Proceedings of the 25th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, London, ON: University of Western Ontario. Tough, A. (1971) The Adult’s Learning Projects: A Fresh Approach to Theory and Practice in Adult Learning, Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Tough, A. (1979) The Adult’s Learning Projects: A Fresh Approach to Theory and Practice in Adult Learning (2nd edn), Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

Part III

Case studies of paid work and learning

Chapter 5

Revisiting Taylorism Conceptual implications for studies of lifelong learning, technology and work in the public sector Peter H. Sawchuk

Introduction In this chapter I argue that Frederick W. Taylor’s Scientific Management system, or Taylorism, constructed in the late nineteenth century, remains a relevant frame through which to understand contemporary changes under advanced capitalism. I suggest that Taylorism has been underappreciated by most work and learning scholars, and by many in the field of work studies generally. In keeping with a variety of Taylor scholars, I seek to demonstrate the breadth of his work and its prefiguring of virtually every major management movement since its inception, including those linked to contemporary computer-mediated applications. I seek to demonstrate that Taylorism offers a deeply pragmatic, practice-based, materialist approach, informed by a historical appreciation of the mode of production from a particular political economic standpoint. As such it has been absorbed, reabsorbed and reconstructed readily – even if unnamed – by theoreticians and practitioners alike. I begin with an orientation to Taylor’s original texts followed by more contemporary investigations into anti-Taylorism, neo- and post-Taylorism. Important to the field of lifelong learning and work, I argue that at its core Taylorism should be recognized as fixated on working-knowledge, its appropriation, its reconfiguration and re-inscription in the labour process from the perspective of capital. I show Taylorism to be a process and not a product. However, even more fundamentally, I show that Taylor’s orientation to learning has been largely ignored, despite his recognition of the formalized and informal dimensions of learning, the linkage between these forms of learning and power in the workplace, and the managerial need for a totalizing pedagogy of work. I maintain that Taylorism is highly relevant for understanding the findings of original research on changes to public-sector welfare work, as illustrated by the WALL case study briefly outlined in the final section of the chapter. Findings from this study begin to highlight the importance of rejecting either ‘disempowerment’/‘deskilling’ or ‘empowerment’/‘upskilling’ conclusions in relation to the effects of Taylorism. Deskilling and upskilling are necessarily simultaneous; an observation already resident in Taylor’s own original perspective.

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Taylorism: origins, persistence and contemporary expressions There is no shortage of Taylor scholarship. Over the course of a century of virtually uninterrupted consideration, the meaning of Taylor’s writings has proven flexible: its populist form as well as its early politicization likely contributing to multiple interpretations. Though typically summarized in terms of highly pragmatic ‘principles’, I suggest that a more fruitful way of orientating to Taylorism is to begin instead by identifying its multiple functions. These functions include, first, ideological rationale: Taylor’s idealized notions of market competition, often held in contrast to what he referred to as ‘dull times’ (economic downturn), and a repetition of basic, received wisdom of supply and demand in relation to employment level maintenance, all easily recognizable today, constitute an important component of why and how Taylorism has maintained its relevance. Second, fixation: obsession1 with efficiency hand-in-glove with a strong, consistent and almost intrinsic recognition of the capacities of the collective labour to resist represents a function of his work that is consistent with its ideological rationale, dogged and unyielding in its focus, and yet incisively inclusive of an understanding of the labour process as necessarily conflictual. And, third, the actual techniques of overcoming collectivized labour through the appropriation and control of the ‘rule-of-thumb’ working knowledge vis-à-vis observation, measurement, standardization and re-inscription of new practices within the labour process addresses Taylor’s deep appreciation for the significance of skill, knowledge and learning as central to the negotiation of conflict in service of efficiency goals. Organized in terms of multiple functions we can see that Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management (1911/1947; hereafter simply Principles) as well as his three-day testimony before the ‘Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management’ (1912/1947; hereafter simply Testimony) represent primary sources on the first two functions,2 while his writing in the paper he delivered to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) entitled A Piece Rate System: A Partial Solution to the Labour Problem (1895/1919) and its eventual comprehensive elaboration in Shop Management (1903/1947) offer the clearest articulation of this third basic function. Orientating to Taylor’s work in this way is a first step, I suggest, to better understanding where, when and how it has persisted. Along with those who have bothered to look closely at Taylor’s work, both for its apparently positive consequences (e.g. Nyland 1996, 1998) as well as for its sustained negative consequences (e.g. Braverman 1974/1998), I argue that Taylorism was and is revolutionary. In part this is due to its emergence at a specific point in place and time, i.e. Euro-American capitalism at the turn of the twentieth century. As Braverman (1974/1998) and others (including Taylor himself) have noted, Taylorism is an admixture of the work of others including Charles Babbage, Andrew Ure and Adam Smith, as well as many within the ASME community and, eventually, members of an offshoot from ASME, the Taylor Society.3 It seems clear from Taylor scholarship, as distinct from what I have termed the ‘rationales’ and

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‘fixations’ of Taylor’s own thought, that its revolutionary nature derived from its circulation of perpetually evolving, material techniques of management in relation to working knowledge. It is relevant to note that, beyond Taylor’s four well-known principles (i.e. work analysis, careful selection of workers, carefully designed training and close monitoring), he included and subsumed many other elements of modern managerial practice. So rare are careful readings of Taylor’s work, in fact what can be seen is that many of these practices have been subsequently thought to represent a departure from his approach. Throughout his writings the role of incentives and inducements were deemed relevant if subsumed in the overall model. Moreover, incentives were broadly conceived as not simply pay increases4 but also promotion as well as shorter work hours, better surroundings and even better human interrelations. While it is often ignored, nor did Taylor eschew the powerful contributions of organizational trust, commitment and occupational identity, and sought to include such matters within the frame of the pre-given limits of the Taylorist scientific form. For example: If after having tried the new method once any workman has a better suggestion to make, of any kind, sort or description, that suggestion is most welcome to the management. And it is through those suggestions from the workmen that nine-tenths of our progress is made. The following kinds of suggestions are received from workmen, after having faithfully tried the method outlined to them, they see something wrong about our method and suggest a new or better way of doing the work . . . (Testimony: 196) It can be said in this sense that the ‘method outlined’ becomes the central mediator of the contingencies of concrete work and the concrete (learning) responses of workers going forward. Also probably related to the ongoing persistence of Taylorism, it is equally important to note that Taylor recognized the successful application of his method of workplace change involved a two-front war:5 it was a challenge to the inherent capacities of worker self-management and knowledge capacities as well as what he called ordinary initiative and incentive management. Importantly, the effects of both of these forces – up to the point of the achievement of what Taylor frequently referred to as a ‘complete mental revolution’6 – were fundamentally problemridden and contradictory. Indeed, it is arguable that the contradictory nature of Taylor’s work may very well be less a failure of analysis as it was a reflection of the reality of capitalism itself. This is a point that some may have inherently recognized in that the narrower dimensions of his work (e.g. in Shop Management) earned him admirers among business management, while its broader dimensions attracted a veritable army of followers in the larger Technocracy Movement of the period, among the inter-war ‘proto-Keynesians’ of the US government, within the Samual Gompers-led American Federation of Labor and even the early Leninist Soviet Russian state (Nelson 1980; Waring 1991; Pabon 1992; Nyland 1996, 1998). In

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this way, across multiple instances of appropriation and recognition of the forces actually at play in organizations, Taylorism can be seen as both materialist and practice-based – that is, reflective of a complex capitalist praxis in the broader sense, and as such in large measures more insightful on the challenges of work reorganization than more than a few contemporary perspectives (see Thompson 2003), as we will see further below. Importantly, what we find within Taylor’s thinking about working knowledge is a deeply rooted recognition of the power of workers’ collective lifelong and lifewide learning within and beyond the workplace. In his testimony to congress, he explicitly remarks that his family’s wealth had but one value to him: it freed him up to ‘learn’ rather than simply earn (p. 112). More importantly, all of his writings in fact drew extensively, both implicitly and explicitly, on the two apprenticeships he completed (pattern-maker, machinist) and he ruminates about the learning process of ‘observing’, ‘imitating’, ‘asking questions’, that knowledge is ‘transmitted from hand to eye and comparatively little is learned from books’ (pp. 34–36), and so on. Clearly, according to both Taylor and Taylor scholars such as Nyland (1996, 1998), Taylor’s early experiences, beginning in 1886 at Midvale Steel advancing from day-labourer all the way to foreman of the entire shop, provided the defining ‘object lessons’ on the ingenuity and resourcefulness of worker learning culture first hand. These were lessons – lessons on learning and power – that were among the most definitive of his ideas. In this sense, Taylor’s response and Taylorism itself is nothing if not a specific pedagogy, albeit of a specific kind based in notions of both individualization and standardization.7 It is striking to contrast Taylor’s articulations of the fluid and creative potential of workers’ learning in virtually all his available writings with those of early Human Relations Movement scholars like Elton Mayo, who by comparison appear both mechanical and instrumental (cf. Braverman 1974/1998: 69f; Waring 1991). More specifically, Taylor’s perspective on workers’ learning has played an important role in its longevity because, for Taylor, workers’ learning was natural, effortless, highly flexible, lifelong and life-wide. His writings include references to individual cognitive/motor as well as socio-cultural, economic and possibly even psycho-dynamic dimensions. And, as he makes clear, given its countervailing power, techniques to control this learning through the material mediations of a standardizing science of management8 – for the purposes of collective good according to his ideological frame – were at Taylorism’s core, summarized in among other places by the following: [T]his one best method and best implement can only be discovered or developed through a scientific study and analysis of all the methods and implements in use, together with accurate, minute, motion and time study. This involves the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb through the mechanic arts . . . The ingenuity of each generation has developed quicker and better methods for doing every element of the work in every trade. Thus the methods which are now in use may in a broader sense be said to be an evolution

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representing the survival of the fittest and best of the ideas which have been developed since the starting of each trade. However, while this is true in a broad sense, only those who are intimately acquainted with each of these trades are fully aware of the fact that in hardly any element of any trade is there uniformity in the methods which are used. Instead of having only one way which is generally accepted as a standard, there are in daily use, say, fifty or a hundred different ways of doing each element of work. And a little thought will make it clear that this must inevitably be the case, since our methods have been handed down from man to man by word of mouth, or have, in most cases, been almost unconsciously learned through personal observation. Practically in no instances have they been codified or systematically analysed or described. The ingenuity and experience of each generation – of each decade, even, have without doubt handed over better methods to the next. This mass of rule-of-thumb or traditional knowledge may be said to be the principal asset or possession of every tradesman. Now, in the best of the ordinary types of management, the managers recognize frankly the fact that the 500 or 1000 workmen, included in the twenty to thirty trades, who are under them, possess this mass of traditional knowledge, a large part of which is not in the possession of the management. The management, of course, includes foremen and superintendents, who themselves have been in most cases first-class workers at their trades. And yet these foremen and superintendents know, better than any one else, that their own knowledge and personal skill falls far short of the combined knowledge and dexterity of all the workmen under them. . . . the managers assume new burdens, new duties, and responsibilities never dreamed of in the past. The managers assume, for instance, the burden of gathering together all of the traditional knowledge which in the past has been possessed by the workmen and then classifying, tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules, laws, and formulae which are immensely helpful to the workmen in doing their daily work. (Principles: 25, 31–32, 36) The heart of Taylorism was in this sense a capitalist science of working knowledge, its appropriation, control and, in particular, its specific processes of re-inscription through forms of pedagogy. Most often noted is the fact that this approach produced a fundamentally new role for management and work designers; roles that I argue are equally well described in terms of knowledge production and teaching, taking in Taylor’s writing as its early reference point formal education. Timemotion study would provide a legitimated, ‘scientific’ as well as materialist counterbalance to management’s relative lack of knowledge, lack of pedagogical capacity and control. In fact, Taylor recognized how capitalist work under non-Taylorist management regularly resisted the natural learning capacities of workers to eventually render them, in his estimation, too dumb, too busy and too selfish to effectively engage in the development of production knowledge themselves, instead directing workers’ energies towards forms of resistance, recalcitrance and/or disengagement (e.g. Principles: 102). Whether it was the social

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organization of a specific trade or a work gang, Taylor clearly understood the natural ingenuity, communication structure, the seemingly effortless developmental patterns that emerged in such arrangements, and the powerful forms of knowledge for resistance that such formations engender. It is, in part, these types of considerations that belie the more superficial though still roughly accurate formulation that Taylorism – a Taylorism easily dismissed then as today – is merely the separation of design from execution. Having looked at Taylor’s work itself, it now makes sense to briefly address its persistence in contemporary work situations. Pabon (1992) provides an exhaustive account of Taylorism’s influence in the interwar period in business and through its key role in not only the Hoover administration but later in the American ‘New Deal’ era’s drafting of its National Recovery Administration policies and Industrial Code. However, in the post-Second World War era, as Waring (1990, 1991) shows, Peter Drucker – arguably the most prominent management writer and consultant in the world over the last 50 years – explicitly recognized the centrality of Taylor’s thought as underlying and anticipating the Human Relations movement (Waring 1990: 205) as well. In fact, Waring goes on to show how ‘Druckerism, rather than being anti-bureaucratic and a genuine alternative to scientific management, proposed new Taylorist techniques’ (1990: 207). The heart of Taylorism would be retained: ‘Taylorism, reborn and transformed, was alive and well after the Second World War’ (1990: 230). More recently, others have confirmed that ‘[A]cademic interest and managerial interest in scientific management have not waned since Taylor proposed it in the late nineteenth century’ (Wagner-Tsukamoto 2007: 105). And over the last 25 years a range of studies has continued to demonstrate that Taylorism offers the core orientating form for capitalist management. However, a relevant orientation can be found in the international comparative work of Pruijt (1997, 2000), who provides a review of 150 cases studies, from a range of sectors, across Northern/Western Europe, of attempts at ‘anti-Taylorist’ intervention.9 A majority of the interventions were what Pruijt calls ‘consensual’ (managers and workers agreeing), and all proved as exceedingly fragile as did Volvo’s now famous but short-lived Uddevalla experiment (1989–93).10 A combination of work intensification and job losses amid limited forms of shared control allows the conclusion that Taylorism’s logic was virtually impossible, in the end, to displace. Often, of course, Taylorism has been specifically contrasted with more contemporary management schemes such as high-performance work, flexible specialization or Quality Circles (QC). In fact, most of these are closely related in principal, and even more so in practice. Looking at the implementation of the QC approach, for example, Giordano (1992) offers a spirited attempt to demonstrate the death of Taylorism. With a special focus on technology and automation, Giordano points out ‘the impact of computerized automation on the labour process is complex, contradictory and multi-dimensional. The comparable effects on the skills of machinists, methods, drafters and design drafters are not uniform, nor can it be simply categorized as deskilling or upgrading’ (p. 200). In fact, it becomes clear in

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Giordano’s analysis that QC techniques are largely an attempt to obtain labour cooperation in relation to the needs of an otherwise stubbornly Taylorized labour process, resulting in an extension of Taylorism rather than a departure from it. Along with Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), Total Quality Management (TQM)11 has also been sometimes thought to have represented a particularly definitive break with Taylorism. However, in his examination of Work Study Engineers (WSEs), Jones (1997, 2000) notes, ‘[s]ince the time of Taylor it has been the responsibility of the time study man or the work study engineer to ensure that improvements made by workers are revealed to management’ (2000: 632). Jones’ participatory observation research into WSE subculture within a TQM initiative adds an important distinction that likewise does not necessarily represent a break with, but a further development of Taylorism, i.e. ‘Tayloristic techniques are now applied by the workers themselves as part of a TQM programme rather than by WSEs’ (1997: 14). Beyond claims as to the eclipsing of Taylorism by more recent managerial approaches is the question raised by Lomba (2005) in a review of claims concerning the meaning of neo- as opposed to post-Taylorism. This distinction is said to revolve around the interpretation of the break with ‘mass production’ understood in terms of material flow, the recognition of the distinction between real and prescribed work, and the emergence of managerial interest to consult with workers on task design (pp. 72–73). In fact however, the review demonstrates how partially as well as unevenly Taylorism is displaced across job categories: neither neo- nor postTaylorism is easily discernible. Attempts at further specification of Taylorism do not stop there. Adler’s well-known studies at NUMMI (e.g. 1995) demonstrate conclusions not unlike those of Jones (1997) above (noting that employees were the ones working the stopwatch, monitoring and redesigning their work), but goes on to conclude that this represents a form of ‘democratic Taylorism’.12 The seemingly endless morphology of Taylorism and persistent interest in further specifying it may partially explain why so many other researchers have wondered – if a unified Taylorism ever existed at all13 – how it could possibly be said to have survived intact today. What does seem clear, however, is that Taylorism cannot be understood as an achievement or product. As an achievement or product it consistently appears to either mutate or crumble under any serious (either radical or managerialist) investigation. What, then, can be the frame of reference for a claim that Taylorism remains with us today? An alternative is to think of Taylorism as not a product but a process: a sustained and persistent attempt by capital and its work designers to respond to the internal contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Looking at it this way forefronts not simply its specific political economic standpoint, as Braverman did, but that this standpoint must be constantly re-achieved within the contingencies of concrete, cultural-historical relations of development: among other things, a matter of constant learning and relearning. Offering some additional clarification to certain readings of Braverman’s work, I argue that, more than classical or neoclassical economics,14 it is the emergence of systematic managerial thought – an articulation of capital’s standpoint in

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production – that is the substance of Taylorism and its ongoing significance. Recognizing not simply the pristine expression of capital’s standpoint but the pragmatic, practice-based and materialist foundation of Taylorism as an ongoing process, I argue, is crucial. That is, Taylorism as the progenesis of capitalist praxis with the contradictions of working knowledge, pedagogy and learning at its centre.

Expansive Taylorism and the transformation of welfare work More than a quarter of a century ago, Tudiver (1982) outlined the incursion of Taylorism into public-sector social services in Canada, the USA and the UK. He argued that fiscal crisis, the early emergence of state austerity hand-in-glove with, at that time the equally novel, New Public Management (NPM) were beginning to put enormous pressures on social work generally and welfare delivery labour processes specifically. He cited the contradictory position of state welfare workers in this context in terms of the response to human needs on the one hand and intensifying managerial control on the other. His analysis has proven prescient. Updating this prophetic statement, Baines’ study of three Canadian provinces (2004a) further confirms Tudiver’s original suspicions that NPM and the deskilling of social work appear to go hand in hand. With a focus on the privatization of state social work including welfare benefits delivery in Canada and England, Carey points out, . . . conspicuous attempts to maximize labour efficiency, reduce staffing levels and other resources, downsize organizations and severely limit formal provisions within social care. In addition, managerial control and regulation has [sic] significantly increased, and once complex social work tasks have been broken up and condensed into simple and easy to regulate Taylorist care/case management procedures. (Carey 2008: 83) Carey makes a strong case for the comparability of changes in public services in Canada and the UK, in fact, which in turn further confirms the relevancy of a number of UK studies in healthcare and utilities as well as welfare work to an understanding of the Canadian case study below. However, as we will see in the case study, there may be little that is ‘simple and easy’ within Taylorized welfare work. An equally important clarification is the point that privatization is probably not necessarily required for the transformation of public-sector services per se. It is likely to be the case, in fact, that public-sector Taylorism takes on its own unique form. Among other things, in this regard Baines (2004b) notes that intensification in the welfare work labour process trades on residual altruistic/humanist elements of the state social work occupational identity that continue to persist. Each of these matters figures in and informs the case study material which analysed the changing nature of welfare work in Ontario from its implementation

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in 2002 to 2007: a five-year time period that was, coincidentally, the same length of time Taylor himself indicated was required for Taylorization to take hold. The changes were part of a large-scale work reorganization that included the implementation of a state-of-the-art ‘Service Delivery Model Technology’ (SDMT) computer system that as a whole changed the nature of the state social work occupation. The case study research included 75 in-depth interviews across three, representative regional office clusters as well as a province-wide survey of workers’ experiences (n=336).15 The goal of presenting material from this case study here, however, is not simply to claim a case for Taylorism. In point of fact, the SDMT labour process reorganization included every element of the Taylorist form: timestudy of workers; a ‘scientific’ reconfiguration of individual tasks seeking to displace the myriad ‘rules-of-thumb’ of existing welfare work; a redesigned managerial role; a new method of selection of workers; intensive, individualized and directive training of workers; and, in fact, a remarkable degree of ‘hearty cooperation’ that Taylor deemed necessary.16 Although there is value in examining Taylorism in the context of a unionized, semi-professional, public-sector, human service occupation, my central goal is instead to further expand the meaning of Taylorism with particular attention to mutually constituting deskilling/upskilling tendencies, and in this way to contribute to substantiate the argument for persistence and continuity. Based on our survey, estimates of the Ontario welfare worker population show it to be relatively well educated: over 75 per cent had completed some form of postsecondary degree or diploma, many in the area of social work with a small proportion holding graduate degrees. They are also generally computer literate. As a lead-in to discussion of the interview data, surveyed two years following the implementation of the new SDMT work system almost half (45 per cent) indicated their work to have become more inflexible, and two-thirds indicated concerns over the fact that the new work system made either no positive or a negative (or extremely negative) contribution to their clients’ lives. Over two-thirds indicated concern over the increased surveillance of their work by management due to the new changes, and 79 per cent felt they were inadequately consulted in the creation of the new system. Importantly, the survey found that most (81 per cent) felt they were applying new skills on the job, but that the bulk of these skills (78 per cent) appear to be related to developing contingent ‘workarounds’ informally to cope with daily work. Analysis of the interview data provides further detail on these and other matters. In the first instance, we see that some form of deskilling and disempowerment was inherent in the SDMT-labour process reorganization. Commentary from virtually all workers provides clear expressions of it. We used to use our eyes and ears and judgment. Now we just type things into the computer. (B2PS0303)17 I:18 So it sounds like the flexibility to use your own judgment and timing is

gone?

110 Peter H. Sawchuk S: I: S:

I: S:

Totally gone. It’s absolutely structured now, between 8:30 and 4:30. And it affects the way the clients see the process too? Definitely. The service is not as personal. I don’t have a clue who the client is, who was in this morning. I know nothing more than they gave me their income, assets, and living arrangements. Just numbers on a screen? Yes. It’s a shame because we learn more about the situation when it’s personal, and you get to know the people more and you know which ones are fudging it or not, so the potential for more fraud is there now. It’s not something that if I just started, I’d say, I’d like to do this for the next 30 years. (B1PS0303)

[Before] it was done manually. It was very, very different because we did home visits so we went out and we saw the clients, where they live and stuff like that. We were out on the road, we had our own schedule. We could stop in and see them, especially for young mothers. To see people’s circumstances made a big difference. The worst part was that it felt like we don’t have much control. We had people waiting for their monthly payments so they could just pay their rent and their bills, so it was frustrating. What I don’t like about SDMT is that when you’re taking applications you’re always typing now, whereas before you used to just sit and jot down an odd note but you could sit and talk with them directly. (SC1DB0303) These particular interview questions asked workers to reflect back on the first two years of their experiences of the labour process change, though additional follow-up interviews with union representatives carried out in 2009 showed extraordinary continuity: ‘Remarkably almost nothing has changed since that first year. Everybody is still learning this crazy system. It still makes almost no sense in terms of serving clients. But just like back then, we’re finding a way’ (B17PS0905). On first blush, we see the transformation of the semiprofessionalized human services occupation of state social work into an apparently thoroughly Taylorized clerical occupation; something interviewees themselves recognized. The myriad rules-of-thumb and working knowledge of welfare work had been appropriated, reorganized and re-inscribed according to the needs of cost reduction, standardization of service and enhanced surveillance (of both workers and clients) as a matter of public accountability and NPM. Following Braverman, clearly, on the surface and the initial experiential reports from workers themselves, the design of one’s work and one’s working day, along with new rules for processing clients had been separated from the execution of the tasks of welfare work. Braverman (1974/1998) summarizes the history of Taylorism in office work up to 1974, foreshadowing many but not all dimensions of the computer-mediated public-sector Taylorism in this case. As regards the ‘deskilled’ and de-professionalized dimensions, we see a distinct parallel with what Braverman discussed as the

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devolution of the Taylorized ‘clerical industry’, which regressed over time from its own form of semi-professionalized form of ‘craft work’ (1974/1998: 207–216). Though taking place in different sectors and almost a century apart, welfare workers today would easily recognize Braverman’s summary: [H]ere the productive processes of society disappear into a stream of paper – a stream of paper, moreover, which is processed in a continuous flow like that of the cannery, the meatpacking line, the car assembly conveyor, by workers organized in much the same way. (1974/1998: 208) The Taylorization in both manufacturing and private-sector clerical work is well documented and happened some time ago. Clearly, as we saw in manufacturing, craft unionism did not dissuade Taylorization, though in practice it clearly forced a broader social perspective into Taylor’s own thought and those of members of the Taylor Society in the 1920s–1930s. Still, Taylorization has in general come somewhat later to certain sectors. Among other features, these appear to be those that include a combination of unionization, professionalization (or semi-professionalization) as well as those delivering public services where there are established occupational cultures involving traditions of charity, public care, human service, altruism, and so on.19 In contemporary Taylorist initiatives, as Durand (1990) points out, ‘the application of IT multiplies the possibilities of appropriation of worker’s savoir-faire and its objectification in computerized machines by means of programmes’ (416). But highly complex automated systems also require highly skilled workers. Durand’s notion of skills, like the vast majority of Taylor scholars (and, still, many work studies researchers as well), is limited enough that, when distinguishing among ‘skill’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowing’, he fails to account for the distinctions between individual and collective, conscious and unconscious, informal and formal, socially legitimated and de-legitimated dimensions (Sawchuk 2003, 2006). The truth of the matter is that Taylorized systems such as SDMT encourage a particular type of skill formation that is much more a matter of attention; something particularly linked to motivation and discipline (rather than creativity and choice) in keeping with Taylorist pedagogy.20 Nevertheless, such ‘skills’ of attention do seem to multiply in importance under computer-mediated Taylorism. It is relevant to note here, as documented in Chapter 2, that along with the computerization of most Canadian workplaces over the past generation, significantly increased numbers of industrial and service workers reported devoting greater thought and attention to their jobs. As Durand points out, Careful observation shows that the new production technologies, along with the high performances demanded of them, multiply the possibilities of breakdown. Put simply, they render fragile the production process. And of course, the human skills necessary to tackle and control problems in that process continue to grow. (1990: 417)

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Anomalies, breakdown work, instances of irregularity demand intervention by human actors. In the case of SDMT labour process, it is the help-desk, just as in Taylor’s time it would have been the planning office, that would offer the technical solution to such problems.21 In welfare work by its very nature, however, it happens that ‘deviations from the routine’ and ‘breakdown work’ are in many ways an inherent backdrop to work and learning. The sheer weight of unpredictability and irregularity in the lives of clients assures this as a starting point and serious challenge to the potential of Taylorization. Add to this a highly unstable computer system (Hennessy and Sawchuk 2003; Hennessy 2004; Boutilier 2008; Sawchuk 2009) and we see yet another invitation to the emerging importance of breakdown work and agentive learning interventions. In the welfare work transformation investigated here, however, we may see something more than simply reactive breakdown work and learning. As a variety of scholars, including several within the French Regulation Theory tradition, have attempted to point out specifically, working-knowledge – indeed, the recollectivization of labour – can often actively reassert itself, albeit within the new, given frame of Taylorized standardization. As welfare workers in the case study commented, I can see a lot of the more informal like water cooler talking now, and you know it happens like if I had a case, for example, and I don’t know how to do something I would ask somebody: Have you ever had this before? And they’d say: ‘Oh yes, this is what I did’ I’ve learned a lot more short cuts, so here I am doing it the long way all this time and then somebody just happens to see me and says, ‘What are you doing it that way for? Just press this button.’ I’ve had a lot of those. (SC1DB0303) As I said earlier, I don’t dislike the system at all, but I think where we are now is where we should have started. What ended up happening was that we had a system created by their people with their perception of what we needed. The info they obtained from our front line workers or trainers or managers was taken but to a small amount. They did it only to appease, but not in a way that was concrete and helpful. Now we are in a system that’s corrupt and flawed. (H1AT0303) Co-workers are what you survive on every day. They’re the ones who are going through the experiences that you’re going through and are going to say ‘well you know what, I made a fix for that last week’ and that’s who’s helping me get through my daily job I think. I would say that this is an ongoing thing because you use this program every day. I would say that it’s more important than the formal sessions were. I mean, it’s something that continues while you’re doing the work. You learn that skill, you tell someone about it and then you implement it right away because you’re more likely to hold on to it. (SC03DB0303) Analysing these same data, in both Hennessy and Sawchuk (2003) and more expansively in Boutilier (2008), this case study has posited an emerging

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‘workaround culture’ in Ontario welfare work – that is, a coherent culture of attempting to work around the pre-given frame of Taylorization that goes beyond reactive breakdown work and that, to date, has continued to be sustained. Besson’s (2000) basic claim holds: it is not productive to maintain either a ‘disempowerment’ or ‘empowerment’ thesis. Put another way, as a Marxist theory of value production, we can seek to overcome the deskilling/upskilling impasse by re-articulating the dialectical, mutually constituting and yet contradictory relations between ‘use-value’ and ‘exchange-value’. A return to this type of formulation, in fact, offers one of the most effective means to overcome the problematic either/or choice that Besson identifies. Importantly, such an approach explicitly counters the tendency to reduce work processes to matters stemming simply from economic exchange. In so doing we rediscover the pragmatic responses of workers; the everyday practices through which they attempt to satisfy their broader, individual and collective needs directly; that is, the underlying ‘use-value’ production. This reemphasis on ‘use-value’ gives rise to what elsewhere I’ve referred to as the ‘Usevalue Thesis’ that inherently recognizes the . . . juxtaposition of widespread de-skilling, on the one hand, and, what becomes increasingly clear at another level, that worker/management co-operation does exist and that, in fact, new skills are constantly emerging. Conventionally, these new skills refer to those necessary for working within new labour processes and emergent sectors, but the Use-value Thesis also helps to bring into focus the new skills for working around restrictive work systems that can be either new or well established. Up-skilling must be understood in this dual sense, as including both those skills that management hopes for and legitimizes, and the skills of ‘making out,’ disengagement and resistance that they do not. Against this observation, de-skilling can be understood on a conceptually different plane; a process revolving around autonomy/control and not skill per se. It is a concept that theorizes formal disempowerment, appropriation and, in a wider sense, cultural disinheritance, as old skills forms are displaced and the new ones that emerge are both limited and limiting in terms of anything but exchange-value generation. (Sawchuk 2006: 610–611)22 In this case we can see conditions under which the rule-of-thumb can reassert itself. But none of this undermines that fact that – again, as Taylor himself knew very well – the appropriation and re-inscription of working knowledge is a conflictual process, and in this way an ongoing pedagogical struggle by management to produce, as he put it, a specific value-laden form of ‘upward’ and not ‘downward’ development of knowledge (Testimony: 199).

Conclusion In the initial review I argued for both the complexity of Taylor’s original thought and Taylorism’s persistence in the face of those who have sought to either

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equivocate and respecify or simply proclaim its irrelevance and demise. It is no coincidence that the same has been said about capitalism itself. However, with a deep appreciation for the capacities of workers’ lifelong and life-wide learning and knowledge production, Taylorism speaks – pragmatically and materially – to the heart of the capitalist mode of production. Indeed, it is unlikely that the fate of Taylorism and capitalism can be disentangled at all. Taylorist and capitalist forms – still seeking countries, regions and sectors in which to be realized – will continue to grapple with familiar contradictions within the context of new sets of contingencies, new technologies and new ever-renewing sources of resistance. One such context is the Canadian public sector. It might be tempting to conclude that the Service Delivery Model Technology labour process did not achieve the Taylorist form. After all, workers appear to have regained some form of control and to have developed an enormous range of new skills. But, as was noted earlier, the ambiguities of this type of achievement should not distract from the clarity expressed by the persistent and sustained attempts at applying Taylorist forms as an ongoing process of managing contradictions. Always and without fail such processes are subject to the contingencies of activation. Even the source of challenge to achieved Taylorism in this case study was prefigured long ago in Taylor’s own work: the virtually endless capacity of workers’ learning to push back, attempt to recollectivize and reappropriate elements of their work.

Notes 1 Both Kakar (1970) and Bahnisch (2000) give extensive evidence of the obsessive compulsive dimensions of Taylor’s thought. 2 There are exceptions to this suggested division of emphasis across Taylor’s publication. Several particularly relevant ones on the matter of work and learning can be found for example in Testimony (pp. 35–44) and Principles (pp. 122–131). 3 The Taylor Society having merged with the Society of Industrial Engineers in 1936 lives on today as the Society for Advancement of Management. 4 However, it is important to note that questioning of Taylor by committee chair William Wilson (Democrat, former secretary treasurer of the United Mine Mill union and later to become Secretary of Labor under Woodrow Wilson) revealed that wage gains were never to be equal to the actual increases in productivity achieved (Testimony, pp. 126–128). 5 While his focus on appropriating working knowledge is well known, Taylor admits regularly that, ‘[o]ur difficulties are almost entirely with the [learning of] management’ (Testimony, p. 153). 6 There are several parallels here to be found between Taylor’s description of ‘a complete mental revolution’, and the descriptions provided by Peter Senge and followers (as well as many in the field of Organizational Development) of the ideal ‘learning organization’, in fact; though Taylor’s recognition of contradictory nature of capitalist work appears to exceed those found in Senge’s work. 7 It is probably no coincidence that, as Taylor indicated in his testimony to congress, his early educational experience played a crucial role in the development of his thinking; thinking that (also according to his testimony and in keeping with his personality) had taken him exactly ‘29 years and three to four months’ to develop (Testimony, p. 132).

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8 Taylor specifically addresses the need for a standardizing psycho-social science of work as well (in terms of mental activities such as the reading of drawings, but also attention and motivation more generally). In conjunction with his practical knowledge of worker learning culture, it prefigures and remains more advanced than the work of Elton Mayo and others of the Human Relations Movement (e.g. see Testimony, pp. 257–263, for a concise statement by Taylor on time-study of mental work). 9 These are largely attempts at socio-technical systems (STS) design (cf. Niepce and Molleman 1998). 10 See the remarkable collection of articles in Sandberg (1995). 11 Stoney (2001) offers additional clarifications of this type on the subject of BPR and Taylorism, while Niepce and Molleman (1998) clarify the matter in the same way in terms of the relationship between Lean Production and socio-technical design and Taylorist principles. 12 Adler’s notion of ‘democratic Taylorism’ is said to provide greater job satisfaction and learning opportunities than traditional Taylorism. Further insights can be gleaned from the Berggren/Alder and Cole debate of 1993–94 in the pages of the Sloan Management Review. 13 Indeed, Taylor is not very helpful in this regard. Looking across his testimony to congress he was unclear as to whether his system had actually ever been fully implemented; particularly so if we take seriously his statement that ‘it cannot be said to exist . . . in any establishment until after [a complete mental revolution] has taken place’ (Testimony, p. 31). 14 In the field of economics, French Regulation Theory provides a partial antidote to the limits of classical and neoclassical economics in this sense. It clearly attends to relations of the labour process in highly insightful ways though its fixation on the ‘wage contract’ may be its Achilles heel (see Besson 2000). 15 The survey sampled worker views through a mail-in questionnaire, distributed to workers across all major geographical regions and representing different-sized offices in the summer of 2005. The response rate for this was just over 30 per cent. 16 For additional contextual information, see earlier publications from this research, including Hennessy and Sawchuk (2003), Hennessy (2004), Boutilier (2008) and Sawchuk (2009). For further conceptual development see Sawchuk (2003, 2006, 2007). 17 These are identification codes of worker interviews used from here forward. 18 ‘I’ references the interviewer; ‘S’ references the subject/interviewee. 19 The matter of what has been called the ‘professionalization project’ may be important here. Research in the UK has shown that such orientations are probably more of a speedbump rather than a road-block on the way to Taylorized public services, and that the most significant sources of resistance are linked more to the specific nature of the work with clients, patients, etc. (e.g. Harrison and Pollitt 1994; Ackroyd and Bolton 1999). Additional insights in this regard can also be found in comparison of occupational transformations of state welfare social workers and professional book-keepers in some, though not all, ways, as well as in comparison to the transformation of ‘data-processing occupations’ of the 1940s–1950s when sub-functions (sorter, collator, tabulator, calculator, etc.) could be integrated in modern computer software we see today (e.g. on this last point, see Braverman 1974/1998: 227). Though, unrelated to matters of public care, altruism and so on, we might also see from comparisons with changes in the banking industry (e.g. Mumford and Banks 1967) that the labour market recruitment patterns and culture of bank employees offered alternative dissuasions to Taylorization delaying the introduction of forms of computerization until well into the last quarter of the twentieth century. 20 Indeed, under such conditions we quickly approach what Marx and later Braverman

116 Peter H. Sawchuk referred to as ‘abstract labour’, the simple ‘expenditure of human labor in general’ (see Braverman 1974/1998: 125). 21 Here a useful ‘object lesson’, as Taylor might have put it, is to be found in the massive resources and reconfiguration of the work environment that Taylorism required even to control effectively the comparatively less complicated work of the (infamous) shovellers of the Bethlehem Steel works who figured so prominently in several of his works (e.g. Principles, pp. 65–72). 22 See also Sawchuk (2008).

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Jones, O. (1997) ‘Changing the Balance? Taylorism, TQM and Work Organization’, New Technology Work and Employment, 12(1): 13–24. Jones, O. (2000) ‘Scientific Management, Culture and Control: A First-Hand Account of Taylorism in Practice’, Human Relations, 53(5): 631–653. Kakar, S. (1970) Frederick Taylor: A Study in Personality and Innovation, Boston, MA: Heffernan Press. Kreis, S. (1990) ‘The Diffusion of Scientific Management: The Bedaux Company in America and Britain, 1926–1945’, in D. Nelson (ed.) A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Lomba, C. (2005) ‘Beyond the Debate over ‘Post’- vs ‘Neo’-Taylorism: The Contrasting Evolution of Industrial Work Practices’, International Sociology, 20(1): 71–91. Mumford, E. and Banks, O. (1967) The Computer and the Clerk, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Nelson, D. (1980) Frederick W. Taylor and the Rise of Scientific Management, Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press. Niepce, W. and Molleman, E. (1998) ‘Work Design Issues in Lean Production from a Sociotechnical Systems Perspective: Neo-Taylorism or the Next Step in Sociotechnical Design?’ Human Relations, 51(3): 259–287. Nyland, C. (1996) ‘Taylorism, John R. Commons, and the Hoxie Report’, Journal of Economic Issues, 30(4): 985–1016. Nyland, C. (1998) ‘Taylorism and the Mutual-Gains Strategy’, Industrial Relations, 37(4): 519–542. Pabon, C.E. (1992) Regulating Capitalism: The Taylor Society and Political Economy in the Interwar Period, unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of MassachusettsAmherst. Price, B. (1990) ‘Frank and Lillian Gilbreth and the Motion Study Controversy, 1907–1930’, in D. Nelson (ed.) A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Pruijt, H. (1997) Job Design and Technology: Taylorism versus Anti-Taylorism, New York: Routledge. Pruijt, H. (2000) ‘Repainting, Modifying, Smashing Taylorism’, Journal of Organizational Change, 13(5): 439–451. Sandberg, Å. (ed.) (1995) Enriching Production: Perspectives on Volvo’s Uddevalla Plant as an Alternative to Lean Production, Hampshire: Avebury. Sawchuk, P.H. (2003) Adult Learning and Technology in Working-Class Life, New York: Cambridge University Press. Sawchuk, P.H. (2006) ‘“Use-Value” and the Re-Thinking of Skills, Learning and the Labour Process’, Journal of Industrial Relations, 48(5): 593–617. Sawchuk, P.H. (2007) ‘Theories and Methods for Research on Informal Learning and Work: Towards Cross-Fertilization’, Studies in Continuing Education, 29(3): 34–48. Sawchuk, P.H. (2008) ‘Lifelong Learning and Work as “Value Production”: Combining Work and Learning Analysis from a Cultural-historical Perspective’, in D.W. Livingstone, K. Mirchandani and P.H. Sawchuk (eds) The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishers. Sawchuk, P.H. (2009) ‘Occupational Transitions within Workplaces Undergoing Change: A Case from the Public Sector’, in P.H. Sawchuk and A. Taylor (eds) Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work: Perspectives on Policy and Practice, Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishing.

