« Francophone perspectives on the articulation between learning at work and learning through work »

Résumé En

Understanding the nature of work and the resources that are expressed in it is a delicate exercise. The recognized gap between the activity as prescribed or described in the formalized repositories, and the activity carried out in the work situations leads to a scientific interest in understanding the hidden dimensions of work. In the francophone context, various approaches are concerned with the analysis of activity in work situations (Filliettaz & Billett, 2015) for the design of professional development. These approaches, which share a primacy granted from the point of view of the actors on their own actions, address the analysis of their activity according to various epistemologies (disciplinary fields and different theoretical hypotheses): professional didactic (Pastré & al., 2006), course of action (Theureau, 2009), ergonomics (Falzon, 2005), and clinic of the activity (Clot, 2008). The understanding of the adaptive processes of the actors in their workspaces thus leans towards a goal of designing professional training environment. This work of design is underpinned by the strong concern to increase the capacity of the trainees to act in a concrete work situation and to fit into communities of professional practice. Research then links comprehensive and transformative aims, seeking access to dimensions of professional activity whose analysis is promising for the training design. It is about understanding how individuals learn in interaction with others and with the materiality of work situations, to grasp the skills necessary to act in contemporary work situations, characterized in particular by an increase in the use of technologies. The challenge of this work for training is to make a comparison between the characteristics and requirements of work situations and those given to experience by learners in training situations. Thus, the use of simulation situations reveals a possible articulation between understanding the workplace learning and designing a potential learning situation based on the analysis of the activity deployed at work. The aim of this symposium will be to consider the link between analysis of work activity of professionals and the design of learning and development situations for professional training. It will be a question of showing how this articulation can be conceived, based on empirical research rooted in various approaches and fields of professional intervention (teacher training,…). These approaches lead to design work and/or training situations as encouraged action spaces (Durand, 2008), enabling environments (Falzon, 2005) or crossed self-confrontation interview, sources of professional controversy (Clot, 2008).