Activity Analysis and Workplace Training: An Ergonomic Perspective

Abstract

This chapter offers an overview of the field of Francophone research on learning through work and is intended as a platform for presenting a delineation of this field. More specifically, the chapter presents a range of research traditions that have secured important places within the French-speaking research community, as illustrated in the chapters collected in the book. This overview aims at explaining the disciplinary background underlying these traditions, identifying key premises and concepts and specific research and training methods that have emerged in that particular context. The chapter also attempts to illuminate the specific conceptions of learning these traditions are built on and have contributed to promote. To achieve that outcome, three research traditions are described, in relation to their historical and cultural backgrounds and key ideas and methodological focuses. The first of these three traditions comprises what is referred to Francophone ergonomics and the epistemology of the so-called work analysis. The historical and disciplinary origins of emergence of the Francophone tradition of ergonomics are presented, along with its central concepts, contributions to methods and applications in the field of vocational and professional training. Second, a focus is placed on the tradition of language use in relation to work, training and learning. These issues have acquired considerable visibility within Francophone research and have developed into a specific research tradition. An overview of the main research topics that have emerged within this tradition and key contributions to vocational and professional training issues is presented below. The third tradition is that referring to learning in connection with specific organisational contexts. Here, the social dimensions of learning are foregrounded, and contributions from Francophone researchers are illustrated and their alignment with other research traditions and particularly those widely disseminated in the Anglophone world. The final section of the chapter draws together a range of ideas which have emerged beyond and across these specific research traditions and that can be seen as having played an influencing role on the ways questions related with learning through and for work have been addressed in the Francophone world.