118 Peter H. Sawchuk Stoney, C. (2001) ‘Strategic Management or Strategic Taylorism? A Case Study into Changes in a UK Local Authority’, International Journal of Public Sector Management, 14(1): 27–42. Taylor, F.W. (1895/1919) Two Papers on Scientific Management: A Piece Rate System and Notes on Belting, New York: G. Routledge and Sons. Taylor, F.W. (1903/1947) Shop Management, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing. Taylor, F.W. (1911/1947) Principles of Scientific Management, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing. Taylor, F.W. (1912/1947) Hearings before Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other System of Shop Management Under the Authority of House Resolution 90, New York: Harper and Brothers Publishing. Thompson, P. (2003) ‘Disconnected Capitalism: Or Why Employers Can’t Keep their Side of the Bargain’, Work, Employment and Society, 17(2): 359–378. Tudiver, N. (1982) ‘Business Ideology and Management in Social Work: The Limits of Cost Control’, Catalyst, 4(1): 25–48. Wagner-Tsukamoto, S. (2007) ‘An Institutional Economic Reconstruction of Scientific Management: On the Lost Theoretical Logic of Taylorism’, Academy of Management Review, 32(1): 105–117. Waring, S. (1990) ‘Peter Drucker, MBO, and the Corporatist Critique of Scientific Management’, in D. Nelson (ed.) A Mental Revolution: Scientific Management since Taylor, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press. Waring, S. (1991) Taylorism Transformed: Scientific Management Theory Since 1945, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Wrege, C.D. and Greenwood, R.G. (1991) Frederick W. Taylor, the Father of Scientific Management: Myth and Reality, Homewood: Richard D. Irwin.

Chapter 6

Women’s experiences of the good, the bad and the ugly of work in a ‘knowledge-based’ society Learning the gender politics of IT jobs Shauna Butterwick and Kaela Jubas Introduction Information technology (IT) constitutes an increasingly large, influential field of education and employment in so-called ‘knowledge-based’ societies. Over the last two decades, studies of women’s participation in computer science education programmes and related information technology (IT) jobs, such as programming and software engineering, have been concerned with women’s persistent under-representation. Countering that image, other research that considers the IT field more broadly, and includes niches such as technical communication and project management, points to how women’s participation is growing; indeed, in some areas, women’s participation is relatively strong. These studies also point to how, in some newer IT fields, women are working without formal IT credentials and are often seen as bringing with them a set of ‘soft’ skills in teamwork and communication (Millar and Jagger 2001; Turner, Bernt and Pecora 2002). The study discussed in this chapter examined how and what women working in British Columbia’s IT field learned about themselves, their relationships with colleagues and their work, most particularly how they encountered and negotiated gendered politics in the course of that work.1 We adopted a constructivist understanding of how gender, technology and learning develop in the course of people’s social participation in everyday activities and processes, as well as a critical feminist understanding of gender as one category of social relations that continues to structure and inform understandings and practices of work. Borrowing from images of the highly gendered ‘Wild West’, we attempt to capture the tensions in participants’ experiences by sorting them into three broad categories: the good, the bad and the ugly. Following an outline of our conceptual framework and an examination of relevant literature, we provide an overview of our methodological approach and a profile of our participants. We then move to an analysis of our findings, before offering some concluding remarks.

Conceptual framework Learning in this inquiry was explored in the context of social participation, and the paid workplace in this study serves as the focal site of that engagement. As Billett

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(2001: 2) argues, ‘learning as an inter-psychological process (i.e. between individuals and the social sources of knowledge) prompts a consideration of learning as engagement with the social world’. Furthermore, as Billet notes, ‘workplaces are becoming even more salient as the responsibility for maintaining the currency of vocational practice is being now increasingly transferred to workers in the current reformulation of lifelong learning policies and practices’ (2001: 3). This study contributes to the growing field of workplace learning by bringing a feminist perspective, one that foregrounds gender as a significant aspect of the social relations that shape work practices. Whether the workplace can be a site of critical learning or is a site of capitalist oppression has been a question explored by many. Some point to the possibilities of the workplace being a site of ‘human creativity’ (Brookfield 2001). Feminist scholars have expanded this debate and illustrated how workplace learning is both reproductive and transformative (Mirchandani et al. 2002). The inquiry discussed in this chapter was informed by feminist theorizing of that focus on the interactive relationship between gender and technology. As Wacjman (2004) notes, technology is shaped by gender relations as much as gender relations significantly inform technology. She argues against technological determinism and gender essentialism, calling instead for an understanding of the gender– technology relationship as much more dynamic. Like several researchers whose work we summarize below, we conceptualize gender in constructivist, relational terms (see Scott-Dixon 2004; Crump, Logan and McIlroy 2007). On the one hand, this means that gender and the associated characterizations of masculine and feminine are constantly contested and reconstructed in particular social contexts. On the other hand, we retain a critical stance in conceptualizing gender, viewing it as a persistent category that helps structure social relations, in spite of changing understandings of masculinity and femininity or of evolving opportunities for women. As Smith (1999: 7) clarifies, social relations are ‘those forms of concerting people’s activities that are regularly reproduced’. This focus is important because, as Smith further argues, by focusing on social relations we can take up ‘how what people are doing and experiencing in a given local site is hooked into sequences of action, implicating and coordinating multiple local sites where others are active’. Furthermore, examining gender as a social relation ‘can illuminate the mechanisms by which gender not only organizes mind and relationships but organizes them hierarchically (with men and masculinity in the elevated position)’ (Goldner 2002: 79). Many of our study participants experienced IT work as contradictory. Their contributions were welcomed, valued and actively supported, decentring the masculine norm of IT work. At the same time, they noted the structural dimensions of the workplace that demanded long hours and other cultural practices that were highly masculinized. There were paradoxes as well that reflected persistent binaries. While experiencing reward and recognition for their soft and informally acquired knowledge and skills, many participants also experienced times when, compared to hard and formal learning, their contributions were devalued. Some faced blatant forms

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of sexism, reinforcing their lower position in the hierarchy of the workplace. In this chapter, we focus our attention on these kinds of contradictory and paradoxical encounters with the gendered politics of IT workplaces and the fluidity of gender relations.

Women’s IT-related learning, knowledge and work: previous research Today, women still tend to have less disposable income and leisure time, typically because they have retained primary responsibility for family care and household tasks (Huws 2000). They also tend to have fewer technical or scientific credentials than men, and are more likely to be employed in part-time, low-paid, low-status, precarious jobs. As Huws (2000: 345) explains, ‘it is already possible to see that the new forms of work emerging from the introduction of ICTs exhibit strongly gendered patterns, which not only reproduce existing patterns of segregation but in some cases add new dimensions to them’. One difficulty in exploring women’s IT work is how research is based on differing, and at times narrow, definitions of such work. Most research on IT learning and work considers only the central niches in this field – computer programming and software engineering – as was the case in Millar and Jagger’s (2001) international study of women’s participation in information technology, electronics and communications (ITEC) courses and careers. They found that ‘women are generally under-represented among graduates in ITEC-related subjects and this is despite the fact that they form the majority and a growing proportion of university graduates generally’ (2001: 10). Their demographic study included the occupations of computer systems manager, software engineer and computer analyst/programmer in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Ireland, Taiwan and Spain. Although these countries have differing socio-political structures and educational systems, Millar and Jagger’s study illustrates the pervasiveness of gender as an issue in ITEC-related education programmes and work. With less formal education in programming and engineering, women are predictably under-represented in these central IT niches. Instead, they are often clustered in lower-paying niches and jobs characterized as requiring the fewest technical skills. Panteli, Stack and Ramsay (2001: 10) note that many women working in the IT field gravitate into administrative or customer service positions, rather than into the male-dominated ‘‘‘hardware”-oriented work’. This is consistent with other reviews of British and American research, which indicates that women tend to be ‘over-represented on the [lower salaried] front and help desks of computing organizations’ (Woodfield 2000: 6). In Canada, feminized niches include help centre operation, database administration, project management, website design and technical writing (Habtu 2003). Workers in website design ‘had the lowest median earnings among all IT specialists and experienced the highest unemployment rate’ (Habtu 2003: 8). Furthermore, women’s computing work is generally under-valued, ‘even after controlling for age, education and experience’

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(Panteli et al. 2001: 7), and women working in higher-status niches are more likely than their male colleagues to remain in lower-paying jobs. Several empirical studies on gender and IT have found gender-based differences in level of interest, approaches to learning, use of and access to computers from childhood onwards. Turkle and Papert (1990) examined elementary and postsecondary computer science education in the USA and observed the early onset of gender differences, noting that girls and women preferred working with others and drawing on concrete experience, in contrast with a more masculine style of systematic, formulaic problem solving and learning. They refer to this more feminine style of learning and work as ‘bricolage’ to describe a process of problem solving that draws creatively on resources at hand. They also note that, while both boys and girls, and men and women, might use either of these strategies, bricolage is considered a feminine strategy. In the university computer science course studied by Turkle and Papert, only one way to approach computers was offered: ‘a way that emphasizes control through structure and planning’ (1990: 134). Female participants described a sense of being outside the cultural norm, with one woman commenting that she had to ‘turn herself into a different kind of person’ in order to perform, while another talked of learning how to ‘fake it’ (1990: 134–135). Similar findings arose from a study of students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh (Margolis and Fisher 2002). Male participants often described a ‘magnetic attraction’ to computers and encouragement for their use from a young age, while female participants who had an early interest in computers were more likely to watch ‘from the sidelines’. Encouragement for girls’ computing tended to come later, in high school, when computer science courses were offered. Finally, Margolis and Fisher (2002: 54) argue that women majoring in computer science offered a different perspective, which they described as a ‘counternarrative’, which contrasted with: the stereotype of computer scientists who are narrowly focused on their machines and are hacking for hacking’s sake. Instead, these women tell us about their multiple interests and their desire to link computer science to social concerns and caring for people. In recent years, studies indicate that women’s already low enrolment in computer science programmes fell even further. Margolis and Fisher (2002) tackled this issue by instituting curricular changes, notably interdisciplinarity and ‘real world’, teambased learning in Carnegie Mellon’s computer science programme. Admissions criteria were also revised to accommodate students who lacked prior computing experience courses or experience, and faculty discussion sessions were held to build awareness of the cultural barriers faced by women who are interested in IT education and work. During their four-year study, women’s representation in the programme rose from 7 per cent to 42 per cent. The gendered aspects of IT education were also explored by Henwood (2000) in her British study. She found that male computer science students tended to have

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more self-confidence in programming than female students and, despite their lower grades, were more often credited with technical expertise. Even if their instructors considered them to be experts, women still tended to underestimate their own capabilities. Henwood studied different approaches to offering introductory, undergraduate courses delivered at two London universities. One course was a conventional computer science course, which focused on providing an education to respond to industry needs. It emphasized the university’s technical facilities and the software skills that students would gain while in the programme. An alternative interdisciplinary course, which presented IT as ‘technologies within innovation processes in which “social, political, cultural, economic and technical factors are interwoven’’’ (2000: 215), was offered to attract women. It combined ‘technical skills acquisition with an exploration of the social, including gender, [and] relations of technology’ (2000: 213), and emphasized ‘evaluation, as well as the construction of technologies . . . in the context of their use and with user needs and requirements always in focus’ (2000: 215). Although the intervention was greeted positively by women, Henwood observed active disruption by some of the male students, who described an elective segment available to female students on women in technology as ‘the option for “lesbians’’’ (2000: 221). The ‘technical’ and ‘social’ approaches that Henwood outlines echo Turkle and Papert’s (1990) identification of planning and bricolage as gendered approaches to learning IT, as well as Margolis and Fisher’s (2002) conclusions. Unlike Margolis and Fisher’s (2002) multi-year study, though, Henwood’s study involved a small sample and was conducted during a single academic year; therefore, longer-term shifts in students’ attitudes and behaviour remain unknown. Furthermore, as Millar and Jagger (2001) point out, the UK is noted internationally for the extreme gender disparity in its IT field. Moving from education to employment, Woodfield (2000) conducted an ethnographic study of a British IT corporation. She found that, despite the high proportion of women in that workplace with computer science, mathematics, engineering or physics degrees, common gender differences persisted. Women tended to describe their interest in technology as only one of several interests, while men held a single-minded interest in computers. In-house instructors described women as being better able to see ‘the broader picture’ in their problem solving, in contrast to their male colleagues who were seen as more narrowly focused on ‘software solutions which grew out of specific technical detail’ (Woodfield 2000: 98). The instructors also appreciated the relative ease with which women were able to share credit for successful problem solving. Corporately, the idea of the ‘hybrid worker’ who possessed feminine qualities such as being collaborative and communicative was encouraged; however, Woodfield found that corporate practice continued to favour male employees, even if they did not exhibit the qualities of the idealized hybrid worker. Informally, there was a tendency to revert to a masculine discourse that valued ‘technical’ expertise over interpersonal and organizational skills, especially during time-sensitive, high-pressure projects. Formally, ‘male recruits seem to have been given the chance to try their hand at management

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earlier’ (Woodfield 2000: 117) and men were more likely to be promoted. Although initially thankful for the in-house orientation which emphasized the value of the hybrid worker and a broad perspective, within their first year on staff, many women became sceptical about the corporation’s commitment to its own rhetoric. A New Zealand study by Crump et al. (2007) helps illuminate some of the nuances that can be lost in both very large-scale and small-scale studies of women’s work in the IT field. Using data from several centres of varying sizes and industrial bases in New Zealand, they found that relatively high incomes and job stability were often linked to the municipality where participants lived and worked, in addition to their particular jobs. Furthermore, they observed geographic differences in occupational categories and size of companies. These observations clarify that geography, along with gender and other social divisions, influences how IT work – like gender – is understood and enacted at a local level. Selfe and Hawisher’s (2002) study is notable in its focus on the technical communication niche, rather than the areas commonly considered central to the IT field. Their study involved 55 respondents from a technical communicators’ listserv of 4,900 members, approximately 65 to 70 per cent of whom were women. The authors note that, although IT-related programmes have developed in the last 25 years and provide new educational options for both women and men, the persistent abstract approach to programming leads to ‘impoverished notions of electronic literacy’ (Selfe and Hawisher 2002: 241).

Pathways to IT jobs Not surprisingly, given their under-representation in IT-related educational programmes, women who work in the IT field follow diverse academic and informal learning pathways into this field. As Millar and Jagger (2001: 25) explain, Contrary to the popular belief that ITEC occupations demand graduate skills in ITEC-related subjects, there are high proportions of people (especially women) in ITEC jobs in the US and the UK who have not received a college education and the majority of graduates in ITEC occupations have not qualified in an ITEC-related subject. Clearly, there is a range of alternative pathways into an ITEC career. For her study, Scott-Dixon (2004) interviewed over 60 participants, most of whom worked in Toronto’s IT field. She found that female participants often came to the IT field without an IT-related credential, although they were more likely than the women represented in Millar and Jagger’s study to have earned some sort of post-secondary credential. In an IT field that, on the whole, is being divided into a relatively small elite of well-paid professionals and a large proletariat whose ITrelated skills largely go unnoticed and under-remunerated in call centre, help desk and similarly precarious jobs, women face especially great struggles. Even those

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located in more central, respected and well-paid niches often must work especially hard to prove their skills and abilities in the face of highly masculinized rhetoric and cultural practices. Similarly, Turner et al. (2002) found in their online survey of members of an American IT-related association that respondents were almost as likely to have completed a college degree in an area unrelated to IT as they were to hold a degree related to IT. They characterize the IT field as ‘a roadway with many on-ramps’ (Turner et al. 2002: 16). These varied on-ramps offer new opportunities to both men and women, even as they lead on to a highway whose lanes can seem surprisingly traditional. Scott-Dixon (2004: 19) surmises that: IT work for women is complex and contradictory, neither wholly negative nor wholly positive. IT work can constrain and liberate, restrict and empower women. Women’s situation in IT both reflects and challenges norms of women’s role in the labour force. We turn our attention now to our exploration of these learning and work on-ramps for women working in British Columbia’s IT field, and how that field can appear good, bad and ugly.

Methodology, methods and participants Our case study was influenced by feminist approaches to methodology which views women’s lived experiences as the starting point of inquiry. Taking cues from Smith’s (1999: 5) call for a sociology for women, in which ‘the subject/knower of inquiry is not a transcendent subject, but situated in the actualities of her own living, in relation with others’, we talked to participants about how and what they learned. Between 2003 and 2006, we met with over 60 women in the cities of Vancouver and Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. Through life and work history interviews, we explored their experiences with IT learning and work. To recruit participants, we advertised in community newspapers and on listservs, and sent flyers to computer training programmes. Although we found some participants through these efforts, snowball sampling, or word of mouth, was the most effective recruitment strategy. We used a broad definition of IT work, recognizing that this is a new field that is continuing to develop and define itself. Participants’ work had to involve knowledge and use of IT in some central way. We purposely sought women who did not have the traditional IT credentials of computer science or software engineering when they entered the field; a small number of participants, however, did have an IT-related credential. Interviews lasted between 60 to 90 minutes and took place in various sites, including participants’ or the researchers’ workplaces, in cafes, or in participants’ or researchers’ homes. Participants were given the option of reviewing their transcripts before they were finalized. We drafted a series of electronic bulletins in an effort to keep participants informed about the development of the study and our

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findings.2 In accordance with standard ethics protocol, participants’ names have been replaced with pseudonyms in all written materials or presentations. While all our case study participants were women, in the 2004 WALL national survey, 70 per cent of the IT workers surveyed were men, most of whom worked as computer programmers or computer systems analysts. A third of the respondents in the survey identified as computer engineers or electrical engineers, and a smaller number were graphic designers. The general educational attainments of men and women IT workers were similar, with around 80 per cent having a post-secondary credential. In that survey, nearly all of these IT workers were employed full-time. Consistent with demographic studies of IT work, as well as our broad conceptualization of the IT field and our focus on alternative learning pathways, participants generally worked in more feminized IT niches, such as website design and maintenance, marketing and operations management, project management, development of technical manuals and other materials, and training. Their work often involved responsibilities for team coordination, customer relations and account management, and marketing and business development. Most participants were employees in the corporate sector, although we did speak with some women who were employed in the public and non-profit sectors; a few were self-employed contractors. Participants ranged in age from their mid-twenties to late fifties. Overall, they were well educated; almost all had some form of post-secondary credential, with many having acquired arts and social sciences degrees. In the WALL survey, consistent with Henwood’s (2000) finding of greater programming self-confidence of male students, female IT workers were more likely than men to have higher educational credentials than required to get their jobs, but a lower subjective sense of being underemployed. Consistent with the Canadian and international research outlined above, the case study participants illustrate the likelihood that women who have entered the IT field have done so in spite of, not because of, their postsecondary education. Many of our participants did take formal IT training once they began working in the IT field; this consisted of mostly short-term courses, seminars or workshops. Younger participants, those in their twenties and thirties, tended to have completed more formal IT training. Regardless of their educational and training histories, participants all spoke about the need for continual learning in the IT field, and the importance of informal learning. Frequently mentioned and valued learning resources included colleagues, supportive managers, work-based meetings and educational sessions (e.g. ‘lunch ’n’ learns’), and websites or help functions. Some participants also mentioned manuals, magazines, books, ITrelated networks and long-term mentors as important learning resources. In contrast to the women who identified as IT workers in the WALL survey, half of whom had children, most of our case study participants did not have children. None of the younger participants, still in their twenties and thirties, had children, although most were married and many hoped to have children in the future. Those who were parents were in their forties and fifties, and their children were generally young adults. In other words, the concern over childcare, which affects many

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women working in other fields, was not an immediate issue for most of the participants at the time of this study. In general, then, our participants were well educated, mostly child-free, white or of Western European ancestry. We recognize that this demographic profile, perhaps in large part due to our reliance on ‘snowball’ or word-of-mouth recruitment, is a noteworthy limitation of this case study and our analysis.

Negotiating the gendered terrain of IT: our findings and analysis We now turn our attention to some of the findings that zero in on the more explicit gendered dimensions of participants’ experiences. We asked participants about their learning strategies, whether and how their IT skills were recognized and rewarded, and whether the IT field was a good place for women to work and why that was the case. And we asked if they had experienced gender discrimination. They spoke about being recognized as well as being devalued, of supportive as well as obstructive employers and peers, and of the opportunities and benefits of working in IT as well as its foibles. Many participants spoke about having experienced most or even all of these sides of IT work, illuminating the contradictions and paradoxical aspects of working in this field and the fluidity of the nature of their relationships. To capture these tensions, we have organized our analysis into three main areas that can be thought of as ‘the good’, ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’ of IT work for women.

The good Many of our participants commented on the opportunities afforded to women, particularly as this field diversifies. Several participants, including Margaret, outlined this ‘good’ side of the IT field for women: I think it’s a great field . . . there is a tremendous amount of potential . . . because it is a growing field. The IT business itself has actually had four different SIC codes [occupational codes] added to it . . . like web designer, that’s a field that’s expanding because there is so many different aspects to web design that technical people can’t really cover off completely, because you have to have an artistic thing and you got to have an expressive communicative thing and so I think that it’s a growing field. As far as for women goes, I think in some areas it is male dominated and I think in other areas it is female dominated. The thing that I think is very interesting about it is that it is a young profession, that’s not to say there aren’t some really older gurus . . . men and women can work side by side in a great deal of equality. Elaine, who worked for a website development firm, made a similar observation during her interview, ‘I don’t believe there are any traditional barriers to women

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accessing any of the career paths in the IT industry. They could easily be president of companies.’ Elaine welcomed the challenge of continual learning, and the opportunity to develop a range of skills and bring them into her work. She also appreciated the generous salary and benefits, which afforded her a good income as well as an allowance for training, educational resources and vacations. IT work can be ‘good work’ in relation to wages, support for learning and opportunities for advancement. Many participants also felt welcomed and recognized for their skills. Some thought that they excelled in IT because of their ‘soft’ skills as team workers, communicators and overall good managers. These abilities were welcomed by employers. For example, Alannah worked in an IT firm where her boss actively sought and recognized women’s skills as team builders and good problem solvers and communicators: I struggle with the gender specific stereotypes but if you look at how we are organized, the roles that are more dynamic, more just in time, more people direction in management are women. Our technical staff [are men], all highly educated, highly trained, do a lot of certification. The coordinators or managers are mostly women from a variety of backgrounds. Very few from an actual IT background and what motivates them and what makes them focused is the people dynamics and solving the problem as a group, where the technical staff is more about solving the problem as an individual. I think that’s the biggest difference. Likewise, Kris relayed a positive experience of having her communication and management skills recognized and rewarded, despite the initial surprise expressed by senior staff about her abilities. Her assertiveness in response to their challenges was well received: I am working with them [and] they are going, ‘Wow.’ Or I will have a discussion with them and it’s a discussion about grammar. I’m going, ‘You know, I have a degree in grammar. You see, you can’t really argue with me’ [laughing] . . . They love a master’s degree, right, just because it means you can write . . . Then one day . . . I asked for a raise and, you know, they said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Well, this,’ and they gave me that . . . Interestingly enough it was a little more than I had originally asked for, quite a bit more. So for me now the career expansion is not so much in terms of money, but in terms of responsibility . . . At one point along the way it did come down from one of the higher ups, ‘Well, does she know how to do this? Did she manage people before?’ So I had to write a little self-promotionary [sic] letter to say, ‘Well yes, as a matter of fact I have worked with people here and there.’ I have done this, I have done that, but it was the exercise of doing it for myself . . . I know how to do this. Expanding on this, Norah thought that some skills that women develop through their domestic work are transferable to IT work; however, she noted that

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acknowledging this transfer in the public realm of work requires a form of selfconfidence. She observed a stronger sense of self-confidence in younger women: I’ve seen women . . . maybe they’re at management level, and [in] their late 30s, they have a child and they discover there’s a skill set [in raising a child]. They didn’t really understand that, they thought since you’re a female it came with your body type. So there’s these skill sets for these different things so it’s a matter of environment, personal self-confidence. What strikes us as interesting here is the reflection of an inclination to essentialize gender, rather than to see it in relational terms. At least some of Norah’s female colleagues had attributed their skills and limitations to their ‘nature’ as women. Presumably, this extended to views about men, and male colleagues’ views about gender and skills. Other participants expressed a view of their IT workplaces as almost gender neutral, although other comments exposed the limitations of this view. Again, Kris’s comments reflected this generally positive, if qualified, perception: My team right now is my three people, and the five people in the regulatory group and me, so there are nine of us. I don’t even notice that I am a woman in the group and I don’t even think that they really notice, like, there is no gender issues and they might even make some sort of an innuendo about women, but it’s not like they’re looking over their shoulders to see if I’m reacting. They don’t even notice because they don’t have it in them, so I think that women have a better chance nowadays as younger women. I just think it’s a little more gender neutral than a lot of other professions. Many participants worked in more peripheral niches of the IT field, where the emphasis was as much on communication, organization, administration and teamwork skills as on a technical skills and knowledge base. One of those women, Lucy, worked in a position that combined sales with development of databases to help meet customers’ business needs. She enjoyed working with IT, learning new applications and combining her IT expertise with social interaction among colleagues and customers. She also felt fortunate to work for a manager who recognized the importance of collegiality and employee morale: There is a lot of camaraderie. If somebody gets a good sale you’re like, ‘Right on,’ you know. They ring the bell. Everybody gets a turn to ring the bell. The manager we have now is actually really good. He is trying to . . . do some fun stuff in the office. Last month he had a golf contest. So if you did all your calls that week, if you had any sales you got so many putts. He brought in a little putting green. So on the Friday afternoon we all had so many putts and he gave away a $50 [gift] certificate and a day off with pay.

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Another participant, Susan, had a credential in website design. Unable to find steady work in that area, she worked as a secretary in a public-sector institution when she was interviewed. Secretarial work enabled her to earn a stable income while she assumed responsibility for her department’s website. For others in her department, she became the ‘go-to’ person whenever they had questions about technology or their own websites. Part of the good side of IT work, then, is that its scope is expanding into traditional fields, including some traditionally feminized fields. For women interested in IT work, this offers an opportunity to develop and practise IT-related skills and build a reputation for themselves, whether or not they have an IT-related credential; however, we note that the IT work that is becoming part of traditional jobs is not always accompanied by raises in profile or salary. Even our discussion of the good side of IT work hints that this field has less appealing sides as well.

The bad In this section, we discuss participants’ experiences of isolation, work intensification and vulnerability in their jobs; we refer to these as ‘the bad’ side of IT work. Participants noted how the IT field can be very demanding of workers’ time, a particular challenge for women who retain primary responsibility for family care and home life. The WALL survey found that women working in IT compared with men in IT were half as likely to work over 50 hours per week (7.5 per cent versus 15 per cent); half as likely to devote more than six hours to job-related intentional informal learning (24 per cent versus 52 per cent); much more likely to prefer to work fewer hours (45 per cent versus 31 per cent); and much less likely to have someone else do most or all of the housework (43 per cent versus 17 per cent). In our case study, responding to a question about whether or not IT jobs were good for women, Amy commented, As a woman, you’ve sort of got this conflict too where an IT job might be more demanding, it might have more hours added. I certainly have done that in the past. If I had a family I don’t know how I would have been able to balance the two. Connie, an operations manager in a high-tech firm, was one of the very few women in her workplace and one of the few women in our study who was raising a child. When asked if she thought that IT work was good for women, she offered this response: I would say that depends on the woman. I think some women are probably – they’re excellent and for other women it would be a slow death, a slow and painful death . . . Because, . . . oh, because it’s not really very – how did I think about it when I first started? Oh, it’s very lonely. It can be very lonely work. . . . Oh, when I go and talk to the guys, [they say,] ‘We go . . . drinking and we

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go, you know, to the strip club or whatever.’ You know? Or we play golf. And I’m like, ‘God, I don’t want to do that.’ So it’s also me saying, like, I’m not going to do it. When the investors come into town and they’re all going out to dinner, oh, it’s so boring. I don’t want to do it. I would rather go and live my life. So maybe that’s the thing too. It’s like you look at it, maybe women aren’t so willing to give everything up, you know, and to go and do all this crap that they all want to do and go and be buddies. And you’re like, . . . I don’t even like you so much. But guys will hang out with people they don’t like, you know. Mandy hoped to have children at some time, but thought that doing so would pose risks if she wanted to stay in the IT field: ‘I think that my skills will definitely probably get out of date during the time period where I have young children. I think I would probably lose interest as well, a little bit, in IT.’ In general, work/home life balance was seen as a difficult accomplishment the closer one got to the centre of the IT field. For Helen, having some control over her income and working conditions was important. Contrasting her work in the peripheral niche of technical writing to the more central niches of software development and quality assurance, she noted the increased likelihood that people working in the centre of the IT field had to work especially long hours: If you’re a programmer or a [quality assurance] tester with a release coming up and you need to work 80 hours in a week to get the release out, then that’s what you need to do. Why I often have to, or why I have had to work over-time is because of that same release issue, but, you know, there are some companies . . . they are just notorious for just wearing their employees out because of their expectations. Esther raised similar concerns about this field in general, as well as the particularities of IT work in the province of British Columbia: I don’t think they’re particularly good for anybody in practice a lot of the time, but I think that women are more realistic about balancing their work life, or more realistic and more demanding about the need to have a balanced worklife relationship. But with things like changes to the Employment Standards Act so that IT is exempt from overtime, I mean . . . [it’s] pretty hideous. It also tends to be a sector that has very poor benefits because after the, sort of, implosion of the field there are fewer large companies and what large companies are there are young . . . in the relative scheme of things. Because employment regulations are set provincially, it is not possible to say how female workers in other Canadian provinces are affected by formal policy; however, Esther clarified that, for IT workers and others categorized as ‘high-tech’ workers in this province, the employment-related expectations are more likely to

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undermine, rather than approach, work/home life balance. Whether or not they felt welcome and respected in the IT field, participants generally understood that this is a problematic side of IT work, especially if they were raising or contemplating having children. Even when the skills and qualities of female IT workers are acknowledged, they themselves can assume a down side. During the famous IT crash in the late 1990s, it was often women in mid-level management positions whose positions were the first to be terminated (Bowlby and Langlois 2002; Bowlby 2004). Alannah spoke about this, although she also argued that it was unrelated to gender: If you look at any drastic downsize, the tendency is to cut out middle management first. You leave the high level management and you cut out middle management because it’s soft . . . nobody’s really sure what they really do, and we know that the techs are the nuts and bolts and we can’t do anything without them . . . and we know we have to have executive staff to set direction, so that’s the layer that gets cut. So I don’t think that it’s necessarily a gender thing or anything like that, I think sometimes that project management or middle management role is undervalued. The terms hard and soft are either end of a binary division that reflects gender stereotypes. Given the stereotypical assignment of nurturing, team building and coordination tasks to women, the gendered dimensions of downsizing cannot be ignored, even when women appear to rise through the ranks of the IT workforce. This was a situation that another participant, Margaret, found herself in. She had moved from a lower-paid office management job in which she became the IT expert into well-paid project management work; however, her position was cut during the IT crash, while the programmers in her workplace, all of whom were men, retained their jobs.

The ugly The ‘bad’ side of the IT field affects both male and female workers. As we outlined above, it has distinct and probably greater impacts on women; however, women do not seem to be its intended targets. In contrast, the IT field’s ‘ugly’ side deliberately takes aim at women, illustrating how sexist attitudes and practices have accompanied men and women into this relatively new field. In the WALL survey, a quarter of women in IT said they experienced discrimination on the job in the past year, compared to 10 per cent of men. Some participants had left jobs in larger IT corporations, partly to escape the sexism that they had encountered in the software development area. Andrea provided a vivid picture of one company where she had worked: ‘I worked very, very briefly at one place . . . this big dotcom company which ended up going under and it was very much a boys’ club.’

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Another participant, Melanie, offered this response to a question on what could be done to attract more women into the IT field: Make it more attractive for women? Yeah, busting up the old boys’ network. I mean, it’s still such an old boys’ network, the domain of software. I mean, you go into a software company and the programming department is likely to be 80 per cent men. What do they joke about? They joke about, you know, they make offensive sexual comments. And, as a woman, you are, you end up being uncomfortable. But what can you say? You are completely in an environment where you . . . there isn’t a space to say, you know what . . . I don’t really like that. Sometimes, experiences of sexism could be shockingly personal and direct. Margaret recounted an incident with a client who felt free to share his offensive sense of humour with her: The one particular day I call him back and we’re chatting and as we’re talking he’d interrupt me and I said, ‘The pause in my breath is not because I need any more information, I’m formulating a thought here.’ He said to me, ‘Oh, you’re one of those.’ And I didn’t get it. I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘You’re one of those one in 100,000 [women] who think.’ I said, ‘Oh that’s really funny.’ But I wanted to say, ‘You’re such an idiot.’ Interestingly, Margaret saw herself as having a strong personality, something which many participants recognized as a prerequisite for women working in the IT field. ‘I’m a fighter and I was very strong,’ she said. But in a society that continues to socialize boys to be strong and women to be nice, assertiveness can carry its own risks for women. Margaret’s experiences of sexism were often overt and extreme; other participants relayed stories that were more subtle, but exemplified sexist attitudes. Linda, who worked in an administrative position at a high-tech firm where she was responsible for technical writing, shared this anecdote during her interview: We’ve had a few lectures, we used to do these ‘lunch ’n’ learns’ and they kind of make you sit down and understand everything. And if I had to turn around and tell it back to them, I couldn’t do it. . . . I don’t know if it’s because I don’t have that background knowledge so I don’t have sort the jargon and the words easily under my fingertips to explain back what’s just been told to me. And I’m trying so hard to understand it when they’re telling me that I probably don’t take the time to remember the words they’re using, like I’m just visualizing what they’re saying to me, so I’m not actually taking it in as . . . as words, I’m seeing a picture maybe . . . all I can see is this picture in my head . . . what do they call those little Russian dolls, you know, I mean the information just keeps getting tucked inside another doll and then it gets sent out and

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. . . which is pretty much what happens but they would just be horrified if that’s how I explained it to them. . . . I don’t really think they would be horrified. They’d probably think it was cute, ‘Oh, isn’t that cute!’ Linda considered that she had a positive, friendly relationship with her colleagues, the vast majority of whom were men. Despite her obviously creative approach to learning, she thought that talking to them about their work in plain English meant, at best, condescension and, at worst, intellectual dismissal and repudiation.

Conclusion We have established that women’s experiences of technology, learning and work are understood and expressed as highly gendered. Our study affirms the contradictory aspects of IT work as noted by Scott-Dixon (2004). Participants’ capacity to be good ‘hybrid’ workers, while beneficial in some contexts, places them at risk at times of industry downturn, times when the binaries of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills surface. Our study participants also speak about the gendered dimensions of workplace participation, particularly communication. At times, participants in our study felt supported in their learning; at other times, they felt frustrated and dismissed when they lacked the ‘right’ terminology to explain how they solved a problem or the ‘right’ problem-solving process. As Bickford (1996: 96–97) notes, ‘the norms that govern communication are not neutral, but rather highlight the ways of speaking of already powerful groups’. Our study also affirms the findings of early research about women having to prove themselves and be assertive, although in some cases this can be interpreted as problematic by sexist colleagues. Similar to other research, these women’s stories indicate that a lack of formal IT credentials in the IT field was not necessarily a barrier; indeed communication, creativity and team-building skills, often developed in other contexts, were often sought and welcomed. This study’s exploration of the gendered aspects of IT work is timely in an era when, as Billett (2001) points out, workers are expected to take full responsibility for maintaining their skills and developing their careers. For women who, overall, continue to experience lower income and management-level job prospects, as well as greater family responsibilities (as found in the WALL survey) this expectation is problematic. It is also important to understand the learning processes of workers in labour markets like IT, given the rapidity of technological change. This raises significant challenges for creating formal training that is relevant and timely, and marks the workplace as a significant site of learning. We have focused in this chapter on learning about the gendered politics of IT. Our study participants, through their involvement in work processes, engaged in significant learning of IT, management and team-building skills. Learning these skills and developing their IT knowledge base was intertwined with learning about the gendered culture of IT, their locations in that culture, and their identities as women and workers. The IT field is one where many binaries reflecting gender

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stereotypes, such as hard and soft skills, creator and user, persist (Jubas and Butterwick 2008). IT is a field of much promise as well as trouble.

Notes 1 Our case study involved a partnership with A Commitment to Training and Employment for Women (ACTEW), a women’s non-profit agency in Toronto, Ontario. ACTEW is a network of agencies providing community-based employment and training services for women. Its mandate is improve services that support women through analysing policies and programmes, educating members and others about the impact of these policies, and strengthening and expanding the channels of knowledge exchange (see http://www.actew.org/about/index.html). The struggles of women working in IT without formal credentials were first identified by members of ACTEW. During our research, we worked closely with Jen Liptrot, the Executive Director of ACTEW and with several graduate students from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, including Danielle Thibadeau, Melanie Knight and Hong Zhu. The interviews discussed in this chapter were conducted by the two authors, who were both located at the University of British Columbia. Shauna Butterwick was the Principal Investigator of this case study and Kaela Jubas joined this project at the beginning as research assistant (during which she completed her master’s and doctoral degrees). 2 See http://edst.educ.ubc.ca/facultystaff/shauna-butterwick.

References Bickford, S. (1996) Listening, Conflict and Citizenship – The Dissonance of Democracy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Billett, S. (2001) ‘Participation and Continuity at Work: A Critique of Current Workplace Learning Discourses’, paper presented at Context, Power and Perspective: Confronting the Challenges to Improving Attainment in Learning at Work, International Workshop, 8–10 November, Sunley Management Centre, University College of Northampton. Brookfield, S. (2001) ‘Repositioning Ideology Critique in a Critical Theory of Adult Education’, Adult Education Quarterly, 52(9): 7–22. Bowlby, G. (2004) ‘The Labour Market in 2003’, Perspectives, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Online: available at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/10104/6759eng.pdf (accessed 1 September 2009). Bowlby, G. and Langlois, S. (2002) ‘High Tech Boom and Bust’, Perspectives, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Online: available at http://www.statcan.gc.ca/studies-etudes/75001/archive/e-pdf/5022961-eng.pdf (accessed 1 September 2009). Crump, B.J., Logan, K.A. and McIlroy, A. (2007) ‘Does Gender Still Matter? A Study of the Views of Women in the ICT Industry in New Zealand’, Gender, Work and Organization, 14(4): 349–370. Goldner, V. (2002) ‘Toward A Critical Relational Theory of Gender’, in M. Dimen and V. Goldner (eds) Gender in Psychoanalytic Space, New York: Other Press. Habtu, R. (2003) ‘Information Technology Workers’, Perspectives on Labour and Income, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Henwood, F. (2000) ‘From the Woman Question in Technology to the Technology Question in Feminism: Rethinking Gender Equality in IT Education’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, 7: 209–227.

