Numeracy: Learning at Work*

Purpose: To identify opportunities for incorporating ideas from formal and informal workplace learning into mathematics/numeracy education.

*Work in this context includes paid, unpaid, voluntary, and domestic tasks, including maintenance, budgeting, caring, and so forth. Work experience may be derived from a temporary placement or ongoing practice, present or past.

References: 9, 22, 37

In relation to learning through and from *work experience:

How does the context (i.e., the historical organisation of mathematics/ numeracy curricula and work), and therefore the access provided in different contexts to artefacts and people, influence learning?
How does learning through work experience involve mediating the relationship between different kinds of knowledge and experience developed in formal education and work (i.e., theoretical mathematics and everyday knowledge or practical numeracy)?
What opportunities are there to participate in forms of social practice, such as using context-specific language to clarify understanding and resolve (mathematical) problems associated with different workplace communities of practice?
How does work experience assist learners and educators to create ‘new’ mathematical knowledge and new educational and workplace practices?

How are learners supported in their *work experience to understand and use the potential of mathematics as a conceptual tool:

for seeing the relationship between their workplace experience and their program of study as part of a whole?
to develop an intellectual basis for criticising existing work practices and taking responsibility for working with others to conceive, and implement where possible, alternatives?
to develop the capability of resituating existing knowledge and skill in new contexts as well as being able to contribute to the development of new knowledge, new social practices and new intellectual debates?
to become confident about crossing organisational boundaries or the boundaries between different, and often distributed, communities of practice?
to connect their knowledge to the knowledge of other specialists, whether in educational institutions, workplaces or the wider community?

“… learning in activity systems, such as workplaces, consists chiefly of undertaking actions which are embedded in activities whose object and motive is not learning as such. One of the main characteristics of boundary crossing is that it involves a process of horizontal development. By this we mean that learners have to develop the capability to mediate between different forms of expertise and the demands of different contexts, rather than simply bringing their accumulated vertical knowledge and skill to bear on the new situation. In this sense, boundary crossing involves negotiating different zones of proximal development.” [37, p. 61]

Informal learning in the *workplace

*Work in this context includes paid, unpaid, voluntary, and domestic tasks, including maintenance, budgeting, caring, and so forth. It may be a temporary placement or ongoing practice, present or past.

How does the mathematical learning activity support learners to transform the relevant mathematical knowledges and skills and integrate them with other knowledges and skills in order to think/act/communicate in a new situation?

Does the learning activity address:

Task Performance : the speed and fluency, complexity of tasks and problems, range of skills required, communication with a wide range of people, collaborative work.
Role Performance : prioritisation, range of responsibility, supporting other people’s learning, leadership, delegation, handling ethical issues, coping with unexpected problems, crisis management.
Awareness and Understanding : of other people; colleagues, customers, managers, etc.; contexts and situations; one’s own organisation; problems and risks; priorities and strategic issues, value issues.
Academic Knowledge and Skills : use of evidence and argument, accessing formal knowledge, research-based practice, theoretical thinking, knowing what you might need to know, using knowledge resources (human, paper-based, electronic), learning how to use a relevant theory (in a range of practical situations).
Personal Development : self evaluation, self management, building and sustaining relationships, disposition to attend to other perspectives, disposition to consult and work with others, disposition to learn and improve one’s practice, accessing relevant knowledge and expertise, ability to learn from experience.
Decision Making and Problem Solving : when to seek expert help, dealing with complexity, group decision making, problem analysis, generating, formulating, and evaluating options, managing the process within an appropriate timescale, decision making under pressurised conditions.
Teamwork : collaborative work, facilitating social relations, joint planning and problem solving, ability to engage in and promote mutual learning.
Judgement : quality of performance, output and outcomes, priorities, value issues, levels of risk.

Developing Work Process Knowledge:

Is the workplace numeracy or vocational mathematics curriculum planned within a conceptual framework representing the overall work process?
Is there close collaboration between the workplace and the external training provider/online developer, so that they can align theoretical study with practical experience within a shared concept of the work process?
Is formal instruction integrated with the formative experience of the workplace? [This is to enable decontextualised theory to be transformed into higher psychological functions through the mediating role of the culture and artefacts of the work system.]
Is learning encouraged by emphasising teamwork in authentic working situations? [This is because significant aspects of competence are collective, and are acquired in pursuit of the common object of joint activity.]