1. Bibliographic Information

• Title: Learning in the circumstances of practice
• Authors: Stephen Billett (Griffith University, Australia)
• Journal/Conference: International Journal of Lifelong Education. This is a reputable, peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the theory, policy, and practice of learning that occurs throughout life, both within and outside formal educational institutions.
• Publication Year: 2014
• Abstract: The paper argues that learning within the context of work (practice) is the most historically common and currently widespread method of acquiring occupational skills. Despite its prevalence, a comprehensive theory explaining this process is lacking. This gap undermines the legitimacy of workplaces as learning sites and hinders efforts to organize and evaluate such learning. The author cautions against using frameworks from formal schooling to analyze learning through practice, as they can distort its true nature. By reviewing historical and anthropological literature, the paper proposes that a proper account should include elements of a practice curriculum, practice pedagogies, and personal epistemologies, all shaped by cultural and situational factors. A crucial finding from this review is the emphasis on the individual's active learning processes (observation, imitation, engagement) rather than on being taught, a distinction with significant implications for understanding and improving workplace learning.
• Original Source Link: /files/papers/68f26c1ab34112def177fd5b/paper.pdf (Formally published paper).

2. Executive Summary

Background & Motivation (Why)

The central problem this paper addresses is the lack of a formal, comprehensive theory for how people learn occupational skills through their work. While learning in the workplace is arguably the most ancient and common form of education in human history, it is often misunderstood, undervalued, and analyzed through the inappropriate lens of formal schooling.

The author argues that modern society is a "schooled society," where the methods and values of institutional education (e.g., didactic teaching, emphasis on theoretical knowledge) are so dominant that they are seen as the only legitimate way to learn. This "discourse of schooling" makes it difficult to appreciate learning through practice on its own terms. As a result:

• Workplaces are not fully recognized as legitimate sites of learning.

• The learning that occurs in workplaces is often dismissed as "informal" or secondary.

• There is no robust framework to guide the organization, promotion, or evaluation of this crucial form of learning.

  The paper’s motivation is to begin building this missing account by looking at how occupational learning occurred before or outside the dominance of formal schooling, using historical and anthropological evidence.

Main Contributions / Findings (What)

The paper makes a significant conceptual contribution by proposing a three-part framework to explain learning in the circumstances of practice. The core finding is that this type of learning is primarily driven by the learner, not the teacher.

The main contributions are:

1. A Foundational Framework: The paper synthesizes diverse literature to propose that learning through practice is composed of three key elements:

   • Practice Curriculum: The sequence of tasks and experiences—either organically occurring or deliberately structured—that a learner progresses through.
   • Practice Pedagogies: The supportive activities, interactions, and artifacts that enrich or guide the learning experience (e.g., storytelling, mnemonics, expert guidance).
   • Personal Epistemologies: The active, agentic processes of the learner, who takes responsibility for their own development through observation, imitation, and intentional engagement.

2. A Shift in Focus from Teaching to Learning: The paper’s most critical insight is that, historically and anthropologically, occupational learning is not premised on instruction. Instead, the onus is on the novice to actively learn. This runs counter to the teaching-centric model of formal education.

3. A Critique of the "Discourse of Schooling": The paper powerfully argues that applying school-based concepts uncritically to workplace learning is misleading and counterproductive. It advocates for understanding and evaluating practice-based learning on its own terms.

3. Prerequisite Knowledge & Related Work

To understand this paper, one must grasp several key concepts that challenge conventional views on education.

• Foundational Concepts:

  • Schooled Society: A term describing modern societies where formal, institutionalized education (i.e., school) is ubiquitous and considered the primary, most legitimate source of learning. Its methods and values become the default standard against which all other learning is measured.
  • Discourse of Schooling: The language, assumptions, and power structures that privilege formal education. This discourse tends to value declarative knowledge ("knowing that," e.g., facts and theories that can be written down) over other forms of knowing.
  • Declarative vs. Non-Declarative Knowledge:
    • Declarative Knowledge: Factual information that can be explicitly stated or "declared." This is the primary focus of most classroom teaching and testing.
    • Procedural Knowledge: "Knowing how" to do something; the skills and steps to perform a task.
    • Embodied/Haptic Knowledge: Knowledge gained and expressed through the body and senses, such as the tactile "feel" a potter has for clay or a physiotherapist for muscle tension. The paper argues the discourse of schooling largely ignores these crucial forms of occupational knowledge.
  • Mimesis: The process of learning through observation and imitation. The paper identifies this as a central mechanism in practice-based learning.

