Work as Social Practice: Activities and Interdependancies

Abstract

Examining work as social practice offers a means of understanding relations between behaviour and the social world; or the mind in activity. Recent views have proposed that cognition is distributed (Hutchins 1991, Resnick, et al 1997) or stretched (Lave 1991) across the social partners and artefacts that comprise the social practice in which they act. Therefore, more than proposing social practice as a context for cognition, it seems necessary to understand the reciprocal, co-constructive nature of knowledge construction, its application and how judgements about its efficacy might arise. Emanating from these concerns, are important factors associated relations between individuals' thinking, acting and knowing and how they act (Cobb 1998) (or are permitted to act) in social practice such as work (Darrah 1997, Hull 1997). The study of work as social practice may permit these relationships to be understood more clearly. From an investigation of emerging work practice, a basis for understanding work, the requirements for performance and the means for learning these requirements are presented. Based on a scheme comprising activities and interdependencies, it is proposed this work offers a tentative basis to understand relations between work, as a social practice, and individuals' thinking acting and knowing.