136 Shauna Butterwick and Kaela Jubas Huws, U. (2000) ‘The Changing Gender Division of Labour in the Transition to the Knowledge Society’, in K. Rubenson and H.G. Schuetze (eds) Transition to the Knowledge Society: Policies and Strategies for Individual Participation and Learning, Vancouver: Institute for European Studies, University of British Columbia. Jubas, K. and Butterwick, S. (2008) ‘Hard/Soft, Formal/Informal/Work/Learning: Tenuous/Persistent Binaries in the Knowledge-Based Society’, Journal of Workplace Learning, 20(8): 514–625. Margolis, J. and Fisher, A. (2002) Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing, Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press. Millar, J. and Jagger, N. (2001) Women in ITEC Courses and Careers. Final Report, Government of the Department for Education and Skills, United Kingdom. Online: available at http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/ACFE89.pdf (accessed 7 January 2004). Mirchandani, K., Ng, R., Sangha, J., Rawlings, T. and Comola-Moya, N. (2002) ‘Ambivalent Learning: Racialized Barriers to Computer Access for Immigrant Workers’, working papers, NALL project, OISE/UT. Panteli, N., Stack, J. and Ramsay, H. (2001) ‘Gendered Patterns in Computing Work in the Late 1990s’, New Technology, Work and Employment, 16(1): 3–17. Scott-Dixon, K. (2004) Doing IT: Women Working in Information Technology, Toronto: Sumach Press. Selfe, C.L. and Hawisher, G.E. (2002) ‘A Historical Look at Electronic Literacy: Implications for the Education of Technical Communicators’, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 16(3): 231–276. Smith, D.E. (1999) Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations, Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. Turner, S.V., Bernt, P.W. and Pecora, N. (2002) ‘Why Women Choose Information Technology Careers: Educational, Social, and Familial Influences’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, 1–5 April. Turkle, S. and Papert, S. (1990) ‘Epistemological Pluralism: Styles and Voices Within the Computer Culture’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 16(1): 128–157. Wacjman, J. (2004) TechnoFeminism, London: Blackwell. Woodfield, R. (2000) Women, Work and Computing, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 7

Beginning from disability to study a corporate organization of learning Kathryn Church, Catherine Frazee and Melanie Panitch

Introduction This chapter speaks to the social relations of learning as they are lived by people with disabilities who are employed by a large corporation. After positioning the case study conceptually and methodologically, we pursue what happened along these dimensions as we implemented the project.1 We note the ways in which doing research with a corporate partner fundamentally shaped the possibilities for inquiry and expression. We highlight the debate over whether employees should disclose a disability in the workplace along with two other findings.2 The first points to the invisible work of informal instruction about bodily difference that disabled employees do in order to facilitate job performance. The second addresses the question of how disabled employees relate to new technologies. Reflecting on the study as a whole, we suggest four promising directions for organizational practice drawn from the learning of disabled employees at work.3 In assembling this chapter, we have drawn from a range of mostly unpublished texts that mark the unfolding of this research: the proposal and ethics review protocol; interim and final reports to the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) network and its funders; conference presentations, draft reports and our final Public Report. We use them to track a complex intertwining of starting and turning points as well as actions, dilemmas and discoveries over the course of the study. Thus, the data of the chapter are located not just ‘out there’ with what was observed of or spoken by the study’s ‘official’ participants but also ‘in here’ with what the research team experienced organizationally, and documented for ‘significant others’ along the way. In other words, we attend not just to them but to us and them (the ‘them’ that we gave rise to). Such a mosaic includes the conceptual framing of learning and work that structures the introductory chapter of this book as well as the tension between survey and case study results. By discussing the ways that paid work and care work are inextricably ‘nested together’ in the lives of disabled employees, we attempt to demonstrate how beginning from disability disrupts and disorganizes theoretical categorization even as it reveals social organization.

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Conceptual demands and desires The research team had a lot riding on this project. Newly engaged in building an Institute for Disability Studies, we viewed the case study as our first opportunity to signal the direction for a whole programme of research. Our most basic desire was to create something that would have real-life applications for real people in their ongoing political struggles. We were drawn to questions of work and learning because paid employment – figuring out how to get and keep a decent job – is a core issue for people with disabilities and their organizations worldwide. Simultaneously, we wanted to situate ourselves in the confluence of theoretical debates whereby disability activists and scholars are challenging the ‘diagnose and fix it’ paradigm of medical and rehabilitative science. Our considerations encompassed a British ‘social model’ that points to physical, economic and social obstacles rather than physical/mental ‘impairment’ as the source of disability (e.g. Oliver 1990, 1996; Barnes, Mercer and Shakespeare 1999; Albrecht, Seelman and Bury 2001), and an American ‘cultural diversity model’ in which disability signals a ‘constellation of stigmatized differences (that) creates groups vulnerable to subjugation and control’ (Couser 2005: 125). Woven through both ‘models’ is a persistent feminist concern with embodied differences and the subjective meanings of experience (e.g. Pinder 1995; Wendell 1996; Hall 1999; Parr and Butler 1999). In a Canadian way, our case study draws from all three lines of argument as we begin from first-hand accounts to look for ways in which individual experiences of disability are organized by institutional talk and action (Smith 1987, 1999). Personal stories are important to us not because they ‘fill in’ or ‘illustrate’ the dominant clinical categories but because each life reveals something important about social organization. In this instance, we are interested in what stories tell us about the corporate organization of learning. Regardless of topic, an interesting thing happens whenever ‘disability’ becomes part of a research problematic beyond the phenomenon of embodied experience itself. Fields of study that are otherwise thick with relevant literature suddenly thin or empty out, as if someone had yelled ‘Fire!’ in a crowded nightclub. In attempting to grasp the scholarly background that could inform our project, we observed the presence of a troubling absence. What we have are two strands of literature to draw from: studies about disability and work; and studies about disability and learning. They remain separate from and uninformative of each other. What we are missing is a literature situated at the nexus of work, learning and disability. Thus, our task was to design a study in the silence of a missing literature, rather than in a rich tradition of theoretical formation.4 In terms of disability and work, there is a strong legacy of studies that track employment rates – or, less euphemistically, unemployment rates for people with disabilities. Many studies have been concerned with documenting the exclusion of disabled people from paid employment and the related task of identifying barriers to hiring and retention (e.g. Hagner, Butterworth and Keither 1995; Westmorland and Pennock 1995; Bunch and Crawford 1998; Bricout and Bentley

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2000; McAlpine and Warner 2002; Enns and Neufeldt 2003; Stapleton and Burkhauser 2003). From the dawn of the industrial age to the present, disabled people are associated with high rates of unemployment.5 Those who are employed are disproportionately represented in part-time, low-wage occupations (Berthoud, Lakey and McKay 1993; Kitchin, Shirlow and Shuttleworth 1998; Payne 2000; Schur 2002, 2003), and are discriminated against within the workplace (Balser 2000). Those who are not formally employed have often been exploited through underpaid or unpaid (volunteer) contributions to the economy (Drake 1994; Abbas 2003). Many find themselves continuously in training – always in transition to jobs that never appear. Given this history, it has been somewhat jarring to relate to ‘the new economy’ as one of the concepts that should organize our study. We understood the technical meaning of the term with respect to an ‘information age’ marked by ‘technology, ever-increasing productivity and globalization’ (Fisher and Downey 2006: 1). In terms of popular meanings, however, the implicit optimism of something new, especially the suggestion of ‘unprecedented prosperity and unrelenting expansion’ was out of sync with the long continuity of employment exclusion and disadvantage lived out by disabled people. Surely a ‘new economy’ would be one in which they finally become well-paid ‘labour’ in the classic sociological sense of the word. The struggle towards that goal continues. Meanwhile, a system of professional jobs has been created to service the problem: from the charitable workhouses that Charles Dickens so powerfully evoked6 to the state-sponsored workshops and training programmes of the modern welfare state (e.g. Block 1992; Sartawi, Abu-Hilal and Qaryouti 1999; Gosling and Cotterill 2000; Olson et al. 2000), and the social economy initiatives of the present neoliberal era (e.g. Blanck et al. 2000; MacEachen 2000). Many disabled people are locked into these forms as permanent substitutes for ‘real jobs’. Thus, much of the literature of ‘work’ is concerned with sheltered workshops, or professionally run vocational rehabilitation and occupational therapy programmes (e.g. Drury 1991; Gates, Akabas and Kantrowitz 1996; Krause, Dasinger and Neuhauser 1998; Fichten, Asuncion and Baron 2000; Capelia 2003). The only new development is the entrepreneurial option whereby ‘enterprising individuals’ (Rose 1996) sustain themselves as producers of goods and services for the marketplace (Neufeldt and Albright 1998). In a slightly different vein, psychiatric survivor organizations in Toronto have pioneered an approach to doing economic development that is collective and political (Church 1997, 2000, 2001). The pattern that marks disability and work recurs with disability and learning. A simple deconstruction of ‘disability’ (not-ability) conjures an image of someone who is lacking, someone who requires training. The trouble is right there in the language. Little wonder that we tend not to think of people with disabilities as learners at all, let alone as informal learners seeking out what and how they want to learn. This discursive trap organizes the academic literature as well – and dramatically so. A keyword search using the terms ‘learning’ and ‘disability’ yields many references but most of them on the topic of ‘learning disabilities’ – luring us once

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again into ‘lack’ and the need for professional remediation. Research on disability and learning is heavily weighted towards rehabilitation studies, a genre in which disabled people appear as recipients of intervention but not as employees who are learning as they move (and moving as they learn) in and through activities in mainstream jobs. Of particular interest is the almost complete absence of research done in corporate sites (also noted by England 2003; Klein, Schmeling and Blanck 2005; Sandler and Blanck 2005; Schur, Kruse and Blanck 2005, as they too break into this environment). In the late 1990s, a group of Canadian researchers undertook a line of inquiry that escaped this frame when they studied how participatory practices in non-profit community organizations generate ‘learning in social action’ (Foley 1999; Church et al. 2008).7 As part of this collaboration, Church ‘re-read’ six years’ worth of research that she had conducted previously with psychiatric survivors who run ‘alternative businesses’, including a courier company in Toronto. Here she uncovered a rich mix of learning through peer training, on-the-job learning, learning-bydoing, trial and error learning, and ‘failing forward’. An in-depth interview with one employee revealed the nuanced ways that this woman understood and stayed connected to fellow survivor workers throughout her transformation from courier to executive director (Church 2001). Church’s retrospective fed into the larger analysis made by the research team. Reading across data from similar organizations, team members identified three dimensions of learning that occur in this milieu ‘while no one is watching’: the organizational ‘smarts’ they acquired to float their initiatives between the welfare state and entrepreneurial models; the sense of connectedness and solidarity they achieved by working together; and, the rethinking of damaged identity that they achieved through inhabiting more socially valued roles. The team concluded that community organizations perform an unrecognized role in informal education, one that inhabits a tension between regulatory and liberatory possibilities (Church et al. 2008). Examples such as this are important because they proceed from the social and economic margins (from people who are ‘crazy’, for example) to discover how and what they are learning in the context of jobs that they control to some degree. That said, it is a mere trickle easily subsumed by the flood of more conventional studies. Following on, our touchstone for conceptualizing a case study was the feminist materialist tradition of inquiry laid down by Dorothy Smith and other practitioners of Institutional Ethnography (Smith 1987, 1999, 2002; Diamond 1992, 2006; Mykhalovskiy and McCoy 2002). We situated Smith’s ‘generous notion of work’ at the heart of our inquiry. Grounded in feminist analyses of housework, she urges researchers to look beyond what people are paid to do in order to attend to ‘anything that people do that takes time, effort and intent . . . as they participate in whatever ways in institutional processes’ (Smith 2005: 229). Taking her lead, we situated learning as part of the invisible ‘work’ that people with disabilities do in order to get and keep a job. The research task was to produce a careful description of the ‘work of learning’ as disabled employees do it within the

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institutional relations of a large corporation during a time of global economic reorganization.

What ‘counts’ as methodology? From the start of the WALL network, organizers were clear about their desire that each case study should relate back to the national survey – a point reiterated by this book. The rationale was to combine the strengths of each approach in order to produce a well-rounded knowledge of the field. However, given the dominance of ‘counting’, the cross-over can be difficult – a matter of some discussion among members of the network. The tension that we experienced between the quantitative and qualitative approaches is best articulated by Nancy Jackson (2005),8 ‘While the survey is concerned with achieving clarity, significance and reliability in counting, the case studies ask “what counts,” what is “significant” and for whom?’ She concluded that fruitful collaboration across the traditions is difficult because while each one is ‘actively engaged in constituting the “actual” they do so using disparate procedures, degrees of reflexivity and conceptions of validity’. Thus, WALL itself had to ask, ‘last but not least, whose knowledge counts as a legitimate contribution to the study of informal learning in the network?’ (2005: 28). We came into WALL on the interpretive side of the debate. For us, the case study was an opportunity to dispel lingering bits of positivism from our practice. The question was whether we could do so in the face of institutional procedures that systematically re-inscribe the assumptions of conventional science. In navigating the requirement for Ethics Review, a prime example, we needed to write a successful Protocol while refusing the framing constituted by university Guidelines. Asked to specify ‘sample size’, we argued that our invitation to participate would not generate a ‘sample’ in the statistical sense. Unlike the national survey, we would not be recruiting to approximate demographic representation of a population according to a priori categories such as age, gender, race and social class (Mykhalovskiy and McCoy 2002). Indeed, we wanted to undercut the essentialist practice of what often amounts to ‘representation by impairment’: selecting ‘one of these’ and ‘two of those’ by bodily dysfunction. We queried as well the designation of people with disabilities as a ‘special’ or ‘vulnerable’ population because it precludes them from being taken up from strength and ‘normality’. While identifying as ‘disabled’ was essential to our methodology, we did not want that action to box people into becoming the object of our inquiry.9 Our response was to situate ‘disability’ empirically as ‘an empty category (that) waits to be filled as we learn’ (Mykhalovskiy and McCoy 2002: xvii). We let potential participants decide for themselves how to identify for the purposes of the study. By the end of the study, we had talked to people living with a variety of bodily situations, visible and invisible: mobility restrictions, visual and hearing impairments, cancer, asthma, arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, to name a few. All were

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intellectually capable, legally competent adults, fully capable of informed consent to participate. Over three years, the research team worked with human resources managers in the corporation’s national office to organize and host a number of focus groups: two groups on the west coast, two in the Maritimes and three in central Canada. In each location, we hosted one group specifically for employees who identified as ‘disabled’ and another for ‘non-disabled’ co-workers and/or managers. Local managers facilitated group formation. We accepted everyone who responded to our invitation, which was sent through the corporation’s electronic networks. In this way, we acquired roughly 80 participants who were employed in a range of jobs: from sales, service and direct client-facing roles to specialized professional roles in information technology analysis and human resources. For the research team, study participants were ‘insiders’ – expert witnesses to their particular piece of the corporation’s operation. We recorded, transcribed and collectively analysed our conversations with them, sifting repeatedly through 300 pages of talk for key phrases, major points and illuminating stories. In the process, we did not so much discover meanings as make them by interacting with our data. Thus, while the findings of this study are very much the product of what participants said, they also represent what the members of the research team know how to perceive based on in-depth study and real life experience (Jackson 2004, 2005). In crossing the university–corporate divide, the research team encountered discourses, practices and knowledge traditions that were distinctly not our own (Conti and O’Neil 2007). Familiar with large-scale surveys, our corporate partner was not well acquainted with social science research in the interpretive paradigm. By contrast, the research team has considerably more experience doing research with marginalized groups than we did with ‘elites’. In ‘researching up’ the class hierarchy, we were startled by how closely our partner managed, organized, facilitated, reorganized and monitored our inquiry (see also Vallas 2003; Sandler and Blanck 2005). Where we pushed for exploration, it pushed for containment, always with an eye to the corporation’s public image. We experienced corporate management directly, and we learned as much from that process as we did from our participants. Suddenly, the issue was not the exercise of researcher power as is the case working with community-based (disability) organizations. Rather, it was ensuring the research team’s capacity to ask questions, make a critical analysis and make that analysis public. The collaboration we established ensured successful completion of the study, but our results must be understood in terms of negotiations across our reciprocal strangeness.

Selected findings In Chapter 2 of this book, Livingstone and Scholtz note that housework and community volunteer work do not obey the same rhythms as paid work. ‘Even in terms of clock-time measures, mothers with small children are among those who work

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the longest hours’, they point out, ‘If they also happen to be employed, clock-time fails utterly to grasp the extent of their labours.’ The same could be said of employees with disabilities. As someone reminded us, ‘Being disabled is a full-time job!’ The conversations we had with study participants revealed layers of labour – on and off the job – which facilitate their employment in the high-speed, competitive environment of a big corporation. In this section, we highlight three findings that are particularly relevant.

The unavoidable issue of disclosure For disabled employees, learning in corporate environments is organized around a delicate strategic judgement. Should they or should they not publicly and/or officially identify as disabled? Our study participants carried different histories of decision making on this question. Some had physical differences that were readily obvious, and/or used some kind of aide (e.g. a working dog) and/or carried a symbol that marked them as disabled (e.g. a white cane). They tended to be strong advocates for openness from other people and were keen on education for their coworkers. Others lived with invisible conditions that were only partially or situationally visible, and consequently had options around disclosure. They did not consider openness about bodily difference as necessarily wise or advantageous. They worried about being ‘branded’ as a potential ‘question mark’ in relation to any employer – current or potential. To the extent that it is possible, then, participants with disabilities preferred to claim some level of workplace privacy by not disclosing. They shared a submerged knowledge, generated through trial and error, about how to conceal aspects of self/body that they thought might be troubling to others. We found two strategies particularly interesting here. First, disabled employees whose jobs were done over telephone and email described how these forms of communication created a kind of privacy that enabled them to mobilize virtual able-bodied identities. Second, employees invoked the informal support of colleagues to stay low-key about their disability in the workplace; successful disabled employees knew how to build good informal networks. Corporations do not train for these kinds of skills but learning them is vital to the success of disabled employees. Our argument is that they constitute a form of invisible work, a second ‘job’ layered onto the one for which people are officially paid. By contrast, our co-worker/manager participants preferred that employees disclose their disability in the workplace. They felt that being fully informed was the only way that they could begin to be helpful around problems of performance and production. They wanted as much information as possible in order to run a team and/or complete a project. Beyond their own workplace, most co-worker participants knew of people who had deliberately not disclosed an illness or disability. They sympathized with that position, noting that bodily difference can have a negative impact on employment especially when employers might be ‘getting rid of the weaker performers’. Consequently, these participants could not decide whether

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there should be a general rule requiring disclosure, or whether it should be an individual decision communicated only to one’s manager. They talked about how awkward it was to probe for information that was not volunteered, and wondered how to ask without offending a disabled co-worker or breaching his/her right to privacy.

The invisible work of informal teaching In a big corporation, the basic concern is for training that improves the efficiency and productivity of the organization. Learning is channelled towards skill development that helps employees meet the demands and standards of their jobs. Less prominent are the skills required to work with other people in project teams and supervisory relationships. The disabled employees we talked to were particularly attuned to dilemmas of interacting with others. They had learned to pick up, interpret, work with and/or resist the reactions – spoken and unspoken – that ablebodied colleagues have to their presence. They had become hyper-vigilant about how co-workers/managers receive and relate to them, especially if those people seem uninformed or carry negative stereotypes about disability. As one participant noted, ‘All of a sudden there’s tension in the workplace that would not have been there [without me].’ Participants in our groups had learned various ways of instructing their co-workers in what to do around them. Each disabled employee did it differently but everyone did it person by person, encounter by encounter, day by day. To complicate matters, co-workers seemed to ‘forget’ what they are told: to use large-font documents for colleagues with low vision, for example, to face colleagues who lip-read, to choose accessible restaurants for lunch. This ‘forgetting’ created situations in which disabled employees had to provide the same information over and over, even with people they encounter frequently. Participants speculated on the cause. Was it individual rudeness? Failing memory? Or did it reflect a more widespread social ‘permission’ to forget? Some managers were alert to the dynamic, and their sensitivity made a world of difference. However, the general assumption was that disabled employees would ‘naturally’ provide whatever instruction is required. So, here is another layer of work contributing to and flowing in and around the core task of job performance but without formal recognition. When ‘you are always breaking co-workers in’, the informal teaching never ends.

The ups and downs of information technology Learning in corporate environments has been strongly affected by the rapid widening and deepening use of computerized information technologies in the past generation. Without doubt, new technologies contribute enormously to the inclusion and success of disabled employees. We think, for example, of the tremendous boon that Jaws (reading) software has been for people with

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visual impairments and voice-activated software for people with mobility restrictions (or computer-generated repetitive strain injuries!). In group conversation, participants with disabilities sometimes burst forth with admiration and pride for the technical skills of others around the table. They marvelled at someone who was able to listen to a client with one ear and Jaws with the other. ‘I can’t do what you’re doing with this software. That’s really, really difficult!’ From another angle, there can be pressure around having to learn something new, and a sense of threat associated with potential consequences for not learning. Disabled participants worried about instances in which they might want to resist new technology and its learning/performance demands in favour of older and more familiar methods. They feared being identified as a problem, slotted into undesirable or dead-end forms of work – even terminated. Case in point: an employee’s vision can be enhanced by the program called ZoomText, but what if he/she finds that using the program is physically nauseating and prefers to use a magnifying glass? ‘Get with the program!’ other participants responded. ‘If you don’t do something about this, your manager will be doing something about you!’ With the advent and intensification of computer use generally and its intersection with disability in particular, there has been a change in the types and level of skills that disabled workers are bringing to the workplace. Our focus groups were inhabited in part by members of a younger ‘hip’ generation of disabled employees who are taking over from their pioneering elders. These younger workers arrive with better technical skills as well as higher expectations for technical assistance from their employers. Many corporations have embraced technological solutions to the puzzle of disability in the workplace. They view computer adaptations and enhancements as a concrete response to demands for accommodation (Neufeldt et al. 2007). We view it as a partial solution. Our question is whether the proliferation of computer technology makes organizations ‘information rich’ – or whether, on some topics at least, the effect might be quite the opposite.

Four recommendations for practice Reflections on our data lead us to make four practical suggestions for practices that would enhance workplace learning/teaching in relation to disabled employees. While we draw these from a corporate study, they have obvious applications for any large organization. While we target managers, similar comments apply with respect to co-worker relations in general.

Mentors Managers need to ensure that disabled employees are engaged in appropriate mentoring and collegial relationships. They need to proactively enhance interactional inclusion such that disabled employees gain access to the places/spaces of informal knowledge exchanges and networks that are crucial to job success.

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Flexible work arrangements Organizations need a range of policies and practices that encourage managers to make flexible work arrangements available to disabled employees. These would include flex-time arrangements (i.e. employees picking their best core hours and days for being on-site) as well as flexible site arrangements (employees being able to work from home for some portion of the week, or during times of bodily crisis). Practices such as these shift attention away from a definition of diversity restricted to characteristics of ‘vulnerable’ populations and focus instead on diversity as a rich and varied array of environments and potential experiences available within the workplace.

Manager evaluations Manager–employee interactions are the vital juncture for day-to-day problem solving, for building a sense of acceptance and company loyalty, and for creating a climate conducive to long-term retention. Recognizing this, some performance measures could target how managers handle the tension between the ‘business’ agenda and the social agenda around disability in any given organization. In other words, managers would be evaluated not just on final outcomes or end goals, but also on their skill in processing the complexities introduced by disability in the workplace. They would be evaluated not just on immediate delivery but on their skills in career planning for their most diverse employees.

‘Counting’ innovative practices Performance evaluations could also become a way for organizations to gather useful information on workplace accommodations that managers have already put to use. Managers could be asked to identify the number of times and the inventive ways that they have shifted, adjusted and changed workplace relations and/or environments to facilitate the full participation of employees with disabilities. In other words, in addition to counting disabled employees, organizations could count the accommodations generated through skilled and creative management. This data could be used to create ‘best practice’ profiles that would enhance organizational learning and public communication.

Disrupting theoretical categories Before concluding, we want to reflect upon the theoretical framing of this book (see Table 7.1 below) whereby forms of learning are positioned in relation to forms of activity. ‘Virtually all forms of human activity and learning are relational processes rather than categorical ones,’ Livingstone argues. ‘Valuable flows of knowledge may occur among these four basic forms of learning and the other forms of our activities.’

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Table 7.1 Forms of activity and learning Basic forms of activity

Forms of learning

• • • •

• • • •

Paid employment Unpaid household work Community volunteer work Leisure (sleep, self-care, hobbies)

J I

Formal schooling Further education Informal education Self-directed learning

Source: Chapter 1 of this book.

Our case study reinforces but also challenges this configuration. Time and again, the actual relations of learning in a corporation bumped against entrenched categories in every direction. Each story we heard demonstrated how real-life dilemmas blur and break down our theoretical models of working and learning. To the extent that a diagram can convey our findings, it needs to indicate interrelations among all forms of activity. The following diagram (Figure 7.1) allows us to view and to tease apart the relations between paid employment and ‘other activities’. We can see that paid employment does not merely co-exist with housework, volunteer work and leisure in the same category. Rather, each form of activity is predicated upon the others in

Leisure work

Community work

Paid work

Home work

Figure 7.1 Interrelations of human activity

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relations that are particular to each instance and different from each other. Learning is implicated in all combinations; it is the general context in which these transactions take place. From here we perceive how disability also stretches each category. For instance, for disabled employees, holding down a job involves what we typically consider ‘housework’ (house cleaning, for example) but it involves other kinds of tasks in this domain as well – many of which have never been formally described. Imagine for a moment the various activities and the range of actors – at home, in transit, at work and in repair – that go into the essential task of keeping a wheelchair in working order. To the extent that categories are helpful, we would argue for ‘extended’ and/or ‘expanded’ housework as well as a fuller understanding of the labour that is involved in doing it. Some tasks are carried out by the disabled person themselves. Others are completed by family members (spouse/partner, parent, son or daughter), or by paid support workers, some of whom work for community agencies. For disabled employees, it is interesting to query, first, whether ‘home’ is ever separate from ‘job’ and, further, where ‘home’ ends and ‘community’ begins. In any event, there are layers and layers of disability-related tasks in the mix of work/home/community that are absolutely essential to job performance but that are not about the job at all. The highly organized ‘business’ of having a job necessitates the same kind of attention to a parallel organization of ‘home’, consuming the hours that one is supposedly not ‘at work’. Leisure time is heavily impinged upon by the ‘expanded housework’ of disability such that sleep, too, is called into question. The reference to ‘self-care’ opens up a highly complex discussion related to care work. In the disability world, there is a direct relation between successful employment and successful arrangements for personal assistance with essential tasks of daily life. In many instances, support workers assist people with getting up and dressed in the morning, having breakfast and getting out the door into whatever form of transportation is possible, accessible and available. Support work may continue throughout the day for activities such as eating meals, using the washroom, and travelling from place to place as the job may demand. Increasingly, personal assistance is about facilitating the movement of disabled people away from the domestic and towards, within, around a variety of workplaces. Regardless of location, disabled employees – the disabled body at work – is often not just a single entity but multiple: two people or multiples of two people involved in sustaining the disabled worker’s labour. In this situation, one person’s job (and their knowledge) is simultaneously present within another person’s. The arrangement constitutes a significant challenge to the prevalent organization of employment around individuals, suggesting the need for a paradigm shift in conventional workplace relations. For many disabled people, mastering the logistics and politics of securing good personal assistance, at home and at work, is an integral and continuous part of

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holding down a job. Increasingly, disabled people are hiring and managing their own care workers; they become employers in order to be successfully employed. That process entails a sophisticated use of service systems, and staying current with available resources, public and private. It involves sophisticated management skills as people with disabilities and their support workers alike confront the complex issues that arise when one person’s home is (for some days, for some portions of the day) someone else’s workplace. For these reasons, getting, affording and managing the kind of personal care you want and need may be the most complex and highly charged issue among members of the disability community today. It is also one of the reasons that disabled people create and engage with community organizations. In their ‘leisure time’, some disabled employees ‘volunteer’ with community organizations, including ones that they have had a hand in creating to address specific needs. Here, they fight for better-quality and more readily available services and support as well as the resources to make them possible. In this instance, volunteering certainly means ‘giving back’ to your community but in ways that are targeted to observations and critiques arising from experience. ‘Volunteering’ can mean doing the activist work of confronting an inaccessible world and trying to change it. Activities of this nature are directed specifically towards those barriers in the social and economic and policy environments that prevent successful jobs and careers. In other words, ‘paid work’ and ‘community volunteer work’ are (also) articulated to each other. Trying to imagine a diagram that might convey what is going on here is an exercise in frustration: the limitations of straight lines for what are essentially circular interrelations. At the centre of it all are the people who make everything happen. They are the mobile ongoing intersection of ‘carework’ and ‘paid work’ – both of which include but cannot be limited to ‘jobs’. Many of these same people are engaged in attempting to change the very relations in that they are already participating, recognizing their discursive and material limitations in the very act of doing. To name these ‘community volunteer’ activities makes them sound less instrumental than they are to the politics of disability. They are pivotal not only to how things get done but also to how things change. Instead of a flat table, we need a configuration that looks more like a sandwich or a layer cake – or something even more imaginative (see Figure 7.2).

Conclusion Beginning from disability, our case study has surfaced some useful insights into learning and work in the computer era. We know that a corporate organization of learning hinges on the difficult decision that employees must make about whether to officially disclose a disability in the workplace. We know that, in the absence of more organized conversation, disabled employees take on the pedagogical task of instructing co-workers and managers in what to do and how to interact. We know that the ‘problem’ of disability is mediated by the use and spread of information

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People Paid and unpaid hoursework to maintain the domestic scene • ‘Extended housework’ related to equipment and support • Personal support work and learning; paid and unpaid, at home and work •

Volunteer and/or paid advocacy Activism and politics • Building disability-specific community organizations • Campaigns to create better services, progressive policies and more resources •

Self, as worker and manager • Allies, friends, family • Informal networks of care and support • Attendants, interpreters, personal support workers (selfand/or agency employed) •

•

Care sphere

Community sphere

Figure 7.2 The dynamic context for relations of work and learning

technologies to enhance job performance. Disabled employees are enthusiastic IT users but also somewhat worried as technology does not resolve persistent problems of social interaction. To conclude, we echo the findings of Baron, Wilson and Riddell when they argue that ‘becoming a competent member of the workplace depends less on formally defined skills and their acquisition through training than on scarcely noticed processes of acculturation into social networks and their whole ways of life’ (2000: 50). We believe that change will happen through concerted attention to the sociocultural lives that employees create at work: through face-to-face contact, explicit communication and reciprocal learning/teaching in the workplace.

Notes 1 This chapter was written by Kathryn Church in consultation with Catherine Frazee and Melanie Panitch. We constitute the core research team for the project. Teresa (Tracy) Luciani was our research assistant; Victoria Bowman compiled our annotated bibliography. 2 The Public Report of this study is organized around ‘Ten Things We Learned’. We picked three that were particularly relevant as the focus for this chapter. 3 There are ongoing and unresolved debates about proper language when it comes to disability. It is common practice to use what is called ‘people first’ language. This practice is the result of arguments made by some disability scholars/activists that ‘we are people first, and disabled only incidentally’. The strategy here is to use language to dislodge bodily difference, ‘impairment’ and/or limitation as a ‘master status’ in defining how people are perceived and treated. We are comfortable with this terminology but we are also aware of arguments made recently by other scholars/activists that ‘disability’ is not only such a primary but such a valued aspect of identity (and also of social perception) that it is not possible or even advantageous to push it to the periphery. From this perspective ‘disabled’ does not signify ‘damaged’ identity. Instead, it is a differently legitimate form of personhood that can be fully incorporated into a valued self. Thus, in this chapter I write comfortably about ‘disabled employees’.

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4 There are two excellent disability-related bibliographies on the WALL website (www.wall.ca). One is a section of the Work and Lifelong Learning Resource base. The other was done by one of my research assistants, Victoria Bowman, to support our case study. Project resources gave us the opportunity to search for relevant studies across a range of fields including organizational learning, ethnography, geography, adult education, law, management and human resources. The original pattern in which disability, work and learning are conceptually split from each other still holds. 5 The Canadian Council on Social Development reports that, ‘[i]n 1991, there were 2.3 million persons of working age with disabilities in Canada. Just under half of these people were in the labour force in 1986 – a proportion that rose to 56 per cent over the next five years’ (Fawcett 1998). Citing Government of Canada statistics, the Canadian Association for Independent Living Centers reported that, ‘among persons with disabilities, the employment rate is 41 per cent for men, and 32 per cent for women’ (CAILC 2004). Government of Canada reports an employment rate for people with disabilities as 50.5 per cent compared to 75.5 per cent for people without disabilities (Statistics Canada 2006). 6 Take the debtor’s prisons in Little Dorritt and David Copperfield, as examples, and the orphanage in Oliver Twist. 7 These case studies were supported by the research Network for New Approaches to Lifelong Learning funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Available at www.nall.ca. 8 In my own teaching of research methods, I have shifted out of the quantitative/qualitative split to create a framework with three ‘legs’: words that count; images/objects that count; and numbers that count. 9 Dorothy Smith follows the tradition of Karl Marx in positioning study participants as the subjects rather than the objects of research. I have grasped this practice primarily in conversation with Timothy Diamond (1993), whose exemplary work on the ruling relations of nursing homes always puts residents ‘in the front half of the sentence’.

References Abbas, J. (2003) ‘Disability and the Dimensions of Work’, unpublished thesis, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Albrecht, G., Seelman, K. and Bury, M. (2001) Handbook of Disability Studies, London, UK: Sage. Balser, D B. (2000) ‘Perceptions of On-the-Job Discrimination and Employees with Disabilities’, Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, 12(4): 179–197. Barnes, C., Mercer, G. and Shakespeare, T. (1999) Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction, Malden, MA: Polity Press. Baron, S., Wilson, A. and Riddell, S. (2000) ‘Implicit Knowledge, Phenomenology and Learning Difficulties’, in F. Coffield (ed.) The Necessity of Informal Learning, Bristol: Policy Press. Berthoud, R., Lakey, J. and McKay S. (1993) The Economic Problems of Disabled People, London: Policy Studies Institute. Blanck, P.D., Sandler, L.A., Schmeling, J.L. and Schartz, H.A. (2000) ‘The Emerging Workforce of Entrepreneurs with Disabilities: Preliminary Study of Entrepreneurship in Iowa’, Iowa Law Review, 85(5): 1583–1655. Block, L. (1992) ‘The Employment Connection: The Application of an Individual Supported Employment Program for Persons with Chronic Mental Health Problems’, Canadian Journal of Community Mental Health, 11(2): 79–89.

152 Kathryn Church, Catherine Frazee and Melanie Panitch Bricout, J. and Bentley, K. (2000) ‘Disability Status and Perceptions of Employability by Employers’, Social Work Research, 24(2): 12–23. Bunch, J. and Crawford, C. (1998) Persons with Disabilities: Literature Review of the Factors Affecting Employment and Labour Force Transitions, Applied Research Branch Strategic Policy, Human Resources Development Canada. Canadian Association of Independent Living Centers (2004) Did You Know? Employment Issues, Fact Sheet #3, Ottawa, ON: Canadian Association for Independent Living Centres. Capelia, M.E. (2003) ‘Comparing Employment Outcomes of Vocational Rehabilitation with Consumers with Hearing Loss to Other Consumers and the General Labor Force’, Rehabilitation Counselling Bulletin, 27(1): 24–33. Church, K. (1997) ‘Business (Not Quite) as Usual: Psychiatric Survivors and Community Economic Development in Ontario’, in E. Shragge (ed.) Community Economic Development: In Search of Empowerment (2nd edn), Montreal: Black Rose. Church, K. (2000) ‘Strange Bedfellows: Seduction of a Social Movement’, in E. Shragge and J.M. Fontan (eds) Social Economy: International Debates and Perspectives, Montreal: Black Rose. Church, K. (2001) ‘Learning to Walk Between Worlds: Informal Learning in Psychiatric Survivor-Run Businesses: A Retrospective Re-Reading of Research Processes and Results from 1993–1999’, NALL Working Paper #20. Online: available at http://www.nall.ca/ res/index.htm (accessed 29 September 2009). Church, K., Shragge, E., Fontan, J.M. and Ng, R. (2008) ‘While No One is Watching: Learning in Social Action Among People Who are Excluded from the Labor Market’, in K. Church, N. Bascia and E. Shragge (eds) Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices, Dordrecht, Holland: Springer. Conti, J. and O’Neil, M. (2007) ‘Studying Power: Qualitative Methods and the Global Elite’, Qualitative Research, 7(1): 63–82. Couser, G.T. (2005) ‘Disability and (Auto) Ethnography: Riding (and Writing) the Bus with My Sister’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 34(2): 121–142. Diamond, T. (1992) Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care, Chicago: University of Chicago. Diamond, T. (2006) ‘“Where did you get the fur coat, Fern?” Participant Observation in Institutional Ethnography’, in D. Smith (ed.) Institutional Ethnography as Practice, Lanham, MD: Alta Mira. Drake, R.F. (1994) ‘The Exclusion of Disabled People from Positions of Power in British Voluntary Organizations’, Disability & Society, 9(4): 461–480. Drury, D. (1991) ‘Disability Management in Small Firms’, Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 34(3): 243–256. England, K. (2003) ‘Disabilities, Gender and Employment: Social Exclusion, Employment Equity and Canadian Banking’, Canadian Geographer, 47(4): 429–450. Enns, H. and Neufeldt, A.H. (2003) In Pursuit of Equal Participation: Canada and Disability at Home and Abroad, Toronto: Captus. Fawcett, G. (1998) ‘Canada’s Untapped Workplace Resource – People with Disabilities’, Perception, 21(4). Online: available at http://www.ccsd.ca/perception/214/per_214a. htm (accessed 29 September 2009). Fichten, C.S., Asuncion, J.W. and Baron, L. (2000) ‘Computer Technologies and PostSecondary Students with Disabilities: Implications of Recent Research for Rehabilitation Psychologists’, Rehabilitation Psychology, 48(3): 207–214.

