Learning through Experience and Reflective Practice

Learning through experience and reflective practice are central themes in the workplace learning literature. For example higher education experience forms an important dimension of cultivating communities of practice (Wenger, 2006), forming a bridge between what is taught and then later applied in the workplace. Further, it is important to be able to make sense of the learning that occurs. Schon (1983 & 1987) coined the term ‘reflective practitioner’ to help guide individuals to learn from their work. This section examines first the literature pertaining to learning through experience before combining both concepts.

Hager (2004:72) in an analysis of five major interpretations of workplace learning found that two major accounts of learning occurred: the first involves learning from experience, which he argues is fundamental to individual personal development and growth. The second focuses on the need for organisations to have workers with a certain set of broad generic skills. Although potentially in conflict, Hagar argues that these two broad theoretical concepts can be viewed as supporting and reinforcing one another. Dewey (1916) argued that education must both engage with and enhance

82 experience and linked to this education must involve reflection on experience. For Dewey the purpose of education is the intellectual, moral and emotional growth of the individual. He defines education as “that reconstruction or reorganisation of

experience which adds to the meaning of experience and which increases (one’s) ability to direct the course of subsequent experience” (Dewey, 1916:74). An

experience must include an active and a passive element. Experience is trying something out, experimenting (the active element). The passive involves undergoing the experience ‘we do something to the thing and then it does something to us in

return’ (146-7). This involves the basic element of the doing and being done to.

Hence, the role of the educator/facilitator is to provide the right type of experience through which the learner may require knowledge and understanding (Jarvis, 2010). Raelin (2008) suggests that students need the opportunity to try out their conceptual knowledge so that it becomes contextual or grounded or in his words ‘do able’. Reliance on conceptualization alone may limit problem solving because most new or real problems are not yet sufficiently coherent to be organised into a theory. According to Dewey (1916: 140) the function of reflection is to

formulate the ‘relationships and the continuities’ among the elements of an experience, between that experience and other experiences, between that experience and the knowledge one carries and between that knowledge and the knowledge produced by thinkers other than oneself.

Raelin (2008) believes, (based upon the views of cognitive psychologists) that reflection can contribute as much to learning as experience itself, to the extent that learners are active observers. Individuals often learn behaviour from observing others before performing the behaviour themselves and tend to anticipate actions and their

83 associated consequences. Mezirow (1991) developed three types of reflection: content reflection, process reflection and premise reflection. The first is based upon Dewey’s notion of critical enquiry and is underpinned by what we perceive, think, feel and act upon. This involves a review of the way we have consciously applied ideas in strategizing and implementing each stage of solving a problem. Process reflection is concerned with how we go about solving a problem whilst premise reflection goes to a final step of questioning the very presuppositions attending to the problem to begin with. To reflect at this level, adults need to invoke their reflective consciousness. Mezirow (1981) calls this learning transformative because it is learning that takes us into new meanings. Raelin (2008:76) suggests that higher-level learning may not occur naturally, therefore learning opportunities need to be provided within the workplace to provoke critical reflection on current meaning perspectives.

Dewey (1938:25) was of the belief that all genuine education comes about through experience but that does not imply that ‘all experiences are genuinely or equally

educative’. Foregrounding practical experience in particular calls into question the

primacy of theory over practice (Jarvis, 2010). Knowles (1978) also draws attention to the value of experience in adult education, one of his four main assumptions that differentiate andragogy from pedagogy relates to experience. Knowles argues that individuals accumulate an expanding reservoir of experience that becomes an exceedingly rich resource in learning. He strongly believed that adult education should be learner centred. According to Kolb (1984:41) ‘learning is the process

whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it’. Kolb’s

constructivist learner centred approach has been criticised as over-simplifying and decontextualizing the learning process as it appears not to take into account the

84 learners’ situation or their personal biographies. Further, Moon (1999:35) questions the orderliness of the experiential learning cycle and the role of reflection in learning when applied to the individual. She states:

even a simple application in a practical situation will indicate that, in reality, the process is ‘messy’ with stages re-cycling and interweaving as meaning is created and recreated.

Similarly, Fenwick (2001) argues that Kolb’s model has been unsuccessful in acknowledging the significance of multi-dimensional experience of individuals, she states that ‘issues of identity, politics and discursive complexities of human

experience’ have largely been ignored (Fenwick, 2000:244). Other writers argue that

the model does not give due recognition to both perception and construction and the finer detail that is required when learning new skills (Sennett, 2008). Although it has remained popular in the educational arena, Kolb’s model does not do justice to the complexity of work-based learning (Jarvis, 2010).

