Translating validation of prior learning in practice

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Translating validation of prior learningin practiceAndreas Diedrich aa Gothenburg Research Institute , Gothenburg , SwedenPublished online: 11 Apr 2013.

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Translating validation of prior learning inpractice

ANDREAS DIEDRICHGothenburg Research Institute, Gothenburg, Sweden

This article contributes to the critical literature in the field of validation of prior learningby framing the idea of validation as a tool for integrating immigrants in the labourmarket as concerning issues of organizational change. Using a perspective from the soci-ology of translation, I examine how the idea of validation is translated in practice as partof a labour market project run by municipal and state organizations in Western Swedenfrom 2006–2008. The project aimed at developing methods for validating recent immi-grants’ prior learning to support more than 500 immigrants into employment. Based onan ethnographically inspired field study, I focus on how the validation procedurematerializes as a result of the organizing practices in the project. The article suggests thatthe difficulties currently experienced in the work with validation of recent immigrants’prior learning in Sweden may be explained by its emphasis on procedural efficiency overa more comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneous nature of the immigrants’skills.

Introduction

The validation of prior learning has over the last decade become a widespreadphenomenon (Andersson & Guo, 2009; Andersson & Osman, 2008; Colardyn &Bjørnavold, 2004; Hult & Andersson, 2008; Jarvis, 2007; Stenfors-Hayes, Griffiths,& Ogunleye, 2008; Tudor, 1991). Researchers, policy-makers and practitionersalike have become interested in validation as the means of promoting equalityand inclusion in education and training, creating a more flexible labour marketand promoting integration and social cohesion (see e.g. Jackson, 2011; Jarvis,2007). In other words, validation is seen as a panacea for many of the problemsfacing contemporary Western societies. Until recently, however, researchers have

Andreas Diedrich is an Associate Professor in Management and OrganizationStudies at the Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economicsand Law, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. In his research he is interestedin the role of knowledge and technology in organizing. At present he studiesthe development and maintenance of procedures for recognizing priorvocational learning in Sweden, Australia and South Africa. Correspondence:Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), School of Business, Economics andLaw, University of Gothenburg, BOX 603, SE 405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden.Email: [email protected]

Int. J. of Lifelong Education, 2013

Vol. 32, No. 4, 548–570, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02601370.2013.778078

� 2013 Taylor & Francis

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predominantly focused on the effects of validation for individuals, groups, organi-zations and countries, and largely ignored validation practices.

Critical researchers have lately refined the literature on validation onmethodological and theoretical grounds, challenging the conventional views ofexperiential learning and the particular readings of knowledge, pedagogy,learning, identity and power, which these views privilege (see, for example,Andersson & Harris, 2006; Fejes & Nicoll, 2008; Harris, 1999; Michelson, 1996).Nevertheless, few studies have examined validation as an organizing practiceconsisting of struggles, negotiations, mediations, ambiguity and multipledemands from persons, groups and organizations involved, as well as a plethoraof material artefacts. The idea of validation is translated and made sense of andmaterializes into a stable process, model, tool or method——or not. Thus, thereis a need to study such practice in everyday organizational life (Smith, 2008).

In this article I heed this call by using an action net perspective (Czarniawska,2004), a combination of the sociology of translation (Latour, 1987) and neoinsti-tutionalism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), to examine how a process for validatingthe prior learning of recent immigrants to Sweden is organized, put in placeand ‘black-boxed’. I studied a project run from 2006 to 2008 by the CountyLabour Board in one of the counties experiencing the highest influx of immi-grants. Its aim was to promote collaboration around the development of meth-ods for validating the prior learning of ‘recent immigrants with non-Nordicbackgrounds’ as part of their settlement support and testing the new methodsby validating 500 immigrants to support them into employment.

The article is based on an ethnographically inspired field study, includingextensive interviews and observations of assessment activities and project meet-ings. By following how a particular version of validation is enacted in practice, Ialso hope to show that this sociology of translation approach is particularly suit-able for bringing forward the various interests, negotiations and mediations thatcharacterize the emergence and stabilization of new methods, tools or practices.Educational reforms such as the introduction of validation methods are in thehands of collective actors and depend largely on how well they will serve theactors’ needs and interests.

I begin by presenting the literature on validation and lifelong learning andlink these discussions to the sociology of translation. Next, I present the study’ssetting and its method. Then, I outline the study’s findings and end with somediscussions and conclusions.

