Læring i arbejdslivet

– et opgør med det ’lærende subjekt’

Abstract

The relationship between the individual and the organisation has been, and continues to be, a challenge in studies of workplace learning. The ‘learning subject’, embodied as a human being and placed at the centre of all forms of development and learning, is difficult to escape, because our understanding of learning is so closely tied to teaching and its systems of, for example, rewards. In the workplace, however, it is the work practices and their (collective) organising that matter most – not teaching and learning. The individual–organisation relationship is doubly problematic, because it also touches on a fundamental ontology of how to comprehend the relationship between person and context. In this essay, I present four approaches to the study of workplace learning, where different researchers provide concepts that move beyond the individual ‘learning subject’ as the centre of learning in working life. As a starting point for these efforts, I begin by presenting a recent theoretical article that shows how the notion of a ‘learning subject’ is, in fact, difficult to escape.