research process provided Shona with a space to consider the way in which her ideas for
designs might be received in their context-of-consumption (i.e. the way in which customers
would perceive them) as well as in their context-of-production (i.e. to anticipate how
Mathew might respond to the ideas that lay behind different designs before she presented
them to him).
In the case of the latter, the introduction of the research-based dimension led Shona to
appreciate that the creative and cultural sector is increasingly less and less a series of
separate and fragmented industries, and increasingly an interconnected field where
aesthetic notions are shaped ‘relationally’ by the way in which people can creatively
juxtapose ideas, artifacts and lifestyles (Bourriard, 2002). This alerted her to the dual
challenge of consecrating a reputation as a jewelry designer in an era of economic
innovation: it is imperative to not only search for inspiration for jewelry designs outside of
the immediate field of practice, but also to consider the way in which those sources of
influence might anticipate and, thus position companies such as M&M, to be at the
forefront of fashion trends.
The second issue is to reveal the crucial role of pedagogic practice in developing the
epistemic dimension of vocational practice in workplaces. Most discussions of workplace
pedagogy have focused on: (i) the transition from novice-to-expert (Fuller & Unwin,
2003a); (ii) the enculturation into preset work processes (Billett, 2003; Eraut, 2004) and
habitus (Casey, 1997); and, (iii) the conditions to facilitate interaction between different
activity systems (Tuomi-Grohn & Engestrom, 2003). Once we focus on how various kinds
of knowledge, material entities, skills, and social functions are built into a new project-
object so that they are aligned and coordinated to make it functionally coherent and
representative of all parties’ desires and interests, we introduce a new dimension into
workplace pedagogy that the gradualistic and radical positions have never addressed: how
to support people to learn to infer what follows from other people’s ideas and practices.
The traditional ‘front-loaded’ argument about the vocational educational curriculum
stresses that such techniques and the theories that underpin their use should be taught to
learners prior to encountering practical situations in the workplace where they may be
relevant (Winch & Clarke, 2003; Winch, 2006). While the more recent ‘practice-based’
argument in vocational education has stressed that modern work is characterized by a need
for ‘hot actions’ and that vocational curricula cannot possibly anticipate and prepare people
for such situations (Beckett & Hager, 2002). The problem with this polarised view of the
vocational curriculum is that both positions gloss over, albeit in slightly different way, that
concepts and working practices are neither context-free nor purely situated achievements;
they dwell in their own normative domain which is underpinned by culturally and
historically constituted reasons. Thus it follows that in order to grasp the implications of
any suggestion (i.e. to know that something either is the case or might be relevant to the
case-in-hand), learners have to be able to discern what is or is not a reason for different
suggestions, and to use their emerging knowledge of those reasons to infer what does or
does not follow for their vocational practice.
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