To learn and to construct knowledge in the context of work with adult education: a Portuguese case study

Work contexts are frequently referred to as spaces of learning and production of individual and/or collective knowledge. In such contexts specific dynamics are developed which cause the processes of learning and of knowledge production to have particularities. This paper aims at accounting for some dynamics that are associated with those processes, based on the main results of an ethnographic study on the adult educator team of a Portuguese local development association. The research identified ways of working/action rules based on the learning and knowledge production processes in the association. Mutual help, the reformulation and collectivization of practice, reflection in and about the action, and the negotiation of meaning about the practice are some of the mechanisms identified. The study also highlights how those dynamics of knowledge and learning and ways of doing may contribute to a practice which is closer to the needs of the adults to whom this team offers its education and training services.