Learning while working

A few quick impressions from my initial skim of Learning while Working, a summary report on eight years of European research grants and studies of informal learning in the workplace:

  • This is an amazingly Euro-centric report. It’s written in the Euro-silo, as if other continents have no relevant lessons worth repeating. Every footnote and finding links to something paid for by European taxpayers. Hello?
  • You can’t please all of the people all of the time. Implying that trainers have to get on board to implement informal learning is wacky.
  • Learning is not all top-down, stuff the union rules allow, in conflict with corporate goals, etc. The bulk of learning is self-motivated. This report fails to address the attitudes, motivation, desires, and aspirations of workers. The report confuses training and learning time and time again.
  • Research finds that “nearly two thirds of the European Union population could not participate in learning opportunities, either formal or nonformal.” Say what? Are the authorities keeping them from learning? Isn’t this a matter of individual choice? Employers are damned for not force-feeding life long-learning to lower-paid employees. Huh?
  • “It is argued that the transfer of knowledge acquired in formal training to daily working practice can be problematic, and companies may consider that training offers are not always relevant to their specific business needs and work organisation.” Uh, yeah, when only 10% to 15% of what’s learned in formal training ever shows up on the job, this strikes me as a pretty strong argument.
  • The Europeans seem to be more focused on credentials than performance, e.g. “On-the-job learning presents a number of challenges that go beyond work organisation, such as the validation and certification of learning.” Apparently just having the capacity to do the job is not enough. The report hammers away at this theme, saying “The validation of learning, personalised learning and training plans, together with career guidance and counselling, are cornerstones of national and sectoral initiatives that seek to up-skill workers, take stock of their life and work experiences to bring them back into learning, and even impel them ‘one-step-up’ through the acquisition, for example, of a qualification.”
  • I have to wonder if the authors of this report ever worked for real companies. “For individuals, returns on the time and resources invested in learning are not immediately visible and do not lead instantly to increases in wages or job stability.” Learning does not yield immediate gratification.
  • Some of the “findings” seem to have been lifted from outside sources, e.g. “There is a challenge to move from training supply-led to more demand-side approaches to training through policies and practices that support individuals to persist as learners.” Unless it’s an amazing coincidence, this is lifted from the work of John Seely Brown, although the words are repurposed to make a case that “A policy dilemma may arise when balancing and aligning policies that tend towards greater standardisation of training to guarantee quality and those that promote greater individualisation of teaching and learning to motivate adults to continue learning.”

I’m not entirely negative on this report. Who could disagree with the spirit of this: “The experience of being able to learn in and through work has a positive effect on the quality of working life, expands one’s competences and enhances the motivation to learn. It is essential that, irrespective of the complexity and level of qualifications, learning opportunities are improved within jobs. A strong learning culture in the workplace makes employees more receptive to change, regardless of age. If workers are not motivated to learn and do not believe in the necessity of training, no kind of formal or non-formal training would have any effect.”

What I’ve learned (or re-learned) from reading this report is that the European Commission and we Americans have fundamentally different ways of looking at the world. Maybe it’s not the European Commission or Europeans, but rather the Europeans who take grant money to write reports. Many of my colleagues in Europe don’t think this way. The report seems stuck in the quaint nineteenth century idea that we can plan our way to success:

“The social partners’ Framework of action for the lifelong development of competences set down four cornerstones of the social dialogue for lifelong learning: forecasting skills and qualification needs; validating and recognising learning; developing suitable information, guidance and counselling; and funding mechanisms for training (European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) et al., 2002). In the present economic crisis, building a skill agenda is of mutual interest and importance to both trade unions and employers.”

This certainly doesn’t describe the situation in America:

“Trade unions were the most active social partner in seeking ways to offer career information and guidance to adults in employment, and encouraging employees to take up more learning opportunities than they would have had otherwise.”

As if oblivious to the title, Learning while Working, the report repeatedly returns to training as the solution to all ills:

“When companies introduce new working processes or technological innovation the inadequacy of skills becomes apparent. Raising SME* commitment to training is a sine qua non for subsidising mechanisms for skill development opportunities to achieve the goal of expanding the provision of continuing training.”

The conclusion that the way to improve learning is to upgrade the competencies of trainers is absurd.

“The success of lifelong learning strategies and employment agendas require expanding access to learning opportunities in the workplace and demand that trainers are supported throughout their careers to upgrade their specialist and pedagogical knowledge and skills.”

I’ll admit that this report gives me a feeling of schadenfreude. America’s missteps during the Bush administration made me feel diminished when conversing with my European friends. Reports like this one restore a bit of my faith in the America approach to things.

A glossary in the final pages of the report defines Informal Learning as “learning that results from daily activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not organised or structured (in terms of objectives, time or learning support). Informal learning is mostly unintentional from the learners’ perspective. It typically does not lead to certification.”

I disagree. Informal doesn’t mean unintentional. Most of the time, the objective is to do something. This is not accidental or random; it’s just not someone else’s intention. That’s why it typically does not lead to certification. Informal learning is ultimately up to the individual, not some credentialing authority.

 

——————————–
*In Europe, SME means small and medium enterprise, not subject matter expert.

Link to Original

Leave a Reply