REPRESENTATION AND THEORISATION - THE KEY TOOLS OF WORK BASED LEARNING

I want to try and capture some thoughts following a stimulating conversation with my colleague and DProf student Jackie Jeffrey at Trent Park yesterday. She submitted her DProf last June entitled ' The Mapping, Nurturing and Nourishing of New Learning Lanscapes: A Case Study in Community Education in South Africa and the UK' It is the story of her struggles to get funding for a group of playwork team leaders from South Africa to come to the UK as part of an accredited development programme. Her contention was that by taking these team leaders out of their 'comfort zone' and into a completely new culture the experience would enhance their learning and a sense of their own identity. This was an Action Research led investigation based on the values based/ Living Theory approach of Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead. And Jean was one of external examiners.

The examiners agreed the study merited a DProf but stipulated a number of conditions which Jackie and I are currently working through. Jean made a significant comment at the Viva. She said 'I love your story but why should I believe you?' For Jackie, as I suspect for many practitioners, it is their 'story' that defines them. But as far as academia are concerned this isn't enough - there needs to be what Jean calls 'theorisation' so that the story as represented can be 'validated' in a wider context which would include references to the literature as well as the pulling together of emerging patterns and themes from the presented stories that enable 'others' to validate the claims made. In Jackie's case these emerging themes are around the importance of a process of 'alignment' in the creation of new social formations. I'd like to reflect on that more in a moment but want to stay with the question of what it is that justifies a piece of work as being 'academic' - and what is role of the'academy' in this process in the specific case of work based learning where it is the experience in/story of the work place that is privileged.

Out of yesterday's discussion there emerged for me a three stage process which I'd like to offer for comment. I would prefer to create a graphical representation but at moment limitation of knowledge of this blog prevenets me from doing it so these are three stages:

Stage 1: CONCRETE EXPERIENCE: There has to be an engagement with/ immersion in the living experiuences/events, But in themselves they are simply 'data'. They need process in second stage to make them accessible so that others can understand them in the same way as does the work based learner. This is stage two

Stage 2 : REPRESENTATION: This is where the story is told, the evidnece created for others to scrutinise. For me 'Representation' is a more meaningful than the other R word, 'Research' and , I suggest is more in keeping with how practitioners make sense of their professional context/work to themselves. In jackie's case she has chosen to describe the complexity of relationships in communities in the form of comic strips as well as DVDs of verbatim observations of these team leaders from S Africa as they confront the London Underground system for the first time. But, as Jean McNiff said, she loved the story but why should we believe it and indeed exactly what was it that Jackie wanted us to believe. This requires the big jump to stage three


Stage 3 : THEORISATION. I've just seen a quote from W Edwards Deming which may be appropriate here: 'Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence, without theory, there is no learning' And this is what characterises everything academic - but in the case of work based learning the theory is not taught in a class room. Indeed,we might question whether the theory taught in classrooms necessarily leads to 'theorisation ' on the part of the learner. The learner is more likley to reproduce the theory as taught rather than genuinely 'theorise' for himself/ herself which is exatky what is required of the work based learner

I'm going to leave it there - posing questions to my colleagues in work based learning as to how by using these three processes we might construct a simpler framework for our students to use to navigate their journey. My thanks to Jackie for sparking off these ideas. And I'd finally like to pick up on her use of the word 'alignment' as a significant way of 'framimg' how our stories are just not shared but 'aligned' with others's stories and where that might lead us. And that's topic for next blog








not just the shaing of stories with others