ERIC Number: EJ830244
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006-Jan
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1074-9039
EISSN: N/A
Relational Interdependence between Social and Individual Agency in Work and Working Life
Billett, Stephen
Mind, Culture, and Activity, v13 n1 p53-69 Jan 2006
A greater acknowledgment of relational interdependence between individual and social agencies is warranted within conceptions of learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege social agency in the form of situational contributions. This de-emphasises the contributions of the more widely socially sourced, relational, and negotiated contributions of both individual and social agency. As these accounts fail to fully acknowledge the accumulated outcomes of interactions between the individual and social experience that shape human cognition ontogentically and that also act to remake culture, they remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In response, this article proposes a consideration of the role for individual agency (e.g., intentionality, subjectivity, and identity), the ways in which it is socially shaped over time and serves to be generative of individuals' cognitive experience, and its role in subsequently construing what is experienced socially. This agency also enacts a relational interdependence with social and historical contributions. Through advancing the conception of relational interdependence, this article aims to balance views that currently privilege particular social influences in conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life.
Descriptors: Social Influences, Social Experience, Social Environment, Work Environment, Cognitive Processes, Individual Development, Adult Learning
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A