Schön (1983) popularised the notion of the ‘reflective practitioner’ arguing that reflection is a critical step in professional development. Dewey and Kolb proposed that learning is dependent on the integration of experience with reflection, and of theory with practice. Each writer argues that experience is the basis for learning but learning cannot take place without reflection. Schön (1983) proposes two models of reflection: ‘reflection-on-action’ and ‘reflection-in-action’. The first reflection-on- action is reflection after the event, often consciously undertaken and documented. This form of reflection is similar to that which occurs as part of a learning cycle that then leads to further action (Kolb, 1984 and Mezirow, 1997). However, underlying reflective practice is reflection-in-action. In reflection-in-action, doing and thinking

85 are complementary. Doing extends thinking in the tests, moves and probes of experimental action, and reflection feeds on doing and its results. Each feeds the other, and each sets the boundaries for the other (Schön, 1983:280).

Schön (1983) presents a sample of vignettes of practice in which senior practitioners try to help junior practitioners learn to do something within communities of practice through reflection-in-action. This reflects the situated context of learning discussed by Lave and Wenger (1991) and the social aspects of learning elaborated on by Vygotsky (1978). It is suggested that competent practitioners will often know more than they realise thereby exhibiting a kind of knowing in practice, most of which is tacit. According to Schön practitioners often reveal a capacity for reflection on their intuitive knowing in the midst of action when coping with uncertain, conflicted situations of practice (1983:8-9). Schön’s work is not without critique. Eraut (1995), for example, suggests that his most important contribution is reflection-in-action although believes that he weakens his argument by ‘seriously overgeneralizing and

overextending it’. Eraut is not convinced that knowledge creation is, as a result of

reflection-in-action rather than a more deliberate reflection out of action. Moon (2001:3) suggests that there is some inconsistency in his writing; nonetheless, he has had great influence on stirring debate on the nature of professional knowledge and the role of reflection in professional education. Miller and Boud (1996:9-10) present five propositions upon which learning is based and that enable experiential learning to be understood more widely, first they suggest that experience is the foundation of, and stimulus for, learning. In addition, they contend that learners actively construct their own experience and that learning is holistic and socially and culturally constructed. Further, learning is influenced by the socio-emotional context in which it occurs.

86 Boud and Miller’s work links to the work of Vygotsky and that of Lave and Wenger on communities of practice.

Throughout this chapter, the contextual, situational and social nature of learning has been brought to the fore. The work of Lave and Wenger (1991), and Engstrom (2001) for example, directly counter the view that learning is context independent (Beckett and Hagar, 2002) and conceptualized through qualifications as the proxy for skill and knowledge (Felstead et al, 2009). Instead, they promote the situated aspect of learning through participation in communities of practice and the wider activity system rather than emphasising the individual as the unit of analysis. Their work, amongst others highlights the holistic, transformative and complex process of learning in the workplace.

However, there are factors both in the workplace and outside that can inhibit or expand learning opportunities. Fuller and Unwin (2003) have developed a framework that enable the characteristic elements of a learning environment to be measured along an expansive/restrictive continuum, whilst Felstead et al (2009) draw attention to the way in which the structures and stages of production influence learning. For example, the retail sector for a long time has suffered from an image problem, characterized by low-skilled jobs, poor training, limited career prospects and long hours (Harris and Church, 2002) which, the Sector Skills Council for Retail and many employers have failed to address. Large retailers have continued to invest in formal training programmes, especially for those seeking to move up the career ladder, but have invested little in qualifications. This may partly be due to the nature of managerial work within this context. Studies by Gilbert and Guerrier (2006), Bolton and Houlihan (2010) and Grugulis et al, (2011) all report concern over lack of managerial

87 autonomy in retailing, using terms such as rigidity, control, powerlessness, little scope for discretion to describe the role of lower level managers within store environments. Grugulis et al (2011) reported, in her supermarket study that she evidenced small elements of leadership, espoused by head office, when it came to the management of people and Keep and Mayhew (2011) reported that managers were not without agency as their role involved ‘the enactment of local knowledge’. Yet, key strategic decisions were concentrated within head office. The Labour government and industry bodies have stressed the need for more graduate level skills citing the performance benefits it could bring (People 1st, 2009; UKCES, 2011). However, lower level managers in the supermarket sector appear to have little space for the exercise of high-level knowledge, judgement and analytical skills, this raises long-term concerns for the Government’s initiative on Foundation Degrees in the retail sector as outlined in the forthcoming chapter.

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