6.6 Preparedness for the “uncertain” future of work

as action; practice as structure – language, symbols and tools; practice as activity system; practice as social context and practice as knowing” (Hager, 2013, p. 94), as is highlighted in professional cooking/F&B menu-change training.

These new understandings (about skill for instance) have been enabled by anthropological studies of apprenticeship (e.g. Marchand, 2008) and professional practices such as physical therapy (e.g. Ross, 1999), which debunk preconceived and received notions of vocation as “low” - or “high”-level skill, and as a binary of skill versus knowledge. Scholars show that “skilled practice is a hard-earned cognitive achievement” (Marchand, 2008, p. 266), and how “cognitive studies, neurosciences, philosophy of mind and ethnographic fieldwork are providing fresh insights into embodied ways of learning and knowledge” (ibid).

6.6 Preparedness for the “uncertain” future of work

We have attempted to highlight, describe and problematise assessment and learning as interlinked, evolving and dynamic concepts of “alignment”, “authenticity” and so on in order to help better understand the complex needs and challenges of preparing workers to become (lifelong) learners for changing futures. While there may be many variations, interpretations and pronouncements about what those futures may be, the element of uncertainty is a common one.

We have observed how current strategies such as “assessment and learning” are designed to produce specific responses and “best” solutions for known, imagined and/or imaginable futures (e.g. the use of simulation in the rota commander course), and how being “future-oriented” also implies predicting the landscape of the future (e.g. doctor residency programme). The current framework of understanding, systems of education and plans of action to deal with uncertainty situate the locus of learning and assessment in the realm of performance and effectiveness, with some considerations of equity and concerns of human nature. This perhaps feeds into the continued demand for learning and assessment to be measurable and hence driven by psychometric scores, statistics and rankings upon which status and recognition are conferred, and taken as indicators of success in the education system.

These measures attempt to make visible, tangible and predictable what are really dynamic, relational and susceptible aspects of learning, and they tend to serve governance and management purposes more than learning ones. One of the effects of all these is the way learning expectations have been internalised as primarily from the school experience, where classroom delivery is dominant (Bound & Lin, 2011a), academic achievements are emphasised, and how it makes demands on learners that are different from later work experiences. The systemic disjuncture is observable in the aircraft engineering case where Da Wei, the programme coordinator, succinctly surmised how “it is a Singaporean student perception that a degree is everything (but) the reality is that attitude is everything”. It resonates with the view of prominent commentators such as the former Chief Editor of the Straits Times, who observed that “the most important characteristics of an education system lie outside the formal structure that comprises the curriculum, pedagogy, textbooks and examinations” (Han, 2016).

Thus, learning and assessment ought to be conceived as part of human nature and capacity (encapsulated as sense-making, judgement and perception), and connected to the workings of social practice (including issues of responsibility, power, and equity). Some of these aspects are highlighted in each case as challenges and/or resistances to easy dichotomies like theory-practice, atomisation of know-how into knowledge and skills, and distinction between learning and the learner. More concretely, our findings show how learners are being prepared for the uncertainties of work, and how efforts to engender preparedness highlight learning and assessment as an ongoing process, responsive to complex contexts in terms of the nature of work, organisational and institutional settings, and systems of learning and knowing.

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