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Fisher, M. and Downey, G. (2006) Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy, Durham and London: Duke University. Foley, G. (1999) Learning in Social Action: A Contribution to Understanding Informal Education, London: Zed. Gates, L.B., Akabas, S.H. and Kantrowitz, W. (1996) ‘Supervisor’s Role in Successful Job Maintenance: A Target for Rehabilitation Counselor Efforts’, Journal of Applied Rehabilitation Counseling, 27(3): 60–66. Gosling, V. and Cotterill, L. (2000) ‘An Employment Project as a Route to Social Inclusion for People With Learning Difficulties?’ Disability & Society, 15(7): 1001–1018. Hagner, D., Butterworth, J. and Keither, G. (1995) ‘Strategies and Barriers in Facilitating Natural Supports for Employment of Adults with Severe Disabilities’, Journal of the Association for Persons with Severe Handicaps, 20(2): 110–120. Hall, E. (1999) ‘Workspaces: Refiguring the Disability–Employment Debate’, in R. Butler and H. Parr (eds) Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability, New York: Routledge. Jackson, N. (2004) ‘Notes on Ethnography as Research Method’, in M.E. Belfiore, T.A. Defoe, S. Folinsbee, J. Hunter and N.S. Jackson (eds) Reading Work: Literacies in the New Workplace, Mahwah, New Jersey, and London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jackson, N. (2005) ‘What Counts as Learning? A Case Study Perspective’, discussion paper for WALL Network Annual Meeting, June, Toronto, ON: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Kitchin, R., Shirlow, P. and Shuttleworth, I. (1998) ‘On the Margins: Disabled People’s Experience of Employment in Donegal, West Ireland’, Disability & Society, 113(5): 785–806. Klein, D., Schmeling, J. and Blanck, P. (2005) ‘Emerging Technologies and Corporate Culture at Microsoft: A Methodological Note’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 23: 65–96. Krause, N., Dasinger, L.K. and Neuhauser, F. (1998) ‘Modified Work and Return to Work: A Review of the Literature’, Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 8(2): 113–139. MacEachen, E. (2000) ‘The Mundane Administration of Worker Bodies: From Welfarism to Neoliberalism’, Health, Risk & Society, 2(3): 316–327. McAlpine, D.D. and Warner, P. (2000) ‘Barriers to Employment among Persons with Mental Illness: A Review of the Literature’, Minneapolis: Rutgers State University. Mykhalovskiy, E. and McCoy, L. (2002) ‘Troubling Ruling Discourses of Health: Using Institutional Ethnography in Community-Based Research’, Critical Public Health, 12(1): 17–37. Neufeldt, A. and Albright, A. (eds) (1998) Disability and Self-Directed Employment: Business Development Models, North York, ON: Captus. Neufeldt, A., Ackerman, M., Buchner, D. and Crawford, C. (2007) The Place of Technology in Employment of People with Disabilities, Summary Report of the Workplace Theme, Disability and Information Technology Research Alliance, Calgary, AB: Community Rehabilitation & Disability Studies Program, University of Calgary. Oliver, M. (1990) The Politics of Disablement, London: Macmillan Education Ltd. Oliver, M. (1996) Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice, Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Education Ltd. Olson, D., Cioffi, A., Yovanoff, P. and Mank, D. (2000) ‘Gender Differences in Supported Employment’, Mental Retardation, 38(2): 89–96. Parr, H. and Butler, R. (1999) ‘New Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability’, in

154 Kathryn Church, Catherine Frazee and Melanie Panitch H. Parr and R. Butler (eds) Mind & Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability, London, UK & New York, NY: Routledge. Payne, G. (2000) Social Divisions, New York: St Martin’s Press. Pinder, R. (1995) ‘Bringing Back the Body Without the Blame? The Experience of Ill and Disabled People at Work’, Sociology of Health & Illness, 17(5): 605–631. Rose, N. (1996) Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power & Personhood, New York, NY: Cambridge University. Sandler, L.A. and Blanck, P. (2005) ‘The Quest to Make Accessibility a Corporate Article of Faith at Microsoft: Case Study of Corporate Culture and Human Resource Dimensions’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 23: 39–64. Sartawi, A.A.M., Abu-Hilal, M.M. and Qaryouti, I. (1999) ‘The Causal Relationship Between the Efficacy of Training Programs and the Work Environment for Workers with Disabilities’, International Journal of Disability, Development & Education, 46(1): 109–115. Schur, L.A. (2002) ‘Dead End Jobs or Path to Economic Well Being? The Consequences of Non-Standard Work Among People with Disabilities’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 20: 601–620. Schur, L.A. (2003) ‘Barriers or Opportunities? The Causes of Contingent and Part-Time Work Among People with Disabilities’, Industrial Relations, 42(2): 589–622. Schur, L.A., Kruse, D. and Blanck, P. (2005) ‘Corporate Culture and the Employment of Persons with Disabilities’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 23: 3–20. Smith, D. (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology, Toronto: University of Toronto. Smith, D. (1999) Writing the Social: Critique, Theory, and Investigations, Toronto: University of Toronto. Smith, D. (2002) ‘Institutional Ethnography’, in T. May (ed.) Qualitative Methods in Action, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Smith, D. (2005) Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People, Lanham, MD: Alta Mira. Stapleton, D.C. and Burkhauser, R.V. (2003) The Decline in Employment of People with Disabilities: A Policy Puzzle, Kalamazoo, Michigan: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. Statistics Canada, Participation and Activity Limitation Survey 2006: Tables (Part III), catalogue no. 89–628 – X – No. 008, Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada. Vallas, S.P. (2003) ‘Rediscovering the Color Line within Work Organizations: The “Knitting of Racial Groups” Revisited’, Work and Occupations, 30(4): 379–400. Wendell, S. (1996) The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, London: Routledge. Westmorland, M. and Pennock, M. (1995) ‘What Prevents People with Disabilities from Obtaining Employment? An Examination of Canadian Data from a National and Regional Perspective’, Work, 5: 255–263.

Chapter 8

Teachers’ learning and work relations (Shifting) engagements and challenges Paul Tarc and Fabrizio Antonelli

Introduction Relative to other workers, teachers show high levels of engagement in both formal and informal modes of learning. Because teachers’ area of professional expertise is supporting (student) learning, they represent a particularly interesting group for analysis. While teachers generally perceive considerable relative autonomy in structuring the learning environments of their students at the micro-level of the classroom, they have had much less control over the institutional contexts shaping their own professional development or learning needs. Traditionally, much professional development for teachers has been formal and developed ‘from above’ without including the voices and perspectives of teachers. Our decade-long case study on Canadian teachers’ learning was designed to illuminate how teachers themselves perceive their learning engagements and challenges. This chapter will summarize our key findings. One primary finding is that teachers especially understand the necessity and value of work-related informal learning, particularly through collaboration with colleagues. Complex institutional dynamics, from policy directives to management trends, both enable and constrain teachers’ engagement with, and prospects for, informal learning. While the pressures for lifelong learning under the guise of the knowledge-based economy have penetrated into the domain of school teaching, our study suggests that the institutional dynamics have not generally been (re)aligned to better support teachers’ informal learning needs and desires. Moreover, in contexts of work intensification the opportunities for more proactive modes of informal learning have generally remained limited. The prevalence of reactive modes of informal learning again is suggestive of the lack of control teachers have at the organizational level. As some other researchers examining teachers’ working conditions and workload (Easthope and Easthope 2000; Smyth et al. 2000; Reid 2003), we draw upon labour process theory to give insight into the domain of workplace control and autonomy. As with these studies, our research finds that the organizational mechanisms of centralized curricular and testing reform do shape and limit teachers’ possibilities for agency. Nevertheless, dimensions of teachers’ (licensed or unlicensed) agency remain opaque within a labour process approach and thus we also consider a ‘governmentality’ analytic becoming

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prominent in analyses of the uses of lifelong learning (Tuschling and Engemann 2006; Tarc 2007). Here, governmentality refers to a technique of governing whereby the subject appears to freely take up the desired subjectivities appropriate to the institutional context. So in our case, we also consider the more capillary processes by which the teacher ‘voluntarily’ takes up the subject positions and dispositions aligned with the larger goals of school reform, particularly as constructed by the discourses of professional development and professionalism. This chapter describes the methods and aims of the research study, summarizes teachers’ self-reported engagements in work-related learning and the challenges they perceive in their engagements. Specific attention is given to how the shifting conditions of teachers’ work impact upon how they engage in their learning. Additional analysis illuminates opportunities and complications for supporting teachers’ informal modes of learning. Based on the research presented, the chapter then offers a few recommendations for policy and future research.

Background of NALL/WALL teacher study The NALL/WALL Teacher Study has included many participants over the past ten years representing various community partners from university faculties, teachers’ unions, graduate students and school boards. Because one purpose of this project was to examine issues of workplace control and autonomy, an effort was made from the beginning to include the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF), the umbrella organization for the provincial teacher unions and federations. The CTF provided invaluable input in the survey design and gave legitimacy to the project among participants.

Conceptual overview of research A number of conceptual themes frame this study. First, the concept of ‘professionalism’ should be viewed in terms of workplace control and autonomy. Situating teachers with respect to classical professions like physicians and lawyers, we can begin to define professionalism in terms of degree, rather than as an absolute category. In the case of teachers, interview schedules and survey designs addressed issues of self-perceived autonomy and control within their practice. Specifically, terms like autonomy and control were expressions of the ability of teachers to design their work within classrooms, as well as the control teachers have over the general direction of the profession, vis-à-vis professional colleges and educational policy initiatives. The contradictory nature of professionalism for teachers has come to the fore in light of the recent neoliberal schooling reforms being promoted and undertaken in Canada, as elsewhere. Teachers as professionals can be understood as existing within a contradictory occupational position. On the one hand, teachers as professionals are given privileged occupational status in society and experience relatively high levels of autonomy in their daily work practices (primarily within the

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classroom). However, teachers as professionals are also open to continual public scrutiny, resulting in a constant ‘need’ for ‘upgrading’ and ‘retraining’. A recent Ontario survey found that a significant majority of parents (75 per cent) favours the practice of teachers submitting accounts of their learning activities to their principals (rather than trusting teachers to use their own judgement); an even higher percentage (83 per cent) favours standardized provincial guidelines over teacher-centred evaluations (Livingstone, Hart and Davie 2001: 32). Teachers’ concern here is not with the upgrading of skills and ongoing learning; we will see that teachers are more than willing to participate in these practices. Rather, it is the loss of direction and control over their learning, allowing those outside of the classroom to unilaterally decide the content, form and timing of professional learning. It is important to register that teachers participate in formal further education courses at very high levels compared with most other occupations, while also engaging in informal learning very extensively. Related to informal and formal learning is the concept of teacher knowledge. There are many research studies that explore teacher knowledge, describing what it is, what it should be, how it is acquired, and how it relates to school and student success (e.g. Donmoyer 1995; Klein 1996; Briscoe 1997; Gibson and Olberg 1998; Ontario College of Teachers 1999). There has been much less attention paid to how teachers view knowledge and learning, and what they think is important to learn, how they would prefer to engage in the learning process, what their current learning practices consist of, what they view as ‘successful’ and pertinent learning, and what they view as obstacles to learning. The research agenda of the NALL and WALL research teams was heavily influenced by the concepts and themes outlined in the previous paragraphs. A national study on teachers’ learning was developed with the intent of allowing teachers to express what they thought about current contexts of formal professional development, preferred methods for engaging in work-related learning, as well as what they desired for future supports around work and learning issues.

Research methodology The Teacher Study of the NALL/WALL project employed a number of empirical research methods. Two national teacher surveys (conducted in 1998 and 2004) were developed and delivered in tandem with the general national public surveys. The surveys asked respondents to report on their formal schooling and continuing education courses, their informal learning in the workplace, home and community, as well as their preferred methods for learning. Also, respondents were asked a series of questions relating to workplace practices and issues, along with standard demographic data. The survey was delivered in two stages. The first stage involved 1945 questionnaires being mailed out at the end of October 1998. For the second stage, 2040 questionnaires were mailed out in November 2003. The 1998 return rate by province ranged from 31 per cent to 46 per cent, with higher response rates

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coming from western Canada. The overall response rate for the second stage of the survey increased to almost 50 per cent. In addition to the surveys, 19 Ontario secondary school teachers were asked to record all of their activities for seven consecutive days. Thirteen diaries were completed and returned to the research team. Three months later, the 13 teachers who completed their diaries were once again asked to maintain a time diary for another seven-day period. Ten diaries were completed and returned in the second round for a total of 23 diaries. The diaries provided a detailed insight into the work weeks of teachers and also helped corroborate quantitative data gathered from the surveys. Further discussions with teachers were conducted in the WALL study. During 2005–2006, ten focus groups were conducted in London, North Bay, Halifax, Sydney, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and three in Toronto. In addition, occasional teachers and permanent teachers new to the profession were later interviewed in small groups or individually; occasional teachers were contacted through local unions and beginning teachers were randomly selected at schoolboard-initiated professional development days.

General findings The following sections summarize and analyse the general findings of the 2004 survey and the subsequent focus group interviews.

Teacher demographics of 2004 survey The demographic profile of Canadian teachers, based on the WALL 2004 national survey (N = 1024) is as follows: • • • • • • • • •

•

the median age was 48 years the median teaching experience was 19 years 74 per cent were female 78 per cent were married/partnered 61 per cent had children living at home 88 per cent were Canadian-born 95 per cent self-identified as ‘white’ 98 per cent expressed themselves ‘most easily’ in English 86 per cent identified themselves as full-time educators (this included classroom teachers, librarians, guidance counsellors, department heads or assistant heads, and school administrators) of those who identified themselves as full-time, 83 per cent were either classroom teachers, or department heads or assistant heads.

Job status One issue that surfaced was the diverse ways in which teachers were employed. In some ways, teaching was similar to the rest of the labour force in that a

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considerable number of respondents reported being employed on a part-time basis. Overall, approximately 14 per cent of teachers who responded to our surveys in 1998 and 2004 indicated they worked part-time. ‘Part-time’ status for teachers was defined as teachers on permanent but part-time contracts, teaching each week for less than a full teaching load, or covering leaves for the semester or full year. In addition, a number of respondents indicated that their main duties within the school were outside of the classroom. These positions included school librarians, consultants, coordinators, guidance teachers, itinerant teachers, school administrators, etc. Other respondents identified as being heads of school departments. In some cases these positions included other duties that reduced their teaching load. In order to consistently report teacher workloads and their relationship with learning, a decision was made to include only full-time permanent classroom teachers for the analyses involving workloads and learning. This is not to diminish the work done by teachers in non-permanent positions or those who work outside of the classroom, but because a clearer and more consistent picture of teacher workloads could be constructed using full-time permanent teachers. Approximately 68 per cent (N = 692) of all respondents fit the category of ‘full-time classroom teacher’.

Teacher workload Determining the ‘hours on the job’ for respondents was a difficult task. Because of ambiguities surrounding what constitutes teachers’ work, the general labour force national survey that asked respondents to simply report the number of hours worked in a typical week showed an under-reporting of hours by teacher respondents compared with the national teacher survey in which respondents were given prompts to record the number of hours spent on work outside of the classroom. The national teacher survey asked respondents to report their hours in the classroom, performing assigned duties (e.g. lunch room supervision), preparing for classes and evaluating assignments, as well as any work that they may do at home, in their lunch hour, or in other venues like libraries or their school board.1 Without prompts to consider such work, teachers tend to ignore the work they do beyond the classroom in reporting their weekly hours. When respondents included classroom duties, supervision and other school duties, and work done at home, the average weekly hours of work for full-time teachers was reported in the WALL 2004 survey to be about 50 hours. This represents an increase of three hours over the 47 hours reported in our 1997 survey. The findings for teacher work week hours are consistent with other findings (Canadian Teachers’ Federation 2005; Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey 1998; Alberta Teachers Association’s Teacher Workload Study 1999) and corroborated by work hours entered in the time diaries. The data from the 2004 survey indicate that teachers on average spend more time performing their job than those in most other occupations. Almost 80 per cent of respondents to the 2004 survey felt that their workload had increased in the previous five years. This perceived increase in workloads was

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felt just as much by experienced teachers (with 16 or more years of teaching experience) with 85 per cent of respondents in this category reporting workload increases in the previous five years. This finding is probably a product of the significant changes that took place within public education during the latter part of the 1990s and early 2000s. Experienced teachers, because of the time spent on the job and in the profession, are likely to have learned how to do the job more efficiently than less experienced teachers. Upheavals to educational practices that in some provinces included taking on extra classes at the secondary level, new reporting practices, and increased administrative duties, left many experienced teachers having to relearn once familiar teaching tasks. Added tasks included learning new computer programs, with teachers already being among the most computerliterate occupations. From the survey questionnaires, the two highest increases reported were: ‘Dealing with administrative requests for information, forms, data, student attendance, etc.’ (81 per cent) and ‘Time/effort required for assessing and reporting on student progress’ (80 per cent). These perceived increases dealt mainly with increased bureaucratic requirements. The information gathered from the teacher interviews and focus groups supports these concerns. When respondents were asked to describe how teaching had changed over the previous five years, a majority of respondents spoke about increased course loads, increased class sizes, increased administrative duties, etc. ‘Accountability’ was often mentioned by focus group participants in relation to new or increased bureaucratic requirements having little to do with an evaluation of their work as teachers. In addition, teachers raised concerns over curricular and student assessment changes that were unilaterally imposed with little support for implementation. The experiences of increased workloads, mostly due to an increase in administrative duties, left many teachers struggling to find time for necessary learning to deal with changing educational policies. The passages here and elsewhere in this chapter are from interviews with teachers in our study. The paperwork. It impacts on the time that you might do some of that informal learning after school or at lunch because you are busy filling out forms in triplicate or putting together yet another referral package for an assessment. I think one other thing I would like to add to my list is energy. I think sometimes I run out of energy to do the next thing. And it is real hard to learn how to have enough energy before school because I do a lot of things before I even walk into the classroom. I have two children to get ready to go to school, and my own things that have to be done and then you make it through the whole day. I do not think in a year I have three lunch hours to myself, and we have no recess in our school. And then I go right home to being a mom, and getting dinner ready and finding out who has homework . . .

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Probably related to perceptions of an increased workload, over 80 per cent of all respondents on the 2004 national survey reported that the ‘overall level of stress’ in their work had ‘increased’ or ‘significantly increased’ over the past five years. It should be noted that more experienced teachers were even more likely than less experienced ones to perceive that their overall level of stress had increased over the past five years. Positive stress can be a feature of work, bringing out the best in people. However, the evidence from the interviews and focus groups emphasizes a negative type of stress that diminishes capacity to perform and can lead to ‘burnout’: I used to direct plays, the good creative stuff we used to do. Our kids are more challenging, our classes are bigger. I teach English. I have more marking than ever before. I went to bed at 2 o’clock last night. We have more mechanical tasks. I have three e-email addresses so I must now check three e-mails. I have now three phone message machines I have to now check. Parents can access anyone of those and thus more communication that’s happening, that’s the problem. And that takes more time and that creates more stress . . . We’ve had all kinds of things and this was the first time in my 25-year career that I applied for stress leave, twice. Twice that I felt heart palpitations, shortness of breath, constant crying and feeling like I was never good enough [voice starts breaking as she tears up]. And I left the school . . .

Formal learning Teachers, like other knowledge workers, are constantly upgrading their knowledge and skills base (Daley 2002; Hodkinson and Hodkinson 2005). As professionals, teachers are placed in a position of public scrutiny where knowledge improvement is viewed as synonymous with credential upgrading. Teachers now enter into the profession usually with an undergraduate university degree and a one-year bachelor of education degree. Despite the high levels of formal accreditation, teachers are expected to keep ‘current’ by participating in formal credit courses or workshops as part of their professional development. From the 2004 WALL teacher survey, 90 per cent of all teachers reported participating in formal courses and workshops in the past year, with a median of four courses/workshops. On average, full-time teachers reported an average of about seven and a half hours of formal learning per week. What prompted teachers to undertake ongoing further education? For the most part, respondents indicated that it was their initiative to take further education courses as part of a certification programme, whether for general knowledge or for career advancement. However, just over a third of respondents indicated that they participated in further education courses because it was required by an authority. Employers, likely school boards, were the most cited level of authority requiring that courses be taken; about 60 per cent of Canadian teachers who stated that they were required to take courses identified their employer as the reason. Professional

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bodies were the next most common authority cited (at about 20 per cent). It is worth noting that about twice as many teachers (proportionately speaking) in Ontario have reported taking one or more courses required by a professional body. This finding is likely a product of the mandatory ‘Professional Learning Program’ (PLP) introduced in Ontario in 2001. The PLP, now defunct, required teachers to complete 14 compulsory courses within a five-year span to keep their certification. A prescriptive learning programme, PLP was resisted by teachers and unions eventually leading to its repeal. In the focus groups, teachers did speak positively of some of the self-initiated formal courses they were involved with. Many indicated a preference for courses that provided relevant material that would directly apply to their classroom teaching. As well, teachers welcomed courses that assisted with implementing ministry initiatives, like programmes on teaching literacy. However, what upset teachers about some of their professional development programmes was the lack of control they experienced in their learning. Often a ‘one size fits all’ approach was used to ‘educate’ teachers on educational initiatives that originated with very little teacher input. The practice of inflexibly imposing the same professional development activities on every teacher was particularly viewed by teachers as representing a lack of autonomy in their practices as teachers: . . . and the major obstacle I see to this kind of PD [professional development] is that they tell you what you have to do and they do not rely on you to trust your own instincts and know what you have to do yourself. It is being challenged by the [teachers’ union] for that very reason: that it is rigid, it is topdown and it is unprofessional because it does not allow the teacher to choose the direction that Professional Development needs to go. Well, every year is different . . . and then to make things more accountable we had PD based on those results which again is more guided reading, running records and . . . which I had the last couple of years and that has been mentioned the same thing over and over again. They say ‘well that is the way it has to be done because it is cost effective, and there are new teachers’ . . . which sounds great, except you have teachers who have had the PD already.

Informal learning In both the survey and interview data, the ubiquity and value of informal learning was a dominant finding. Almost all teachers reported on the survey that informal learning was ‘very’ (53 per cent) or ‘somewhat helpful’ (45 per cent). Interviewees consistently spoke positively of their collaborations with colleagues. The following snippets are representative: Okay, well I was in great need of professional development this year. And actually my greatest source was another teacher who became a partner to me . . .

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I think the best professional development I have ever had that I had gotten the most from is talking to people in my own school, and having the time to do that . . . When respondents were asked about the way they participated in their informal learning, most teachers (70 per cent) learned collaboratively with colleagues. Almost half of respondents (48 per cent) also indicated that they engaged in informal workplace learning on their own. The focus group interviews corroborated findings from the survey, as many teachers discussed their learning in courses and workshops as a great way to collaborate and learn informally with colleagues. Even where involved in formal learning courses, teachers would often discuss the learning beyond the formal curriculum/class. For example, coffee breaks during PD courses were not viewed as simply a respite from the class; rather they were an opportunity to discuss with other teachers ideas related to what they were ‘formally’ learning. Use of terms like ‘relevance’, ‘usefulness’, ‘hands-on’, ‘things to take in the class tomorrow’, signified the importance of sharing ideas around one’s immediate context of learning under the demands of teaching. When pressed to speak about the most relevant aspects of learning from collaboration, teachers from the focus groups spoke about opportunities for observing colleagues in the classroom. These teachers valued the opportunity to experience other ways of teaching, fully understanding that effective pedagogy involves the ability to deliver curriculum content in a wide array of methods: And I’ve seen this happen, that sometimes principals will free up teachers to go visit another teacher and see what they are doing. Just to sit in their classrooms for the day, not to read with kids, not to do anything else, just to sit and see what they have done on their walls, to see how they interact with kids, and to get a totally different perspective because at the five or four year point, I think that is really good learning. I am still okay but sometimes when I see other people doing things I think that is brilliant. I did not know about that. And even to just have a day once a year to say I am going over to K’s class for the day. Another common suggestion for informal learning supports, especially for beginning teachers, was ‘mentoring’. Many teachers described mentoring as an effective strategy for introducing teachers to the profession and/or the school. Some of the less experienced teachers spoke of a mentor-colleague as the single most valuable support for their informal learning. In addition, some of the experienced teachers acting as mentors spoke of the benefits of the mentor/protégée relationship as a way to make more explicit and extend their own approaches to teaching. One final note on the general findings of teachers’ informal learning resonates with a major theme of this edited collection. Teachers’ workplace learning is not only lifelong, but life-wide. There were a number of accounts by teachers that

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illustrated how their out-of-school contexts often provided opportunities for informal learning useful in their work as teachers. In fact on the quantitative survey, a significant percentage of teachers indicated that the informal learning they categorized as ‘community-related’ (80 per cent) or ‘domestic’ (56 per cent) was also useful to their teaching practice. In the interviews, one teacher suggested that the only thing that was an obstacle to his ‘informal learning’ was sleeping, implying that at all times he was in some way conscious of how out-of-school activities or understandings might be useful in the school context. Other teachers reported constantly being on the lookout for current news, pop culture or potential fieldtrips as a way of making classroom pedagogy more engaging and relevant for students. On less positive terms there were also reports of the difficulty of leaving work behind and having a life outside of work. A few teachers made the point that being able to leave their work at work was important for their mental health.

Obstacles to learning Complementing the quantitative findings, workload intensification was also a dominant theme surfacing in the focus group interviews. The 2004 survey results show a small but significant increase of three hours per week of work-related activities; however, the significant numbers of respondents indicating workload increase on an independent question may also be suggestive of a compression of activities, or more diversions from what they conceive as their central tasks (i.e. curricular objectives). Again as evidenced by previous citations, the focus group interviews provided some illustrative examples of ‘compression’ and increased tasks, accompanying stress levels and their negative impacts upon teachers’ health or wellness.2 As previously stated, most of the interviewees emphasized the importance of informal learning as an indispensable and ongoing part of the work of teaching. While the level of participation in formal learning seemed to be contingent on a greater number of factors, such as costs of courses, career stage, course availability and relevance, informal learning, by comparison, was presented by many teachers as more constant and continuous, albeit somewhat contingent upon structures and processes shaping teacher-to-teacher contact and collegiality. Lack of time was reported in teacher interviews consistently as the primary obstacle to informal learning (and one of the most emphasized constraints for participating in formal learning as well). This finding is consistent with Lohman’s (2000) research on inhibitors to teachers’ informal learning where lack of time was found to be the predominant inhibitor.3 As in the Lohman study, the problem of insufficient time was typically explained in the context of work intensification as related above.4 For example, the time pressure created by the increase in workload, for some, seemed to directly impact upon the quantity and quality of collaboration with colleagues. In addition, some teachers spoke about other impediments such as work schedules that did not include common planning times, or the lack of a

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common meeting area. An anecdote often repeated was of the teacher working alone while eating his/her lunch rather than going to the staff room. Increased supervision of students was also described by a few teachers as an impediment to their engaging in informal learning, as the following snippet highlights: I am in a small school so there is a large amount of supervision time which perhaps high school teachers do not have to deal with but my planning time now is less than my supervision time. So I do 160 minutes of supervision and I only have 120 minutes of preparation time [per week]. So that is where it cuts down on my informal learning, and it cuts down on that informal collegiality thing because you are always on duty. So you do not have a chance. In the context of workload intensification, teachers also sometimes spoke of informal learning almost as a survival mechanism – learning how to manage amid all the challenges – rather than as a more autonomous activity directed proactively by the teacher in an area of pedagogical interest. For example, the following teacher quotes illustrate the ‘survival’ side of informal learning: And I think because the working conditions have changed so much, the formal learning has decreased and the informal learning has skyrocketed because you are constantly learning. You have to learn that new curriculum, you are just moving along, moving along, so it’s never ending. I think we learn to do whatever we can to be successful at whatever our success is: whether it is success for our students or success in your personal life or success in getting through the day. Expedience is the word. This ‘on the go’ and ‘getting by’ informal learning, if considered within the definitional bounds of informal learning, also leans towards ‘reactive’ rather than ‘deliberative’ learning, categories in Eraut et al.’s (2000) typology of ‘non-formal’ learning. Some teachers clearly recognized the existence and pervasiveness of this ‘survival’ mode of learning in response to intensified workload with insufficient supports, citing lack of timely training, learning new software in the process of doing report cards electronically, teaching new courses before textbooks have arrived, and repairing photocopiers. Many teachers, however, attempted to focus on the more proactive meanings and uses of informal learning in their work. In a sense, then, there were two conceptions of learning emerging from teacher discussions in the focus group interviews. Where responding most directly to the interviewers’ set questions, teachers explained their learning practices and preferences in relation to improving their teaching practice in the classroom. However, in more spontaneous and engaged conversation about the day-to-day challenges of teaching, teachers’ more reactive modes of learning became more prevalent as the interviewer drew attention to these modes of learning. This prevalence resonates with the findings of Hoekstra and colleagues (2007) that a significant proportion of teachers’ learning occurs in reactive or tacit modes.

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Teachers’ learning and ‘autonomy’ We can quantitatively compare teachers’ senses of organizational control and sense of autonomy at the classroom level to other professions (Livingstone and Antonelli 2007). In addition, we can track explicit demands placed on teachers’ professional learning – ranging from compulsory PD regimes to forms of ‘steering from a distance’ through the centralized control of curricula (Smaller and Livingstone forthcoming). Further, as also emphasized above, we can illustrate how learning becomes reactive in a context of work intensification. Much more challenging is to illuminate the actual limits and possibilities of teacher agency given the structural dimensions of their work. On the one hand, teachers recognize that they have little control of the organization as professional employees, largely responding to the demands placed upon them legally and contractually. On the other hand, teachers generally understand themselves as having considerable autonomy at the level of classroom pedagogy. A top-down control vs bottom-up autonomy dichotomy might seem like a way of articulating a theory of teacher agency, but this dichotomy would miss the inter-penetrations between the structural and organization levels and the level of classroom pedagogy; social ideologies (from above), for example, are embedded in discourses of professional development and teacher professionalism that teachers internalize and make their own. Thus one’s interpretation or measure of self-directedness is always, already influenced by wider contexts. Given the ubiquity and growing recognition of the value of informal modes of workplace or professional learning (Tuschling and Engemann 2006), informal modes present new possibilities and challenges to teacher autonomy. In discourses of professional development there is growing interest in supporting informal modes of teachers’ growth and learning, as with the following approaches: ‘building learning communities’, teacher leadership, action research, reflective practice, and teacher mentoring (Fullan 1995; Katzenmeyer and Moller 1996; Darling-Hammond and Sykes 1999; Williams 2004; Hoekstra et al. 2007). Most of these recommended practices rest on the assumption that greater teacher autonomy leads to improved working conditions and improved student learning. Autonomy, however, can be envisioned more as means than as ends. For example, under (neo) human capital paradigms, worker autonomy or ‘empowerment’ can be a tool for shaping workers’ subjectivities to correspond with organizational goals (Garrick and Usher 2000). Accordingly, a number of theorists warn that these approaches can effectively work more as subtle forms of control, rather than liberating or democratizing initiatives (Smyth 1992; Garrick and Usher 2000; Tuschling and Engemann 2006). The recent calls to accentuate self-directed, professional learning for teachers (Hargreaves 2000) against the prior dominance of compulsory, top-down professional development regimes are promising, but these new discourses of teacher reflection and empowerment also bring with them new regimes of self-regulation. Thus, (teacher) autonomy is a very elusive and complex concept to theorize. Not only is there no ‘outside of ’ control in the context of work, it remains unlikely that

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‘autonomy’ (as with ‘freedom’) can ever be defined in wholly positive terms.5 Rather, it is only possible to consider shifts in relative autonomy given changing conditions of work. Clearly there are very real constraints such as time and material supports that can limit how creatively, reflectively and deliberatively teachers can practise. Nevertheless, changing contexts present both new possibilities for agency and new dynamics of control. Even where these new initiatives have the best of intentions, they face the challenge of altering long-standing structures, beliefs and practices. For example, our research has shown that there are definite institutional impediments to optimizing teachers’ collaboration to build and sustain ‘learning communities’. In spite of the interest in promoting and supporting teaching as the ‘learning profession’ (Darling-Hammond and Sykes 1999), the limited material and sometimes limited social or administrative support for teachers’ informal learning suggests that schools do not necessarily represent a ‘knowledge intensive work context’ for teachers. In such contexts, as described by Belanger and Larivière (2005: 20): ‘[t]here is a direct relationship between knowledge intensive work context and organizational support of informal learning activities’ (2005: 20). For example, while many teachers spoke of the value of mentoring and of observing colleagues teaching, these valued learning activities came with structural and organizational obstacles that mitigated their take-up. Teachers cited the difficulty of leaving one’s ‘own’ classroom or students. A few teachers explained that one of their colleagues could ‘lose’ their planning period if they took the initiative to observe a colleague teach. Other teachers explained the difficulties of finding common planning times in complex and full schedules, and of extensive supervision time that interfered with the possibilities for collaboration. Some teachers noted that in more recent years department heads and administrators had diminishing time to support or engage in peer observation. Teachers’ anecdotal reporting suggests that while collaborative modes of learning are possible, and even sometimes promoted by administration, the rigidity of the timetable, the teacher’s traditional role (that one teacher needs to be sovereign over his or her class(es) for the duration of the year or semester), and curricular and testing regimes, among other factors, limit teachers’ participation. The interviews revealed the contradictory space of teacher initiative in professional development – for example, jumping on board as team players in accord with the latest professional development trend, albeit with little material, and sometimes administrative, support. Teachers have to negotiate the devolving of accountability in the contradictory spaces of educational reform (Dehli and Fumia 2002). They are invited to initiate learning activities such as peer coaching but understand that any time away from teaching ought not to affect the day-to-day routines and supervision, nor how ‘their’ students perform. More insidiously (perhaps) teachers have needed to wait to exert autonomy over their professional learning until these teacher-led practices have become a trend promoted from above. Based on our focus group interviews with full-time teachers,6 they generally are not the optimally flexible (Tuschling and Engemann 2006) knowledge workers

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envisaged for the postmodern learning organization (Garrick and Usher 2000). The more experienced teachers, while ‘stressed out’ with work intensification and obviously adapting to change, generally resisted envisioning themselves as ‘adaptable’ or ‘flexible’, but instead articulated more established notions of themselves as professionals and learners. Nevertheless, more nuanced analysis of the survey data does align with premises emerging from a ‘governmentality’ analytic (Tarc, Smaller and Antonelli 2006: 12); some teachers seem to be taking on, ‘for themselves’, forms of ‘lifelong’ and ‘life-wide’ learning conducive to the larger goals of the governing bodies of schooling. A few teachers interviewed also seem to be taking on some of the characteristics of the flexible, enterprising self, especially teachers with little seniority or teachers who are un(der)employed. One full-time teacher, who reported constantly engaging in informal learning, exemplified the subject-position of the flexible, lifelong learner; he was highly engaged in both formal and informal learning and able to respond to his frequently changing assignments. This teacher described himself as ‘very flexible’, explaining how he constantly has been shifted (‘pinkslipped’) from one school to the next and from one teaching assignment to the next. Had we interviewed more teachers with little seniority, we might have heard similar narratives about the need to stay current and be permanently updating.7 We also heard these narratives in the focus group interview with the younger, occasional teachers. Where informal learning becomes an explicit tool of workplace rationalization (read: constructing the adaptable worker), it operates as a mode of control rather than supporting self-directed professional learning. At the extreme, informal learning becomes a form of ongoing, unpaid overtime, exerting pressure on contract teachers who try to maintain reasonable work/home boundaries and on teachers who are trying to secure full-time contracts. Even for teachers with job security, the following comments are illuminating in terms of the blurring of boundaries between work and home in an age of interconnectivity and competitiveness: So we are constantly on call in terms of . . . last night I got an e-mail telling me that I better review something that I had taught yesterday because this woman felt that her child didn’t learn it properly and she and her husband struggled to teach him, and the e-mail was sent at 9:30 last night. I had a phone call from a parent this year; she left the message at 3:40 a.m. And now that’s just so commonplace. I mean now with the e-mail we have teachers that are going berserk because there are parents e-mailing and saying we want a report every week on how their kid is doing in high school – every week. And they feel entitlement to that . . . where [are] our boundaries? These examples illustrate the pressures for continuous communication and responsiveness to the stakeholders in schooling. These changing conditions, in turn, shape what and how teachers are learning and can further diffuse the focus of

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teachers’ learning from the domain of classroom pedagogy. More experienced teachers are critical of attempts to intensify their work and of mandates to be more flexible and accountable although they understand that their learning practices are impacted by these neoliberal reform policies. Teachers who are new to the profession and without job security may be more aligned with the worker-subjectivities of the postmodern learning organization, but time and future research will be necessary to know with greater certainty.

Conclusion First and foremost, it should be noted that teachers participate in high levels of informal and formal learning relative to most other occupations. In addition, teachers express a high degree of control at the micro level, often citing the ability to decide upon the specific content and pedagogy associated with curricular demands within the classroom. However, the NALL/WALL study over that past ten years uncovered an intensification of teachers’ work that has had a direct impact upon their workplace control and learning. The intensification of their work coupled with an increased demand to remain ‘current’ with Ministry and board initiatives has in many instances placed teachers in a contradictory position regarding their control in the classroom context. With bureaucratic controls like standardized testing, curriculum reforms and increased involvement in administrative duties, teachers are finding themselves increasingly engaging in ‘reactive’ learning and ‘coping’ with change in the classroom, rather than being given the opportunity to generate, guide or ‘speak back to’ educational reforms. The interviews for the NALL/WALL study also illuminated preferred content and learning strategies for professional development. For the most part, teachers expressed concern over the one-size-fits-all approach to learning, citing the lack of relevance and ‘flexibility’ of the pedagogy and content. Instead, teachers favoured modes of learning that allowed for more collegial, hands-on, practical and relevant learning. Much of this learning was taken up informally; indeed, the more formal episodes of learning did not typically address the elements of teaching that are context dependent, and too often under-acknowledged by the more centralized and removed educational partners at the school board and government levels. It is therefore the recommendation of this study that policy in teachers’ work and learning be much more informed by the experiences and views of practising teachers themselves. More recent developments that accentuate self-directed modes of learning and professional development in educational reform seem promising. Given the intensification of teachers’ work, however, new initiatives or supports claiming to support teachers’ professional learning face difficult obstacles – ‘lack of time’ being a dominant one. We recommend also that more, and more nuanced, research – perhaps embedded in the site of the school and classroom – be carried out to illuminate (with teachers) how teachers’ informal modes of learning can be supported in ways that do not simply demand more of teachers or act as new modalities of control

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compelling teachers to adapt more efficiently to changes from above. Under tightening budgets, the pressing challenge will be to harness and magnify the knowledge and informal learning networks that already exist or are organically forming. The most difficult first step might be actually convincing teachers that the power holders in policy and curriculum reform want to hear, and act upon, what classroom teachers know and have to say.

Notes 1 Floors and ceilings were used to bring ‘suspicious’ responses closer to ‘realistic’ values. For responses deemed to be ‘unrealistic’ by the research team a decision was made to remove the case and treat the response as a ‘missing’ value. 2 In spite of these pressures, among full-time respondents 29 per cent reported that they were ‘very satisfied’ with their jobs, while a further 56 per cent were at least ‘somewhat satisfied’. By comparison, only 9 per cent were ‘dissatisfied’ and 2 per cent ‘very dissatisfied’ with their job. 3 This finding also aligns with research in adult education on workplace learning more generally (Livingstone, Stowe and Raykov 2003). 4 As found in the Lohman study, increased administrative tasks and the perception of having to support students with greater needs were two of the most significant changes reported by teachers on their working conditions in recent years. 5 Further, it may be unfair to cast (teacher) autonomy vs (state) control exclusively in a good–bad dichotomy. While we might not agree on what the limits to teacher autonomy should be, most of us probably still believe that there ought to be limits. 6 Most of the teachers we interviewed were teachers with ten or (many) more years of experience; a number of the beginning teachers we contacted indicated that they were too busy to volunteer to participate in the focus group interviews. 7 It is worth noting also that Storey (2007) finds that new ‘mid-career’ entrants to teaching seem more aligned with ‘new professionalism’ with its ‘target setting’ and performance management techniques. Her study in the UK finds that these teachers may find ways to be creative (rather than ‘deskilled’ as the traditional critique goes) within the new demands of professionalism.