Literature overview

A prevalent approach to research on lifelong learning and validation of priorlearning is to focus on the effects of validation by examining lifelong learningpolicies and their application to various groups (Chapman, Gaff, Toomey, &Aspin, 2005; Pitman, 2009; Stenfors-Hayes et al., 2008). This research demon-strated that the agenda for lifelong learning is driven, mostly, by social inclusion,but also showed the difficulties associated with implementing lifelong learningpolicies, including validation of prior learning. Many studies and reports, how-ever, adopted a managerialist, essentializing perspective (see e.g. Bjørnavold,2000; Cedefop, 2009), taking for granted the idea that validation has a liberating

TRANSLATING VALIDATION OF PRIOR LEARNING 549

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effect, and that it promotes social justice and equity (Jackson, 2011). Thisresearch is based on three assumptions. First, knowledge and skills are objectswith essential characteristics. Second, people possess knowledge and skills, whichare products of formal, informal and/or non-formal learning (see e.g. Eraut,2000). Third, there exist methods and tools with ‘objective’ characteristics that,if implemented correctly, can ‘objectively’ assess knowledge and skills. LikeClarke and Fujimura’s (1992) laboratory scientists, striving to find ‘the righttools for the job’ in their experiments, validation’s proponents search for thebest tools to (objectively) identify, document and assess prior learning.

Recent research has begun to question such essentializing approaches to vali-dation and lifelong learning (Aspin & Chapman, 2000). In a seminal article,Elaine Michelson (1996) criticized the validation literature for its focus on ratio-nality and for treating knowledge as an entity with essential characteristics.Assuming the situatedness of knowledge and learning (see also Brown &Duguid, 1990; Lave, 1993; Lave & Wenger, 1991), she argued for an understand-ing of validation in a particular context. Such a situated learning perspective hasmore recently been used to examine the validation of prior learning in specificcontexts such as migration to Sweden (Andersson & Fejes, 2010b).

Anderson and Harris’ (2006) criticism of the prevalent validation literaturecalled for a more profound theorization of the concept of validation to moveaway from conventional ideas of experiential learning and their particularepistemological and ontological understandings, including ideas on pedagogy,learning, identity and power. Heeding this call, and using Foucault-inspireddiscourse analysis, some studies have explicitly addressed the issue of power inthe context of validation (see e.g. Fejes & Nicoll, 2008). Andersson and Osman(2008), for example, examined how generic discourses structure the subjectsand objects of validation. Other studies showed how well educated immigrantsface the problem of not having their prior experience, knowledge and skills rec-ognized adequately, for instance, when foreign nurses are validated as assistantnurses (Andersson, Fejes, & Song-Ee, 2006; Andersson & Guo, 2009).

Nevertheless, to date, few studies have shown how particular versions of vali-dation are enacted in in everyday practice (Smith, 2008). More importantly, themajority of research on validation has focused on validation processes and sys-tems already in place and taken for granted——‘black-boxed’ in Latour’s (1987)sense of the term.

The sociology of translation and action nets

One approach that promises to shed more light on everyday practices is ActorNetwork Theory (ANT) (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987; Law, 1992). Broadlyspeaking, ANT is interested in innovation as an assemblage of heterogeneousnetworks. Although it is called a ‘theory’, ANT does not explain ‘why’ a networktakes the form that it does (Latour, 2005), but shows how it is constructed. Atpresent, variations of ANT are used in many different fields, from science andtechnology studies (Latour, 1996), to education studies (Fenwick & Edwards,2010) to organization and management studies (Czarniawska & Hernes, 2005).

Early ANT researchers examined networks already in place due to theirinterests in the history of science and technology. A classical example is Law’s

550 ANDREAS DIEDRICH

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(2000) study of Portuguese vessels, showing how they facilitated early imperialistexpansion in the fifteenth century. Later studies, such as Fenwick and Edward’s(2010) discussion of an educational change project, the Alberta Initiative forSchool Improvement (AISI), continued to focus on networks already in place,due to accessibility to the material. This does not mean, however, that studies ofongoing processes are beyond ANT’s focus.

In organization theory, ANT has been used to account for how changeunfolds in organizations and how innovations spread in time and space (see e.g.Bergstrom & Diedrich, 2011; Czarniawska & Sevon, 2005; Czarniawska & Hernes,2005; Diedrich, 2004). Previously, such change has been conceptualized as a dif-fusion process, assuming that plans, policies, standards, methods, processes ortechnologies are ‘objects’ that travel across space of time with only ‘friction’impeding their circulation (see Latour, 1987, for a criticism of the diffusion lit-erature). In practice, ideas appear at a certain time in a certain place, and maybe picked up by people, who pass them on, translating them in the process. Thismeans they may alter, betray, deflect, enrich, or appropriate the original idea(Latour, 1986, p. 267). In organization theory the translation model has beenspecified as a four-step process through which (1) an idea is separated from itsoriginal context and translated into an object such as a text, a model or otherrepresentation; (2) the idea qua object travels in time and space; until (3) it istranslated further in some other time/space based on the local context andpractices; and finally (4) the new activities and practices are repeated andbecome institutionalised and eventually taken for granted (Czarniawska & Sevon,1996, 2005).

