If the potential of learning through work and throughout working lives is ever to be fully realised there is a need to develop a clearer conception of workplace pedagogic practices. Without such conception, efforts by individuals and interventions organised by governments and employers may not be directed towards achieving the kinds of learning of individuals will need to work effectively and to maintain their capacities throughout their working lives This paper draws on a series of studies of workplace learning experiences (Billett 2001, 2002, Billett, Barker & Hernon-Tinning in press) to identify and illuminate a set of reciprocal workplace participatory practices that constitute bases for workplace pedagogic practices. These practices are, on the one hand, how workplaces afford opportunities for individuals to participate in the workplace activities and interactions from which they initially learn, refine and extend what they have learnt. These affordances distribute the opportunities for how and what individuals are invited to learn in the workplace. On the other hand, is the degree by which individuals elect to engage in the workplace and learn. Underpinning this engagement are bases of identity, self and subjectivity, that shape participation in and learning from social practices such as workplaces. These reciprocal premises are explored and elaborated drawing on data from studies of learning in contemporary workplaces. The complexities of workplace affordances extend to the interests and standing of groups and affiliates in the workplace, the degree by which the existing work practice can tolerate the full participation, promotion and ongoing learning of those who work within it and the external demands on the workplace which necessitate change in its practices and goals. Moreover, often there are relations among these factors that underpin the complexity and contested nature of workplace affordances. For instance, who gets access to training and for what purpose illuminates these affordances. The bases of individual engagement in workplaces can also be idiosyncratic and selective. These bases appear often to be a product of negotiation between individuals' subjectivity and identity and the kinds of social practices they have participated in and how they have participated. These studies include evaluations of everyday and guided learning for groups of workers in workplaces of a period of six months and a year, detailed studies of the micro social processes that shape participation in and learning from work and studies that emphasise the key role of individual agency in engaging in and learning through work. Conceptually, the paper addresses the important question of relations between individuals and social practice: the social genesis of knowledge and learning, and the reciprocity that underlies the social bases to human development of. It seek to position learning for work between situational and individual determinism through elaborating the relations between the individuals' subjectivity, identity and sense of self as manifested in the exercise of their agency and the contested and dynamic social practice that comprises workplaces.