Towards a model of workplace learning: the learning curriculum

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Abstract
To understand the nature of learning in workplaces and how this learning might be improved, it is useful to view the activities that learners engage in as key units of curriculum. These learning experiences, which workers engage in as part of everyday work practice, should be conceptualised as goal‐directed activity shaped by the context and requirement of the particular community of practice in which those activities occur. This paper draws upon current theorising and empirical work in order to provide an initial model of a workplace learning curriculum. The model suggests that learning rather than teaching should be at the core of concepts of curriculum. Commencing with a review of goals for vocational expertise, learning through goal‐directed activity and a synthesis of some recent research into learning in workplaces a tentative model of workplace learning is advanced. Features of this model include guided participation in the everyday activities of the workplace with explicit interventions aimed at providing access to forms of knowledge which remain opaque and also the development of procedures. The overall structure of the learning arrangements is referred to as the learning curriculum with activities being advanced as key components of the curriculum model. Although founded within workplace communities of practice, this model may well have wider applications.