Ideas that have entered the chain of translations indeed acquire physical attri-butes; they become quasi-objects (Czarniawska & Joerges, 1996) or actualobjects. Only as objects can they circulate in and between organizations, andfrom one time/space to another (Czarniawska & Sevon, 1996; Latour, 1986,1996; Pipan & Czarniawska, 2010; Star, 1995). A policy document outlining thenew lifelong learning strategy of the municipality can travel more easily, withgreater speed and to far more places than a speech on the new strategydelivered by a head of one department (unless it has been recorded and thus‘objectified’). However, even after having become an object, the idea does notbecome entirely ‘objective’ and unambiguous. When objects move in time andspace, they too change——intentionally or unintentionally (they become older,worn out). Actors who translate an idea for their purposes may encounter otheractors with anti-programmes (Latour, 1992) and competing interests that seek tointerrupt this translation. Thus there are continuous struggles to stabilize agiven translation, against various efforts to destabilize it. If the new activities andpractices are repeated and become taken-for-granted and eventually institution-alized the forces of stabilization win. Actors, their actions, patterns, identitiesand the connections between them can be presented to the outside as one col-lective actor——an actor-network. When the forces of stabilization lose, an objectdisintegrates and the network character of the actor-network is revealed (Pipan& Czarniawska, 2010).

One concept derived from ANT and of use in the present context is that ofaction nets (Czarniawska, 2004; Lindberg & Czarniawska, 2006). It combinesinsights from the sociology of translation (Callon, 1986; Latour, 1987) andneoinstitutional theory (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983), suggesting that, in organiz-


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ing, connections between actions may be prior to connections between actors.Organizing is ordering, getting things done, and what is to be done may havepriority over who or what will be doing it. Eventually, actions tied togetherproduce actors, and networks or actor-networks, i.e. networks presentingthemselves as macroactors.

Thus while ANT advised researchers to study how the macroactors were puttogether, from an action net perspective the study begins earlier, before suchmacroactors as organizations, systems or networks are in place and have beenblack-boxed (Latour, 1987). This brings to light critical instances of organizingthat may otherwise be obscured when studying the already black-boxed entitiessuch as formal organizations (Czarniawska, 2009). Such a perspective is of rele-vance in the study of an educational development project that involves manyorganized and non-organized actions, and which may or may not coalesce in aformal organization.

Additionally, an action net approach shares the ambition of the critical diver-sity literature to examine how identities are constructed, and to refrain from tak-ing them as givens. It offers a vocabulary that permits joint conceptualization ofthe material and the symbolic aspects of organizing (Czarniawska, 2009). Inagreement with Pels, Hetherington, and Vandenberghe (2002), it is assumedthat objects and quasi-objects——an organization, a technology, a model,etc.——‘actively participate in the making and holding together social relations’(Pels et al., 2002).

While the prevalent literature on validation tends to focus on what exists——avalidation process or tool, for example——the translation approach in organiza-tion studies puts light on what happened before processes, tools or practices arein place and taken for granted (‘implemented’ in popular management jar-gon)——the relationships between humans and ideas, ideas and objects andhumans and objects (Czarniawska & Sevon, 1996, 2005). These relationships arecharacterized by arising contingencies and attempted control created by actorsin search of meaning as part of their work with validation. In this article I arguethat attention to all of these is required in order to understand what is usuallyreferred to as ‘validation of prior learning’.

As part of such a framework, knowledge and learning are made sense of asgenerated through the process and effects of actions that are connected to oneanother. Learning here is regarded neither as an individual or cognitive activity,nor as a social achievement. Instead it becomes enacted as a network effect(Fenwick & Edwards, 2010). In the language of the action net, what learningbecomes in practice is the result of actions being connected to one another asaction nets form and are stabilized.

This article draws upon empirical material collected from a field study ofa project aimed at establishing validation as a viable tool for the assessmentand documentation of foreign knowledge and skills. The tool was not yet inplace and taken for granted and negotiations and mediations on the mean-ing of validation were continuing. In the next section I describe the meth-ods of the study, before outlining the setting within which the projectunfolded.


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The study’s method

In the course of the study, I conducted 73 open-ended interviews (Kvale, 1996;Silverman, 1993) with public officials, caseworkers, educational experts andimmigrants (see Table 1). The interviews were recorded and transcribed in full.

I also observed 16 meetings in the project and took extensive field notes.Finally, I analysed documents ranging from the ‘informal’ to the ‘formal’ andthe ‘official’ (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995; Silverman, 1993). Such documentsincluded official reports from the Swedish Government, reports published onthe Internet, memoranda and notes taken by project members during the meet-ings, magazine and research journal articles, and other material published bythe Swedish National Commission for Validation on the Internet such as officialreports, educational material, and images, photos and utterances from the Pub-lic Employment Service (PES), the educational services providers (ESP) andother organizations.

