Hermeneutics of complexity and the limits of learning pre-specification

Abstract Contemporary work confronts researchers and educators with a range of challenges, including those posed by complex environments in which workers grapple with uncertainty in high-stakes situations. A different challenge lies in the assumptions brought to learning design and facilitation, assumptions which together constitute a ‘paradigm’ concerning how to approach these tasks. Without a paradigm, designers and practitioners may exercise an incoherent practice; but if the paradigm is in some way problematic, then the practice may be compromised. In this article, we focus on work in complex environments, problematizing a particular paradigm—the ‘pre-specification’ approach—that is often brought to bear on it. The key to this paradigm is that work can be analysed and represented such that it can be specified in advance as a reference point for educational endeavours. We problematize key epistemological and ontological assumptions of this paradigm. Hermeneutics draws attention to the limits of these assumptions regarding what we can understand and represent about work, while complexity theory allows us to recognize ontological features of work that make pre-specification difficult or untenable. We conclude that in complex work, representation-making needs to be a distributed activity rather than a specialty, and it occurs at multiple points on the learning continuum rather that solely at the beginning.