Coparticipation at work: Knowing and work practicer

Abstract

A basis to understand how doing and learning coalesce through work, referred to as co-participation at work, is advanced. Coparticipation encompasses, on the one hand, the affordances provided by the workplace for engagement in activities and the provision of guidance. However, workplaces are contested, their affordances are neither benign nor distributed equally to those who participate or wish to participate in them. Accordingly, these affordances determine how individuals participate and learn in workplaces. However, on the other hand, individuals determine how they engage in work, how they know and transform their ways of knowing as a result. In this way there is a reciprocity and interdependence which underpins thinking, acting and learning through work.