from Part II - Learning Differences in Contemporary Cultural Practices
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2026
This chapter examines how baker apprentices in Danish bakeries learn to become bakers. Learning is part of everyday practices shaped by conflictual issues involving, among other factors, economy, gender, power structures, and identities. In the first part of the chapter, I discuss why modern learning theories often fail to integrate contradictions and conflicts as important elements in understanding learning processes. In the second part, I present an ideology of critical relational thinking, drawing on Gramsci and the concept of situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991), both of which link learning to processes of social change. This perspective foregrounds the role of contradictions and conflicts in shaping practice. In the final section, I apply these ideas empirically, analyzing how apprentices’ everyday activities both reflect and transform the social dynamics of their workplaces.
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