ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the use and efficacy of pedagogically rich work activities as means to assist individuals to learn through their everyday work tasks and interactions. These activities are important because they possess qualities inherently conducive to supporting learning, including that which might otherwise be difficult to realise. This includes accessing and constructing the knowledge required to meet new or emerging occupational and workplace challenges. So, they often comprise both a ‘pedagogic event’ and, subsequently, opportunities to appraise and reconcile the processes and outcomes of that event. Beyond identifying and elaborating on the pedagogic qualities of these activities, this chapter proposes how their potential can be optimised to maximise workers’ and students’ learning. It commences by discussing the importance and qualities of these work activities illustrated by illuminating work activities such as handovers, team meetings in healthcare and education and production meetings and planning processes in manufacturing. Strategies for optimising these activities to promote effective kinds of learning are then advanced. These considerations include how these activities might be used to promote (a) students’ or novice workers’ learning, (b) workers’ ongoing development across and within their working lives and (c) effective interprofessional working and learning.
