This paper draws on on-going research on workplace learning affordances in Norwegian retail apprenticeship to explore the significance of personal responsibility and autonomy for professional development. Within the discipline of educational psychology, much has been written on self-regulated learning. Based on the pioneering work of Zimmerman (e.g. 1990), the term refers to learners assuming personal responsibility and control of their skills acquisition. The literature, foremost based on learning in academic settings, portrays self-regulated or self-directed learning as intra-personal traits and metacognitive capabilities, 'innate' in particular types of learners or a craft to be taught. It is depicted as an ideal-type or even ‘the ideal learner’, who regulates one’s own learning, feedback and emotions, driven by intrinsic motivation. The topic of this paper is rather self-regulated apprenticeship learning. The paper seeks to move beyond individual-centred perspectives in order to place mutual emphasis on the social context in which the learner is situated and the learning environment which the learner is co-creating.

The research questions are: Which learning environment affordances foster self-regulated learning and how do apprentices subjectively engage in such learning practices? How do these work practices interplay with apprentices’ professional development? Norwegian Sales VET is struggling to establish its trade identity to gain foothold. Compared to the better-established apprenticeship systems within industry and craft, VET-tradition, employer engagement in education and training and standing of the trade certificate is weak within the field of sales. The current situation is a VET program where only one third of the students complete apprenticeship (Vibe et al. 2011). Although nation-specific differences, retail employment is largely depicted in negative terms; as low skill, low pay work with bleak prospects for further formal training (Grugulis and Bozkurt 2011; Roberts 2012). In this paper, I explore how Norwegian retail apprentices construct and negotiate a sense of occupational self within such a weakly-defined institutional framework and lacking learning focus in retail apprenticeship.

Dual understandings of learning as either individual or social represent a longstanding theoretical debate (Hodkinson et al. 2008). Within individual-centred learning theories, learning as cognition has been defined as the process through which one acquires knowledge as skills, e.g. Ellström et al. (2008) distinguish between reproductive (low level), productive and creative learning (highest level). Social and largely prevailing learning theories emphasise knowledge construction mediated by the social and cultural circumstances in which the learning activity is situated (Rogoff 1990; Lave and Wenger 1991). Herein, learning is viewed as a social process that takes place in interaction between people, i.e. communities of practice (Illeris 2011). The notion of learning environment, which in this paper serves as an analytical point of departure, is commonly used to grasp the “conditions and practices in an organization that are likely to facilitate or hinder learning in and through work at a particular workplace” (Ellström et al. 2008: 86). By this concept, I aim to bridge the dualist views on learning. The concept of learning environment is widely accepted, but operationalized in various ways. I will apply the term in three distinct, but interlinked ways. First, the technical-organisational aspects of the learning environment describe the material, physical, technical and organisational characteristics of the labour process. Second, the socio-cultural aspects of the learning environment denote communities of work, power relations, values and norms (Jorgensen and Warring 2001). The third and crucial aspect relates to how the individuals elect to engage in the activities. Herein, there are dual bases for participation at workplace learning in the dialectic relation between ‘objective structures’ and subjective agency’, mutually constituting the learning environment.

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