References Alberta Teachers Association (1999) Teacher Workload Study, Edmonton: ATA. Belanger, P. and Larivière, M. (2005) The Dynamics of Workplace Learning in Knowledge Economy: Organizational Change, Knowledge Transfer and Learning in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry, WALL working paper, OISE, University of Toronto. Online: available at wallnetwork.ca/resources/Belanger-Lariviere_Workplace_ Learning_Jun2005mtg.pdf (accessed 4 October 2007). Briscoe, C. (1997) ‘Cognitive Frameworks and Teacher Practices: A Case Study of Teacher Learning and Change’, Journal of Educational Thought, 28(3): 286–299. Canadian Teachers’ Federation (2005) Teacher Workplace Study, Ottawa: CTF. Daley, B. (2002) ‘Context: Implications for Learning in Professional Practice’, in M. Alfred (ed.), Learning in Sociocultural Contexts: Implications for Adult, Community and Workplace Education, 96: 79–88. Darling-Hammond, L. and Sykes, G. (eds) (1999) Teaching as the Learning Profession: Handbook of Policy and Practice, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

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Dehli, K. and Fumia, D. (2002) Teachers’ Informal Learning, Identity and Contemporary Education ‘Reform’, NALL Working Paper, OISE, University of Toronto. Online: available at oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/56KariDehi.pdf (accessed 25 September 2007). Donmoyer, R. (1995) The Very Idea of a Knowledge Base, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of AERA, San Francisco, April. Easthope, C. and Easthope, G. (2000) ‘Intensification, Extension and Complexity of Teachers’ Workload’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21(1): 43–58. Eraut, M., Alderton, J., Cole, G. and Senker, P. (2000) ‘Development of Knowledge and Skills at Work’, in F. Coffield (ed.) Differing Visions of a Learning Society, Bristol: Polity Press. Fullan, M. (1995) ‘The School as a Learning Organization: Distant Dreams’, Theory into Practice, 34(4): 230–235. Garrick, J. and Usher, R. (2000) ‘Flexible Learning, Contemporary Work and Enterprising Selves’, Electronic Journal of Sociology. Online: available at http://www.sociology.org/ content/vol005.001/garrick-usher.html (accessed 8 July 2007). Gibson, S. and Olberg, D. (1998) ‘Learning to Use the Internet: A Study of Teacher Learning through Collaborative Research Partnerships’, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 44(2): 239–242. Hargreaves, A. (2000) ‘Four Ages of Professionalism and Professional Learning’, Teachers and Teaching: History and Practice, 6(2): 151–182. Hodkinson, H. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) ‘Improving Schoolteachers’ Workplace Learning’, Research Papers in Education, 20(2): 109–131. Hoekstra, A., Beijaard, D., Brekelmans, M. and Korthagen, F. (2007) ‘Experienced Teachers’ Informal Learning from Classroom Teaching’, Teachers and Teaching, 13(2): 191–208. Katzenmeyer, M. and Moller, G. (1996) Awakening the Sleeping Giant: Leadership Development for Teachers, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Klein, P. (1996) ‘Preservice Teachers’ Beliefs about Learning and Knowledge’, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 42(4): 361–377. Livingstone, D.W. and Antonelli, F. (2007) How Do Teachers Compare to other Workers? Professionally Speaking. Online: available at oct.ca/publications/ professionally_speaking/march_2007/how_do_teachers_compare.asp (accessed 1 October 2007). Livingstone, D.W., Hart, D. and Davie, L.E. (2001) Public Attitudes Towards Education in Ontario 2000, Toronto: OISE. Livingstone, D.W., Raykov, M., Pollock, K., Antonelli, F., Scholtz, A. and Bird, A. (2008) Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base (WALLRB): Materials for Teaching, Research and Policymaking (2nd edn), Toronto, ON: Centre for the Study of Education and Work, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Online: available at http://oise.utoronto.ca/research/wall/resources/WALLRB.htm (accessed 14 April 2009). Lohman, M. (2000) ‘Informal Learning in the Workplace: A Case Study of Public School Teachers’, Adult Education Quarterly, 50(2): 83–101. Ontario College of Teachers (1999) Standards of Practice for the Teaching Profession, Toronto: OCT. Reid, A. (2003) ‘Understanding Teachers’ Work: Is There Still a Place for Labour Process Theory?’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(5): 559–573.

172 Paul Tarc and Fabrizio Antonelli Smaller, H. and Livingstone, D.W. (forthcoming) Understanding Teachers’ Work and Learning: Challenges for Professional Control, London, ON: Althouse Press. Smyth, J. (1992) ‘Teachers’ Work and the Politics of Reflection’, American Educational Research Journal, 29(2): 267–300. Smyth, J., Dow, A., Hattam, R., Reid, A. and Shacklock, G. (eds) (2000) Teachers’ Work in a Globalizing Economy, London: Falmer Press. Statistics Canada (1998) Labour Force Survey, Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Storey, A. (2007) ‘Cultural Shifts in Teaching: New Workforce, New Professionalism?’, Curriculum Journal, 18(3): 253–270. Tarc, P. (2007) ‘Informal Learning in “Performative” Times: Insights from Empirical Research on Canadian Teachers’ Work and Learning’, Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 20(2): 71–86. Tarc, P., Smaller, H. and Antonelli, F. (2006) Illuminating Teachers’ Informal Learning: Shaping Professional Development and Schooling Reform. Online: available at wallnetwork.ca/resources/Tarc_Teachers_Inf_Learning_AERA06.pdf (accessed 6 June 2007). Tuschling, A. and Engemann, C. (2006) ‘From Education to Lifelong Learning: The Emerging Regime of Learning in the European Union’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 38(4): 451–469. Williams, A. (2004) ‘Informal Learning in the Workplace: A Case Study of New Teachers’, Educational Studies, 29(2): 207.

Part IV

Case studies of transitions between education and work

Chapter 9

Challenging transitions from school to work Alison Taylor

Introduction In Canada, as in other industrialized countries, educational policy makers are interested in facilitating high school students’ transitions to work. The finding that the duration of youth transitions from high school to work increased between 1990 and 1996 across 15 OECD countries has raised concern (OECD 2000). Traditional pathways into adulthood have become more complicated as changes in the global economy affect national and regional labour markets (Krahn and Hudson 2006). More youth spend more time in formal education and delay their entry into the adult labour market as demand for post-secondary education (PSE) credentials increases. Further, a lack of transparency of career pathways is seen as contributing to more extended youth transitions. A common response from ministries of education across Canada has been the introduction of school–work transition (SWT) policies that aim to develop young people’s ‘employability skills’ and clarify their career pathways (Taylor and Lehmann 2003; Lackey 2004). Trends in Canada as well as in other industrialized countries include providing more opportunities during high school for students to participate in work experience, cooperative education and apprenticeship programmes (OECD 2000; Bell and O’Reilly 2008). A federal task force also recommended that the government encourage a more integrated approach to youth employment through partnerships between the key players (Government of Canada 1996). Canadian governments have encouraged vocational education and training (VET) partnerships in the absence of more structured partnerships of countries like Germany (Krahn 1996; Schuetze 2003). This chapter draws on findings from a case study of youth SWT that was part of the research network on ‘The Changing Nature of Work and Lifelong Learning’ (WALL) to reflect on some of the assumptions that underlie Canadian policies. These include the idea that transitions from school to work are linear; focus on the ‘supply’ side (developing human capital through formal education) to solve economic problems; assumption that schools should develop students’ employability skills; and reliance on market approaches, e.g. voluntary partnerships. The purpose is to provide a policy analysis that considers the main actors of policy formation, key

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features of the system, and the institutional and ideological atmosphere in which decisions are made (cf. Torres 2004).

The school–work youth transition case study The purpose of the youth transition case was to examine different high school initiatives that aim to facilitate youth transitions to further education and work. The first phase of the case study examined the provincial policy context in Ontario and Alberta through interviews with representatives from government, business, unions, education and community. The second phase involved cases studies of three initiatives: a high school apprenticeship programme in carpentry in an urban centre in Ontario, a similar programme in the steamfitter/pipe fitter trade in a city in central Alberta, and a programme that aimed to attract Aboriginal youth living on reserves in southern Alberta into healthcare occupational pathways.

Linear transitions The idea that young adults follow a developmental process that involves a linear and sequential movement towards their goals has been critiqued by a number of writers (Looker and Dwyer 1998; Dwyer and Wyn 2001; Raffe 2003; te Riele 2004). Raffe (2003) offers three main criticisms of the pathways metaphor that has dominated educational policy discourse in several OECD countries in recent years, as follows: the idea of linearity ignores the complexity of transitions – e.g. many students combine work and study, many cycle between living on their own and in their parental home; in privileging the transition to paid work, pathways discourse ignores other important transitions experienced by young people; and the individualism of this discourse ignores social structures and mistakenly assumes that pathways are equally accessible to all young people. A study of over 1000 high school students in their last year of high school in Alberta in 1996, and contacted again in 2003, found that a large minority of study participants had deviated from a traditional high school to college or university pathway (Krahn and Hudson 2006). A quarter of students had returned for a second year of grade 12 to either complete credits needed to graduate or to improve their grades to gain admission to a desired post-secondary education (PSE) programme; 19 per cent of PSE participants had transferred between institutions while completing a programme; 20 per cent had changed a programme of study; and 14 per cent of PSE participants had ‘dropped out’ of a programme. The authors also found that different groups have differential access to PSE opportunities, and that factors such as gender, family socio-economic status and race/ethnicity affect educational and occupational aspirations and attainment. For example, although young women were more likely to have chosen university or community college pathways, they were earning only two-thirds of what their male peers were (Krahn and Hudson 2006: v). More than twice as many respondents from university-educated families compared to non-university-educated

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families had attended university (67 per cent compared to 37 per cent) and had received a degree (51 per cent versus 23 per cent) (2006: 19). After controlling for parents’ education and income, the odds of Aboriginal youth having received a PSE credential were only one-fifth the odds of non-Aboriginal youth (2006: 20). Our study of a programme designed to attract First Nations youth into careers in healthcare sheds further light on some of the barriers to ‘linear pathways’ (Taylor and Steinhauer 2010). Although the participants in this programme aspired to PSE and had either completed or were on track to successfully complete high school, their pathways were not linear. In exploring some of the institutional constraints that shape individual ‘choices’, we found that schools on reserves faced challenges in terms of resources (e.g. less funding for students with special needs compared to the provincial system), a higher than average proportion of students with special needs, and limited curriculum offerings (e.g. fewer advanced level and career-related courses). A high proportion of students attended schools off-reserve because of the perception that the quality of education was higher (despite concerns about racism). Access to PSE was limited by the scarcity of federal funding for First Nations students and the lack of availability of programmes on reserve. For example, a representative from the band-controlled college that administers PSE funding in the community that was the focus of our study said, ‘we have between 700 and 800 applicants and we reject 60 per cent’. Further, the additional financial and emotional costs of moving away from home, and leaving behind peers, family and culture posed challenges for youth, especially since PSE credentials did not guarantee work on reserves. The unemployment rate on the reserve we looked at was estimated by a representative from the Employment and Skills Training department as between 40 and 50 per cent. When asked what might hold her back from achieving her career goals, a 16-yearold participant in the summer health internship programme replied: Um, maybe schooling. If I wanted to go that way [nursing], I think to get a good program, I’d probably, like go to the U of A [University of Alberta, approximately 500 kilometres away]. But I’m the baby of the family, so it’ll be kind of hard for me like to let go of that whole support system of my family. Our data confirmed that youth did not make educational decisions in isolation from other decisions related to work, family and community (cf. Looker and Dwyer 1998). Career transitions were part of broader life transitions and the students interviewed felt the need to balance career goals with other goals related to family, spirituality, culture and community. Given the more collectivist orientation of young people, we suggest that in contrast to a vision of individual linear pathways, a vision of community pathways may be more appropriate (Taylor and Steinhauer 2010). Our examination of students’ experiences in a high school apprenticeship programme in carpentry also supported the idea that transitions were challenging for some youth (Taylor 2007a). For example, the only female student in a cohort of

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70 dropped out of the apprenticeship after less than a year. Female students and other non-traditional entrants to the field were given the message that they were likely to encounter discrimination and would have to be ‘better than’ other apprentices to survive in the field. Students without social, cultural and economic capitals (e.g. contacts in the trade, maths proficiency, access to a car) as well as those who were ‘minorities in the trades’ appeared to experience more difficulty in completing in-class training and/or finding and keeping work. Therefore, even in an industry where there is much talk about labour shortage (e.g. Canadian Federation of Independent Business 2007), there were no guarantees that students would find satisfactory employment and complete their training. Further, despite the construction of high school apprenticeship as a ‘stay-in-school’ programme, entry requirements (e.g. on track to graduate, good attendance, the ‘right’ attitude) meant that students at risk of dropping out were unlikely to be included in such programmes. Similarly, although they agreed that the high school apprenticeship programme made it easier for them to complete high school, none of the Alberta apprentices in Lehmann’s (2007) study had considered dropping out of school. The reality that youth transitions to further education and the labour market are often extended appears to have generated an interest among policy makers in ‘seeking ways to get more young people through the high school and PSE systems more quickly and efficiently’ (Krahn and Hudson 2006: 60). However, recognizing the challenges faced by some youth, I agree with these authors that it is also important to provide opportunities for them to ‘move through the systems more slowly, to move out and then back into the systems, and to reconsider their PSE decisions once they have been made’ (2006: 60).

Developing human capital Policy discourse related to SWT reflects the human capital assumption that more highly skilled workers will be more productive, yielding both individual and collective economic gains. While there is little doubt that it is increasingly difficult to obtain high-quality jobs without PSE credentials and work experience, human capital arguments tend to ignore the underutilization of workers’ skills (Livingstone 2004) as well as other factors that influence economic productivity.1 Instead of assuming that workers’ skills are fully utilized and valued, Livingstone (2004) suggests that workplace outcomes are based on ongoing negotiations and struggles over access to education and training and the conditions of paid work. For example, educational attainment of youth continues to be positively correlated with their parents’ education; occupational classes that have been more able to limit access to their jobs are less likely to experience sustained unemployment and part-time work; and young job entrants and visible minorities are more likely to feel overqualified for their jobs and to feel that their skills are not utilized. Consistent with the idea of a greater ‘performance gap’ experienced by youth, Krahn and Hudson (2006) found that one-third (31 per cent) of all employed respondents felt overqualified in their current job (2006: v), while almost half

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(47 per cent) felt that they were underpaid (2006: 56). Study participants employed in managerial/professional and skilled occupations were much less likely than those in semi- and unskilled occupations to feel overqualified. In addition, less than half of this 2003 sample (46 per cent) agreed that: ‘My career has worked out the way I hoped it would’ (2006: v). Our research into high school apprenticeship programmes suggests that despite talk of labour shortages, young people’s expectations that they will find sustained employment and will have opportunities to develop their skills are often unrealized. Therefore, the link between training (even when it is closely tied to employer needs) and ‘good jobs’ (characterized by high levels of skill and remuneration) is by no means certain. Data from the SWT case support the idea that outcomes are based on ongoing negotiations and struggles. For example, although apprenticeship training is designed to produce a well-rounded trades person, young apprentices may become highly specialized in one part of the trade, which limits their mobility. Finally, although there are promises of high incomes and steady work, the reality was frequently quite different. Apprenticeship outcomes are likely to depend on the trade (the length of training and value of certification vary), whether an apprentice is unionized (most high school apprentices are not), the local economic context and changes in the labour process. Paap (2006) discusses trends in the construction trades in the USA, which are reflected also in Canada. She argues that while union construction workers a few decades ago were seen as having ‘significant freedom, good working conditions, great pay, and a convivial environment where working-class masculinities set the rules’, in more recent years, the rules tend to favour supervisors and owners (2006: 31). Paap observes that there has been increasing specialization in trades work (deskilling) and decreasing economic security. There was a decline in union membership in construction in the USA from 39 per cent to 19 per cent between 1970 and 1999, and during approximately the same period, the purchasing power of union wages ‘declined roughly 25 percent’ (2006: 35–36). Further, although the hourly wages for trades workers sound high, construction work is vulnerable to logistical and weather-related shutdowns and therefore worker earnings are estimated on a 39-week year. The structured insecurity of the industry, combined with a workplace that values strength, speed and toughness, results in increased pressure on workers to get jobs done quickly regardless of the risk to their personal health and safety. Further, the competitive culture of the workplace does little to discourage divisions among workers based on gender and race. Our study of unionized carpentry apprentices confirmed some of Paap’s observations (Taylor and Watt-Malcolm 2006). In the cohort of 30 students that we interviewed throughout the process, there was one woman and five students of colour. Two black students did not pass the basic level and, when we tracked these apprentices for two years, only one of the original six students was continuing his apprenticeship. A closer look at the experiences of a female and black apprentice in this cohort suggests that students’ withdrawal from the apprenticeship occurred over a period of time as they struggled to become ‘right for the

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job’ (Taylor 2008). The work was insecure – for example, it was customary for employers to over-hire, with the intention of keeping only the ‘best’ apprentices. Apprentices were often treated as unskilled labourers, as a carpentry apprentice in our study observed: Some [instructors] say that ‘when you get out there you’re going to need to know this,’ right, but then they turn around and say you’ll be pushing a broom for the next four years doing whatever you’re told. . . . I’m getting mixed–like everyone, I still don’t know what to expect when I get out there. (Taylor and Watt-Malcolm 2008: 226) The most common placement for high school apprentices was in specialized areas like scaffolding or formwork. Since the most stable work (at least in the short term) appeared to be in such areas, there was little incentive or opportunity for apprentices to gain the range of skills expected for certification. For example, a scaffolding employer remarked: What we see happening here is when we get a young apprentice and we start training him [sic] and we keep him, after about two or three years they kind of realize that this sort of a trade inside a trade. They don’t need to have all that apprenticeship training to be a scaffolder because there’s no accreditation for it. So they tend to, yeah, drop out of the big course because they can focus on just scaffolding. And there’s no real need for training. (Taylor and WattMalcolm 2007: 39) Many apprentices therefore had little opportunity to demonstrate or further develop the breadth of skills learned in technical in-class training. Because employers tended to hire workers based on ‘what they can do’ as opposed to certification (particularly in non-compulsory trades),2 there was little pressure or incentive to complete an apprenticeship. As a trainer comments, ‘the apprentices will be told on site by carpenters, “What do you want [the trade certification] for? They’re not going to pay you any more money.”’ Changes in materials and technologies have also changed carpentry work. For example, a representative from an employer association commented: ‘There is a de-skilling in the sense that 60 years ago, if you were a carpenter, you were making windows and doors. And we’ve automated a lot of that.’ He confirmed that trades are also becoming more specialized and, from our observations, there is pressure to narrow apprenticeship training. Our study of non-union steamfitter/pipefitter apprentices suggested further that negotiations between the government, an owner, contractor and college over the responsibility for and costs of training affected high school apprentices (WattMalcolm and Taylor 2007). For example, the owner invested some funds in training high school apprentices at the local college (certification is compulsory) but also paid them about half of the first-year apprentice rate when they started work. Further, this programme was reviewed annually because, as a representative from

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the owner company comments, ‘it is kind of a contentious issue whether we actually see value for that investment’. While students were aware of their potential labour market power, they were required to subsidize their training (unlike unionized carpentry apprentices). Our examination of high school apprenticeship programmes in Alberta and Ontario therefore suggests that producing ‘employable’ youth does not mean that they will be employed, that their working conditions will be satisfactory or that they will have access to appropriate training. Instead, experiences and outcomes for youth are the result of negotiations between players that include unions, employers, apprenticeship boards, colleges and high schools. From this perspective, the assumption that skills are automatically valued and rewarded in the workplace is problematic.

Developing employable students The view that a key role of schools is to produce ‘employable’ students prompts a number of questions. For example: How are employer needs determined, and by whom? What curriculum should high schools be providing to youth (e.g. general/specialized, academic/practical)? Should students be streamed according to their perceived abilities and destinations, and how much mobility is there across streams? Does ‘vocational’ education lead to stable, well-paying jobs? What is the role of schools in encouraging youth to challenge vs conform to exploitative or inequitable workplace practices? This section addresses these questions in light of our case study research. The role of schools in addressing industry needs has been a recurring historical theme. In 1914, John Dewey advocated a progressive approach to vocational education in the USA that would develop in young people an ‘industrial intelligence based on knowledge of social problems and conditions’ as opposed to what he saw as the narrow technicist vocational education proposed by David Snedden (Drost 1977: 38–39). While this discussion continues to have relevance today, Rikowski (2001, 2002) encourages us to step back and ask not only whether schools should be trying to (re)produce labour power, but also whether it is possible to determine industry needs, and whether schools could ever meet such needs. He challenges the assumptions that employers’ needs can be clearly stated, that there are no contradictions within labour power, and that employers’ labour power needs are realizable through education and training. Instead, he argues that employers’ statements regarding their labour needs tend to be either ‘ambiguous, confused, or contradictory’ (Rikowski 2001: 33). This occurs partly because of the contradictions within labour power (e.g. employers want high-quality work at low cost). After considering different categories of labour power, from capital in general (the labour power requirements of all existing capitals over time) to individual capital (what is needed by a particular firm at a particular time), Rikowski concludes that the ‘practical task of educating for industry is too great’ (2001: 45). Developing education and training

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systems based on employers’ labour needs is therefore impossible and not just undesirable (p. 46). Despite this caution, policy makers are developing work experience programmes with particular emphasis on students who are considered to be ‘at risk’ of not completing high school. This raises the question of what education is offered to whom. Historically, high schools have been characterized by a division between academic and vocational programming (Young 1998; Kincheloe 1999). For example, in Ontario, the 1962 Robarts Plan reorganized the programme of studies such that students could enrol in a two-year practical programme, a four-year programme to prepare them for the labour market or entry to college, or a five-year programme to prepare them for university (Taylor 2005). Although students are no longer streamed by programme but instead take courses at different levels, they continue to be prepared for different destinations. The restructured curriculum introduced by the Harris government in the mid-1990s required students in grades 11 and 12 to ‘choose’ between workplace, college, university/college or university ‘destination’ courses. In 2000, just under two-thirds of 15 year olds surveyed in Ontario3 were taking core courses that would keep all PSE options open, including university, and parents’ education was positively related to their course-level selections (Taylor and Krahn 2009). Streaming therefore continues to be a common practice despite talk of the ‘knowledge economy’. Critical writers promote a vision of a curriculum for the future that challenges academic/vocational divisions and the hegemony of the academic curriculum. In the UK, Young (1998) argues that a divided system is dominated by selection, inflexible tracks, and a devaluation of vocational education and training. Instead, he promotes a curriculum vision built on breadth and flexibility, connections between general and applied studies, opportunities for progression and credit transfer, and new ways of linking learning based on the experience of work and conceptual learning. Similarly, Brown and Lauder (1992) argue that Fordist organizations produce low-trust systems of education – by presuming a rigid hierarchical division of labour, they privilege a narrow academic education and waste talent. In contrast, authors propose the development of high-trust systems more consistent with post-Fordist organizations, which aim to provide a broad-based curriculum of academic, technical and practical study, thereby increasing the diverse skills of all students. Kincheloe (1999) and Simon, Dippo and Schenke (1991) argue for a critical pedagogy of work education. As opposed to an instrumental view of vocational education, they aim to provide students with the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to both understand and participate in the political dynamics of the changing workplace. A critical vocational curriculum would focus on labour economics, the political and economic consequences of schools, the dynamics of unemployment and under-employment, discrimination in the workplace, etc. New vocational ideas around flexible career pathways and the integration of academic and vocational learning through a broad-based technology curriculum are evident to some extent in policy discourse related to SWT. Provincial governments

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have tried to update and revitalize the old ‘vocational’ curriculum, and promotional campaigns for high school apprenticeship seek to raise the status of skilled trades work. However, streaming persists and the curriculum is vertically differentiated. Furthermore, increased school choice means that schools compete to attract the most academically capable students, since school performance continues to be judged by student achievement on core academic subjects (Taylor 2006a). Our study of youth apprenticeship programmes in Ontario and Alberta suggests that traditional ideas about vocational education continue to predominate in policy and practice. High school work experience programmes emphasize worker preparation over progressive pedagogy (Lehmann and Taylor 2003). The policy approach to SWT in Alberta tends to privilege employer ‘needs’, as evidenced by the formation of a Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement in Education (FEBI) in 1996 and the development of an industry-driven career foundation funded by private sector and government. Interviews with representatives from government, education and industry involved in the FEBI suggested that the main function of off-campus education was to adapt young people to the values of the workplace (Taylor 2002). For example, a government representative expressed a common view of the goals of work education: When you talk to business people and you ask them, what is the number one reason why new employees, particularly those straight out of high school, lose their first job? And the answer will be, it’s not because they can’t read or write or count . . . it’s that they have no work ethic. . . . They can’t work in teams. They don’t have any pride in workmanship. They don’t care how much materials they waste or tools they break. They don’t care to show up on time. A key goal of work experience programmes is therefore to change youth attitudes and behaviours. Ontario policy (Taylor 2005) also suggests greater interest in providing an education that will produce ‘appropriately trained workers with the required skills, attitudes and behaviour for inefficient production and capital accumulation’ rather than education to enhance ‘opportunity, mobility, equality, democratic participation, and the expansion of rights’ (Carnoy and Levin 1985: 230). Our closer look at a high school apprenticeship programme suggested that staff from high schools and a union training centre aimed to socialize youth to construction work despite recognition that practices were often unsafe, and sometimes exploitative (Taylor and Watt-Malcolm 2007). While it is reasonable that trainers wanted students to learn ‘survival skills’ in the trade, apprentices were understandably confused about issues like when and how to challenge existing safety practices, demand more challenging tasks and question discriminatory practices. For example, they were told that safety was most important but they would run the risk of being fired if they refused to do certain work; they needed to keep learning but their skills were unlikely to be fully utilized during their apprenticeship; they should demand respect but were likely to be treated poorly, especially if they were

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female or belonged to other ‘non-traditional’ groups within the trade. And although students earning school credits were supposed to reflect on the relationship between their classroom and workplace learning during ‘integration days’, this requirement was generally ignored for fear of imposing on employers, as a technology teacher suggests: I don’t like to take time away [when I visit students] because [the employers] might be very polite but I don’t know how much I’m affecting their work at the time, and then therefore later they might say, ‘You know, I don’t want to take on these students because somebody wants to talk to them for half an hour and to me for half an hour.’ Because that’s one of the things we’re supposed to do is also talk to the employees at length and they’re also supposed to fill out all these evaluation forms. (Taylor 2006b: 332) As a result, there was very little evidence of the integration of learning or opportunities to critically reflect on work. Although the programme provided a degree of upward mobility for some students, it also reflected social class reproduction in that participating students tended to have parents with lower than average educational attainment and occupational status (Taylor 2007a). This is consistent with Lehmann’s (2007) findings from his study of students in high school apprenticeship and academic programmes in Canada and Germany. Our study confirmed problems with academic/vocational division within high schools. The public school district in the large urban centre that offered this programme was perceived by students to be divided into ‘technical schools’ and ‘collegiates’, reflecting the legacy of a historically stratified secondary school system. But although one would think that students from ‘tech schools’ would be advantaged in apprenticeship training, instructors observed that they were more likely to have difficulty passing the ‘in-school’ portions because of weak maths skills. On the other hand, students from collegiates were more likely to pass maths, but were less likely to be informed about the programme or to have gained technical skills during high school. Therefore, neither group of students was well served by the existing stratification of secondary school programming. The lack of articulation between apprenticeship and other post-secondary programmes also meant that students who failed technical training had few other options. Rikowski (2002) suggests that education and training institutions are implicated in the process of socially producing labour power, but they also contain possibilities for the questioning and disruption of this production. However, this is more likely to happen when high school knowledge is less stratified, and when the promises of good work and shared decision making in the workplace are realized. As Kincheloe (1999: 179) comments: [Democratic progressives realise] that their effort to produce talented, creative, and thoughtful workers will serve little purpose if industrial leaders do not rearrange their workplaces to accommodate such workers, if labour

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leaders do not build unions that will extend the educational work of a progressive democratic vocational schooling, and if government leaders do not push legislation to reward firms that rearrange their workplaces so as to utilize creative labour and punish firms that perpetuate bad work. Progressive work education therefore appears to require a more regulated VET system.

Market approaches In contrast to the German dual system, which combines firm-based on-the-job training and school-based vocational education delivered through the cooperation of social partners (employers, unions and government) (Heinz 2003), policy makers in Ontario and Canada have emphasized a market approach to SWT, through voluntary school–business partnerships coordinated by brokers (Taylor 2005). For example, school districts in Ontario are expected to develop SWT programmes, and the Ministry of Education provides funding to the Ontario Learning Partnership Group to mobilize employer involvement in work experience, cooperative education and youth apprenticeship programmes through a campaign called ‘Passport to Prosperity’. Although organized labour was nominally involved in partnerships, most business-education councils involve only employers and educators – i.e. a limited partnership model predominates (Taylor 2005). For example, although apprenticeship training is delivered by a number of unions in the building trades, few are involved in high school apprenticeship at provincial or local levels (partly because they are often not invited and partly because they do not participate without the certainty of jobs at the end of the training).4 Unions are also noticeably absent in the Alberta context. The provincial government provides funding for CAREERS the Next Generation (CAREERS) – an industry-driven foundation that brokers partnerships in local communities across the province. CAREERS employs several staff who are seconded from industry, and develops programmes only in areas of industry-defined labour demand (e.g. skilled trades, health services, information communication technology).5 Governments also encourage a decentralized approach to SWT programmes to meet local needs, which means they are shaped by local labour markets and industrial relations. Our examination of high school partnerships in Ontario (Taylor 2006b) and Alberta (Taylor, McGray and Watt-Malcolm 2007) revealed tensions between employers, colleges, unions and government related to who controls the content and delivery of apprenticeship training. In Alberta, some corporations in Fort McMurray wanted greater control over apprenticeship training because of production pressures, while trainers (colleges and unions) were concerned about possible loss of training market share and a decline in standards with the advent of ‘just-in-time’ training. For example, a college representative comments: We are beginning to hear the occasional person saying we should give trades training over to private industry. Now I’m not saying private industry can’t do

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good training. . . . The problem is when you get people who don’t hold that same high standard. (Taylor et al. 2007: 387) There was also concern that industry-led approaches may be too narrow and shortterm focused (cf. Brown and Lauder 2004). Some other aspects of voluntary partnerships for VET are also problematic. For example, partners do not necessarily share the same goals, power relations are usually asymmetrical, there are questions about responsibility and accountability, and a market approach may promote greater fragmentation of service delivery and less transparent pathways for youth. More generally, the costs and risks of training in a market-determined system are more likely to be borne by individuals (Brown and Lauder 2004). Our research in Ontario and Alberta demonstrates some of these problems. Despite discourse of labour shortage, employers tend to be more concerned about defining employability skills than providing training opportunities. Given the resulting shortage of placements, there is pressure on educators to select students who are positive ambassadors for high school apprenticeship programmes. As a partnership broker commented, ‘when we go and see the employers, there’s a reputation factor there. Are you sending us good kids? . . . It’s about value for money’ (Lehmann and Taylor 2003: 61). Further, even when unions are present (e.g. our research examined a programme that was run by a joint management–union training centre), employers held disproportionate influence (Taylor and Watt-Malcolm 2008). As a result, SWT programmes tend towards ‘fitting students’ into the industrial workplace rather than challenging exploitative or inequitable workplace practices. In addition, responsibility for SWT programmes is often unclear in multi-sector partnerships, the challenges of partnership work can be underestimated, and outcomes can be difficult to measure. For example, government departments responsible for high school education, PSE and apprenticeship all work with high school apprenticeship programmes. However, there has been no longitudinal tracking of these apprentices to date in Alberta or Ontario, partly because responsibility for the outcomes of this programme is unclear (Taylor 2007b).6 Since partnership work is relational, tangible outcomes are difficult to measure and take time to realize (Billett and Sedden 2004). In an era of accountability, this is likely to present a problem for government officials, making SWT programmes a ‘tough sell because no one really owns it in the school’ (Taylor 2005: 335). Partnership work also spawns entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour among service providers (e.g. colleges, high schools, training boards, partnership brokers and other community agencies) that can be counterproductive. Our research confirms that VET policies should not be left to market forces alone. As Brown and Lauder (2004: 65) write: Without an adequate foundation for material and social security the emphasis on enhanced employability within a culture of competitive individualism

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becomes translated into the Hobbesian condition of ‘all against all.’ . . . [H]ow the state intervenes to regulate this competition in a way which reduces the inequalities of those trapped in lower socio-economic groups must be addressed, not only as a matter of economic efficiency but also for reasons of social justice in a post-Fordist economy. The Canadian state therefore has a role to play, which it has arguably not played very effectively in the past (cf. Schuetze 2003).

A summary of key findings Policies must ensure that the greatest demands to ‘take control of their lives’ do not fall on those who are the least powerfully placed in the ‘landscape’. (Evans 2002: 265) The preceding discussion suggests that some of the assumptions related to SWT policy are problematic. Policies that seek to move young people through high school to work more quickly and efficiently ignore inequities. While it is a laudable goal to try to make pathways more transparent, not all youth have the same ability to access and to take advantage of education and training opportunities. For example, First Nations youth face a number of institutional barriers to linear pathways to PSE and work. High school apprenticeship programmes tend to be premised on class-gendered-raced trainee types and related assumptions about their material and cultural resources (Bates and Riseborough 1993). Non-traditional entrants to trades (and other sectors) therefore face challenges that need to be acknowledged by policy makers (Taylor 2008). The implicit assumption that employers will recognize workers’ potential and invest in upgrading the quality of their human resources is clearly naive (Brown and Lauder 2004). Our studies of high school apprenticeship programmes and partnerships suggest that employable students are not guaranteed satisfying, secure or well-paying work. Instead, the outcomes of programmes for youth (as well as their goals and structures) are related to negotiations between the players – schools, colleges, unions, employers, government and partnership brokers. This broader institutional context warrants further attention if policies are to be effective. The socially reproductive potential of SWT programmes also merits attention. The assumption that there should be closer ties between education and industry can lead to more efficient streaming of youth. Questions about when students should be ‘choosing’ pathways and which pathways are deemed to be appropriate for which students are therefore important. Our high school apprenticeship research confirms the assertions of writers like Brown and Lauder (1992) and Young (1998) that the stratification of knowledge in schools does not serve any group of students well. In addition, efforts to make youth more employable ignore the need for change in hierarchical and sometime exploitative workplace practices.

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Finally, the voluntary partnerships approach raises legitimate concerns about whether industry-focused approaches promote training that is too narrow and short-term focused, and who is accountable for outcomes. Current policies appear to result in a limited partnership model (with little involvement of unions), encourage a decentralized approach that relies on local labour markets, and promote entrepreneurial behaviour across service providers. The dangers are that schools fail to provide equal access to training as they try to sell work experience programmes to employers, that training closes rather than opens broad opportunities for youth, and that struggles among groups mean that the costs and benefits of training are unequally distributed across players and sites.

Policy implications The preceding discussion and the case study research on which it is based have implications for different groups involved in SWT policy. First, understanding the players, power relations and struggles within and across fields allows one to predict how policy is likely to be taken up and how it can be made more effective. For example, struggles within and across employers, unions, training delivery agents, educators and partnership brokers influence the forms and structure of apprenticeship training for adults and youth. The struggles include whether training is mandatory or not, who pays for training, who determines what training is needed and for how long, and how it is to be delivered and rewarded. Without an understanding of this broader context, researchers and policy makers are likely to assume that the current system is static, there is a unity of interests across players, youth and adult training systems are unrelated, and high school programmes are easily transferable across sites. For educators, the following topics require further consideration: • • • • •

contradictions between the knowledge economy discourse of increasing skill levels for all and practices of streaming; the valuing of formal and informal learning within schools; differences between a focus on industry needs and education for work and a focus on learner needs and education about work; articulation between secondary and post-secondary levels of education; and the scope and sequencing of the apprenticeship curriculum and articulation across programmes.

Unions also need to consider their role in the education and training of youth. They are encouraged to consider the following questions: What are the implications for youth of the limited partnership model that is evident in high school apprenticeship? What difference does it make if organized labour is involved in SWT programmes? How can a more holistic vision of learning and work be promoted? On the other hand, questions for debate within employer communities include the following:

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What is wrong with employers today? (we have already heard a great deal from employers about what’s wrong with kids today) What commitment should employers make to young workers? What would a more democratic workplace look like? What are some of the contradictions in employer needs, and what does this mean for how students are prepared for their futures in schools?

The purpose of such policy-relevant discussions within and across communities is to look at how the learning potential of youth can be best developed in a collective way. Of course, further research that probes the experiences of youth in their diversity and gives them greater voice is also sorely needed.

Notes 1 For example, Dell Canada recently announced that it will close its Edmonton call centre, laying off 900 people. The company cited increasing wages and the strong Canadian dollar as reasons for the closure, despite the fact that the company reportedly moved to Edmonton only three years ago partly because of its supply of educated young people. Company founder Michael Dell was quoted as saying in November 2006, ‘the reason we are here in Edmonton is because we need skills’ (Finlayson 2008: A1–2). 2 Non-compulsory or voluntary trades do not require workers to have the certification to be employed. Therefore, although students in the carpentry programme were encouraged to complete their Certificate of Qualification, it was not evident that this credential would necessarily pay off in the workplace. 3 In Alberta, 59 per cent of 15 year olds were taking core courses that would keep all PSE options open, including university (Taylor and Krahn 2009). 4 Building trades representatives tend to be concerned about creating an oversupply of apprentices, safety concerns and undercutting existing contracts (since high school apprentices do not have to be paid). 5 Information communication technology (ICT) was identified as an area of labour shortage in the late 1990s. However, CAREERS found it difficult to gain commitment from employers in this sector, and did not continue with its internship programme for students. 6 Statistics Canada has reported on outcomes a decade later for all apprentices who registered as apprentices in 1992 (Prasil 2005). This study found that only 34.5 per cent of carpentry apprentices in Ontario and 50 per cent of steamfitter/pipe fitter apprentices in Alberta completed their apprenticeship within 11 years. The average duration of a carpentry apprenticeship in Ontario and a steamfitter/pipefitter apprenticeship in Alberta was six years and three years respectively.