As I began the analysis of field material, I was struck by the fact that therewas no shared understanding of what actions and activities were to count as vali-dation, who the target group was, and what validation should mean in the firstplace. During the meetings and assessments different versions of validationmaterialized. It then became relevant to analyse how the different versions ofthe quasi-object (the validation procedure) and the subjects (immigrants, train-ing experts, caseworkers, etc.) of the project were performed as the eventsunfolded and actions and activities were initiated, repeated——or not. I codedand categorized the field material in accordance with the grounded theory ofGlaser and Strauss (1967) following their precepts of constant comparative anal-ysis. I also compared the notes from the observed meetings and the documentscollected to the interviews. It then became possible to identify categories andsubcategories in the material. Subsequently, I used Czarniawska and Joerges’(1996) model of translation, presented earlier, as analytical heuristics (Whittle &Spicer, 2008) to organize the empirical material.

I am aware that my reading of the material is based on my pre-understanding,which originates from a particular cultural and professional context, and that it issubsequently inevitable that the categories used are tinted by this understanding.

The validation/integration project

Validating prior learning in Sweden

In Sweden, the idea of validation of prior learning appeared in connection withthe Adult Education Initiative (Kunskapslyftet), an elaborate education

Table 1. The interviews

Category No. interviews

Public officials (municipal organizations and state agencies) 62

Immigrants 8

Private educational services providers 3

Total 73


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programme run by the Ministry for Education from 1997 to 1999. Validationhad existed in Sweden before (see Andersson & Fejes, 2010a), but it nowbecame packaged in a more explicit way, it was positioned as a vital part of aprocess whereby the prior learning of every citizen is recognized, and which isto be followed by flexible and individual formal learning (Andersson, 2008, p.133). According to the Swedish government, validation is:

[a] process that involves the structured assessment, valuation, documenta-tion, and recognition of the knowledge and competence that an individualpossesses independently of how these were acquired. (Swedish Ministry ofEducation, 2003, p. 19, author’s own translation)

Over the years following the Adult Education Initiative, Sweden did not manageto build a national system for validation. Instead, the development of validationmethods was carried out in many local, regional or national projects (see e.g.Andersson & Fejes, 2010a; Andersson & Osman, 2008; Diedrich, 2011; Diedrich,Walter & Czarniawska, 2011).

In the early 2000s, the Swedish government asserted that it was particularlyworthwhile ‘to validate the prior learning of persons with foreign backgrounds’(Swedish Govt. Official Reports, 2003, p. 75; Swedish Integration Board, 2002,2006), due to the difficulties immigrants experienced becoming employed andan integrated part of society in Sweden (see e.g. Bevelander, 2000; Broome,Backlund, Lundh, & Ohlsson, 1996; De los Reyes, 2001; Lundh & Ohlsson,1999; Scott, 1999). Since then, a number of regional and national projects havebeen initiated to develop and maintain a procedure of validation of recentimmigrants’ prior learning. The results of many of these projects have beenrather disappointing, however: recent immigrants, especially from non-Nordiccountries, have rarely achieved permanent employment faster or on a largerscale, and the role of validation in promoting social inclusion in the context ofimmigration has proven difficult to measure.1

Apart from the fact that the idea of validation became increasingly associatedwith the integration of immigrants, activities put under the label ‘validation’have also differed between the various projects (see e.g. Andersson & Fejes,2010a; Diedrich, Eriksson-Zetterquist, & Styhre, 2011). To alleviate the situationand move towards a more unified validation system, the Swedish government in2004 established the Swedish National Commission for Validation (Valideringsdel-egationen), an idea-bearing organization (Czarniawska & Sevon, 1996) designedto spread and stabilize the idea of validation in Sweden. The commission wasdisbanded in 2007, but not before its experts managed to produce a four-stepmodel of validation (see Figure 1). While it is possible to imagine that validationproceeds along the steps 1–4 in a sequential manner, proponents of validationstressed that each of the four steps is a self-contained process and can be usedon its own or in any sequence seen fit. The four-step model gave a name to whatwas already being done in various projects around the country. According toCzarniawska and Joerges (1996), this is a major step in history-making: it is atthis point that one suddenly knows what one has been doing all along and willbe able to tell the story.

In the following I will explore how the fashionable idea of validation wastranslated into practice as part of a labour market project in Sweden. I do so by


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examining episodes that each highlights some important aspect of such transla-tion. First, I will look at how the idea of validation was objectified to be spreadfurther, and then at how it was picked up by various actors who translated itbased on their own interests and local contexts. Finally, I look at how, as moreand more actors were enrolled, the idea and the actions connected to the ideahave been changed almost beyond recognition. To this day, the struggle to stabi-lize a particular translation of validation continues in Sweden.

The V/I project – a fashionable idea gets picked up and travels

In 2006, at roughly the same time as the Swedish National Commission for Vali-dation produced the four-step model, the Swedish government allocated fundsto six regional projects to establish and further develop collaboration aroundsettlement support for recent immigrants. Projects were to contain both educa-tional and economic elements, such as language classes, job-seeking activities,work training and settlement benefits. One such project in Western Swedeneventually became known as the Validation/Integration (V/I) project.

