Understanding Work-Related Learning: The Role of Job Characteristics and the Use of Different Sources of Learning

It is argued that internships have a distinctive contribution to professional education. It is suggested that the confrontation with the workplace triggers learning. Based on the Demand-Control-Support (DCS) model, this chapter aims to investigate the influence of job characteristics such as job demands, job control and social support on the learning in the workplace during internships. We investigated different dimensions of knowledge construction and regulation that can take place during internships (Oosterheert IE, Vermunt JD, Learn Instr 11(2):133–156, 2001). Four such activities were distinguished in our sample: (1) external-regulated knowledge construction, (2) self-regulated knowledge construction, (3) shared regulation of knowledge construction and (4) avoidance of learning. Moreover, we looked how these relate to the perceived competences reported by both the students and the supervisors. One-hundred seventeen engineering students conducting an internship and their supervisors in the companies participated by completing questionnaires based on contextualised versions of existing and validated scales. The results of the correlational analyses indicate that both individual and contextual factors need to be taken into account when (re)constructing workplaces for learning during internships. This study provides insight in workplace characteristics that affect learning during internships. Moreover, it disentangles different dimensions of knowledge construction and regulation, hereby identifying different ways in which learning is shaped in the workplace. This suggests pathways to promote learning during internships.