2006/02/01 by Stephen Billett · 278 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Critical Realism in Sociology #Cultural Differences and Values #Social Representations and Identity
paper · pdf · doi:10.1207/s15327884mca1301_5
published in Mind, Culture, and Activity 13(1), 53-69 (Informa UK Limited)
crossref issued 2006/02/01 · crossref published 2006/02/01 · crossref published-print 2006/02/01 · openalex publication_date 2006/02/01 · crossref created 2006/06/26 · crossref deposited 2025/01/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/08/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
A greater acknowledgment of relational interdependence between individual and social agencies is warranted within conceptions of learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege social agency in the form of situational contributions. This de-emphasises the contributions of the more widely socially sourced, relational, and negotiated contributions of both individual and social agency. As these accounts fail to fully acknowledge the accumulated outcomes of interactions between the individual and social experience that shape human cognition ontogentically and that also act to remake culture, they remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In response, this article proposes a consideration of the role for individual agency (e.g., intentionality, subjectivity, and identity), the ways in which it is socially shaped over time and serves to be generative of individuals' cognitive experience, and its role in subsequently construing what is experienced socially. This agency also enacts a relational interdependence with social and historical contributions. Through advancing the conception of relational interdependence, this article aims to balance views that currently privilege particular social influences in conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life.