The project’s purpose was to develop collaboration between local munici-palities, the PES and educational service providers, and establish a procedure‘for the recognition and assessment of prior learning of recent immigrants fromnon-Nordic countries’ who possess ‘skills and knowledge that could not be veri-fied in any other way’. The goal was to assess 500 recent non-Nordic immigrantswith the aim of getting at least 70% of them ‘into jobs, or into studies and otheractivities that will eventually lead to employment’.2 A project leader from theCounty Labour Board ran the project working in close cooperation with a repre-sentative from the ValCentre, a small educational services provider owned by thelocal municipality that had been instrumental in the early stages of the develop-ment of validation methods in West Sweden. Its representative, based on her

Step 3: Assessment of

skills and knowledge

(certificate)

Step 4: Assessment of

skills and knowledge

(grades, license)

Step 2: In-depth mapping

of skills and knowledge

Step 1: Explorative

mapping of skills and

knowledge

Figure 1. The four subprocesses of validation (adapted from: Swedish NationalCommission for Validation, 2008)


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past experience with validation, summed up the intentions behind the projectas follows:

The problem is that we today compare a lot with our Swedish situationwhen it comes to immigrants and work. We have to start looking at whatthey bring with them when they arrive in Sweden? We need a deeperunderstanding ... [KO061013:2]

Through the materialization in the form of the V/I project, the local actorstranslated the fashionable idea of validation into a tool for integration. Now, inorder for the idea to be enacted, other actors needed to be persuaded to join inand support a particular version of validation. To become public knowledge,however, the idea had to become objectified, made into a quasi-object: only thencould it travel with greater ease. In this regard, Latour (1987) highlighted therole of what he called ‘immutable and combinable mobiles’ in translation. Suchmobiles——a graph depicting the development of a stock, for example——are eas-ily transmittable, and although they do not change, they can be easily combinedin many ways. Once such objects or quasi-objects are produced, they can be pre-sented to various audiences. Thus, the project representatives envisaged a seriesof conferences to present ‘their’ validation procedure.

Episode 1: representing the idea of validation——from idea to object

The V/I project was launched at four ‘kick-off’ conferences, held in differentregions of the county, at which the project leaders presented the project to thelocal caseworkers, heads of departments, counsellors and vocational experts.The aim was to enrol as many caseworkers as possible in the project ensuringthat they sent their clients to be validated. To do so, the project leaders had pre-pared a PowerPoint presentation. It depicted the intended validation procedure(see Figure 2) as firmly embedded in the settlement process for recent immi-grants.

Based on their presentation, the procedure was to work in the following way:a PES caseworker met the client and documented his or her experiences, skillsand knowledge——an activity referred to as ‘mapping’. If she judged the immi-grant to possess foreign occupational skills and knowledge, she needed to regis-ter the person for an occupational assessment. If she judged the person to lackforeign occupational skills and knowledge, she needed to register the immigrantwith the ESP for a qualification portfolio course to see if the person possessed otherskills and knowledge that could be connected to some or other occupation.

The results were then to be used to determine whether the person was eligi-ble for a ‘full’ validation——in other words, an assessment of prior learningagainst the formal requirements of the labour market or the upper secondaryschooling system. After a full validation, the immigrant would be issued with acertificate or diploma within the occupation. In case the assessment establisheda ‘knowledge gap’——a gap between the knowledge identified through validationand the skills required for working the particular occupation in Sweden——he orshe would be registered for supplementary training/education aimed at closingthe gap.


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The four conferences brought together caseworkers, heads of departments,counsellors and training experts from the whole county. The idea of validatingrecent immigrants’ prior learning materialized as a diagram in the PowerPointpresentation. The idea-as-presentation could now travel more widely in andbetween organizations. Yet, while a banking assistant wishing to convince his cli-ents of the benefits of an investment can show them graphs depicting the stock’shistoric performance, and compare these graphs with other graphs or informa-tion, the diagram and PowerPoint presentation in the case discussed here donot function in this way. Thus, building a coalition of the project representa-tives, the caseworkers and immigrants around the concept ‘validation is a goodthing to do’ was difficult, as I will show in the next episode.

Episode 2: from object to action——negotiating the meaning of validation

Caseworkers and heads of department were enrolled in the project based ontheir work within the settlement process. Participation in the project was volun-tary. As the caseworkers represented different organizations and worked in dif-ferent parts of the county, they did not have habitual meeting spaces. Theproject representatives instituted regular (monthly or bi-monthly) meetings infour regions of the county. At each of these meetings one of the two projectleaders informed the caseworkers about recent developments. The caseworkersalso exchanged experiences of their daily work with immigrants and validation.