• Previous Works (Sources of Evidence): The paper builds its argument not by refuting specific recent studies, but by drawing on a broad base of historical and anthropological literature to uncover pre-schooling learning models.

  • Historical Accounts:
    • Ancient Mesopotamia & Hellenic Greece (Talmud, Plato): These sources show that learning a trade was integrated into family life. Plato's account of a boy learning his father's craft illustrates a natural progression from playful imitation with toy tools to becoming a "helper" and then an associate. This points to an early form of a practice curriculum.
    • Imperial China (Zhuangzi, Ming Dynasty): Chinese history provides a contrasting view of skilled work. The massive scale of production (e.g., the terracotta army, porcelain) led to a modular, team-based approach to craft, different from the individual artisan model in Europe. The parable of the wheelwright by Zhuangzi is used to highlight the limits of book-learning (declarative knowledge) and champion the inarticulable, embodied knowledge gained through decades of practice.
  • Anthropological Studies:
    • Jordan (1989) on Mexican Birth Attendants: Shows how learning occurs through immersion in the community and participation, not through didactic teaching.
    • Singleton (1989) on Japanese Potters: Introduces the concept of minarai kyooiku, or education through observation, where the apprentice is entirely responsible for learning without direct instruction.
    • Bunn (1999) on Kirgizstan Nomads: Distinguishes between learning through everyday "lived experience" and learning occupations that require deliberate, structured experiences outside of daily life (e.g., blacksmith, storyteller).

• Differentiation: This paper stands apart from conventional educational research by deliberately rejecting the "discourse of schooling." Instead of trying to find the "teacher," "lesson plan," and "assessment" in the workplace, it builds a new model from the ground up, centered on the learner's agency and the organic structure of practice itself.

4. Methodology (The Proposed Conceptual Framework)

As a theoretical paper, its "methodology" is the construction of a new conceptual framework. The framework is built on three pillars.

1. Practice Curriculum

This refers to the pathway of learning activities and experiences that a novice follows to gain competence. The paper identifies two main forms:

• Learning through "Lived Experience": In some contexts, occupational skills are acquired simply by being born into and participating in a community's way of life. Examples include Kirgizstan nomads learning to herd, ride, and make food as part of their daily existence.
• Deliberately Structured Pathways: More often, especially for specialized occupations, the learning path is structured, though not necessarily in a formal, classroom-like way. This structure is often based on a principle of escalating risk and complexity.
  • Example (Tailoring Apprentices): Lave's study showed apprentices start with low-risk tasks (e.g., finishing garments, sewing cheap underwear) and gradually progress to high-risk, high-skill tasks (e.g., making expensive ceremonial garments). This pathway provides a natural, work-integrated curriculum.
  • Example (Hairdressing Apprentices): Novices begin with client interaction and salon tidiness, then move to washing hair, applying treatments, and finally to cutting hair (often starting with men's hair, considered lower-risk).
  • Example (Junior Doctors): They follow a path from patient admissions and examinations to more complex diagnostic and treatment activities, building on foundational skills.

2. Practice Pedagogies

This refers to the various supportive interventions that enrich or augment the learning that occurs through the practice curriculum. These are not "teaching" in the traditional sense but rather aids to learning.

• Key Idea: These pedagogies help learners go beyond what they could learn from observation alone. They are often embedded within the work itself.
• Examples:
  • Guidance and Scaffolding: An expert providing "hands-on" help to a novice to get the "feel" of a task (e.g., shaping pottery), or providing partially completed examples to guide their work.
  • Artifacts as Guidance: Physical objects used to support learning, such as shells arranged to teach Micronesian sailors star navigation patterns or notation systems used by lace-makers to learn patterns independently.
  • Storytelling and Verbalization: Mexican birth attendants share stories of past births to transmit complex situational knowledge. Nurses' "handovers" between shifts are a rich pedagogical activity where patient conditions, treatments, and prognoses are verbalized, providing a deep learning opportunity for all present.
  • Heuristics and Mnemonics: "Tricks of the trade" that simplify complex tasks. For example, doctors are advised to remember a rare disease by associating it with the first patient in whom they diagnosed it.

