Griffith University

Keynote Prof. Dr. Stephen Billett - Griffith University Australia - Learning through practice

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• published: 09 Oct 2012
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Keynote Title: Towards an account of learning through practice: Traditions, practices and potentials University of Paderborn - Department Wirtschaftspädagogik (Business and Human Resource Education) http://www.upb.de/wipaed cevet - centre for vocational education and training http://cevet.upb.de/ ___________________________________________ Most of the learning for occupations across human history has likely occurred within the circumstances of its practice, albeit in Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Asia. Across Europe, this learning occurred almost universally within family or local enterprise until the various industry revolutions overturned this mode of skill production. The key exceptions were programs in universities focussed on specific and prestigious occupational (e.g. medicine, architecture), and even these included extensive practice-based experiences. However, since the development of mass higher and vocational education systems that arose through industrialisation and the formation of modern nation states, decreasing attention has been given to the traditions of learning through practice and within settings where occupations are practiced. Yet, now with considerations of workplaces once again being seen as useful and legitimate learning environments, the integration of experiences within practice settings and imperatives to engage seemingly all learners in authentic instances of practice in university programs, considerations of learning through practice are re-emerging. This paper initially identifies and compares the curriculum, pedagogic and epistemological practices utilised long ago in Hellenic Greece and Imperial China and how the nature of work, working knowledge and practice pedagogies were shaped and enacted. Distinctive views of what constitutes skilled artisans, the processes of working and learning through and for that work were generated in these cultures. It is proposed that the ordering of these experiences can assist inform how learning through practice might progress in contemporary times. Indeed and next, the presentation commences the task of setting out some bases for what might constitute an account of learning through practice, comprising i) practice curriculum, ii) practice pedagogies and iii) personal epistemologies in practice. Although far from complete, the evidence from historical and anthropological accounts point to the structuring of learning experience (i.e. practice curriculum) as being of either shaped by the lived practice or by deliberate organisation, but for particular rationales. A set of pedagogic practice are presented and discussed as are the kinds of learning that might arise through them. Then, and of equal, if not of greater importance, some key personal epistemological practices are discussed. These bases, their applicability and potential are likely shaped by particular cultural, societal and situational factors that also comprise the circumstances of practice. ____________________________________________________ Autumn's Conference of the Department for Business and Vocational Education & Training of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Erziehungswissenschaft (German Society for Educational Studies) 24 and 26 September 2012 at the University of Paderborn, Germany. The members of the Organization team are: Professor Dr Marc Beutner Chair of the Department for Business Education II Professor Dr H.-Hugo Kremer Professorship for Business Education, prominently for Media Didactics and Further Education Professor Dr Peter F. E. Sloane Chair of the Department for Business Education I Professor Dr Esther Winther Chair of the Department for Business Education Junior Professor Dr Karl-Heinz Gerholz Junior Professor for Tertiary Education Didactics and Development