As part of the settlement support activities, the caseworkers asked their clientsabout their personal and professional background and ‘mapped’ their skills.Based on such a ‘map’, the PES caseworkers placed a person into an occupa-tional category according to the Swedish National Labour Board’s Occupational

Occupational assessment

Qualification portfolio

Financial settlement support

Swedish for immigrants (SFI) and Occupational SFI (Yrkesfärgade SFI)

Validation

Financial settlement support

Supple-mentary training

Work

Settlement period 0–3 years

Figure 2.Source: Presentation material of the project representatives, Autumn 2006


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Classification System (Swedish acronym: AMSYK). Top municipal officials had criti-cised this activity claiming that caseworkers did not understand the intricacies ofthe various occupations (Diedrich & Styhre, 2008), lacked the technical knowl-edge required to produce a ‘good and correct’ map of the person includingtechnical details of the knowledge and skills and did not know how to ask the‘right’ questions or where to look for the ‘right’ answers. The following episodetook place in one of the meetings at the PES offices two months after the ‘kick-off’ conferences.

Refugee Counsellor 1: You presented the validation procedure for con-struction workers at the kick-off conference last month in a strange way.We [refugee units] don’t have a lot of people who fit in there, who workwithin the construction industry. Listening, I thought, ‘ok, this doesn’twork for any of my clients’. The whole procedure is far too complicated.Validation Expert: Ah, ok, but you have to remember that Peter presentedthe whole procedure. But for your clients, maybe only part of it is applica-ble …

PES Caseworker: I agree with RC 1. I also think it’s strange that you choseto present the validation procedure taking the construction industry as anexample. It’s very difficult for our clients to cope with that, to go throughthat process ...

Project Leader: Well, we did it, because construction is one of the fiveareas we validate people in as part of this project. We also have ‘automechanic’, ‘transport’, ‘healthcare’ and ‘restaurant’ ...

Vocational expert: ... and we chose those occupations based on a survey wedid among caseworkers handling newly arrived immigrants. That surveyshowed that most of their clients belonged to one of these groups.

PESC: Well, I can tell you that this doesn’t correspond to our picture atthe PES ... Also, our people are different from the people that are handledby the refugee units. We all have very different target groups ... [Also]whenever we’ve sent our clients to be validated, they only went through anoccupational assessment. So, they just get a piece of paper, instead of a cer-tificate. It seems like they don’t get anything ... I have an example: I had apainter. He had worked for a couple of years in Australia. I mapped himand came to the conclusion that he could do this and that ... And then Isent him to be validated ... and then you wrote exactly the same things I’dalready written ...

[...]

PL: It seems as if you’ve managed to do a good occupational assessment ofthe person even though you’re not an expert in the particularoccupational field, and you subsequently came to the same results [as thevalidation expert]. But, there’re many caseworkers who can’t do such anassessment ...


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PESC: I’ve worked at the refugee units, the Social Security Service and nowat the PES, and I think that everyone’s doing similar mappings.

VE: But you need an expert to produce really good assessments. Oneexample is the truck driver from Iraq. Sure, he’s worked as a truck driverin Iraq but, he’s driven a truck from 1964. That’s a completely differenttruck from the one’s we have here in Sweden ...

[Meeting at City Hall, 061205:2]

The project leader and validation expert say that immigrants’ skills and knowl-edge can not be ‘adequately’ assessed within the existing system, because activi-ties such as the PES caseworker’s mapping are not connected to the actionsnecessary to become employed in Sweden. In order to remedy this situation, thetwo actions——settlement support and providing employment——needed to beconnected by translating the results of the mapping done by the caseworkersinto the validation process.

Each participant tells a slightly different story about the assessment and docu-mentation of prior learning. Such stories enact different realities, containing dif-ferent subjects and objects——thus validation is a different thing for differentparties (see Star & Griesemer, 1989, on boundary objects and Law & Hassard,1999, on multiple objects). For the validation expert, validation is a procedurethat can be divided into different parts, each of which is labelled as valida-tion——in accordance with the four-step model (see Figure 2). For the PES case-worker, however, validation and occupational assessment are two differentthings. For her, validation is a complex process that results in the issuing of for-mal documents, and occupational assessment is less than a validation——just anequivalent of the ‘mapping’ they have been doing at the PES.

The discussion above constitutes objects and quasi-objects, but also thepersons——present and absent——as multiple. PES caseworkers are constituted byvalidation experts as incapable of correctly assessing immigrants’ prior learning,and by themselves as equal to the validation experts; the immigrants as capableor not of going through a ‘full validation’, and so on. The meaning of validationwas constantly negotiated. In the absence of easily movable immutable mobiles,coalition building around the concept of ‘validation is a good thing’ wasunsuccessful. Nevertheless, the ideas voiced at the meetings were translated intoconcrete assessment activities.

