Mittuniversitetet

This thesis contributes to an understanding of the conditions of experience in daily work. If workplace is studying as a pedagogical arena, at least two contexts for experiential learning will come into sight.

This study is focusing interaction and communication at the workplace when something occurs that diverges from ordinary routine. The thesis has an ethnographic character and the empirical data are based on participatory observation, interviews and talk at work with 31 employees at a Swedish steel company during the years 1999-2000. The principle of abductive approach has been used in a qualitative analysis.

It demonstrate that learning throughout working life is an inevitable product of everyday thinking and acting, shaped by the work practices in which individuals participate.

A consequence will be to pay more attention to relations and how we act according to each other then to interfere with different interventions which try to promote learning in a certain way. The process of learning is continuous and self-regulated and not possible to tame.