Ms Nicky Solomon - Abstracts

Chapters in Books

Solomon, N. (1999 )
'Culture and difference in workplace learning'
in Understanding Workplace Learning (eds D. Boud & J. Garrick) Routledge

There is little argument that there has been enormous cultural change in the workplace. This has been accompanied by new interest in the use of culture as a management technology and in the productive potential of difference. Indeed ‘culture’ and ‘difference’ have become central in workplace learning discourse. However while ‘culture’ and ‘difference’ are now part of everyday work — organisational culture, team culture, a learning culture, cultural differences, celebrating diversity, cross-cultural training, culturally diverse workforce, crossing cultural boundaries—their meanings remain almost taken for granted and unexplored. This chapter, as part of a book whose purpose is to explore workplace learning, aims to surface some of the challenges that the terms ‘culture’ and ‘difference’ demand of workplace educators.

Scheeres, H. & Solomon, N. (1999)
'Methodological dilemmas in collaborative research practice'
in Culture and Text (eds. A. Lee & C. Poynton) Allen & Unwin

This chapter examines the dilemmas and tensions in the developing collaborative research practice involving government, industry and education. The main focus of this chapter is on the complexities of academics 'doing' collaborative research. We draw on our participation in a specific commissioned workplace research project focusing on the new language of work, as a typical site of such collaboration. Our reflexive commentary on our work aims to bring to the surface a range of methodological, political and epistemological tensions in commissioned research in the contemporary world with pressure on academics to produce particular kinds of knowledge.

Conference papers

Usher, R. & Solomon, N. (1998)
'Experiential learning and the shaping of subjectivity in the workplace'
paper presented at the International Conference on Experiential Learning' University of Tampera, Finland July 1998

The focus of this paper is the development of work-based learning awards drawing on one such initiative conducted by a major Australian university. We relate work-based learning awards to the way in which the workplace has been constructed by contemporary workplace reform discourses that combine elements of the managerial and the educational. These discourses, articulated in the language of ‘enterprise’ and ‘excellence’, emphasise the role of cultural change and the role of learning in the workplace (eg ‘learning organisations’ and ‘knowledge worker’ discourses). We examine how the subjectivity of workers/employees is shaped by this and therefore what place ‘disciplinary’ power has in a context where the workplace is recognised as a significant site of learning and where experiential learning is now seen as an important mainstream pedagogical form.

Solomon, N. (1998)
'New partnerships, new knowledges' fourth paper in a symposium on New Discourses of Work and New Modes of Knowledge Production
co-presented with A. Lee, R. Wickert, H. Scheeres at the Australian Association of Research in Education Conference, Adelaide, November 1998.

With the competitive global market for higher education and the accompanying diversification of educational 'services', large organisations have become a new site of university and workplace collaboration. The workplace as a legitimate site of learning has for some time been reflected in courses yet the work-based learning initiatives present new challenges to academia's understanding of what counts as 'legitimate' knowledge. The paper discusses some of the problematics around the concept of ‘work as curriculum’ that are emerging in these work-based learning initiatives, including: (i) the changing roles and identities of learners and academics and the consequences for what counts as knowledge' in these new collaborative pedagogical relationships, and (ii) the contested spaces within ‘formalisation of informal learning’ and the ‘deinstitutionalisation of learning’.

Seminar papers

McIntyre, J. & Solomon, N. (1998)
'A politics of curriculum in work-based learning'
as part of a series on 'Work as the Curriculum/Working Knowledge'