Episode 3: from object to action——attempts at stabilising validation asoccupational assessment

Dmitri, a Chechen man in his fifties, is scheduled to go through an occupationalassessment in the afternoon. He speaks rudimentary Swedish and a translatorhas been booked for the meeting. The translator does not arrive and Dmitri’s13-year-old son, who speaks Swedish, is asked to assist by Stefan, the vocationalexpert. Stefan is connected to the ValCentre’s homepage and checks Dmitri’sdetails in the system. He then explains to Dmitri, through his son, that hewishes to ask him questions about his past experience and fill in the information


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in a standardized template provided by the ValCentre. After briefly askingDmitri about his schooling, he proceeds to his work experience.

Dmitri has difficulties explaining what he has done after school. He makes amovement with his hands——somewhat resembling the movement of a forklifttruck. His son does not understand what he intends to say. Stefan says that hesuspects that Dmitri is referring to a forklift truck. He asks Dmitri whether hedrove a forklift truck. Dmitri’s son still does not know what to say. Stefan tellsDmitri to wait a moment and searches on the Internet for pictures of forklifttrucks. He has access to a website with a large variety of pictures of differentvehicles (trucks, buses and construction vehicles), tools and machines to befound in the transportation sector. (Stefan said afterwards that he has usedthese pictures many times before.) He finds the pictures depicting forklift trucksand shows them to Dmitri. Dmitri immediately points to the pictures, smiles andnods. Stefan fills in the information on his computer.

S: How long did you work as a truck driver?

D: For 5 years … altogether. I also worked at the airport in Grozny. I dideverything: pull aircraft, drive trucks, buses …

S: Did you drive trucks with kerosene?

D: No.

[…]

S: What other jobs did you have?

D: I opened my own auto repair shop during the time between the wars inChechnya. The airport, after all, was destroyed …

S: Did you repair cars or trucks?

D: Cars.

S: Russian cars?

D: Yes, but also Mercedes and BMW.

[…]

S: How many people did you employ?

D: 14.

S: That’s a lot of people.

[…]


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S: If you could choose what you wanted to work with in Sweden, whatwould you choose?

D: I’d want to repair cars …

[Observation of occupational assessment, 070504]

The vocational expert documented the results of occupational assessment in theform of a certificate; a standardized form drawn up by ValCentre. The documentwas sent via an intranet to the caseworker who had registered Dmitri for theassessment. It was seen as a guideline for further action on the part of thecaseworker.

Dmitri’s background is typical of the heterogeneous experiences of recentimmigrants to Sweden and of the stories that the immigrants tell. Dmitri wassent to the assessment by his caseworker to be validated as a truck driver. Itbecomes clear from the above scene, however, that he has broader professionalexperience, including running his own business and repairing cars. But, Stefanhad difficulties putting the information into the standardized form and the cer-tificate at his disposal:

There are problems with the forms we get from ValCentre. There areforms … and then there’s reality. The questions in the forms aren’t reallymeaningful. For the ValCentre, yes, because they’re focused on theSwedish context. But, for me here … no. Many of the things I have to askhere aren’t important in the other countries. The forms need to beadapted to the other situations. For example, I know that a truck driverfrom Russia has a very good theoretical background. But, when I havepeople from other countries, I need to ask a lot more technical questions.It might be important for ValCentre to standardise the process as far aspossible to build legitimacy for their process, but in my work this createsabove all problems. [Vocational Expert AB070504:5]

The standardized form with the questions left no room for adequately represent-ing the heterogeneity of Dmitri’s experience and the final certificate, represent-ing the outcome of the assessment within the context of the project, had noroom for any additional information. Here is an excerpt from the certificategiven to Dmitri:

6.1 Summary of occupational assessment

Dmitri shows very good prior knowledge of both the theoretical and practi-cal elements. My assessment is that he is well prepared and highly moti-vated to take part in a training course for a CE or a D [Swedish truckdriver’s licence].

6.2 Recommendation

Occupational SFI [‘Swedish for immigrants’ language course] followed byCE or D training. Dmitri has a good chance of getting work as a driver of


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HGVs in Sweden on condition that his language skills improve. (Excerptfrom a ‘Certificate for completed occupational assessment’[DocOA070504]).

This episode is an example of how the idea of validation is translated into con-crete assessments; how it is performed by human actors and material artefacts(Latour, 2005). The ValCentre’s action of producing standardized assessmentforms and certificates for validation are connected here to the actions of assess-ing prior learning via the standardized template used by the assessor. Validationhere is to be a tool for mapping skills and knowledge in preparation for furthertraining. However, no provisions were made for offering such training withinthe framework of the project. Dmitri and others received a certificate outliningtheir training needs, but the project did not promise to match this informationto further action. The reason given was that the PES did not have a politicalmandate to organize labour market training. Validation was enacted as mappingof a person’s skills and knowledge, and while the certificate offered potential fora further connection, this did not materialize.

