Skill and work experience in the European knowledge economy



little attention has been given as to how to prepare young people to move between
different types of work contexts and how to relate formal and informal learning.

Re-thinking work experience as ‘consequential transition’.

One of the most interesting insights into understanding the process of learning that
occurs through work experience has been provided by Beach (1999) and Beach and
Vyas (forthcoming). Beach’s work originates in socio-cultural activity theory and, as
such, it is not primarily concerned with addressing the development of generic skill.
His ideas about transition, however, help to throw new light on the debates about how
work experience can assist students to make effective transitions from education to
work (Guile and Griffiths forthcoming).

Beach argues that rather than seeing work experience as a strategy whereby students
learn to the transfer of knowledge and skill acquired in one context (work) into another
context (education), it is important to see it as a process of
consequential transition.
The idea of consequential transition is about movement in relation to purposes and,
therefore, Beach argues that greater account needs to be taken of how, in the process of
transition, identities and even contexts themselves might change.

Beach identifies four different types of consequential transitions - lateral, collateral,
encompassing and mediational, although he acknowledges that there are certain
affinities between the first and second pair of transitions. Lateral and collateral
transitions involve people moving between sets of activities that are changing slowly
compared to the changes that individuals are experiencing as they move between them.
Beach and Vyas'’ account of high school students working in a fast food restaurant
illustrates this type of transition. Students had to adapt to the restaurant and acquire the
ability to produce and deliver hamburgers. In contrast, he suggests that encompassing
and mediational changes occur when the rate of change in an activity is relatively rapid
compared to the change that is required by the individual involved. He suggests that

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