Individualising the social - socialising the individual: Interdependence between social and individual agency in vocational learning.

Abstract

A greater acknowledgment of the interdependence between individual and social agency is warranted within current conceptions of learning, and policy and practice within adult and vocational education. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege situational agency to the detriment of the negotiated contributions arising between more broadly conceptualised accounts of individual and social agency. As they fail to fully acknowledge the accumulative outcome of interaction between the cognitive and social experience that shapes human cognition ontogentically and remakes culture, these theories remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In a different way, social agency is also overly privileged in current conceptions of vocations, vocational education and its policy and practice within Australia. A consideration of individual intentionality and agency and its interdependence with social and historical contributions is proposed to balance views that privilege particular social influences in current conceptions of vocational practice and its development