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190 Alison Taylor Billett, S. and Seddon, T. (2004) ‘Building Community Through Social Partnerships Around Vocational Education and Training’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 56(1): 51–67. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (1992) ‘Education, Economy and Society: An Introduction to a New Agenda’, in P. Brown and H. Lauder (eds) Education for Economic Survival, London: Routledge. Brown, P. and Lauder, H. (2004) ‘Education, Globalization and Economic Development’, in S. Ball (ed.) The Routledge Falmer Reader in Sociology of Education, London: Routledge Falmer. Canadian Federation of Independent Business (2007 February) ‘Apprenticeship Training: Lessons Not Learned: Results of CFIB Ontario Apprenticeship Trades Training Survey’. Online: available at http://cfib.ca/legis/ontario/education-training.asp (accessed February 2008). Carnoy, M. and Levin, H. (1985) Schooling and Work in the Democratic State, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Drost, W. (1977) ‘Social Efficiency Re-Examined: The Dewey–Snedden Controversy’, Curriculum Inquiry, 7(1): 19–32. Dwyer, P. and Wynn, J. (2001) Youth, Education and Risk, London: Routledge/Falmer. Evans, K. (2002) ‘Taking Control of Their Lives?: Agency in Young Adult Transitions in England and the New Germany’, Journal of Youth Studies, 5(3): 245–269. Finlayson, D. (2008) ‘900 Jobs Lost as Dell Bolts: Rising Wages Offset Cheap Lease, Tax Breaks’, Edmonton Journal, 1 February: A1–2. Government of Canada (1996) Take on the Future: Canadian Youth in the World of Work, Ottawa: Report of the Ministerial Task Force on Youth. Heinz, W. (2003) ‘The Restructuring of Work and the Modernization of Vocational Training in Germany’, in H. Schuetze and R. Sweet (eds) Integrating School and Workplace Learning in Canada, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Press. Kincheloe, J. (1999) How Do We Tell the Workers? The Socio-Economic Foundations of Work and Vocational Education, Boulder: Westview. Krahn, H. (1996) School–Work Transitions: Changing Patterns and Research Needs, Edmonton, prepared for Applied Research Branch, Human Resources Development Canada. Krahn, H. and Hudson, J. (2006) Pathways of Alberta Youth Through the Post-Secondary System into the Labour Market, 1996–2003, prepared for Canadian Policy Research Networks, Ottawa: Ontario. Lackey, L. (2004) ‘Policy, Rhetoric, and Educational Outcomes: Interpreting Skills Now!’, in J. Gaskell and K. Rubenson (eds) Educational Outcomes for the Canadian Workplace, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Lehmann, W. (2007) Choosing to Labour? School–Work Transitions and Social Class, Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Lehmann, W. and Taylor, A. (2003) ‘Giving Employers What They Want? New Vocationalism in Alberta’, Journal of Education and Work, 16(1): 45–67. Livingstone, D.W. (2004) The Education–Jobs Gap: Underemployment or Economic Democracy (2nd edn), Toronto: Garamond Press. Looker, E. and Dwyer, P. (1998) ‘Educational and Negotiated Reality: Complexities Facing Rural Youth in the 1990s’, Journal of Youth Studies, 1(1): 5–22. OECD (2000) From Initial Education to Working Life: Making Transitions Work, Paris: OECD.

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Paap, K. (2006) Working Construction, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Prasil, S. (2005) Registered Apprentices: The Class of 1992, a Decade Later, research paper (cat. no. 81–595-MIE, no. 035), prepared for Statistics Canada, Ottawa: Ontario. Raffe, D. (2003) ‘Pathways Linking Education and Work: A Review of Concepts, Research, and Policy Debates’, Journal of Youth Studies, 6(1): 3–19. Rikowski, G. (2001) ‘Education for Industry: A Complex Technicism’, Journal of Education and Work, 14(1): 29–49. Rikowski, G. (2002) ‘Fuel for the Living Fire or: Labour Power!’, in A. Dinerstein and M. Neary (eds) The Labour Debate: An Investigation into the Theory and Reality of Capitalist Work, Aldershot: Ashgate. Schuetze, H. (2003) ‘Alternation Education and Training in Canada’, in H. Schuetze and R. Sweet (eds) Integrating School and Workplace Learning in Canada, Montreal: McGillQueen’s Press. Simon, R., Dippo, D. and Schenke, A. (1991) Learning Work: A Critical Pedagogy of Work Education, Toronto: OISE Press. Taylor, A. (2002) ‘In/forming Education Policy’, Journal of Education Policy, 17(1): 49–70. Taylor, A. (2005) ‘“Re-Culturing” Students and Selling Futures: School-to-Work Policy in Ontario’, Journal of Education and Work, 18(3): 321–340. Taylor, A. (2006a) ‘“Bright Lights and Twinkies”: Career Pathways in an Education Market’, Journal of Education Policy, 21(1): 35–57. Taylor, A. (2006b) ‘The Challenges of Partnership in School–Work Transition’, Journal of Vocational Education and Training, 58(3): 319–336. Taylor, A. (2007a) ‘“You Have to Have That in Your Nature”: Understanding the Trajectories of Youth Apprentices’, presentation at the International Perspectives on Learning and the ‘New Economy’ in a ‘Global World’, Lifelong Learning Institute, School of Education, University of Leeds, June. Taylor, A. (2007b) ‘Pathways for Youth to the Labour Market: An Overview of High School Initiatives’, prepared for Canadian Policy Research Networks, Ottawa: CPRN. Taylor, A. (2008) ‘“You Have to Have That in Your Nature”: Understanding the Trajectories of Youth Apprentices’, Journal of Youth Studies, 11(4): 393–411. Taylor, A. and Krahn, H. (2009) ‘Streaming In/For the New Economy’, in C. Levine-Rasky (ed.), Canadian Perspectives on the Sociology of Education, Toronto: Oxford: 103–123. Taylor, A. and Lehmann, W. (2003) ‘“Reinventing” Vocational Education Policy: Pitfalls and Possibilities’, Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 48(2): 139–161. Taylor, A. and Steinhauer, E. (2010) ‘Evolving Constraints and Personal “Choices”: Understanding the Career Pathways of Students in First Nations Communities’, in P. Sawchuk and A. Taylor (eds) Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work, Rotterdam: Sense: 65–84. Taylor, A. and Watt-Malcolm, B. (2006) ‘Trading Up? Factors Affecting Outcomes for High School Apprentices’, Rethinking Work and Learning: Research Findings and Policy Challenges (Conference Proceedings), Toronto: OISE/University of Toronto. Taylor, A. and Watt-Malcolm, B. (2007) ‘Expansive Learning Through High School Apprenticeship: Opportunities and Limits’, Journal of Education and Work, 20(1): 27–44. Taylor, A. and Watt-Malcolm, B. (2008) ‘Building a Future for High School Students in Trades’, in D. Livingstone, K. Michandani and P. Sawchuk (eds) The Future of Lifelong Leaning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Netherlands: Sense Publishers.

192 Alison Taylor Taylor, A., McGray, R. and Watt-Malcolm, B. (2007) ‘Struggles over Labour Power: The Case of Fort McMurray’, Journal of Education and Work, 20(5): 379–396. te Riele, K. (2004) ‘Youth Transitions in Australia: Challenging Assumptions of Linearity and Choice’, Journal of Youth Studies, 7(3): 243–257. Torres, C. (2004) ‘The Capitalist State and Public Policy Formation: Framework for a Political Sociology of Educational Policy Making’, in S. Ball (ed.) Routledge Falmer Reader in the Sociology of Education, London: Routledge Falmer. Watt-Malcolm, B. and Taylor, A. (2007) ‘ “Get Them Young and Train Them Right”: Negotiations in a VET Partnership’, Canadian Journal of Studies in Adult Education, 20(2): 57–70. Young, M. (1998) The Curriculum of the Future: From the ‘New Sociology of Education to a Critical Theory of Learning, London: Falmer.

Chapter 10

Biographical transitions and adult learning Reproduction and/or mobilization Pierre Doray, Paul Bélanger, Elaine Biron, Simon Cloutier and Oliver Meyer

Introduction Occupational mobility is often preceded, accompanied and eventually followed by an intensive learning phase related to the new job. These occurrences exemplify the relations between life transition and either informal adult learning or formally structured education and training activities. Besides occupational transitions, one can think of other situations like entry in adult life, retirement and geographical mobility or migration. Certain transitions are painful, others enriching. In all cases, they are turning points that can be regarded as changes whose consequences, in the individual life course, remain uncertain. In this chapter, we explore the relations between various types of biographical transition and modes of adult learning participation. Do different types of transition have varied effects on participation in learning activities as a whole and on modes of learning? Do relations between transition and learning vary according to social conditions, composition of cultural capital or institutional factors? How do living conditions impinge on possibly diverse articulations between life transition and learning biography? Our intention is to scrutinize the articulations between transitions and participation in learning with reference to individuals’ various social experiences and the search for coherence in one’s life path, as well as examining the changing image and meaning of learning within and across generations. The research relies on two types of material. While quantitative information, through the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey, makes it possible to seize the importance of transitions in individual biography, and the relation between these life changes and participation in learning activities, qualitative data provide information on social meaning of such associations and of their variation according to social contexts and individual characteristics. Qualitative data are based on interviews administered through two subsets of the WALL survey sample involving individuals who, in Montreal and Toronto, have mentioned important life transitions. Interviews were focused on the meaning people gave to such life changes and on their possibility to pilot or co-pilot these biographical transitions.

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Theoretical framework Modulation of participation in learning activities Participation in adult learning and education (ALE) results from a continuous tension between, on one side, learning demand and aspirations and, on the other side, the organization and availability of learning opportunities. Both aspects are socially constructed. Indeed, factors modulating participation are both individual, like cultural predisposition, socio-economic status and living conditions, and also collective, like public policy, work environment and institutional provision of learning opportunities. Once such factors are identified, the challenge is to capture how they interact, and specify processes and mechanisms of participation in learning activities. Different structural or psychosocial theoretical frameworks have been developed to understand various modulation processes in societies. Structural approaches propose to explain uneven participation patterns and their social reproduction by the social position of individuals in relations of production as well as by evolution of the economy and educational system, itself subjected to social and economic changes. Taking as a starting point the social reproduction perspective (Bourdieu and Passeron 1970), this analysis traces similar processes within the field of participation in adult learning and education (de Montlibert 1973, 1977; Dubar 1980); it takes into account the social determinations of educational biographies. Psychosocial approaches insist on individual bases of decision for taking part in learning activity, like motivation and, especially, occupational projects or expectations. For example, Houle (1961), the initiator of this tradition, proposed a typology of people’s motivations as key factors in decision to participate. A third tradition focuses on obstacles, trying to understand the factors influencing individuals to take part in learning activities. Cross (1982), followed by many researchers (Scanlan and Darkenwald 1984; Darkenwald and Valentine 1985; Doray, Bélanger and Labonté 2005), distinguishes institutional, dispositional and individual obstacles. Cross (1982) considers life transitions within people’s life courses as potential learning-intensive phases. Other researchers offer explanatory models of participation that combine social context, features of personality and individual situation. Decisions to take part in learning activities are seen as resulting from self-assessment of the usefulness of anticipated learning activities (valence) and perceived chances of success (expectancy) (Rubenson 1977). Both valence and expectancy are viewed as socially influenced, as well as influenced by available learning provisions or resources (Blair, McPake and Munn 1995). The social demand for learning and its expression could not be understood without taking into account cultural dispositions that influence people’s representation and perception of anticipated results. In that perspective, one has to recognize the importance of cultural capital, of uneven distribution of symbolic resources, which, when activated, could influence learning life courses.

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Such capital intervenes critically in appreciation of both ‘valence’ and ‘expectancy’ of learning opportunities (Rubenson 1977; Cookson 1986). The strongest determinant of participation is level of former education, since initial schooling experience shapes dispositions towards further education. Longer initial education, positive former learning experience and stronger education expectancy do explain unequal probability of participation in adult learning and education and, to a certain degree, the small but significant difference in participation rate between women and men. Former formal education also influences the expression of unmet learning demand and aspiration (Doray et al. 2005; Doray and Livingstone 2008). The impact of cultural capital is, however, broader. Attitude to written culture tends to influence participation. For example, participation increases with level of literacy and reading habits, whereas it decreases with intensity of television viewing (Doray and Arrowsmith 1997). Life conditions, both domestic and in the workplace, tend to determine access to two key resources: time and money. These latter resources, in turn, impinge on adult learning and education participation. Time availability is gender related via a different balance of professional and family responsibilities and the prevailing division of domestic labour. The money factor includes direct costs and less visible indirect charges. Working conditions also influence participation through unequal allocation of learning resources and opportunities within and between firms (Gagnon 2005; Gagnon, Doray and Bélanger 2004). In such a context of uneven opportunities, caused by level of qualification, size of organization, economic sectors, and intensity of research and development, firms are often on both sides of the learning demand–learning response relation. Firms request development of skills and knowledge and are asked to recognize individual demands, as well as providing learning opportunities directly inside the enterprise or through support for external providers. Development of learning activities is also related to economic conditions, human resource policies and mode of labour relations. The logic of reproduction dominates development of adult education; individuals with higher cultural or educational capital and in higher socio-economic positions show a higher probability to participate in courses. However, other logics are at work, like the logic of educational mobilization among minorities excluded from formal schooling but later investing in adult education where space can be created. Life is a succession of transitions. Far from being exceptional, transitions have become an important constituent of contemporary life. Overt or public transitions are most easily identified: occupational transitions, sickness episodes, change in intimate life and family status, geographical mobility and immigration, retirement, etc. Some transitions are less explicit, even unconscious, like passage from adolescence to adulthood or phases in the occupational life course. For individuals, transitions must be regarded as moments – events or crossroads in occupational or private life. For example, intensive learning episodes are key moments involving acculturation and acquisition of new rules (Coulon 1992; Tinto 1993).

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A biographical approach using life stories is often used as a learning tool or, more precisely, a self-learning tool. The de-institutionalization of the life course requires new competence to pilot one’s life and ‘a redeployment of learning opportunities in individual and social spaces which characterizes adult life today’ (Dominice 1999: 143). It requires ‘biographicity’ (Alheit and Dausien 2000). Reflexive work on one’s own biography develops coherence and gives meaning to one’s life. A second biographical approach, more macro-social, looks through cross-generational interviews at grasping different meanings that people give to their learning life course. Indeed, visions of learning and education do differ according to generations and their different economic and cultural contexts. For example, as Antikainen and Juha (2002: 214) note, ‘whereas education was an ideal for the older generation, it is now a commodity, one that is taken for granted. Society has become more rationalized and consumer-oriented, and education is just a part of this generation’s everyday life.’ These two biographical approaches could be regarded as two poles of an analytical continuum. The first one insists on reflexive practice and production of knowledge and representation, with emphasis being put on construction of identity and search for subjective biographical coherences. The second approach, more research orientated, underlines the intergenerational change of representations of learning and education, with less emphasis on the dynamics of educational biographies. Our approach borrows elements from both approaches. In such a theoretical context, transitions are regarded as identifiable moments and objective life events. But it is still more important for us to grasp the meanings people give to their life events, the direction that these events take in the eyes of the individuals. In this respect, the same event could have different meanings in relation to various contexts. Negative educational experience might have a depressive effect in certain context, but it has also the potential, under certain conditions, to initiate a mobilization movement. Some transitions, like initial formal education, are institutionalized, foreseeable and even mandatory. Alternatively, transitions like a job promotion or the formation of a couple can be voluntary, impelled by individuals themselves and, in certain cases, prepared long in advance. Certain transitions are also forced (Hodkinson and Sparkes 1997), impelled by a third party, or accidental – for example, sickness. Articulation between biographical transition and adult learning participation, both formal and informal, is complex. Transitions can influence adult participation in learning in several manners. A project of occupational mobility can motivate individuals to take part in education and training programmes. Transition to another employment or life context, like retirement or migration, could affect availability of learning resources. Transitions also can be influenced by the process of developing cultural capital, like longer initial education and social representations of actors, with capital influencing people’s capacity and propensity to mobilize learning resources. The availability of learning and educational opportunities as well as their organization can also structure participation.

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Methodology The quantitative section of our analysis, based on the WALL survey, aims at determining the impact of transitions on adult learning practices. Having distinguished three types of transition (occupational mobility, migration and retirement) and two dimensions of learning practices (participation in formal education activities and profiles of informal learning as self-reported by people), we have examined the relations between transition and participation while controlling key factors like type and level of prior formal education, health condition and occupational position. Complementing this quantitative investigation, we have carried out a qualitative analysis on self-perceived impact and meaning of transitions on learning practices. Within the WALL survey sample, we carried out 83 personal interviews with respondents from two urban Canadian centres: Montreal and Toronto. Assuming that life transitions constitute heuristic moments to seize meanings people give to their learning practices, individuals selected were those who declared, in the survey, a recent experience of transition, of personal or occupational nature, as well as related to migration or retirement. This qualitative investigation aims at discovering meanings people give to learning practices in such contexts as well as the various learning strategies they may use to handle or pilot these life changes. We analysed the interviews with the idea of determining the nature of transitions (which, at times, needed to be verified with respondents in order to select the more subjectively meaningful ones) and of understanding the biographical context in which they took place. We described the steps taken by individuals going through the transition. We discovered various types of transition: voluntary ones decided and ‘dealt with’ by the subject, forced transitions leading either to active reaction or to defeatism. Then, we observed whether and how individuals were able to mobilize learning resources to facilitate and lead these life changes. Finally, we looked for similarities among sub-groups in order to induce categories which also allowed us to detect factors modulating relations between transitions and participation.

Results Global picture We will examine these three basic types of transition, beginning with occupational transitions which, though more numerous, are of diversified nature: entry on labour market, employment change, vertical mobility, shift from full- to part-time job or the opposite, parental leave, etc. Second, migration is considered, distinguishing ‘recent’ (ten years or less) and older immigration. Third, passage to retirement will be examined. The incidence of these types of transition in the WALL 2004 sample during the five years (1998–2003) preceding the field survey was as follows. Occupational

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Table 10.1 Incidence of transitions and gender, 2004 Sex

Employment transitions (actively employed)

Personal life transition (total population)

Retirement (total population)

Any transition (total population)

16 21 19

36 41 38

Years since immigration

Women Men Total

% % %

42 43 42

10 or fewer

11 or more

5 5 5

14 15 14

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8982). Note: ‘Any transition’ includes those experiencing any kind of transition, while ‘Employment transitions’ is a percentage of the actively employed population.

shifts were the most numerous transitions noted (see Table 10.1). Indeed, 40 per cent of respondents acknowledged changes of occupational nature, with a similar proportion of women and men. Transition in personal life follows with 38 per cent, with women more likely than men (42 per cent versus 33 per cent). During that five-year period, 19 per cent of people retired, while recent immigration was mentioned by only 5 per cent, with similar proportions of men and women. Different types of transition relate differently to prior formal schooling (Table 10.2). Occupational transitions increase with basic level of schooling. In cases of immigration, transitions relate differently to formal education; they are more frequent among those having migrated in the last ten years than among older immigrants. This may have to do with recent Canadian policies giving higher priority to qualified immigrants. The observed frequency of retirement across formal

Table 10.2 Types of transition and prior formal schooling, 2004 Formal educational attainment

Occupational transitions

Years since migration 10 or fewer

Elementary or less Some secondary Secondary completed Some college/cégep College/cégep completed University (bachelor) University graduate or professional degree Total N Source: WALL survey 2004.

Retirement

11 or more

% % % % % %

4 33 41 49 50 55

1 3 4 6 4 9

20 10 14 12 15 15

75 22 16 10 12 9

% %

51 43 8827

15 5 441

20 14 1281

12 19 8813

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Table 10.3 Participation in further education and informal learning by type of transition, 2004 Type of transition

No occupational transition With occupational transition People born in Canada 10 or fewer years since immigration 11 or more years since immigration Retired (64 years or younger) Retired (65 years or older)

Participation in further education

Informal learning Job related

Volunteer work

Household work

General interest

%

34

90

82

86

85

% %

54 43

92 83

82 83

86 83

85 83

%

54

94

94

94

94

%

37

90

90

90

90

%

25

—

82

88

85

%

14

—

75

81

81

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

educational strata is not surprising; it may reflect greater flexibility of such transition among those with more formal education. The 2004 WALL survey shows an overall rate of participation in adult or further education and training of 42 per cent, while more than 75 per cent of people mention being involved in informal learning activities. Even if, through this survey, no causal or direct association could be inferred between transitions and learning activities, we noted nonetheless a higher rate of participation in further education activities among people in occupational and migration transition, except for passage to retirement, where the tendency is reversed (Table 10.3). With regards to informal learning, the situation is somewhat different; frequency of informal activities generally fluctuates little. The exception is transitions related to immigration, thus underlining a multitude of learning experiences carried out during integration into the new community, a process that goes well beyond formal courses provided by public authorities and voluntary associations.

Occupational transitions Opportunities for participation in education and training activities at time of occupational transition are numerous, in order either to undergo change of one’s profession or to be introduced in a new job context or to new tasks. The nature and amplitude of education and training provision organized by employers or through active labour market policies do structure such participation. Vertical mobility tends to be associated with higher participation rate (Table 10.4); this is a wellknown tendency (Courtney 1992). However, the fact that unemployment is

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Table 10.4 Participation in further education and transitions, 2004 Type of transition

Participation in further education

Absence of transition Presence of a transition Total Getting first employment Vertical mobility Changing job Becoming unemployed Transition from full- to part-time or part- to full-time Maternity leave Other transitions Total N

% % % % % % % %

34 54

% % %

53 45 42

Percentage of population 62 38 100 12 32 50 21 21

51 66 55 47 55

11 5 100 8982

Source: WALL survey 2004.

associated with a lower rate of participation is somewhat surprising, considering discourse on provision of public training policies for unemployed people. As in virtually all prior studies, former schooling strongly influences participation in further adult education (Tables 10.5). But occupational transitions do tend to be associated with higher participation at all levels of formal educational attainment. With regard to informal learning, the situation is very different (see Table 10.3): occurrence or absence of transition does not make a significant difference, except for job-related informal learning. But even then variation is ten times smaller than for formal learning.

Table 10.5 Participation in formal adult education according to level of former schooling and occupational transitions, 2004 Formal educational attainment Elementary or less Some secondary Secondary completed Some college/cégep education College/cégep completed University (bachelor) University graduate or professional degree Total

Absence of occupational transition

Presence of occupational transition

Total

% % % %

6 25 27 42

12 38 45 58

7 29 35 50

% % %

44 56 55

58 67 71

51 62 63

%

34

54

42

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

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Thus, transitions are associated with greater participation in formal adult education, even when we take into account third variables like prior schooling. The social structuring process of adult education participation could not be fully understood outside the context of people’s life course and biographical episodes. Transitions tend to create social demand and opportunities for participation in formal learning activities or for having access to structured educational resources. They tend also to influence cultural disposition towards adult learning, raising awareness or interest in work- and employment-related formal learning activities. Our analysis of biographical interviews shows four patterns of occupation-based participation. 1

2

3

4

Absence of participation. Some occupational transitions have no connections whatsoever with adult education and training participation. This is the case for people with limited former schooling and for people whose prior schooling experience, though longer, was negative. The first case is classic: those who have less schooling tend to participate less in further educational activities in their adult life course. The second case looks at first sight unusual, but it shows how long school attendance does not automatically lead to active lifelong education. Prior negative educational experience may cool out further aspirations. Such a pattern of non-recourse to formal education in time of transition may also result from unequal availability of non-work-related educational provisions, since some of these transitions were characterized by a shift to unemployment. Dissatisfaction. This pattern is found among people having had weak or average initial schooling. While losing a job, having to quit voluntarily or transferring between jobs, they could not take part in formal education and training for various reasons, often related to absence of adequate provisions. Only one person, in that group, took part in a leisure-related course (painting), which, for her, was a source of personal satisfaction. Obligation. Confronted with promotion, job transfer or unemployment, members of this group, who also had access to weak or average prior schooling, were obliged to take part in formal education courses carried out by employer, public authorities or occupational bodies. Dissatisfaction, then, is higher when occupational transition is non-voluntary as, for example, in the case of industrial restructuring. Volunteering. In this fourth pattern, we found highly schooled people who join formal educational programmes or courses in order to pilot a foreseen promotion, undertake a freely chosen job transfer or better manage a loss of employment. Their positive vision of formal education is the result of accumulated successful educational experiences all through their life. This case, like the first one, is also a classic one: those who have more education get more.

All in all, there is no linear relation between types of transition and adult education participation. The meanings of education, which people have constructed

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throughout their lives, and the objective or institutional context are two key intermediary factors. Subjective value given to education tends to be the prevalent element among types one and three; it is the deterrent factor among the nonparticipants and the incentive variable among the voluntary participants. On the other hand, the objective situation appears more important for the dissatisfied, who could not locate relevant training provision to support them in their transition, as well as for participants required by their occupational situation to undertake prescribed courses or programmes.

Retirement Entry in retirement is a major biographical transition, compulsory for some, voluntary for others or a shift in life course for health reasons. It is a rupture with one’s occupational or occupational network, and a critical phase in the reorganization of daily life. Adult education participation studies have persistently observed a reduction of participation rate with age. Older workers and pensioners tend to participate less than the average population in formal education activities (Courtney 1992; Silva, Cahalan and Lacireno-Paquet 1998). Studies undertaken in 11 industrialized countries have shown that young adults from 25 to 34 years have twice the chance to join formal learning activities than people 55 to 64 years old (OECD 2000: 24). The WALL survey confirms such a trend (Figure 10.1). A decline in participation is observed after 45 years. It is at a time when people have more time to allocate to such activities that participation in structured adult learning tends to decrease and decline very significantly. Prevalent explanations of such trends include a cost–benefit rationale based on time needed to recuperate training cost, as well as the effect of an educational provision socially structured by firms and governmental agencies policies and practices to give high priority to job-work-related learning demands. In such a context, one should not be surprised that retirement tends to be associated with participation decline. Retirement appears a key turning point in formal learning biographies. 60 50 40

56

54

46

51 50

50

45 38

% 30

30

20

15

10 0 18–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60–64 Age

Figure 10.1 Age and participation in further education, 2004 Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

65+

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Table 10.6 Participation in further adult education and retirement, 2004 Employment status

Participation in further education

Working Retired (aged 64 years or younger) Retired (aged 65 years or older) Total

%

N

49 25 14 43

7084 427 1225 8736

Source: WALL survey 2004.

Table 10.7 Participation in formal adult education according to gender and retirement, 2004 Employment status Employed Retired (aged 64 years or younger) Retired (aged 65 years or older) Total

% % % %

Women

Men

Total

50 25 17 44

47 24 11 42

49 25 14 43

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

As shown in Table 10.6, participation decreases by half between the active population and ‘the young’ retirees (64 years and under) and further by one-third for older retirees. We observed a similar trend for men and women, though, as usual, women have a slightly higher rate than men (Table 10.7). A first explanation of this declining trend has to do with the impact of withdrawal from employment context. Another factor is deterioration of health condition. Six per cent of retirees, 64 years old and under, reveal fragile health; this proportion increases to 11 per cent for 65-year-old retirees. The mention of health deterioration over the last five years climbs from 27 per cent to 38 per cent between the two groups of retirees; similarly, the proportion of people with a handicap goes from 14 per cent to 19 per cent. Two health indicators shown in Table 10.8 indicate how such deterioration tends to be associated with lower participation rate, especially among retirees 65 years old and over, whereas such variation is absent or not significant in case of the second indicator (health deterioration over last five years). On the other hand, formal schooling remains a key factor in adult education participation all along people’s life course (Table 10.9); participation does increase significantly with initial education independently of age or retirement status. What meaning do older individuals give to adult education participation? We analysed transition to retirement according to prior schooling of the 14 retired individuals in our sample. The first sub-group is made up of individuals having lower former schooling (lower than the secondary). Transition to retirement is especially associated with important change in one’s health condition and/or that of a close relative. No one in this group mentioned formal education activities at retirement or afterwards. Education is subjectively associated with work and initial

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Table 10.8 Participation in further education according to retirement and health, 2004 Participation in further education Health and disability status Precarious health Good or excellent health Deterioration of health People with handicap

Yes No Yes No

Total

Working (not retired)

Retired (64 years old or younger)

Retired (65 years or older)

% %

25 50

20 25

8 15

19 44

% % % %

44 50 36 50

25 25 31 24

16 13 9 16

36 44 28 44

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

Table 10.9 Participation in further education according to retirement and level of schooling, 2004 Formal educational attainment

Elementary or less Some secondary Secondary completed Some college/cégep College/cégep completed University (bachelor) University graduate or professional degree Total

Working

Retired (aged 64 years or younger)

Retired (aged 65 years or older)

Total

% % % % % % %

8 34 38 52 55 65 66

13 11 22 32 30 47 50

5 13 15 27 23 31 29

7 29 35 50 51 62 63

%

49

25

14

43

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

schooling, which explains, for them, their lack of interest. In this sub-group, interest in learning and cultural activities is thin. The second sub-group is composed of retirees with higher formal schooling. Several of them did not, during the last year, take part in formal educational activity, while acknowledging informal learning activities linked to personal development in their everyday life. Some of them have had a positive image of formal education all through their active life; they value education as a way to acquire the knowledge and know-how needed in daily activities. But others keep and have kept their distance from formal education, in reference to past negative school experience or the difficulty of balancing family, work and study daily demands. Participation in such activities may be associated with leisure time. Informal learning is often rooted in and nourished by their social network.

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A third group of retirees, having benefited from high initial education, handle their transition to retirement in an active manner. Participation in adult education, then, plays a significant role but in different terms: a logic of social participation and of leisure time is taking over from the former occupational logic. While showing interest in undertaking courses for personal development, some members of this sub-group express dissatisfaction with current formal provisions, showing a capacity for a critical approach to current education provision that their familiarity with educational activity does allow. Informal learning is present in everyday life. Retirees see daily activities and informal networks as primary sources of learning, as in the cases of travel, music listening or instrument self-learning, and other cultural activities. Their participation in formal education is seen as a way to nourish and enlarge their social capital, bringing them closer to their entourage. These individuals have different cultural and social assets, allowing them to initiate actions requiring or resulting in formal education participation as well as informal learning. Thus, relations between retirement and participation in adult learning are complex. In the first sub-group, characterized by weak initial schooling and low participation in structured learning activities along their occupational life, informal learning tends to remain marginal. On the contrary, in the third sub-group – made up of people having benefited from longer initial education – learning activities, both formal and informal, are strongly integrated, within a continuous educational biography, into everyday life and social participation. The relation between adult learning and transition into retirement is also modulated by other factors, like health condition and social representations of formal education. Some people in retirement identify learning activities with initial formal education or else with occupational development. Such a normatively restricted framework of reference tends to drive retirees away from more formal learning activities.

Migration Migration to another country, in a context of acculturation, constitutes a transition that mobilizes both occupational and domestic spheres of everyday life. In such a situation, people are likely to engage in extensive learning activities in order to better manage their life shift. Likewise, public agencies and community groups will often provide adult education activities for people immigrating to their communities. We distinguish three situations in relation to such transition: people who have migrated during the last ten years, those who have done so more than ten years ago, and people born in Canada. The first category includes 5 per cent, the second 14 per cent and the last 81 per cent of our sample. One person out of five in this sample was born outside the country. Adult education participation varies significantly according to these three categories (Table 10.10). Rate of participation for ‘recent’ immigrants is 54 per cent,

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Table 10.10 Participation in further education according to birthplace and immigration, 2004 Immigration status

Participation in further education

Born in Canada 10 years or less since immigration 11 years or more since immigration Total

%

N

43 54 37 42

7209 441 1281 8931

Source: WALL survey 2004.

that is to say 11 points higher than that of people born in Canada (43 per cent) and 17 points higher than that of immigrants of long date with only 37 per cent. The difference between older and more recent immigrants could also be explained through the documented negative relation between age and further education. In relation to gender, we observe no significant difference between women and men. What matters most, within each category, is the level of prior formal education (Table 10.11). Nonetheless, recent migrants tend to participate more at all levels of prior education, except at the highest level of educational attainment where people born in Canada prevail by 11 percentage points. The lowest participation rate is found among people having migrated more than ten years ago, and they are less likely to have attained a post-secondary education. Among more recent immigrants, those outside the employed labour force participate in further education as much as those in any employed occupational category. Participation in further education differs by occupational status and level of initial education among migrants (see Table 10.12). Among managers and professionals, people born in Canada have a somewhat higher rate of participation than recent immigrants, who, in turn, tend to be slightly ahead of older immigrants. On Table 10.11 Participation in further education according to level of education and immigration, 2004 Formal educational attainment

Elementary or less Some secondary Secondary completed Some college/cégep College/cégep completed University (bachelor) University graduate or professional degree Total

Born in Canada

Years since immigration 10 or less

11 or more

Total

% % % % % % %

7 30 35 50 52 62 69

— 55 52 52 49 68 58

5 13 28 46 48 58 50

6 29 35 50 51 62 63

%

43

54

37

42

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

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Table 10.12 Participation in further education according to occupational status, birth place and immigration, 2004 Occupational status

Employers and self-employed Managers and professionals Wage workers (blue and white collars) People outside active labour force Total

Born in Canada

Years since immigration 10 or less

11 or more

Total

%

46

53

42

45

%

60

57

52

59

%

46

47

39

45

%

24

56

20

25

%

43

54

37

42

Source: WALL survey 2004 (N = 8825).

the other hand, people who immigrated recently and are not in the labour force participate in further education at the same level as recent immigrants who are employed. Compared to older immigrants outside the active labour force, recent immigrants who are not employed participate in further education at a much higher rate. Recent immigrants with a lower level of initial education tend to participate more in further education than older immigrants with similar limited initial schooling (see Table 10.11). Among the sub-sample of people having experienced a transition, 16 respondents identified immigration as a recent shift in their life course. We placed these individuals in three categories according to their assessment of occupational and social integration: weak, limited and full integration. We then examined how participation in adult learning did or did not play a significant role in the immigration and integration process. In the weak integration sub-group, integration, whether occupational or social, was seen as problematic. These individuals are recent immigrants who did not find an appropriate employment in spite of their formal school qualification. Often young and single, they did not have time to build a social network. They have a negative evaluation of their current situation, which they associate with difficulty either to master the required second language or to have their former qualification officially recognized. They felt locked in precarious employment. In the limited integration sub-group, people acknowledged having achieved occupational integration, but they felt socially isolated. Employment found was in line with their former field of work but often at the price of suffering occupational deskilling. As those in the first category, they cannot rely on a wide social capital or family network. Social exclusion weighs very heavily on them. In the third group, where both occupational and social transition in Canada was seen as a success, individuals were in position to pilot actively their transition. Indeed, they have benefited from prolonged former schooling and have also had

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access, since arriving in their new country, to intensive formal education and training. The active networks in which they are involved have also given them a social capital that they could use actively in this life transition. Though in line with their former occupational life, their new occupational situation was often achieved by accepting some kind of deskilling. Some of them arrived in Canada as students and thereafter decided to remain in the country. In all three sub-groups, and as in other studies (Renaud, Piché and Godin 2003), we observe that integration in the labour force is often achieved at the price of a deskilling process and absence of recognition of work experience gained in the country of origin. As noted in Chapter 2, among respondents of the WALL survey, around a quarter of people born in Canada perceived themselves to be underemployed, but the percentage is much higher among recent immigrants, with 43 per cent noting problems in recognition of their qualification and former experience (Table 10.13).

Conclusion Many factors influence probability of participation in adult informal learning and further education. The social complexity of this lifelong process and of its probability could not be grasped through one single explanation. Social reproduction in adult learning, as well as in education as a whole, is relative. Transitions are heuristic moments in the life course to observe how mobilization, under certain conditions and contexts, could run against social predictability. Participation is closely related to people’s social experience and to institutional arrangements of learning provision in a given society. According to our preliminary assumption, phases of transition were bound to be intensive moments of participation in adult learning. Our analysis, however, shows a more complex reality. If certain transitions tend to be conducive to such participation, others do not. Specific conditions and contexts either support or prevent linkage between transition and active learning; social

Table 10.13 Migration and perception of education–job match, employed labour force, 2004 Education–job match

Greatly under-utilized Somewhat under-utilized Matched Somewhat underqualified Greatly underqualified Total N Source: WALL survey 2004.

Born in Canada

% % % % % %

9 17 67 8 1 100 4528

Years since immigration 10 or less

11 or more

20 23 47 5 6 100 253

12 19 64 3 2 100 747

Total

10 18 66 5 1 100 5528

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environments do structure learning culture and informal learning (Egentenmeyer 2008). Occupational transitions tend to stimulate participation in formal education activities. Forms of such articulations are various: registration in formal education programmes with the idea of a promotion, introductory training within industry for newly hired employees, occupational development initiatives at time of employment change, etc. Immigration is also a time of heightened participation in adult learning activities to facilitate integration. To that end, some specific educational opportunities are provided by public authorities and community associations. In these two types of transition, we observe close association between biographical changes and participation in intentional learning: strong social and individual demands are expressed, while specialized institutions could channel and support participation. Conversely, transition into retirement does not tend to be associated with higher levels of formal participation. Increased availability of free time does not translate itself into higher levels of participation in further education. Decline in explicit demand for further education courses could be explained by the symbolic association that retired respondents tend to make between formal adult education and either initial schooling or work-related education and training. Two other factors have to be noted. On the one hand, the occurrence of health problems, which tend to increase in this period of life, may reduce autonomy and the possibility to take part in such activities. On the other hand, the kind of educational provision available, or rather its absence, plays an important part. The field of organized adult learning tends to be highly concentrated on occupational demand; retirees have difficulties finding relevant or interesting formal activities. If articulations between transitions and participation depend on certain conditions that limit or support participation, prior formal schooling always remains a key factor throughout people’s life course. Educational biographical continuity emerges as an important if not central tendency. The more formal education you have, the more you get. The more one has benefited from formal education previously, the higher the probability will be to participate later in formal learning activities after retirement. The probability of social reproduction throughout the individual life course is however relative. Our analysis of biographical transitions and adult learning, while confirming this prevalent trend, shows how, under specific conditions, individuals could mobilize social capital or other resources to counter their socially predictable learning life course. Mobilization of individual and collective actors, in specific context, can overcome social reproduction processes. For the migrant population, the situation is different. Recent immigrants with limited initial schooling participate in further education more than people born in Canada with similar educational status. This is probably due to their strong demand and the development and accessibility of public and non-profit educational provisions now offered during the first years of people’s arrival in the country. For older immigrants with limited initial education, however, the situation

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is very different – their rate of participation is less than half that of Canadian-born citizens. Clearly, former education constitutes the heaviest and most stable factor of participation in formal adult education. Interviews shed new light on this well-known association. For example, in specific contexts like recent immigration, former education does not have the determining role noted generally, such as in case of transition into retirement or of occupational mobility. Different symbolic association of formal adult education with work and employment does influence participation among retirees, because of propensity for continuity in people’s learning life course. The same applies in the case of occupational transition, where people with negative experience in former formal education will tend to participate less or will get involved only when obliged to do so. Articulation between life transitions and informal learning follows a different path. We observe three types of relations between formal and informal learning: convergence, dissociation and passivity. In the convergence type, people combine both formal and informal forms of learning to actively lead their transition. In dissociation, people rely more on informal ways of getting knowledge and developing skills. In the third type, people tend more to submit to their unwanted life shift. Rooted in the everyday life at work or elsewhere, informal learning tends to be nearly always present, but at a lesser degree in passive transition. If occupational transition tends to be associated with more intensive participation in formal education activities, reported informal learning remains always high whether or not people undergo such transition. It is interesting here to note, according to the WALL survey, that people with negative formal educational experience tend to place a greater value on informal learning that they see as more relevant to their current life context. The situation is similar but reversed for transition into retirement. Participation in formal education activities decreases, while the level of non-employment-related informal learning activities remains almost the same (80 per cent). Retirees tend to value informal learning highly. They could rely on their social resources and networks, or on earlier and longer experience to ensure continuity in their personal development and learning biography. In the case of migration, both formal and informal learning tend to be more intensive during the first years of immigration, but, afterwards, rate of participation in formal learning activities decreases significantly, especially among migrants with lower initial education. Informal learning is important throughout people’s life course. It does not tend to increase significantly in the context of transition, except in cases of migration. In such a life shift, social capital seems to play an important role. Recent immigrants use their networks to mobilize knowledge and knowhow, to acquire strategic information and thus enhance their capacity to remain in control and achieve their transition. From a methodological perspective, this study again underlines difficulty and ambiguity that emerges from using interviews to document informal learning. Requested to speak about their learning biography, people have no difficulty in

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expressing the subjective meaning that they give to their formal educational experiences. But they have problems going beyond structured or organized learning activities. In our interviews, for example, people had difficulty not only in going beyond formal learning, but also in disentangling self-learning and socialization or incidental learning (see Schugurensky 2000). They had problems in sorting out intentional informal learning from daily cognitive internalization. Even intended but unstructured acquisition of skills or new languages through daily activities tended to remain invisible for most. The issue is not the importance of informal learning in people’s educational biography, but the way to document such informal social reality. We need more in-depth studies to better understand how people combine or not, and in which ways, their formal and informal learning activities in carrying out changes throughout their life courses. We begin to see how types of transition are associated differently with these forms of learning, and how some specific conditions facilitate or hinder recourse to different learning opportunities in transitions. Outreach provisions and mobilization of social assets or social policies could offset the logic of social reproduction in transitional conditions. For example, active labour market policies allocating space and resources for further education and training, and life course-based social policies could make a difference, creating options for more people to pilot their lives more actively. This preliminary documentation of complex relations between formal and informal learning in transitions should open new vistas for understanding actual learning biographies through the life course. It is important that we deepen our understanding of the reproduction process in people’s educational life course. Forming a crucial node of this process are the individual and collective practices and actions that produce paths outside of the social determinations of educational biographies. These practices generate important change movements and open up the possibility of thinking about the reproduction process as one that is not an all-encompassing form of determinism, but can be challenged and transformed.

