Student exposure to knowledge sharing processes during Work-Integrated Learning

Abstract

It is generally accepted that the purpose of higher education is to prepare students or learners to perform effectively and efficiently in the complex world of ‘work’. It is assumed that ‘work-integrated learning’ or WIL should prepare a student for the social, professional and working environments that they will enter after successfully attending an institute of higher education. Furthermore, work practices can only be learned through the experience of practising with other practitioners. It is in this context that Raelin ( 2007:499) identifies the following building blocks of a so-called epistemology of practice:  Critical reflection: the thinking capacity to make sense of practitioners’ own practice and experiences; the ability to think about how their actions resulted in a particular outcome.  Mastery: developed through an appropriate apprenticeship in which the novice is exposed to multiple practices.  Extensive use of tacit knowledge: the tacit (intangible) thinking processes that practitioners use as they solve problems and challenges of daily practices. The third element forms the focus of this paper, namely that as we introduce through WIL the student to the practical activities within an organisation, they should also become acquainted with the knowledge generation processes within an organisation. This does not entail knowledge management as such, but implies the ultimate practice as can be found in the term knowledge sharing. Effective knowledge sharing has developed into an important priority to enterprise, not necessarily because of the importance of knowledge to knowledge workers, but because of the increasing acceptance that tacit knowledge adds more value than explicit knowledge to the innovation process (Marouf 2007:11). There is general consensus that of the many resources an organisation may apply, knowledge is accepted as a key differentiator, therefore crucial to any organisation’s competitive advantage.