What does the working class learn when it works?

Abstract

Workplace learning research appears almost totally to neglect the idea that the most important thing we can learn at work is the nature of class society, and what power we can sometimes exert, if we are organised, to defend ourselves against its worst excesses. Generations of workers have learnt their politics at work, becoming more conscious of their class interests, and how to act on them. The absence of this phenomenon from the bulk of workplace learning literature has political and theoretical implications. Politically, it reflects the employer-driven agendas of much workplace learning research - how can 'we' get 'them' to work harder, faster, smarter, for example. Theoretically, it means that workplace learning research (with a few notable exceptions) has developed few concepts with which to theorise or even see the 'counter-cultural' nature of much workplace learning, as it actually happens, and has happened. This paper is a contribution to a symposium in which presenters have been invited to make visible some of this remarkable learning that occurs at work, the learning which helps us see a way forward; and what we as researchers can do to acknowledge, validate, support and extend that learning, and so continue and build on the work of previous generations of educator/intellectuals (organic and less-so) in the international socialist movement.