The microphysics and micropolitics of microscopic meanings: situated ethics and professional workplace pedagogy and learning in Venezuelan and Australian universities

Abstract

ract]: A crucial challenge confronting contemporary workplaces is finding meaningful ways to facilitate ongoing workplace learning. This is certainly the case in universities, where competing pressures on academics and managers require the learning of new roles such as social entrepreneurs (Anteliz & Danaher, 2004). These pressures reflect the ongoing need for attentiveness to the microphysics and micropolitics of university workplaces if such professional workplace learning is to be effective, efficient and equitable. That attentiveness reinforces the situated and politicised character of such learning; it also raises questions about appropriate forms of pedagogy to accompany and enable such learning. One potentially useful conceptual tool in articulating meaningful professional workplace pedagogy and learning in contemporary universities is situated ethics (Piper & Simons, 2005; Simons & Usher, 2000). Situated ethics eschews adherence to a timeless and universal code in favour of understanding ethical practice as contingent and located in the specific power grids of particular institutions. From this perspective, the ethical dimension of pedagogy and learning in relation to academics and managers must engage explicitly and hopefully productively with the aspirations and interests of members of the institutions in which their roles are performed. This paper illustrates this argument by reference to the authors’ reflexive accounts of the dilemmas and strategies informing their efforts to participate in ongoing professional workplace learning. These dilemmas and strategies are framed by global, national and regional developments in socioeconomic policymaking, yet also enacted in contexts shaped by the microphysics and micropolitics of meaning making in their particular workplaces. The authors elaborate and apply selected features of situated ethics that underpin their respective and shared pedagogical approaches to facilitating their colleagues’ and their own professional workplace learning.