Learning in-between, across and beyond workplace boundaries

In this paper, we challenge conventional theories underpinning the practice of human resource development (HRD) that typically focus on the objects of learning - individuals, skills, jobs - or separate the contexts of work (performance) from learning (training). Using case study research from a public utility and a winery, we found similarities in workers' experiences of various organisational practices despite different objects of learning. These practices were, firstly, temporarily occupying (acting up) in a more senior position and, secondly, collaborating across functions. Unlike notions of boundary-crossing or job rotation, we argue that learning 'in-between' develops interactional competence that is grounded within the work practices of interacting individuals. This relational view opens up possibilities for redirecting the focus of HRD practice towards integrating work and learning in ways that develop the potential for learning in-between, across and beyond the boundaries of work. © 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Packing as practice: creative knowledges through material interactions

Contemporary travellers are presented with a range of material, spatial, bodily and environmental interactions, and may use these to develop experiential modes of creative knowledge production. The study of tourism has had many recent calls for a greater awareness to the interactions between humans and non-humans, particularly the importance of material encounters we have in-transit.

Examining the process of packing a bag, this paper advocates the need for a greater understanding of materiality within travel processes that leads to collaborative and creative knowledges. In addition the process of packing a bag evolves into a creative practice that facilitates a series of strategies that assist in reconceptualising traditional notions of materiality. A rethinking of material interactions presents affirmative, global, and nomadic encounters for a multitude of actors and situations. In the rigorous, daily process of packing, objects are transformed into fluid, malleable forms – as a mass of material that is being collaboratively negotiated.

A range of interdisciplinary propositions, such as Bruno Latour’s collective action and Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory, suggest how we may conceive of objects not as singular forms situated within specific representations. These theories open up methods of embodied and situated knowledge production that informs how we, as global citizens, shift between individual and collective modes of experience. Drawing on interviews and photographic documentation of travellers, this paper discusses the potential of creative practices to reveal an array of affective, relational situations that hold potential for collaborative forms of knowledge production.