Relational Interdependence Between Social and Individual Agency in Work and Working Life

A greater acknowledgment of relational interdependence between individual and social agencies is warranted within conceptions of learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege social agency in the form of situational contributions. This de-emphasises the contributions of the more widely socially sourced, relational and negotiated contributions of both individual and social agency. As these accounts fail to fully acknowledge the accumulated outcomes of interactions between the individual and social experience that shapes human cognition ontogentically and which also acts to remake culture, they remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In response, this paper proposes a consideration for the role of individual agency (e.g. intentionality, subjectivity and identity), how it is socially shaped over time and serves to be generative of individuals' cognitive experience, and its role in subsequently construing what is experienced socially. This agency also enacts a relational interdependence with social and historical contributions. Through advancing the conception of relational interdependence, this paper aims to balance views that currently privilege particular social influences in conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life.