3. Personal Epistemologies

This is the most critical element of the framework, highlighting the centrality of the learner's own actions and intentions. It describes how individuals actively construe and construct knowledge from their experiences.

• Key Idea: The responsibility to learn rests almost entirely with the novice, not with an expert "teacher." Learning is an active, self-directed process.
• Mechanisms:
  • Mimesis (Observation and Imitation): This is the foundational learning process. The novice must learn how to observe effectively and then attempt to replicate the actions of experts.
  • Intentionality and Agency: The learner must be proactive. This includes putting oneself forward to learn, actively seeking out learning opportunities, listening intently, and engaging with the practice. The anthropological literature shows that experts often do not offer help unless the novice demonstrates a clear desire and effort to learn.
  • Construing and Constructing: Learning is not passive reception. The individual actively makes sense of what they see and do, building their own understanding moment by moment.

5. & 6. Results, Analysis, and Evidence

This paper does not present empirical results from an experiment. Instead, its "results" are the arguments and evidence synthesized from the literature to support its three-part framework.

• The Primacy of Learner Agency: The most significant finding, repeated across numerous anthropological sources (Jordan, Singleton, Pelissier), is that occupational learning in traditional settings is fundamentally a learner-driven process. The phrases "the apprentice has to discover" and the emphasis on mimesis over didactic instruction strongly support the centrality of personal epistemologies.
• Embedded Curricula and Pedagogies: The analysis of tailoring, hairdressing, and medical training demonstrates that a practice curriculum exists, but it is shaped by the logic of the work itself (e.g., risk, complexity) rather than by an external educational designer. Similarly, practice pedagogies are not separate "lessons" but are integrated into work activities, like storytelling or shift handovers.
• The Inadequacy of the "Discourse of Schooling": The paper successfully analyzes how a school-centric view fails to capture the richness of practice-based learning. It highlights how schooling privileges abstract, declarative knowledge while ignoring the crucial embodied, sensory, and procedural knowledge (the wheelwright's "dregs") that defines expertise in practice. This critique justifies the need for the new framework.

7. Conclusion & Reflections

• Conclusion Summary: The paper concludes that learning through practice, despite being the most enduring form of occupational development, lacks a legitimizing theoretical account. The author proposes a foundation for such an account built on three pillars: practice curriculum, practice pedagogies, and personal epistemologies. The most profound implication is the shift in focus from teaching-centric models to one that recognizes the active, agentic role of the learner. To give this model the credence it needs to influence policy and practice, the author suggests that a "science of learning through practice" may be required to counter the pervasive and often-limiting "discourse of schooling."

• Limitations & Future Work:

  • Conceptual Nature: The framework is primarily theoretical, derived from a synthesis of existing literature. It has not been empirically tested or validated in diverse contemporary workplace settings.
  • Contextual Focus: Much of the evidence is drawn from pre-industrial or traditional crafts. While the principles are argued to be generalizable, further work is needed to explore how they apply to modern, highly complex knowledge work (e.g., software engineering, financial analysis).
  • The Role of Teaching: The paper draws a very sharp, almost polemical, line between "learning" and "teaching." In many modern apprenticeships and mentorships, a blend of both is likely most effective. The framework could be expanded to more carefully delineate the role of intentional, expert-led instruction as a specific type of practice pedagogy.

• Personal Insights & Critique: This is a powerful and important paper that provides a much-needed vocabulary and conceptual structure for understanding workplace learning.

  • Strengths: Its core strength is the clear and compelling critique of the "discourse of schooling" and the elegant, three-part framework that offers a constructive alternative. By centering the learner's agency (personal epistemologies), it aligns with modern understandings of adult learning and constructivism.
  • Practical Implications: The framework is highly valuable for anyone designing internships, apprenticeships, on-the-job training, or professional development programs. It encourages a shift away from creating "courses" and towards cultivating rich learning environments where novices are empowered to observe, practice, and receive embedded, timely support.
  • Open Questions: How does this framework apply in virtual or remote work environments where opportunities for observation and informal interaction are limited? How can organizations intentionally design better practice curricula and foster practice pedagogies without falling back into the trap of overly formalizing them and stifling learner agency? The paper lays the groundwork for answering these crucial questions.