Seeing Workplace As A Learning Space: A Call For Developing Critical Work-Based Learning (WBL) Pedagogy

The aim of this paper is to present the concept for developing a critical work-based learning (WBL) pedagogy in the emerging advanced apprenticeship circuit. The paper draws on an extensive sample of student reflective writings. With the help of multiple streams of longitudinal data sets, spread over a period of three years comprising data from 154 student-practitioners enrolled at a UK business school, we argue for a critical approach to WBL pedagogy that aims to change circumstances by empowering individuals to take charge of their own learning and practice. The findings illuminate issues of power and politics, which the traditional WBL approach fails to acknowledge. We seek to position our WBL pedagogical framework at the nexus of spatial and relational junctions of work settings to go beyond surface level notions of incidental, experiential and reflective learning to recognize the social, cultural, political and historical context within which learning is situated.