References Alheit, P. and Dausien, B. (2000) ‘“Biographicity” as a Basic Resource of Lifelong Learning’, in P. Alheit, J. Beck, E. Kammler, R. Taylor and H.S. Olesen (eds) Lifelong Learning Inside and Outside Schools, Roskilde: Roskilde University. Antikainen, A. and Juha, K. (2002) ‘Educational Generations and the Futures of Adult Education: A Nordic Experience’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 21(3): 209–219. Blair, A., McPake, J. and Munn, P. (1995) ‘A New Conceptualization of Adult Participation in Education’, British Educational Research Journal, 21(5): 629–644. Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J.-C. (1970) La reproduction, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Cookson, P. (1986) ‘A Framework for Theory and Research on Adult Education Participation’, Adult Education Quarterly, 36(3): 130–141. Coulon A. (1992) Le métier d’étudiant, Paris, Presses universitaires de France.

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Courtney, S. (1992) Why Adults Learn: Towards a Theory of Participation in Adult Education, London: Routledge. Cross, K.P. (1982) Adults as Learners, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Darkenwald, G.D. and Valentine, T. (1985) ‘Factor Structure of Deterrents to Public Participation in Adult Education’, Adult Education Quarterly, 35(4): 177–193. de Montlibert, C. (1973) ‘Le public de la formation des adultes’, Revue française de sociologie, XIV: 529–545. de Montlibert, C. (1977) ‘L’éducation permanente et la promotion des classes moyennes’, Sociologie du travail, 19(3): 243–265. Dominice, P. (1999) ‘La formation adulte en tant que régulateur des itinéraires de vie’, Education permanente, 138: 145–151 Doray, P. and Arrowsmith, S. (1997) ‘Patterns of Participation in Adult Education: Cross National Comparisons’, in P. Bélanger and A.C. Tuijnman (eds) New Patterns of Adult Learning: A Six Country Comparative Study, London: Pergamon: Chapter 3. Doray, P. and Livingstone, D. (2008) ‘Entre la pyramide et l’iceberg: les diverses facettes de la participation a 1-education et la formation des adultes’, WALL working paper. Online: available at http://wall.oise.utoronto.ca/resources/DorayLivingstone2008.pdf (accessed 29 September 2009). Doray, P., Bélanger, P. and Labonté, A. (2005) Les contours de la demande insatisfaite de formation, Note de recherche no. 5, Montréal: CIRDEP-CIRST/UQAM et Québec: MESSF. Dubar, C. (1980) Formation permanente et contradiction sociale, Paris: Éditions sociales. Egetenmeyer, R. (2008) Informal Learning in betrieblichen Lernkulturen. Eine interkulturelle Vergleichsstudie, Bonn: Schneider-Verlag Hohengehren. Gagnon, L. (2005). Une analyse multiniveau des facteurs en présence dans l’accès des employés à la formation en milieu de travail, Montréal: Département de sociologie, UQAM, mémoire de maîtrise. Gagnon, L., Doray, P. and Bélanger, P. (2004) ‘En entreprise, quel sera le scénario de développement?’ Possibles, 28(3–4): 134–153. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) ‘Careership: A Sociological Theory of Career Decision Making’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 18(1): 29–44. Houle, C.O. (1961) The Inquiring Mind, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. Organization de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE/OECD) (2000) Des réformes pour une société vieillissante, Questions sociales, Paris: OCDE. Renaud, J., Piché, V., Godin, J.-F. (2003) ‘L’origine nationale et l’insertion économique des immigrants au cours de leur dix premières années au Québec’, Sociologie et Sociétés, 35(1): 165–184. Rubenson, K. (1977) Participation in Recurrent Education, Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Center for Educational Research and Innovations. Scanlan, C.S. and Darkenwald, G.-D. (1984) ‘Identifying Deterrents to Participation in Continuing Education’, Adult Education Quarterly, 34(3): 155–166. Schugurensky, D. (2000) ‘The Forms of Informal Learning: Towards a Conceptualization of the Field’, NALL working paper no. 19, OISE/University of Toronto. Online: available at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/csew/nall/res/19formsofinformal. htm (accessed 4 September 2009).

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Silva, T., Cahalan, M. and Lacireno-Paquet, N. (1998) Adult Education Participation Decisions and Barriers: Review of Conceptual Frameworks and Empirical Studies, Washington: US Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, National Center for Education Statistics, working paper no. 98–10. Tinto, V. (1993) Leaving College: Rethinking the Causes and Cures of Student Attrition, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Part V

Concluding reflections

Chapter 11

Reflections on results of Canadian studies and German perspectives on work-related learning Bernd Overwien

The findings of the WALL research network presented in this volume provide important stimuli for the discussion in Germany. The changes in Canada are on the whole similar to those seen in Germany. This applies particularly to the restructuring within paid labour. The importance of unpaid work in the home, with role stereotypes only slowly changing, also can be confirmed in the case of Germany. In the field of education, different conditions are to be found. The structure of postsecondary education in the two countries differs: we note that the proportion of students in tertiary education is considerably lower in Germany than in Canada. This is partly due to the fact that in Germany a larger proportion of young people acquire corresponding skills in the context of an apprenticeship or other activities within organized and very strictly regulated vocational training. From a Canadian perspective, the ‘dual system’ of vocational training in Germany is doubtless an interesting combination of formal and informal learning, which institutionally guarantees participation on the part of trainees in paid workplaces. Learning takes place in parallel at institutions of formal education and at the paid workplace. Meanwhile, learning within the practical part of this system was long neglected by research. Only in recent years have awareness of and research into learning at work in the context of the firm gained recognition. This can also be seen in a slowly changing attitude to informal learning among organizations of vocational training, employers, and employees and their unions. In this connection, we can first note that the increasing participation in further adult education in Germany during the last few years has approximately corresponded to that in Canada. During the last 12 months (2007), 43 per cent of the general population between the ages of 19 and 64 attended courses in further education (van Rosenbladt and Bilger 2008: 4). It is also only in the last few years that ‘informal vocational training’ has been identified within the representatively functioning system of surveys on workplace learning. Respondents are invited to evaluate 13 types of learning (e.g. ‘learning by observation and experimentation’, computer-assisted self-learning programmes, or the use of quality circles and supervision) as to their relevance in their own cases. This does not correspond precisely to the Canadian study reported on in this volume, but at least provides a basis for comparison (van Rosenbladt and Bilger 2008: 16f). In 2007, 68 per cent of the

218 Bernd Overwien

population engaged in different forms of employment-related informal learning. Self-directed learning during leisure time is also investigated, with 39 per cent engaged in self-learning during leisure time. These figures are increasing – tendencies that correspond to the Canadian experience. These apparent differences in participation rates may be partly explained in terms of differences in the education systems and population structures. With regard to the high degree of organized vocational training in Germany, there is less of a need to pursue informal paths since corresponding skills can be acquired in different ways. Against the high rate of hours spent on informal learning in Canada, there is a smaller amount in the case of German employees, as studies have shown; this has something to do with the differences in organized vocational training in the two countries. In the Canadian studies it is noted that the economic background has an important influence in the case of formal education, and that this is less so with informal work-related learning. For Germany we don’t have studies that give us answers to that question. But we have newer inquiries of the German Youth Institute regarding younger people, which permit the conclusion that the ability to profit from informal learning is also closely related to the formal educational level of the respondents (Düx et al. 2008: 148). Formal educational attainment in Germany is more closely connected with social status than in other OECD countries (cf. Overwien and Prengel 2007). It is furthermore the case that the immigrant sector of society in Germany has quite a different character from that in Canada. Thus migrants in Germany, as a result of the recruitment of chiefly unskilled workers in the 1960s and 1970s, have less formal education than those going to Canada. At the same time, the German educational system has hardly permitted an adjustment for them and their families. On the whole, however – and the relevance of this has yet to be substantiated – the question needs further investigation as to how clear the connection is between social status and the ability for the informal based acquisition of competencies in Germany. In Germany over the last decade, findings from the NALL and WALL projects influenced efforts to have greater attention paid to informal learning across a wide range of workplace contexts. Because of the marked formalization of vocational training and of further education in Germany, and also a widespread lack of interest in the learning and acting subject, there had been considerable resistance to the recognition of forms of learning that elude didactic assessment. Discussions of informal learning began with a view to the developing countries and the designing of development policy measures. Within this relatively narrow segment of research and discussion in educational science, at an early stage research was done into learning in precarious work environments, and also within social movements (Overwien 2005). Beginning in 1999, more widely noted essays on informal learning were published in German, including results from the Canadian context (Livingstone 1999; Overwien 1999; Dohmen 2001). Here the question arises why informal forms of learning, in particular work-related ones, are increasingly attracting attention. With the coming into being of industrial and Taylorist

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organized work, learning at the workplace as an important source of the acquisition of skills was lost sight of. In the course of the transition to a knowledge-based and service-based society, it is possible to speak of a renaissance of this kind of learning (Dehnbostel, Molzberger and Overwien 2005; Dehnbostel 2009). In German firms, it appeared as early as the 1980s that new workplace practices require a more comprehensive development of skills and thus an intensification of learning at work. In Germany, the learning processes connected with this were, at first, rather characterized as ‘learning by experience’. Also, in view of economic and technological structural changes, together with learning at the workplace, increased attention has recently been paid to: the acquisition of skills in social movements; the new media; the framework of museums and science centres or, beyond this, in the leisure sphere; and the combination of school learning and informal learning. It was not until 2005, however, that a reputed German journal for educational science published a number of articles focusing on the topic area of informal learning in various contexts (see ZFE 2005). In all the important essays in this volume, findings from the Canadian context were also reported on. The perspective of the Canadian studies has been fruitful for the German discussion overall. This applies to the idea of a continuum of forms of learning, but also to informal education or training as a possible way of accompanying and supporting informal self-directed learning. It can also be expected that the case studies, within the inclusive framework of the overall WALL network and in the context of the national survey of 2004, will increasingly be taken account of in the German and European scene; there are already indications of this. Accordingly, the first published findings on the informal learning of teaching personnel in Germany make clear the considerable achievements of school teachers in combining informal learning with further education courses (Heise 2007). In another field of research into informal learning in Germany – education for sustainable development – new studies are based on the definitions developed in recent years in the context of WALL. Here, the mechanisms of learning at work are researched in the context of biological agriculture, the field of tourism, collective contexts of work related to sustainability, or as part of further training in the firm. Topics also include the possibilities of informal learning through the mass media, or within regional development (Brodowski et al. 2009). The WALL case study on the learning strategies of women in the IT sector is confirmed by a shorter German study on the topic area, although the institutional practices in the German samples were rather less patriarchal. it should be noted, however, that the German study deals chiefly with men (Dehnbostel et al. 2005). An extensive study on informal learning in voluntary commitments also made use of important insights from the WALL research network (Overwien 2005). This study, which contains a representative survey and case studies, supports the central results of the Canadian study on learning in volunteer work (Düx et al. 2008). On the other hand, as in most countries, research in Germany into informal learning within unpaid domestic work has not yet moved beyond its infancy. Here, as in the other areas of existing studies, a considerable impetus is also to be

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expected in the German discussion, precisely because the complexity of the learning processes has been so impressively demonstrated. All of the WALL studies break new ground, and the exemplary research questions are likely to bear fruit in the international discussion. This will also provide material for practical educational policy from which support strategies for learners can be developed. This will, however, require a considerable quantity of further collateral research. The creation of a European Qualification Framework, and a German Qualification Framework based on it, offer relevant research opportunities. The German framework is currently in its test phase and introduction is being regarded ambivalently. In German vocational and adult education, the British National Qualification Framework is seen as a rather neoliberally inspired instrument, hostile to workers. Numerous critics anticipate the downgrading of vocational training, in the sense of a comprehensive concept of education, and the depreciation of skilled work. On the other hand, there is the hope that more transparency and permeability within the German education system and European systems may lead to an upgrading of learning at work. At any rate, the German Qualification Framework also provides for a greater share of informal learning. Work-related components are intended to be formalized in the framework of recognition procedures, and thus made visible via the skills acquired; the requisite instruments for this are, however, still in the developmental stage (European Commission 2008; Dehnbostel, Neß and Overwien 2009). This is just one example of the current political and educational conditions that can facilitate further exchanges between Canadian, German and other international researchers in the general field of workplace learning.

References Brodowski, M., Devers-Kanoglu, U., Overwien, B., Rohs, M., Salinger, S. and Walser, M. (eds) (2009) Informelles Lernen und Bildung für eine nachhaltige Entwicklung Beiträge aus Theorie und Praxis, Leverkusen-Opladen: Budrich. Dehnbostel, P. (2009) ‘New Learning Strategies and Learning Cultures in Companies’, in R. Maclean and D. Wilson (eds) International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work (Volume 6: Lifelong Learning for Livelihoods and Citizenship, Section 15/Chinien, Chris; Singh, Madhu: Adult, Continuing and Lifelong Learning), Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer: 2629–2646. Dehnbostel, P., Molzberger, G. and Overwien, B. (2005) ‘New Forms of Learning and Work Organization in the IT Industry: A German Perspective on Informal Learning’, in N. Bascia, A. Cumming, A. Datnow, K. Leithwood and D.W. Livingstone (eds) International Handbook of Educational Policy, New York: Springer: 1043–1063. Dehnbostel, P., Neß, H. and Overwien, B. (2009) Der Deutsche Qualifikationsrahmen (DQR) – Positionen, Reflexionen und Optionen, Frankfurt: GEW. Dohmen, G. (2001) Das informelle Lernen. Die internationale Erschließung einer bisher vernachlässigten Grundform menschlichen Lernens für das lebenslange Lernen aller, Bonn: BMBF. Düx, W., Prein, G., Sass, E. and Tully, C. (2008) Kompetenzerwerb im freiwilligen

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Engagement. Eine empirische Studie zum informellen Lernen im Jugendalter. Wiesbaden: VS-Verlag European Commission (2008) The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF), Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities. Heise, M. (2007) ‘Informelle Weiterbildung von Lehrpersonen’, Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 10(4): 513–530. Livingstone, D.W. (1999) ‘Informelles Lernen in der Wissensgesellschaft’, in Arbeitsgemeinschaft Qualifikations-Entwicklungs-Management (QUEM): Kompetenz für Europa – Wandel durch Lernen – Lernen im Wandel, Referate auf dem internationalen Fachkongress Berlin: BMBF: 65–92. Overwien, B. (1999) ‘Informelles Lernen, eine Herausforderung an die internationale Bildungsforschung’, in P. Dehnbostel, W. Markert and H. Novak (eds) Erfahrungslernen in der beruflichen Bildung – Beiträge zu einem kontroversen Konzept, Neusäß: Kieser: 295–314. Overwien, B. (2005) ‘Informal Learning and the Role of Social Movements’, in M. Singh (ed.) Meeting Basic Learning Needs in the Informal Sector. Integrating Education and Training for Decent Work, Empowerment and Citizenship, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer: 43–59. Overwien, B. and Prengel, A. (eds) (2007) Recht auf Bildung. Zum Besuch des Sonderberichterstatters der Vereinten Nationen Muñoz in Deutschland, LeverkusenOpladen: Budrich. von Rosenbladt, B. and Bilger, F. (2008) ‘Weiterbildungsbeteiligung in Deutschland – Eckdaten zum BSW-AES 2007’, Munich: TNS Infratest Sozialforschung. ZFE (Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft) (2005) Schwerpunkt Informelles Lernen, 8(3).

Chapter 12

‘Not just another survey’ Reflections on researchers’ working and learning through investigating work and lifelong learning Stephen Billett

Introduction Reflecting on researchers’ work and learning through their participation in a large, multi-part and long-term research project seems particularly apt when that project focuses on work and learning. Hence, this chapter seeks to provide such a reflection, albeit from the perspective of a researcher with his own preferences for conducting inquiry and conceptions of work and learning through work, and who had particular kinds of engagement with that project. This engagement was across the entire network project: from early meetings about its proposal, the process of assessment, and then through participation across its enactment, most notably through attending the annual meetings as an international adviser. In addition, the author has participated in and led multi-member research teams, and experienced and learned from some of the complexities of completing projects on time, with the available funds, and to satisfy participants’ and sponsors’ needs and aspirations. However, none of those projects has approximated the scale of the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) network, which was extraordinary in terms of its scope, complexity and extent of funding. However, before advancing such a reflection, some acknowledgement is required of issues associated with using different disciplines and methodologies within such a research network. Most notable are those issues that arise between researchers adopting qualitative and qualitative orientations and procedures. The orthodoxies that underpin these distinct methodologies are long-standing, frequently contested, and have been eloquently and extensively debated. Moreover, the disciplines within the social sciences are founded on distinct premises, conceptions and starting points (e.g. the individual or social systems and factors), hence issues of disciplinary orientations can also make problematic the conduct of such a network. Consequently, collaboration in such a network is never going to be straightforward or easy among researchers who variously adopt and strongly identify with either quantitative or qualitative methods, and who bring to the general project diverse disciplinary perspectives and are seeking particular kinds of outcome. Other factors can shape potential contributions, including previous working histories and affiliations, individuals’ experiences with other collaborative projects and mixed

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methods, the range of purposes for conducting research and preferred means for proceeding in such a project. Those who did the most in their own ways to realize the opportunity for work and learning through what the WALL network afforded them and also strived to be faithful to their preferences and projects were at the centre of much of the contestation within the project. Others, who were much less engaged, avoided the contested spaces that inevitably arose within such a large and ambitious network. The use of different methods and disciplinary orientations is held to benefit research projects by securing contributions from distinct disciplinary insights. Case studies can augment survey results, providing greater detail; alternatively, surveys can identify patterns across populations thereby enriching the findings of smallscale detail qualitative inquiry. In some ways, the use of different methods and procedures is consistent with the concept of triangulation deployed in quantitative enquiry by which different approaches to data gathering and analyses are used to ratify or verify the outcomes of inquiry – that is, triangulation is used to increase the validity of research findings. However, such a premise is easily contested within a network using distinct methodologies and aiming to accommodate disciplinary differences, unless the means of progressing is founded on some agreement of what constitutes valid research processes (Jackson 2005) and outcomes as a starting point, not as a point of difference that arises through the general project. However, beyond validating a set of findings that are taken as a common focus for inquiry, there is another important and converse role to be played by a so-called mixed-methods approach – that is, to tease out, offer, and also attempt to reconcile distinct contributions to and outcomes (albeit referred to as either ‘results’ or ‘findings’) of a research project. Indeed, this is likely to be central to the work and learning by researchers within such a project. Therefore, processes that can effectively generate, reconcile and utilize divergent processes and findings are likely to be necessary within a multi-method project. Yet, beyond having different premises, starting points, procedures, and ways of privileging and valuing processes and outcomes of enquiry, these distinct methodologies have developed in response to perceived shortcomings of other methods. Indeed, the prospect and possibilities for complementarity across these approaches were evident in the Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) network project. For instance, as Butterwick and Jubas (Chapter 6) report, how are women who underestimate their capacities as IT workers likely to represent themselves in survey data? Hence, the prospect here is for the survey data and results to be informed and augmented by such findings. Yet, utilizing and attempting to reconcile such complementary perspectives and securing reciprocity in augmenting the outcomes of different approaches is far from a straightforward matter. Indeed, such ambiguities and distinctive findings can and did make perilous the work and collaborations within the WALL network, and make difficult the administration of the general project and the task of meeting sponsors’ expectations, including timelines, and completing the work in ways that fulfilled methodological and disciplinary requirements. Moreover, the learning arising for the researcher-workers was

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likely to be dispersed and premised on their starting points and the kinds and bases for engagement in the project. For instance, the orientation of some of the researchers, as workers and learners, was directed towards identifying factors and assigning weightings to them, which is not so easily reconciled with those whose work and learning is directed towards explanation through exploration. Analogously, Church et al. in Chapter 7 refer to this same tension when investigating work and learning in a financial institution: with the organization wanting to close things down while the researchers wanted to open things up for inquiry and consideration. Then, in seeking the required return for their investment, there are the imperatives of the programme’s sponsors who want a coherent and detailed set of findings (or results), not an ongoing debate around potentially contradictory outcomes. But it was these very sponsors who stated that they wanted more than a survey. Consequently, the task of engaging in and bringing together distinct research disciplines and preferred methodologies represented much of the work and learning within this network.

Reflections on work and learning in WALL These preliminary comments seem pertinent for reflecting on the processes and outcomes of the Work and Lifelong Learning network, which is the focus for and source of this publication. WALL was a well-funded national network project involving researchers and representatives from labour organizations from across Canada, as well as some international advisers such as myself. It is likely that only once or twice in their working lives will researchers engage in a project of this magnitude and level of funding. Consequently, the project represented an important opportunity for the researchers’ work and their learning, and to demonstrate the benefits of social science research to the Canadian community that has so generously funded it. The participants within the research team comprised more than contributors from across the provinces, and some industry sectors, and incorporated not only French and English-language speakers but embraced the Spanish-speaking community as well. Less evident were indigenous voices. As noted, the distinctions among the participants were multi-fold. Disciplinary distinctions were largely those within a broadly sociological discipline, such as those interested in power relations, class politics, inequity, gender and disability, in keeping with the overall concern of the network to understand how social factors are linked to adult learning activities (Livingstone, Chapter 1). There were also diverse perspectives about whether workplaces are sites of capitalist subjugation or places for critical learning (Butterwick and Jubas, Chapter 6). Then there were distinct emphases on the purposes for the investigation: policy formation, reordering labour relations, or advocacy for particular interests (e.g. migrants, disabled, women). This advocacy went beyond research orientation, and was enacted by participants who represented particular interests (e.g. labour unions, sectors of the workforce), who also professed particular forms of legitimacy (i.e. being

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spokespersons for particular community cohorts) and groups in the community (e.g. practitioners in areas that were the focus of research projects). There were also different ways of engaging with the network. Some were primarily concerned with its overall management, others with attempting to reshape and reformulate the project; for some, this project represented a way of defining themselves and, for others, much less so. For some researchers, the project provided an opportunity to critically and reflexively appraise their own perspectives and positions. For others, it was an opportunity to reaffirm and extend their existing perspectives and orientations. Then, as seemingly in all such ventures, there were those who worked too little to realize the opportunity that the project afforded them and there were others who, perhaps, invested heavily in the project and became frustrated by the low return they were able to secure. This frustration included realizing that, even through effortful and full-blooded engagement in the project and demonstrating a capacity to contribute to its overall goals, their efforts would be valued through the measures of others and on bases that were distinct from and even contrary to theirs. Indeed, the project was punctuated mid-term by a powerful discussion paper from Nancy Jackson (2005) that posed the question: What counts as learning and legitimate research methodologies in the project? This paper became a key artefact representing the expression of diversity, distinctions and, for some, frustrations within the network, and eloquently articulated differences that needed to be reconciled. However, although thereafter this paper could never be wholly ignored, its sentiment was never really accommodated or addressed within the network. Perhaps, by then it was too late, in both the chartered direction of the general project and the delineations that had been created within the project, among methodological and disciplinary grounds. In all, the work of learning within WALL was undertaken by a group of individuals with distinct ways of viewing and approaching their work as researchers, policy makers, advocates and managers. Not surprisingly, then, the processes and outcomes of the project did not unfold as an enquiry premised on mixed methods whose contributions would readily coalesce into and be reconciled as a set of coherent and verified outcomes. Likely, the researchers’ learning was equally diverse. Of course, the former outcome is what the sponsors were seeking. However, from the outset and in the negotiations surrounding the sponsors’ decisions to fund the project was an explicit statement that WALL was not to be ‘just another survey’.1 Certainly, the work, learning and outcomes generated fulfilled this request: the project realized far more than a survey and survey results. However, a survey was a central artefact in this project, and the focus of much of the work and learning that went on around and despite it. Indeed, the survey served as a centrepiece not only in terms of its apparent resourcing, but also around which the engagements, contestations and methodological differentiations (i.e. the work and learning) unfolded within the project. For instance, when preparing chapters for this publication, the relevance of the contributions and feedback to contributors was often premised on how what was proposed in the contributions related to the survey data and results. Contributors were questioned as to whether and in what ways the

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findings they were reporting or claiming were consistent with or could be verified through survey results. However, it is now timely to move closer to some of the projects and their reporting so as to understand how the work and learning arose through this project. Hence, a brief commentary on three of the projects is now provided by an international adviser, who, as noted, has his own perspective and position but who, as also noted, was engaged with the network in the process of it being funded and during its enactment across its five-year life. This task is undertaken through a consideration of just three contributions to this book. These are the contributions of two quite distinct chapters: one by Butterwick and Jubas (Chapter 6) on gendered work, participation and learning in the information technology industry, and another by Church, Frazee and Panitch (Chapter 7), who inquired into the standing, engagement and learning of workers with disability in corporations. In addition, the contribution that outlines the findings of the survey about the changing nature of work on lifelong learning and as summarized in this volume through Chapter 2 is also discussed.

Three distinct approaches to work and learning The chapter on women working in information technology (IT) roles makes the strong case for the limits of simple binaries (i.e. true–false, yes–no) in learning and work. Instead, Butterwick and Jubas (Chapter 6) highlight relational and complex bases for understanding these women’s working and learning. IT work is not seemingly inherently masculine, when compared to mining, forestry or fishing, for instance, where humans confront and engage with the brute world of nature, which is perhaps of the kind to be seen as being pre-eminently masculine work (Somerville and Abrahamsson 2003). Yet, the dominance of and exercise of forms of masculinity are reported as being pervasive in IT work, albeit in different ways across this form of work. In particular, males are held to have colonized those forms of work that attract high sectoral esteem (e.g. programming), and masculine behaviours have become norms in those areas of work. This behaviour is held to variously permit women to engage, perhaps conditionally, and provides some spaces for them to excel and progress, albeit precariously, yet also places them in situations where they may be confronted by overtly inappropriate and potentially demeaning masculine behaviour. However, many of these women reported being able to negotiate work roles that they both enjoy and with which they are sympathetic. Ironically, some of this negotiation is premised upon gendered capacities – that is, women’s attributes to communicate, collaborate and to supervise effectively are seen as assets in a sector where male capacities are not seen as extending to these kinds of roles. It remains unclear whether this claim is just the workingthrough of generalizations about gender, and is unhelpful in positioning women in particular ways. Yet, this positioning raises questions about the degree to which societal sentiments associated with gender are merely self-serving norms and provide effort-saving practices, such as promoting changes (i.e. learning) in others.

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Such sentiments might well provide shorthand means of organizing work and opportunities to participate and learn in ways that provide platforms for realizing ontological security (Giddens 1991) in turbulent work situations and times, as sociologists such as Beck (1992) and Bauman (1998) claim constitutes contemporary working life. It should not pass without mention that it is women researchers who largely engaged in case studies of the disadvantaged, in the WALL network, thereby extending these sentiments into the work in the general project. Yet, at the heart of organizing and participating in such work is the need for negotiating relations with the social world, as Butterwick and Jubas assert. Clearly, it is not sufficient merely to calculate the degree of opportunities and costs as an objective fact. It is also necessary to explain what this participation means to individual males or females engaged in these forms of work. For instance, there are possibly many males working in the sector who are affronted, confronted and marginalized by overt male behaviour as a dominant or pervasive workplace practice. For instance, three male information technology workers, employed in a workplace where banter, overt humour and engagement in social events outside the workplace were held to be the premises for participation, were interviewed about their work life (Billett, Smith and Barker 2005). One of these three workers reported only grudgingly engaging in this male-initiated behaviour, and another simply refused to participate in much of that behaviour. Yet, the third informant was keen to initiate and sustain this behaviour. Consequently, had informants in the IT study included males working in information technology roles, then it might well have been found that some of them, too, resented, avoided and resisted masculine behaviours, and engaged in similar negotiations, while working and learning. Although acknowledging and respecting that this chapter specifically sought to understand work and workplace relationships from the perspective of women workers, the considerations of the relational bases of their participation and preferences may well be shared across both genders. There is, of course, a lesson to be drawn here from quantitative inquiry: to determine whether a particular effect is limited to a particular category of informants. Indeed, there are ways of trying to account for whether particular sets of experiences cross different cohorts or are limited to one. Yet in all of this, importantly, the kinds of nuances and considerations that Butterwick and Jubas’s chapter in this volume illuminates are unlikely to arise through mass surveys and quantitative designs. Hence, the need for their findings to shape the reporting of the survey results because they augment the survey data. The starting point to understand the kinds of issues that can be addressed in surveys and the ways in which quantitative design can assist in explaining complex human processes, such as the relational nature of experiencing and acting (i.e. knowing, behaviour, learning and changing), has to be within methodologies and procedures that can access such data – that is, for these kinds of inquiries quantitative procedures such as surveys might be best served by building upon and appraising qualitative procedures. Not knowing the source of data and what motivates differences leads to a need to impute (i.e. construe) conclusions rather than being able to be more directly informed by them. Again, to draw upon a recent example

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from my own work, the findings from a series of over 50 interviews with older workers, which sought to understand how best to maintain their working capacities, indicate that these informants report little or nothing in the way of age-based workplace bias in relation to opportunities for advancement, development or security of employment (Billett et al. 2009). This finding contradicts the majority of literature on older workers that has arisen through the results from surveys, which finds that older workers are downtrodden, do not feel valued, and are denied opportunities for training and advancement, and so on. Yet, this is not what these older workers report through extended interviews. Instead, and in different ways, they report being as competent and valued as other workers, often more so. So, what should we make of these apparently contradictory accounts? True, the particular cohort of older workers interviewed tended to strongly represent those employed in skilled work, paraprofessional and professional roles, yet even those workers in occupations of lower status reported similar experiences. So, is this difference a methodological issue of sampling and particular kinds of procedures (i.e. interviews versus surveys)? Certainly, apart from their differences per se, these findings suggest that those researching work and learning need to reconcile not only the processes by which we attempt to explain phenomena such as the work and learning of individuals, but also the veracity and particularities of the conclusions (i.e. findings or results) we might claim. That is, beyond our agendas, disciplinary affinities, imperatives and methods, there may be significant consequences for those about whom our work as researchers refers. For instance, Livingstone and Scholtz claim in Chapter 2 that many Canadian workers are overqualified for their current levels of employment. However, there is a need for further elaboration and qualification about the kinds of purposes that individuals are pursuing education to achieve, and under what circumstances. Otherwise, there is a risk that such a claim might well be taken up and used to argue for a reduction in the national education budget, and particularly for continuing education and training provisions, because this national survey finds that workers are overeducated for their current work roles. Those arguing for a market-based approach would probably suggest that such an approach is required to counter the unproductive use of state resources in overeducating individuals for jobs that have lower-level requirements. So, such claims are potentially perilous and need to be validated through identifying what has led to this situation in a competitive labour market, and its implications and consequences for individuals. That is, we need to understand the sources of this over-qualification and its impacts through a consideration of how this apparent over-education has arisen for individuals. The consequences of such claims may well be most salient to what is provided for those who are disadvantaged in some way. Certainly, the market seems ill-equipped to respond to those who are unable to compete on equal terms, except in exercising disadvantage. The work and learning described in the Church et al. chapter (Chapter 7) echoes their struggle with their corporate partner, as suggested earlier. The kinds of engagements with the corporation are also rehearsed in the relationships with the

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larger WALL network. They report in their chapter in this volume and elsewhere (Church and Luciana 2004; Church, Bascia and Shragge 2008) that their project of explaining the social relations that shape the learning of workers with disabilities pursued an interpretive approach to inquiry that was in many ways antithetical to the survey work that stands as the centrepiece of the WALL network. So, for these researcher/worker/learners, their work both within the corporation and the project comprised the same kinds of struggles for legitimacy, space and possibility of doing the very kinds of work that they had been invited into both ‘projects’ to accomplish. Indeed, from these authors’ perspectives, the claim that ‘doing research with a corporate partner fundamentally shaped the possibilities for inquiry and expression’, might equally be applied to their engagement within the WALL network. Placed on the periphery of both projects, these researchers were positioned to work and learn through negotiating in two distinct environments: a corporation and a national research project. This negotiation appears to have progressed in distinct ways across these projects. Discrete and careful positioning appears to be favoured within the corporation (Church and Luciana 2004) and a more overt form of resistance and engagement in the project was evident (see Chapter 7). That negotiation between the researchers and the WALL network is ongoing, as is evident in their chapter in these proceedings, directly questioning the premises under which the WALL survey has proceeded and the kinds of assumptions about, premises for and bases on which its conclusions have been fashioned. So it comes as no surprise that much of the discussion that was rehearsed over the duration of the project is now manifested in Church et al.’s chapter. As with the study of women IT workers, it seems essential to capture the kinds and character of the work and learning of these disabled workers, lest they are swamped in the data that represent other workers and learners, when explanations of their learning and working and needs might be quite distinct. Like the women IT workers, negotiating places, space and opportunities is a core element of these workers. Much of this negotiation is individual because the kind, nature and consequences of disability for their work and learning are person- and situation-dependent. In all, it is likely that some of the key learning from the researchers in the disability project has been about the necessity of struggle to be represented in mainstream work, learning and research activities, because, even at best, the dice is loaded against both the researchers and their subjects. Certainly, this is Church et al.’s opening claim. This represents a wearisome scenario of struggling for legitimacy, space and voice. Some of that scenario is evident in this chapter. As noted, the survey data, its results and its reporting stand as the centrepiece of the network, as captured and presented in Chapter 2. The survey provides a data set that says much about the work and learning of Canadian citizens at the time the data were gathered. As Livingstone and Scholtz note in Chapter 2, few, if any, other countries now have such a rich data set of the work and learning experiences and intentions of their adult populations. This achievement and outcome is remarkable and most noteworthy. Many countries focus their research efforts on

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children’s learning, and often appear to ignore and misunderstand the importance of ongoing learning across life beyond schooling. So, in these terms, the survey, its findings and reporting of adults’ learning and learning across the life course, and through experiences in work, home and community-related activities as well as through paid employment, can helpfully inform policy and practice. Moreover, building upon the earlier surveys, there is a substantive basis to inform policy and practice in Canada and elsewhere. Certainly, it would be a great waste if these data and results are not actively engaged in processes that inform practice in Canada and elsewhere, as set out in Chapter 2. Nor should the survey data and the results of their analyses be lightly dismissed by researchers such as myself who have a primary interest in individuals’ accounts and conceptions of work and learning, even while acknowledging the pervasive influence of situational and cultural influences on work and learning. The kinds of patterns of responses across communities and nations provided by the survey should inform a range of current debates occurring in and beyond Canada. These include debates about lifelong learning, maintaining and developing individuals’ occupational and other capacities within and across working life, and how educational provisions might best be arrayed. As with other forms of research, the skilfulness required to generate a large multi-part survey, its administration and analysis are significant and the research is demanding. The learning associated with that work in reflecting upon and revising approaches used in earlier surveys is likely to have been significant. As with other researchers, the difficulties in reconciling disciplinary and methodological distinctions will have been learnt throughout this general project. Also, soberly, it is unlikely that studies only emphasizing qualitative accounts would ever be sponsored by governments in the way that the WALL network was funded. However, in doing so and in emphasizing the need to go beyond a survey, there were clear expectations that the case study research would form central parts of the research programme, which has been the case in terms of the work being undertaken and the kinds of outcome realized.

Learning and researchers’ work So how far along did we progress with advancing our understandings of work and learning through the WALL network? From my perspective, in some ways little has changed in and around the central premises of the survey at the heart of the project and the conclusions arising from it. At an initial meeting with network leader, Livingstone, in 2001, I argued against using the term ‘informal’ as an explanatory principle for understanding learning in circumstances other than participation in educational institutions based on what has been advanced elsewhere (Billett 2002). Later, I also argued against delineating the qualities of the learning process on the basis of an analysis of settings. However, apart from an acknowledgement of disagreement about such terms, these contributions had little impact upon the survey design, or its reporting as evidenced in Chapter 2. Yet, although this may be the case, there have been significant benefits in terms of work and learning for myself

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and others from participation in this project, albeit sometimes unintended. The intensity of the engagement in the network at times, and with the diversity of views that it represented, has afforded a powerful set of bases to engage with and reflect upon work and lifelong learning, not least how these conceptions pertain to the work and ongoing learning of researchers. Working in the WALL network has had a profound legacy for me as a researcher interested in adult learning and in and for work. Participation in this project and a book publication that arose from the earlier NALL network (Church et al. 2008) caused me to engage with a range of perspectives of and kinds of adult learners outside of my existing experience or research ambit. That engagement has included considerations of the needs of migrant workers, sex workers, retirees, workers with disabilities, workers who are psychiatric survivors and an array of occupations within these projects, and in a different nation than my own. This difference alone has alerted me to focus more on the cultural and national factors that shape individuals’ work and learning. In a very real way, participation in the project engaged me in the messy and indeterminate process when a range of different imperatives, approaches and interests coalesce around a project that is important to many of those engaging in it, including advocacy for particular interests, disciplines, methodologies and sense of space. In some ways, this engagement assisted significantly in the development of explanatory concepts that I have been seeking to explain adults’ learning through and for work, as well as that outside of it – that is, the broader project of learning as an ongoing process throughout our everyday thinking and acting and across and throughout our lives. The particular conceptual negotiations I have been undertaking during the period of time that constitutes the life of the WALL network are to understand more importantly the significance of the relationship between the personal and social – a socio-personal conception of learning (Billett 2006a). The personal here is seen as arising through the individual and potentially idiosyncratic set of negotiations between personal and social that arises across our personal histories, and it is the ongoing negotiation that shapes our learning and then contributes to how we subsequently engage with the social and brute world we encounter (i.e. how we construe and construct what we know). Consequently, these conceptual negotiations fit tightly within the ambit of the WALL network, because these personal histories comprise social factors, albeit distinctly individual and possibly idiosyncratic. Hence, accounting for the personal more strongly in theories of learning has become a central guiding principle in my work. This direction is perhaps captured well in the following quote from the presentation I made at the annual meeting in 2006: . . . focussing on the individual offers the potential to humanise and understand social relations more fully and identify the impact of social structures upon individuals (Hodkinson & Bloomer, 2002), and understanding ontological security (Giddens 1991) in insecure (Bauman 1998) and anxious times (Beck, 1992). It can also assist understanding and illuminate the enactment of and consequences for individuals of their participation in social practices

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(Fenwick, 2002), elaborating in greater detail human need and identity: what it means to be marginalised as a minority (Shragge et al. 2004), or categorised in some way, for instance, as disabled (Church et al. 2004). Thus, individual subjectivities are central to understanding the dynamics of social relations (O’Doherty & Willmott, 2001). It is also about legitimating the role for individuals in the mediation of cognition, learning and remaking of culture. (Billett 2006b) So, although I am not at all confident that the distinct perspectives of the participants within the WALL network have been reconciled in productive ways as intended by the request for the general project to be more than another survey, there is probably a greater understanding across the two perspectives because of the engagements across the life of the project. However, this understanding more likely comprises a greater level of inter-subjectivity or shared understanding than affection for other orientations and methods. Indeed, it is unrealistic to suggest that the kinds of collaborations that comprised this network would lead to wholesale reconciliations because the general project set up a space more likely to lead to contestation than reconciliation. Indeed, some of the key outcomes for our work and learning seem to have arisen from these very perturbations.

