Drawing from my (Lewis Hughes) diverse experience in teaching, industrial training, enterprise management and consulting in making the best use of what is known and can be done, this paper is an autoethnographic account of the possibilities for enhancing the quality of learning outcomes through learning partnerships. In particular, ten years as an Australian vocational education and training (VET) system approved quality assurance consultant in respect of learning design and development of VET learning support materials in Australia, has given me broad and deep insight into the opportunities inherent in – but largely overlooked – learning partnerships. Whilst this study is Australian orientated, there is appended commentary by European colleagues as to resonance, or otherwise, to the European environment. In looking to enhance learning outcomes and their application, a learning partnership potentially includes others beyond the learner and teacher relationship – which in some instances is not of a partnership nature. With respect to the workplace, a learning partnership potentially includes training supporters/coaches, mentors, supervisors, colleagues and even customers. External to the workplace – fellow students, family, friends, and associates are among those who can be recruited to an overt learning partnership. The autoethnographic study has made explicit the propensity in facilitating VET learning to overlook the multi-faceted value of recruiting “others” to a learning partnership – both in terms of achieving the target learning outcomes and in strengthening the transfer of these outcomes to the workplace. Identifying “the who” of a learning partnership just requires opening one’s mind to the possibility. However, acting upon the opportunity – “the how” - is more challenging as there are inhibitors constraining the formation of learning partnerships and cause difficulty in maintaining the relationships – especially with respect to beneficially transferring the outcomes to application. Accordingly, the autoethnographic probing had formation and maintaining as the principle focus and required probing systemic influences in an institutional ethnographic manner as exampled in Campbell and Manicom (eds) (1995). Consequent upon the highly institutionalised nature of VET in Australia, as an Activity Theorist with an interest in exploring coupling Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) with Institutional Theory (IT), this study has also served to explore the relationship between these two theories (notwithstanding much debate regarding what is accepted as IT) and the efficacy of this coupling as a prism through which to view research data. Accordingly – taking a lead from Ogawa et al. (2008) – this paper includes discussion of the potential influence of the “Coercion”, “Norms” and “Mimicry” IT carriers upon the activity of “Learning Partnerships”. In essence, this paper reviews ways and means to establish and maintain VET learning partnerships which resonate with Learning by Expanding as advocated by Engestrom (1987; 1997) and his more recent concept of “Knotworking” (Engestrom 2008). In this way, the paper is a further building upon the Vygotsky notion of the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky 1978) and has acting upon the opportunities inherent in learning partnerships as its offering; and in the expectation that extrapolation to European circumstances from the Australian context is appropriate.

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