Exercising autonomy in the workplace is a prerequisite for the acquisition of complex perceptual, judgement, and decision making skills widely agreed to be criteria of vocational expertise. It has wide workplace relevance. Despite the importance of autonomy for developing vocational expertise there is virtually nothing on methodologies for…

This article explores the concept of the "vocational" in contemporary educational discourses, and argues for the centrality of vocational aspects of learning in making meaning. The existing tensions are seen to lie between discourses that place the vocational at the bottom of a hierarchy of knowledge and value, and discourses concerning…