Notes 1 At the teleconference with the funding body, the statement was made that the project should not be another of network leader Livingstone’s surveys.

References Bauman, Z. (1998) Work, Consumerism and the New Poor, Buckingham: Open University Press. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. Billett, S. (2002) ‘Critiquing Workplace Learning Discourses: Participation and Continuity at Work’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(1): 56–67. Billett, S. (2006a) ‘Relational Interdependence Between Social and Individual Agency in Work and Working Life’, Mind, Culture and Activity, 13(1): 53–69. Billett, S. (2006b) ‘Positioning Learning within WALL’, paper presented at the WALL Network Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, June. Billett, S., Smith, R. and Barker, M. (2005) ‘Understanding Work, Learning and the Remaking of Cultural Practices’, Studies in Continuing Education, 27(3): 219–237. Billett, S., Dymock, D., Johnson, G. and Martin, G. (2009) ‘Retaining and Sustaining the Competence of Older Workers: An Australian Perspective’, paper presented at Centre for Lifelong Learning Research conference, Stirling University, Scotland, 24–26 June. Church, K. and Luciana, T. (2004) ‘Dancing Lessons: A Choreography of Disability in Corporate Culture’, paper presented at the WALL Annual Meeting, Toronto. Church, K., Bascia, N. and Shragge, E. (eds) (2008) Out of Bounds: Participatory Practices for Learning through Community, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Academic Publication.

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Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Jackson, N. (2005) ‘“What Counts as Learning”: A Case Study Perspective’, discussion paper for WALL Network Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, June. Somerville, M. and Abrahamsson, L. (2003) ‘Trainers and Learners Constructing a Community of Practice: Masculine Work Cultures and Learning Safety in the Mining Industry’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 35(1): 19–34.

Chapter 13

Reflections on the WALL research network and future studies of work and learning D.W. Livingstone

Steps taken This final chapter includes brief reflections on the significance of the WALL network research by the network leader. In addition to the preceding reflections by Bernd Overwien and Stephen Billett, some of the members of the international advisory committee have also published other relevant studies; for example, Kjell Rubenson has discussed the national surveys in relation to other recent surveys of adult learning (e.g. Rubenson, Desjardins and Yoon 2007). It should be noted that, in addition to the materials that continue to be available on the NALL (www.nall.ca) and WALL (www.wallnetwork.ca) websites, several other books have been published. These include overviews of the NALL survey (Livingstone 2002) and case studies (Church, Bascia and Shragge 2008), preliminary summaries of the WALL research in general (Livingstone, Mirchandani and Sawchuk 2008), of the WALL survey (Livingstone 2005), various WALL case studies (e.g. Clark et al. 2007; Choudry et al. 2009; Livingstone 2009; Sawchuk and Taylor 2009; Eichler et al. forthcoming), as well as the most extensive recent annotated bibliography on work and learning (Livingstone et al. 2008). Information on other forthcoming books may be found on the WALL website. For further ongoing CSEW research in this field, readers can consult the centre website www.learningwork.ca. The NALL and WALL survey findings summarized at the end of Chapter 2 indicate a widening incidence of formal schooling and further adult education, as well as nearly universal engagement in intentional informal learning. The case studies illustrate people’s dynamic engagement in different forms of learning in all spheres of paid and unpaid work. This engagement includes extensive informal learning in paid work settings as we saw, for example, in the chapters on women IT workers (Chapter 6) and disabled bank workers (Chapter 7). Learning experiences in the home and community, explored carefully for the first time in the chapters on household work and volunteer work (Chapters 3 and 4, respectively), set the stage for and continue to support productive capacities in the paid workplace. These studies begin to reveal the complex, multi-dimensional character of adult learning. The most basic finding is that, in paid workplaces as well as in communities and homes, most people are actively engaged in multiple learning efforts to deal as

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effectively as they can with these turbulent times. The ‘learning society’ has arrived in terms of the continuing learning efforts of most people. The WALL data also documents extensive learning activities aided by growing public access to diverse sources of information, most notably through free or low cost electronic information networks that signal the full emergence of a ‘computer era’. In contrast, the increasing concentration of private ownership and control of mass media and other business enterprises, the growing bureaucratization of government organizations, the increasing commercialization of information systems such as the internet, and the growth of intellectual property laws and ‘knowledge management’ systems in paid workplaces all serve to restrict access to information. The contradiction between democratic public access to information and knowledge versus restricted private control of the production of information and knowledge as commodities to be sold for profit shapes the debate between broader social and narrower vocationalist versions of lifelong learning in all advanced market societies. There is some evidence from the 1998 and 2004 national surveys that while formal educational attainments continued to increase, participation rates in selfreported intentional informal learning may have declined somewhat. These findings hint at a substitution effect of formal education for informal learning. There has been some formalization of informal learning through such mechanisms as prior learning assessment. Such tendencies are consistent with continuing commodification of learning in advanced market societies and, ironically, with a narrowing recognition of the scope of adult learning. However, as Chapter 2 documents, even if the extensive and intensive informal learning efforts of working people are ignored, formal measures of the match between formal educational attainment and educational requirements for jobs find increasing proportions of overqualified, growing numbers of overeducated or underemployed. A ‘knowledge-base economy’ is far from fully realized when growing numbers cannot use their qualifications in meaningful jobs. The extensive and in some ways unprecedented formal and informal learning efforts found by the WALL network research contradict most current lifelong learning policies which presume that the emergence of a knowledge-based economy, driven by forces of globalization and technological change, is outpacing the learning activities of current labour forces. Appeals for greater efforts at lifelong learning are now offered as a major economic strategy by governments around the world. Literacy panics are raised by well-intentioned education critics bemoaning the declining skills of youths; but, while skill sets change over time and the small numbers with limited literacy skills may be more marginalized from informationbased jobs, the much larger problem is the lack of jobs for qualified people. The dominant policy focus is on workers’ flexibility and responsiveness to competitive markets, with the implication that workers should lower their expectations regarding economic return and employment stability while studying harder. In particular, neoliberal advocates of the merits of free markets continue to argue for greater personal investment in educational and training programmes as the optimal

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solution to economic growth problems, in spite of mounting evidence of the fragmented results of such programmes (e.g. Lafer 2002). More generally, the credibility of those persistently advocating more instrumental formal education and training as economic salvation is wearing thin in the wake of mounting underemployment of more and more highly educated labour forces. The dominant tendency in reality is the reverse: the formal educational attainments and informal learning efforts of the available labour force are outpacing job requirements. The evidence presented in both the survey and case studies in this book is ample testimony to these extensive and intensive learning efforts of working people. We have a learning society but not yet a knowledge-based economy. The WALL findings suggest a need to reverse the dominant policy optic preoccupation with promoting ever greater personal investment in learning to resolve economic problems. It is now advisable to place less focus on promoting workers’ learning per se and more on the reform of work to more effectively utilize workers’ increasingly evident talents (see Livingstone 2004, 2009). The profuse rhetoric about the ‘learning society’ and a ‘knowledge-based economy’ that pervades public sphere discussion could offer some ingredients for a useful way forward. Many durable historical societies have been influenced by dominant ideologies and normative images of the ‘good society’ and ‘good citizen’, while the prevalence of cynical and negative imagery has often been associated with the decline of earlier civilizations (Polak 1973). Positive transformative social images of a fully developed learning society in which all citizens have opportunities to combine learning with their everyday lives and more democratized work in creating knowledge-based societies now contend with narrow vocationalist images of fully knowledge-based economies that incessantly require greater learning efforts from a population deemed deficient in this respect (see Wain 2004). These normative images are expressions of the fundamental contradiction between democratic public access to knowledge for sustainability and restricted private control of the production of knowledge as a commodity in advanced market societies. If the credibility of the discourse of education as economic salvation is wearing thin, then it is increasingly evident that we now have a lifelong learning culture in the labour force that is insufficiently recognized in the design of most paid workplaces, and inequitably rewarded in virtually all of them. Educational reforms should always be encouraged for human enrichment. But only economic reforms that address basic dimensions of work – including the redistribution of paid work time to reduce current polarization and the democratization of paid work to give more workers’ greater opportunities to apply their extensive acquired knowledge – can enhance substantially the quality of employment and its outcomes. Without such major paid work reforms, the underemployment of most working people and their wasted capacities to flourish in more democratic workplaces may continue to grow (see Livingstone 2004; Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004).

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Steps ahead The studies completed by the WALL research network provide original empirical evidence to estimate the range of learning and work relations in advanced market societies, and provide benchmarks or leads for further research. Similar insights and patterns found in other studies based on more limited conceptions of learning and work have been referenced in the preceding chapters. Further grounded investigations of learning and work from standpoints of learners themselves – beyond narrow imposed categories of schooling and paid job requirements and along the lines of WALL and some other recent research initiatives (e.g. Felstead et al. 2004) – are surely needed to aid understanding of learning strategies for coping with and/or transforming work environments in the twenty-first century. Such research should explore the everyday experiences of workers/learners to offer deeper, more inclusive understanding of work and learning relationships in specific contexts, notably the complex interrelations of power, work and learning. There should be continuing research including both more intensive case studies and related largescale surveys. Such studies can serve as an antidote to universalizing analyses and policy responses that ignore social differences in workplace forms and learning practices. Throughout the life of the NALL and WALL research networks, there has been debate about the relative merits and wisdom of trying to combine survey and case study methods of inquiry. If we were able to begin again, we would probably try to find more concerted ways to engage those predisposed to each of these approaches to engage with each other’s methods as well as their evidence. We did agree in principle at the outset to combine these approaches, had regular dialogues about related issues from the design stage onwards, exchanged reports of findings and tried to summarize each other’s findings in network meetings. But the various project leaders were all mature academics with well-established methodological dispositions, and the incentives to problematize their established ways of researching were limited. Much of the originality of the network contributions emerged from the preparedness of all to engage with an expansive framework of work and learning in conducting their empirical studies. Some, such as the disabled workers’ project team, have used their empirical research to interrogate the initial conceptual framework and suggest thoughtful revisions. Such reflections may be promising for future research that builds on these exploratory case studies to conduct more in-depth interpretive inquiries and eventually to inform the design of further survey research in the field of work and learning, as Nancy Jackson (2005) has suggested. But for the moment we are left with some suggestive statistics and stories. Take one example. The statistics on the matching between formal education attainments and job requirements in the NALL and WALL surveys, as reported in Chapter 2, and a rapidly growing number of other surveys (see Livingstone 2009 for recent review) find a definite trend towards greater underemployment. The WALL case studies and other recent case studies (see Livingstone 2009 for other

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examples) graphically describe how, regardless of the formal match or mismatch of their educational attainments and job requirements, most workers engage in continual informal learning activities to cope with and try to modify their job conditions. If we rely purely on case studies, we might be able to conclude that better communications with managers might resolve the lack of recognition and reward of many non-managerial employees’ talents. But the extent of underemployment measured by the survey research indicates that this is a systemic problem needing major reorganization of paid workplaces. Considering the case studies in the context of the survey findings can convey both the depth of many workers’ frustrations and the extent of waste of their talents and desire for organizational change. As, Ethan, a formally under-employed autoworker puts it (Livingstone and Pankhurst 2009: 309): Just involve the people . . . This guy might run this machine every day for years. He will come up with ideas that will make his job easier for him and easier for [management] . . . Give people some sort of a sense of importance . . . rather than being treated like cattle. Similarly, the disabled workers’ case study reveals an array of innovative practices used by employed workers to cope with various conditions in learning to perform their jobs well. But when these accounts are combined with surveys that estimate the exclusion of the majority of disabled people from any meaningful paid employment, realization of the depth of the waste of people so labelled in advanced market societies is unavoidable. As noted in Chapter 1, ensuring both representative selection and valid interpretation in the same study remains extremely difficult. But the quest to combine statistical surveys that address the extent of the human conditions such as systemic discrimination in work and learning practices with case studies that tell compelling human stories will continue. Hopefully, the case studies, survey findings and reflections reported here offer some resource materials for further combined studies in this field that aspire to place the case study horse before the survey cart while retaining some linkage to basic survey findings. However successful future studies are in combining case study and survey research methods, they are unlikely to grasp the full extent of learning in work in all its dynamic complexity. If nothing else, the current research should suggest the vast scope of these processes. But even within these limits, the research points to a wider extent and deeper ingenuity of workers’ learning than most prior studies. Also within these limits, the findings underline the imperative of designing, demonstrating and assessing alternative models and democratic reforms of work to allow more effective expression of the wasted potential of many workers and fuller human development generally. The current mindset to reduce learning and work to formal education and paid employment is so pervasive that virtually everyone lapses into it in everyday discourse. At some level, most would concede that unpaid household work and

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volunteer work are important and that informal learning is widespread. But the prevalent tendency remains to dismiss them as done naturally by everybody or, in the case of volunteer work, done only by those who really want to do them. Household work is widely supposed to be so simple that anyone can do it. In fact, as Chapter 3 illustrates, to do it well requires learning some very complex activities that many of us may be under-qualified to perform because of poor or limited training. Household work should be validated in its own right, as well as appreciated as an essential source of lifelong learning for everyday life, citizenship, health and some of the subtlest forms of understanding needed for sustainability in advanced technological society. Learning in household work and volunteer work also appears to have lateral benefits for paid work performance, and vice versa (see especially Chapters 3 and 4). Those who attend to the studies of household work and volunteer work in this book should begin to appreciate both the real magnitude of these labours and the complexity and enduring value of some of the related informal learning. Finally, this book offers a foundation for further expansive inquiries into relations of paid and unpaid work with adult learning in advanced market societies. Further comparable projects now have been begun by researchers in several countries and are planned by CSEW researchers. The WALL Resource Base offers an extensive recent annotated bibliography on expansive work and learning (Livingstone et al. 2008) for other interested researchers. Different current theoretical approaches to work and learning (see Sawchuk 2009 for an overview) may focus on explaining distinctive aspects of these relations, and lead to substantial revision and development of an expansive conceptual framework. Interpretive case study and statistical survey methods of inquiry may continue to have halting and difficult dialogues. More philosophical approaches to lifelong learning may offer even more inclusive paradigms (e.g. Jarvis 2009). The lineages from those such as Allen Tough (1971) and Alan Thomas (1991), who pioneered empirical studies of expansive adult learning in our times may become obscured. But the vast hidden knowledge that people attain through their working lives must be more fully recognized, nurtured and allowed fuller expression in meaningful decent work in order to increase the chance of a sustainable future for all human societies. Other blueprints may be offered but reconstruction of the field of work and learning studies is under way.

References Choudry, A., Hanley, J., Jordan, S., Shragge, E. and Stiegman, M. (2009) Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants, Toronto: Fernwood Publishing. Church, K., Bascia, N. and Shragge, E. (2008) Learning through Community: Exploring Participatory Practices, Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer. Clark, R., Antonelli, F., Lacavera, D., Livingstone, D.W., Pollock, K., Smaller, H., Strachan, J. and Tarc, P. (2007) Beyond PD Days: Teachers’ Work and Learning in Canada, Toronto: Ontario Teachers’ Federation.

240 D.W. Livingstone Eichler, M., Albanese, P., Ferguson, S., Hyndman, N., Liu, L.W. and Matthews, A. (forthcoming) More Than it Seems: Household Work and Lifelong Learning, Toronto: Women’s Press. Felstead, A., Fuller, A., Unwin, L., Ashton, D., Butler, P., Lee, T. and Walters, S. (2004) ‘Exposing Learning at Work: Results from a Recent Survey’, paper presented to the Work, Employment and Society Conference, UMIST, 1–3 September. Jackson, N. (2005) ‘What Counts as Learning? A Case Study Perspective’, discussion paper for WALL Network Annual Meeting, June, Toronto, ON: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Online: available at www/wallnetwork.ca (accessed 29 September 2009). Jarvis, P. (2009) Learning to be a Person in Society, London: Routledge. Lafer, G. (2002) The Job Training Charade, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2002) Working and Learning in the Information Age: A Profile of Canadians, Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks. (CPRN Discussion Paper no. W/16). Livingstone, D.W. (2004) The Education–Jobs Gap: Underemployment or Economic Democracy (2nd edn), Toronto: Garamond Press. Livingstone, D.W. (2005) Exploring Adult Learning and Work in Advanced Capitalist Society, PASCAL International Observatory, PASCAL Hot Topic. Online: available at www.obs-pascal.com/hottopic.php (accessed 30 September 2009). Livingstone, D.W. (ed.) (2009) Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Livingstone, D.W. and Pankhurst, K.V. (2009) ‘Education and Jobs: The Way Ahead’, in Livingstone (ed.) Education and Jobs: Exploring the Gaps, Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 309–326. Livingstone, D.W. and Sawchuk, P. (2004) Hidden Knowledge: Organized Labour in the Information Age, Toronto, ON: Garamond Press/Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield. Livingstone, D.W., Mirchandani, K. and Sawchuk, P. (eds) (2008) The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Livingstone, D.W., Raykov, M., Pollock, K., Antonelli, F., Scholtz, A. and Bird, A. (2008) Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base (WALLRB): Materials for Teaching, Research and Policymaking (2nd edn), Toronto, ON: Centre for the Study of Education and Work, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Online: available at http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/research/wall/resources/WALLRB.htm (accessed 30 September 2009). Polak, F. (1973) The Image of the Future, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Rubenson, K., Desjardins, R. and Yoon, E.-S. (2007) Adult Learning in Canada: A Comparative Perspective, Ottawa: Statistics Canada. Sawchuk, P. (2009) ‘Researching Workplace Learning – An Overview and Critique’, in M. Malloch, L. Cairns, K. Evans and B. O’Connor (eds) The International Handbook of Workplace Learning, London: Sage. Sawchuk, P. and Taylor, A. (eds) (2009) Challenging Transitions in Learning and Work: Reflections on Policy and Practice, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishing. Thomas, A. (1991) Beyond Education: A New Perspective on Society’s Management of Learning, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Tough, A. (1971) The Adult’s Learning Projects, Toronto: OISE Press. Wain, K. (2004) The Learning Society in a Postmodern World, New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Index

Italic page numbers denote references to figures/tables. ableism 74 academic/vocational division 182, 184 accidental learning 90–91 Adler, P. 107, 115n12 adult care 63; see also eldercare Adult Education and Training Surveys (AETS) 17, 22–23, 37–38 adult learning and education (ALE) 194–196, 199–211, 217, 239; see also further or continuing adult education; post-secondary education advocacy 88–89 AETS see Adult Education and Training Surveys age 43, 45; see also older people ALE see adult learning and education American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 102 Antikainen, A. 196 Antonelli, Fabrizio 9–10, 155–172 apprenticeships 177–178, 179–181, 183–184, 186, 187, 189n6, 217; see also vocational education and training autonomy 156–157, 166–167, 170n5 Baines, D. 108 Baron, S. 150 Bauman, Z. 227 Beck, U. 227 Bélanger, Paul 10–11, 167, 193–213 Besson, D. 113 Bickford, S. 134 Billett, Stephen 11, 119–120, 134, 222–233 biographical approach 196 Biron, Elaine 10–11, 193–213

Braverman, H. 102, 107, 110–111, 115–116n20 bricolage 122 British National Qualification Framework 220 Brown, P. 182, 186–187 Butterwick, Shauna 9, 119–136, 223, 226–227 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP) 26–27, 82–83 capitalism: features of market economies 4–5; Taylorism 102, 103–104, 108, 113–114 carework 63; paid 71–72; unpaid 70–71; see also childcare Carey, M. 108 case study methods 5–6, 7, 17, 223, 237, 238 childcare 23, 25, 25, 27, 48, 63 Chinese immigrants 68–70 Church, Kathryn 9, 137–154, 228–229 Cloutier, Simon 10–11, 193–213 Cnaan, R.A. 81, 93 cognitive development 4 collaborative learning 162–163, 167 communication: disabled employees 143; skills 30, 38, 87–88, 128 community work 2, 23; disabled employees 149, 150; skills 70–71; see also volunteer work competition 4, 102, 186–187 computer science 122–123 computers 5, 235; age and participation 45, 46; disabled employees 9; gender differences in learning 122; increase in

242 Index computers (cont.): use 3, 3, 49; job-related informal learning 38; Taylorized public service work 111, 112, 115n19; teachers 160; underutilization of skills 40, 40; see also information technology construction trades 179–180, 183–184 constructivism 120 cooking 68–69 corporate organizations 137–154 critical pedagogy 182 Cross, K.P. 194 Crump, B.J. 124 CSGVP see Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating cultural capital 194–195, 196 cultural diversity 138 curriculum 182–183 deskilling: apprenticeships 179, 180; immigrants 207–208; Taylorism 9, 101, 109, 110–111, 113 Dewey, John 181 Diamond, Timothy 151n9 Dippo, D. 182 disability 9, 137–154, 229, 238; ableism 74; cultural diversity model 138; disclosure 143–144; flexible work arrangements 146; household work 67–68; informal learning 39, 144; information technology 144–145, 149–150; manager evaluations 146; mentors 145; personal assistance 148–149; research methodology 141–142; self-care 63, 67, 68, 148; social model 138; workplace accommodations 146 disciplinary distinctions 222–224, 225, 228, 230 discrimination: apprenticeships 178; disabled people 139; gender 9, 132 Doray, Pierre 10–11, 193–213 downsizing 33, 34 Drucker, Peter 106 Duguid, Fiona 8, 79–98 Durand, J.-P. 111 economic classes 7, 34–35, 35, 48; apprenticeship students 184; credential matching 42–44, 42, 43, 50; educational attainment 35–36, 36, 49; employer-sponsored education 36–37,

37, 49; informal learning 37, 39; see also social reproduction educational attainment 7, 18, 49, 50; apprenticeship students 184; economic classes 35–36, 36, 49; Germany 218; immigrants 198, 206, 206, 209–210; increase in 235; informal learning 22–23, 22, 38–39; job requirements 40–41; occupational transitions 198, 200, 200, 210; parental education 176–177, 178; participation in further/adult education 19, 19, 195, 200, 201, 204, 208–210; retirement 198, 204; underutilization of credentials 42–44, 49–50, 237–238; see also formal learning; university education Eichler, Margaret 8, 59–78 eldercare 23, 25–26, 26, 48 Elsdon, K.T. 83 emotion work 62, 68, 71 employability 175, 181–185, 186 episodic volunteers 82 Eraut, M. 165 ethnic minorities: Aboriginal youth education 177; apprenticeships 179–180; household work 60; informal learning 39; underutilization of credentials 44, 50, 178; see also immigrants European Qualification Framework 220 experiential learning 92 FEBI see Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement in Education feminism 120, 138, 140 First Nations 177, 187 Fisher, A. 122, 123 flexible work arrangements 146 Foley, G. 84 formal learning 1, 2, 238; immigrants 206–207, 206, 210; increase in 235, 236; NALL/WALL surveys 18, 48–49; occupational transitions 200, 200, 201, 209, 210; participation in further/adult education 19, 195, 199, 200; retirement 202–205, 203, 209, 210; survey limitations 15–16; teachers 155, 157, 161–162, 164, 169; volunteer work 91; women in IT work 121; see also educational attainment Framework for Enhancing Business Involvement in Education (FEBI) 183

Index Frazee, Catherine 137–154 Freire, Paolo 4 friends and neighbours, helping 27, 27 full-time employment 32, 32, 33, 48 further or continuing adult education 2, 18–19, 19, 49; age and participation 45; economic classes 36, 36; employersponsored 36–37, 37, 49; Germany 217; time spent on 22; transitions 194–196, 199–211; see also adult learning and education; post-secondary education gender: computer science 122–123; discrimination 9, 132; participation in adult education 203; sexism 73; transitions 198; women in IT work 9, 119, 120–124, 129, 134–135, 226–227; see also women general interest see hobbies General Social Survey on Time Use (2005) 21, 24 Germany 217–221 Giordano, L. 106–107 governmentality 155–156, 168 Handy, F. 81 Hawisher, G.E. 124 health status 203, 204, 209 Henry, J. 84 Henwood, F. 122–123, 126 hobbies (general interest) 3, 28, 28, 29, 30, 31, 49, 199; see also leisure Hoekstra, A. 165 home/work balance 131, 132 horizontal learning 86–87, 92 Houle, C.O. 194 household work 1–2, 23–26, 48, 50, 59–78, 142–143, 238–239; Chinese immigrants 68–70; complex learning 7, 8; data collection 59–61; definition of 64; disabled people 67–68, 148, 150; Germany 219–220; informal learning 11, 28, 28, 29, 31, 49; paid carework 71–72; scope of 62–64; transitions 199; understanding of ‘work’ 64–66; unpaid carework 70–71 housework 24–25, 24, 48 Hudson, J. 178–179 Hughes, L. 84 human capital 178–181 Human Relations 104, 106

243

Huws, U. 121 Ilsley, P.J. 83 immigrants 198–199, 205–208, 209–210; Germany 218; household work 68–70; informal learning 39, 199, 199, 210; interpersonal communication 51n10; racism 74; underutilization of credentials 44, 50, 208; volunteer work 85, 88, 93–94; see also ethnic minorities incentives 103 inequalities 10, 187, 188, 195 informal learning 1, 2–3, 4, 238–239; age and participation 45, 46, 47; decline in 235; disabled employees 144; Germany 217–219, 220; household work 11, 66, 72–73; immigrants 199, 199, 210; importance of 7; job-related 37–39, 38, 49; NALL/WALL surveys 15–16, 20–23, 27–31, 37–39, 38, 46, 49, 50, 82; occupational transitions 199, 200; retirement 199, 204, 205, 210; teachers 155, 157, 162–164, 165–167, 168, 169–170, 219; time spent on 20, 21–22, 21, 22, 29–31, 31, 49; volunteer work 8, 11, 79–80, 82–94 information technology (IT) 5, 189n5; computer use in paid work 3, 3; disabled employees 144–145, 149–150; job requirements and qualifications 39–40, 40; women in IT work 9, 119–136, 219, 226–227; see also computers instrumental learning 87 intentionality 87 interpersonal skills 30, 51n10, 87–88 IT see information technology Jackson, Nancy 6–7, 141, 225, 237 Jagger, N. 121, 123, 124 job rotation 33, 34 Jones, O. 107 Jubas, Kaela 9, 119–136, 223, 226–227 Juha, K. 196 Kincheloe, J. 182, 184–185 knowledge: access to 235, 236; household work 73; job requirements and qualifications 41–42; legitimate 4; older people 46; Taylorism 101, 102, 104, 105–106, 113; teachers 157; volunteer work 93 knowledge-based economy 182, 235, 236

244 Index Knowles, Malcolm 4 Krahn, H. 178–179 labour process 102, 155–156 Larivière, M. 167 Lauder, H. 182, 186–187 learning: by doing 90–91; by experience 4, 219; disabled employees 9, 137–154; experiential 92; forms of 1, 2, 15, 146; from experience 42, 92; future research 237; gender differences 122; household work 59, 66–75, 239; instrumental 87; multi-dimensional character of 234–235; paid employment 8–10, 35–44, 49–50; sites of 2; socio-personal conception of 231; survey limitations 15–16; Taylorism 104; teachers 9–10, 155–156, 161–169; transformative 90; transitions 10–11, 45–48, 193, 194–196, 197; unpaid work and 27–31; volunteer work 8, 80, 82–94; women in IT work 119–136, 226–227; see also formal learning; informal learning; selfdirected learning ‘learning society’ 17, 19, 50, 235, 236 Lehmann, W. 178, 184 leisure 2, 3; disabled people 148, 149; informal learning 30; see also hobbies life stories 196 life-wide learning 163–164, 168 literacy 41, 235 Livingstone, D.W. 1–12, 15–55, 142–143, 146, 178, 228, 229, 232n1, 234–240 Lohman, M. 164 Lomba, C. 107 management: evaluation by managers 146; women in IT work 132 Margolis, J. 122, 123 market approaches 185–187, 228, 235–236 Marxism 113 Matthews, A. 74 Mayo, Elton 104 mentoring 2, 20, 37; disabled employees 145; teachers 163, 167; volunteer work 91 Meyer, Oliver 10–11, 193–213 migration 198–199, 205–208, 209–210; see also immigrants Millar, J. 121, 123, 124

Miller, J.J. 71 Mothers Are Women (MAW) 59–60 multi-skilling 33, 34 Mündel, Karsten 8, 79–98 NALL see New Approaches to Lifelong Learning survey nannies 71–72, 74 neoliberalism 73, 235–236 neo-Taylorism 107 New Approaches to Lifelong Learning (NALL) survey 6, 7, 15–51, 234; formal schooling 18, 48–49; further education 18–19, 19; Germany 218; household work 48; informal learning 20–23, 28–31, 37–39, 38, 46, 49, 82; job requirements and qualifications 41, 41; paid employment 31–35, 48, 49–50; response rate 16; teachers 156, 157, 169; underutilization of credentials 42, 43, 43; volunteer work 84, 90 ‘new economy’ 139 New Public Management (NPM) 108, 110 non-formal learning 165 NPM see New Public Management Nyland, C. 104 occupational categories 34, 178, 206–207, 207; see also economic classes occupational transitions 197–198, 199–202, 209, 210 office work 110–111 older people 10, 43, 45–46, 47, 228 Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition (OHCC) 84 organizations, corporate 137–154 overtime hours 33, 34 Overwien, Bernd 11, 217–221 Paap, K. 179 Pabon, C.E. 106 paid employment 2, 8–10, 31–35, 48, 50; carework 71–72; computer use 3; credential matching 39, 41, 41, 42–44, 49–50; democratization of 236; disabled employees 9, 137–154, 150, 229, 238; immigrants 206–208; informal learning 11, 37–39, 38, 49, 218–219; job requirements and qualifications 39–42, 49; learning 35–44, 49–50; occupational transitions

Index 197–198, 199–202, 209, 210; organizational change 33–35, 34; overlap with volunteer work 3; schoolwork transitions 10, 175–192; teachers 9–10, 155–172; time spent on 25–26, 31–33, 32; understanding of ‘work’ 64, 65; welfare work 108–113; women in IT work 9, 119–136, 226–227; women’s participation 3–4, 32; see also Taylorism; underemployment/underutilization Panitch, Melanie 137–154 Panteli, N. 121 Papert, S. 122, 123 partnerships 185, 186, 187–188 part-time employment 32, 32, 33, 34, 48 Paulston, R. 92 political efficacy 88 post-secondary education (PSE) 175, 176, 177, 178, 182, 217; see also adult learning and education; further or continuing adult education; university education post-Taylorism 107 poverty 74 privatization 108 professional development 155, 156, 162–163, 166, 167, 169 professionalism 156–157, 166, 170n7 Pruijt, H. 106 PSE see post-secondary education psychiatric survivors 139, 140 psychosocial approaches 194 public sector 108–113 qualifications 39–44, 49–50, 228 Quality Circles (QCs) 106–107 race see ethnic minorities racism 74 Raffe, D. 176 Ramsay, H. 121 reflection 91–92, 93 reflexive practice 196 research methods 5–7, 222–223, 225, 237; disabled employees 141–142; informal learning 94; quantitative and qualitative 227–228; teacher surveys 157–158; transitions 197; women in IT work 125–127; see also case study methods; surveys resistance 105–106

245

retirement 10, 33, 47, 198–199, 202–205, 209, 210 Riddell, S. 150 Rikowski, G. 181, 184 Robarts Plan (1962) 182 Rubenson, Kjell 234 Sawchuk, Peter H. 8–9, 101–118 Schenke, A. 182 Scholtz, Antonie 15–55, 142–143, 228, 229 school–work transition (SWT) 10, 175–192; community pathways 177; employability 181–185; human capital development 178–181; linear transitions 176–178; market approaches 185–187; policy implications 188–189 Schugurensky, Daniel 8, 79–98 Scientific Management see Taylorism Scott-Dixon, K. 124–125, 134 SDMT see Service Delivery Model Technology self-care 3, 64; disabled people 63, 67, 68, 148; understanding of ‘work’ 65 self-directed learning 2–3, 20, 22, 82; Germany 218; household work 73; survey limitations 15–16; teachers 166, 168, 169; volunteer work 87, 90 Selfe, C.L. 124 self-employment 34, 35 self-esteem 88 self-governance 89–90 self-initiated learning 73 Service Delivery Model Technology (SDMT) 109–110, 111–112, 114 Sexism 73, 120–121, 132–133 shopping 69 Simon, R. 182 skills: apprenticeships 180, 181; carework 70; communication 30, 38, 87–88, 128; community work 70–71; employability 175, 186; household work 72; interpersonal 30, 51n10, 87–88; jobrelated informal learning 38; literacy 41, 235; spiritual 71; Taylorism 9, 111, 113; technical 184; underutilization 40, 42–44, 178; volunteer work 30, 85, 87–88, 89–90, 94; welfare work 109; women in IT work 128–129, 134; see also deskilling Smith, D.E. 120, 125, 140, 151n9 Snedden, David 181

246 Index social capital 2, 205, 210 social class see economic classes social justice 86, 187 social movement learning 86–87, 92 social reproduction: apprenticeships 184, 187; educational attainment 36; transitions 194, 195, 208, 209, 211; see also economic classes Spear, G. 48 spirituality 62–63, 68, 71 Stack, J. 121 stereotypes 132, 134–135 Storey, A. 170n7 streaming 182, 183 stress 161 students 32, 32, 48 surveillance 109, 110 surveys 5–7, 223, 227, 229–230, 237–238; see also New Approaches to Lifelong Learning survey; Work and Lifelong Learning survey SWT see school–work transition tacit learning 16; household work 73; teachers 165; volunteer work 87, 88, 90 Tarc, Paul 9–10, 155–172 Taylor, Alison 10, 175–192 Taylorism 8–9, 101–118; functions of 102; knowledge 105–106; morphology of 107; persistence of 106; welfare work 108–113; workers’ learning 104–105 teachers 9–10, 155–172; autonomy 156–157, 166–167, 170n5; demographics 158; flexible learning 167–168; formal learning 155, 157, 161–162, 164, 169; Germany 219; informal learning 155, 157, 162–164, 165–167, 168, 169–170, 219; job status 158–159; obstacles to learning 164–165; research methods 157–158; research overview 156–157; workload 159–161, 164, 165, 169 technical schools 184 technology 5; gender relations 120; Service Delivery Model Technology 109–110, 111–112, 114; see also computers; information technology temporary employment 33, 34 Thomas, Alan 239 time 195

Total Quality Management (TQM) 107 Tough, Allen 2–3, 7, 20, 22, 82, 87, 239 training: apprenticeships 177–178, 179–181, 183–184, 186, 187, 189n6, 217; informal learning 2, 37–39, 94; partnership model 187–188; private sector 185–186; specialized 5 transformative learning 90 transitions 10–11, 45–48, 193–213; linear 176–178; migration 198–199, 205–208, 209–210; modulation of participation in learning 194–196; occupational 197–198, 199–202, 209, 210; research methodology 197; retirement 198–199, 202–205, 209, 210; school to work 10, 175–192 Tudiver, N. 108 Turkle, S. 122, 123 Turner, S.V. 125 underemployment/underutilization 5, 7, 41, 41, 49–50, 228; computer-related skills 40; economic classes 42–44, 42, 43; employee knowledge 42; growth in 235, 236, 237–238; human capital arguments 178; immigrants 44, 50, 208; older workers 43, 47; women in IT work 126 unemployment 32–33, 199–200; disabled people 138–139; youth transitions 177 university education 18, 176–177; immigrants 198, 206; occupational transitions 198, 200; participation in adult education 200, 204, 206; retirement 198, 204; see also educational attainment; post-secondary education unpaid work 23–27, 48, 50, 238–239; disabled people 150; Germany 219–220; learning and 27–31; see also household work; volunteer work upskilling 101, 109, 113 visual impairments 144–145 vocational education and training (VET) 175, 181–185, 186–187, 217, 218, 220; see also apprenticeships volunteer work 1–2, 23, 26–27, 48, 50, 79–98, 238–239; advocacy 88–89; carework skills 70–71; case studies 84–86; complex learning 7; demographics 81–82; dimensions and categories of 81; disabled people 149,

Index 150; episodic volunteers 82; informal learning 8, 11, 28–29, 28, 30, 31, 49; instrumental learning 87; interpersonal relations 87–88; motivation for 86; older people 10; overlap with paid work 3; political efficacy 88; reflection 91–92, 93; self-governance 89–90; social context 89; time spent on 79; transitions 199; types of volunteer 86 Wacjman, J. 120 Wadsworth, M. 81 wages 179 WALL see Work and Lifelong Learning survey Waring, S. 106 welfare work 108–113 Wilson, A. 150 women: apprenticeships 177–178, 179–180; childcare 26, 26, 27, 48; earnings 176; eldercare 25, 26; household work 2, 24–25, 24, 48, 59–60; informal learning 39; IT sector 9, 119–136, 219, 226–227; participation in paid employment 3–4, 32; see also gender Woodfield, R. 123–124 work, understanding of 64–66 Work and Lifelong Learning (WALL) survey 6–7, 8, 11, 15–51; childcare 25,

247

25; collaborative research 222–224, 232; disabled employees 137, 141, 151n4; economic classes 34, 35; eldercare 26; formal schooling 18, 48–49; further education 18–19, 19; Germany 217, 218, 219–220; household work 24, 48; impact on researchers 230–232; informal learning 20–23, 28–31, 37–39, 38, 46, 49; job requirements and qualifications 40, 40, 41, 41; paid employment 31–35, 48, 49–50; reflections on 224–232, 234–239; Resource Base 239; scale of 222; school-work transition policies 175; teachers 9–10, 156, 157, 161, 169; transitions 45, 45, 47, 193, 197–208; underutilization of credentials 42, 43, 43; volunteer work 26, 84, 90; women in IT work 126, 130, 132 work experience 182, 183, 188; see also apprenticeships ‘workaround culture’ 112–113 worker self-management 103 work/home life balance 131, 132 working class 42–43, 50 working hours 31–33, 32, 48, 130, 159–160 Young, M. 182 youth transitions 175–192