Navigating turbulent waters : crafting learning trajectories in a changing work context

How do newcomers gain access to learning opportunities when they are denied opportunities to practice? Changes in the nature of work, such as labour outsourcing and technological advancements, have created challenges for newcomers to learn. They may be more easily relegated to low-level repetitive tasks, such as scutwork. In these situations, newcomers’ ambiguous position as learners can limit access to participation in practices needed to progress their learning trajectories. Using field-study data, we explore the situated learning of merchant-navy cadets. We show that, when newcomers are not permitted access to participation, the structural arrangements of practice – temporal structures, spatial territories and hierarchical arrangements – hinder learning opportunities. We show, further, that some newcomers leverage these same structural arrangements surreptitiously as resources to access participation, which we conceptualise as stealth work. Consequently, we unveil the soft forms of power at play in crafting access to learning trajectories, making three contributions. First, we show how structural arrangements of a practice can be leveraged to enable learning. Second, we show that gaining access stealthily, requires both normative and counter-normative performances. Third, we show the importance of access in crafting learning trajectories and unpack how such access is navigated by newcomers

The process of transition : becoming legitimate peripheral participants in the practice of seafaring.

My thesis seeks to develop the theory of legitimate peripheral participation by focusing on how it is accomplished in practice, through exploring the process of transition from novices to (relative) masters. In doing so, the study opens the black box of participation in studies of situated learning and focuses on two aspects that lead to a further development of legitimate peripheral participation. First, it looks at how newcomers undergo legitimate peripheral participation at two sites of practice and how movement between the sites influences the process of transition. Second, it focuses on the ways in which newcomers negotiate access to participation at a site where such access is not readily available. The research was conducted as a five-month multi-sited ethnographic study in the maritime industry; as such it focuses on the process of transition from cadets (newcomers) to officers (relative old-timers). Two research sites were used for conducting the ethnographic study, a maritime training center, and a merchant shipping vessel. Analysis of the data collected through observations and interviews at the two sites reveals key insights into the practical accomplishment of legitimate peripheral participation. The study shows the influence of movement between sites of practice and theorizes transition as an episodic process. Furthermore, the study explores the ways of doing through which newcomers are able to successfully negotiate access to participation. As such it develops a practice-sensitive concept of proactivity as a way of negotiating access to participation. Overall the thesis develops a more nuanced understanding of participation and shows how legitimate peripheral participation is accomplished in practice