The Paradox in Open Learning at Work
| Published date | 01 May 1990 |
| Pages | 29-33 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000000780 |
| Date | 01 May 1990 |
| Author | Alison Fuller,Murray Saunders |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
The
Paradox
in
Open
Learning
at
Work
Alison Fuller and Murray Saunders
THE PARADOX
IN
OPEN LEARNING
AT
WORK
29
O
pen learning ideology lends itself to an
environment which allows users to learn
at their own pace.
Introduction
The challenges that currently face British industry are well
known. References to demographic decline, 1992, rapid
technological change, skill shortages and an increasingly
competitive world market loom large in the publications
of government departments[1], industry organisations[2]),
and academics[3,4]). A head of steam has been building
up over the last few years behind the view that improved
vocational education and training (VET) can help the
economy to meet these challenges successfully.
Unfavourable comparisons have been made between
British VET and the provision available in competing
countries, such as West Germany, Sweden and Japan
([5,6,7].
It has also been pointed out that
while
the figures
are rising, British companies still spend far
less
on training
than many of their counterparts overseas. Anderson[8]
estimates that British firms spend
0.15
per cent of turnover
on training compared with 1-2 per cent
in
Japan,
France
and West Germany. For
example,
one survey showed that
two-thirds of employees
in
manufacturing industry received
no formal training in
1987[9].
Since the publication of the
government's White Paper on training last year, with its
pronouncements on employers' training responsibilities,
attention has been firmly centred on the efforts of
individual companies to develop and retrain their
staff.
It would be wrong to explain many employers' under-
investment in training as mere irrationality or ignorance.
Employers give two principal reasons for lack of
expenditure on
training.
First, the sheer
cost.
For example
British Telecom estimated that it would cost £40 million
to
train
its
20,000
operators to use computerised telephone
exchanges by traditional off-the-job methods. Firms
struggling to survive, through the recession of the early
eighties and more recently through high interest rates,
understandably find it difficult to stretch resources to cover
training. Second, the free-rider
problem.
Many employers
complain that investment in training can be doubly
expensive as newly trained staff leave to join firms who
poach rather than train. These companies calculate that
it
is
cheaper
to
offer trained staff
salaries
above the market
rate than to train their own recruits.
Given the above scenario, with exhortations to train
in
order
to combat competitive, technological and demographic
pressures on the one hand, and the realities of
high
training
costs and the free-rider problem on the other, it is no
wonder that firms have been looking at innovative forms
of
training.
As a consequence open learning as a training
method, often teamed with computer-based training (CBT)
as a learning
medium,
is being seen as an attractive option
to many, including major companies such as Sainsbury's,
B&Q,
Austin
Rover,
Lucas and Jaguar. Managers argue that
the initial costs of installing new equipment and buying or
producing course materials are offset by less need for
trainers and savings, as staff learn either
in
their
own
time
or at their
positions
instead of off-site. For
example,
instead
of spending the £40 million mentioned above, BT bought
a CBT system for £4 million to train its 20,000 operators.
However, the development of open learning as an
operational concept has had an ambiguous history. We
argue in the concluding section of this article that the
paradox at the heart of the use of open learning as a label
for more differentiated approaches to training, is derived
from this ambiguous past. It
is
possible to discern at least
two
kinds of
imperative
from which open learning has been
derived. Although they are not in the least mutually
exclusive, overlapping in important areas, the imperatives
do contain differences in emphasis which give rise to the
tensions to which we later refer.
On the one hand, open learning was the result of an
instrumental
imperative
concerning the difficulties of
access certain groups of people had to educational
opportunity. These difficulties may have arisen from their
disadvantaged position, for example they did not have
conventional qualifications, or any at all, or they were
disabled in some
way,
or they were geographically isolated
or were unable to gain access to educational opportunity
because of their work
in
the home (e.g. mothers or fathers
at home) or outside (shift workers). In all these cases,
more or less conventional curricula were offered to them,
designed by external providers. Such instances as the
School of the Airways in Australia, correspondence
courses and the Open University are examples of this.
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