Workplace learning in break rooms and other hybrid spaces

These notes are part of a series for the book. When a person enters a transitional space (such as break rooms at work), they also adopt a transitional identity, which allows the person to take greater risks. This is something people value, and is a reason people don’t want to formalize the informal spaces.

Solomon, N., Boud, D., and Rooney, D. (2006) ‘The In-between: Exposing Everyday Learning at Work’, in Hall, K., Murphy, P., and Soler, J. (eds) (2012) Pedagogy and Practice: Culture and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd. in association with The Open University.

Outline

Background to the study
The meaning of space
Spaces within: some vignettes
1. Ambivalent sites: the trade teachers’ tearoom
2. Non-ambivalent site: work-based program teaching group
Discussing the in-between

Notes

The authors look at spaces in which learning occurs in the workplace.

They did their study at a vocational training institution, so naturally many of the respondents discussed classrooms and offices, but they also discussed ‘meal breaks in staff rooms, coffee taken at local cafes and sharing transport with colleagues to and from work…. [Places which] can be understood as hybrid spaces, that is, at one and the same time work and socializing spaces where the participants are both working and not working’ (Solomon et al., 2006, p. 76).
These hybrid spaces are ‘linked to broader social relations and networks of power’ (p. 77). ‘When they enter these spaces, they are neither entirely workers nor social beings, but located in between. Their activities are viewed as either working or socializing. They are not productive in the sense that they are performing the roles of normal work, yet the presence of significant learning means that they are not unproductive either’ (Solomon et al., 2006, p. 82).

Examples of hybrid spaces (time-spaces):

Break times
Break rooms and workrooms (note that these can be both on-the-job and off-the-job)
Conversations during commutes and other similar conversations between work times

The type of learning that occurs in these spaces is informal and/or incidental learning.

One group of teachers acknowledged that they were sharing ideas, but did not want to call it learning. Another group was open to the idea of naming their activity and spaces as learning, but they did not want it formalized. Further, they identified staff development days as mostly useful for the networking that happens during the breaks.

I thought this was interesting: “Part of the original design of the research project was a stage in which some of the practices identified through the study would be developed as formal interventions to ‘improve’ learning at work. This idea was abandoned at an early point once it became clear that the richness of learning we identified could be compromised by attempting to move it into the system world of the organization” (Solomon et al., 2006, p. 83).

Katherine Hinchey