Episode 4: repeating actions——attempts at stabilizing validation asqualification portfolio

When the PES caseworkers attempted to categorize a person as belonging to acertain occupational category, they were frequently faced with a set of difficultjudgements, lacking, as they did, direct experience of the workplace where theskills and knowledge had supposedly been acquired and being alien to the con-text, life and experiences of the immigrants. In order to make these judgements,they could engage in further mapping of their clients, or in a deeper occupa-tional assessment. Such activities, however, were time-consuming and, given thefinancial and other constraints facing the caseworkers, were not seen as practica-ble. The caseworkers often opted for an easier way——using a generalized ‘other’category: ‘indeterminate occupation’ or ‘unspecified labourer’.

You can be considered to have an indeterminate occupation [in Sweden]even though you possess occupational experience from your home country,if the occupation doesn’t fit in Sweden. […]. For example, take a 50-year-oldjudge from Iran; it’s difficult for him to become a judge in Sweden. Or aherdsman from Iraq: that’s considered an indeterminate occupation in Swe-den. […]. You may have an occupation in your home country, but it’s con-sidered strange in Sweden, or the competence that isn’t directly compatiblewith the demands we have here. [Refugee unit caseworker LL070213:4]

By classifying immigrants as possessing an ‘indeterminate occupation’ or as‘unspecified labourers’, caseworkers and vocational experts met the demands ofthe administrative system to put a label on each of their clients, and could returnto dealing with clients who had ‘clear occupational identities’. However, such‘indeterminate’ person could not be registered for an occupational assessment.Thus, the actions mapping clients by the PES caseworkers did not becomeconnected to the actions of the training specialists of assessing prior experience.


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The way out was to look for other skills the person possessed. In the project, thisidea was connected to the so-called qualification portfolio. One expert explained:

I think most of the people should begin with a qualification portfolio. Ifwe look at the occupations we have decided to focus on in this project,there aren’t that many of our immigrants who are clear-cut tradesmen thatSweden demands, that you expect in order to be employable. They mighthave parts of it … And then they might have a lot of other stuff that couldbe useful. We should not focus blindly and in a narrow fashion on a per-son being an automechanic, for example. Instead, let’s try and find outeverything a person brings along. And once you’ve done that you can nar-row it down. [Validation expert EA070314:10]

Qualification portfolio classes had in the past been described as a means ofimproving the job-search skills of persons with experience of having worked inSweden who had been made redundant, or were simply looking for a change incareer. During classes, a coach helped participants to reflect on their own pastexperiences, and to explain their skills and knowledge in job search documentssuch as the Europass CV or a job application letter. As part of the V/I project,the activities of the qualification portfolio were connected to the activities of sup-porting recent immigrants. However, the short time they had spent in Swedenmeant that participants had halting knowledge of the Swedish language necessaryto produce a personal portfolio of previous experiences. Thus, the focus in port-folio classes shifted from producing job-search documents to presenting pastwork experiences in front of the class by responding to the coach’s questions.Still, the result of the portfolio classes was to be a portfolio of documents. Oneday towards the end of one of the courses, the coach informed the participantsthat it was now time to produce their personal portfolios:

Sara (coach): Today we’ll write down what you know. It’s very important todo this as early as possible. […] If you have very good social skills, thenKarl [co-coach] and I will look at this and we’ll maybe see, ah, you canwork with people. […] It’s important to write down everything, every singlething … Then we can see ‘ah, he can work within this occupation or thatoccupation’. Sometimes, it’s hidden competence you didn’t even knowabout.

The coach then explains how the job-search process works in Sweden: compa-nies frequently search for employees through adverts and one responds toadverts by sending in a job application including a presentation letter and a CV.Today they are going to focus on the presentation letter.

Sara: Today, you will describe your background … what did you do in yourhome country? […] Ok, let’s start.

Participant A: We are here in the course for ten weeks … Sara, you thinkwe will write many job applications here?

Sara: Yes …


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Participant A: What should we write?

Sara: Didn’t you listen?

A: Yes, but …

Sara: You should describe what you did in your home countries … yourbackground … and how you’ve worked …

A: But … I never got a diploma … something written …

Sara: What did you do?

A: I worked on a construction site … for 3 months. I worked with every-thing … went to fetch the hammers and other tools … and then went backand carried on …

Sara: Ok, write this down. Everyone, write down everything. Start with thelatest work you’ve had and then go back in time.

The participants start writing on the computers. Sara goes around the room andanswers their questions. She constantly helps them to find Swedish words andcorrects their spelling.

Sara: You have two spelling mistakes in this word [points out]. Where didyou work?

Participant B: In Djibouti.

Sara: Write that down … and how long?

B: 1996–2000 … 4 years.

Sara: And then … [looks in the document] … as a forklift driver? Did youtake a forklift driver’s licence?

B: [looks confused] … eh … we …. we only drove small vehicles.

Sara: … ok, just write down what you did.

[Fieldnotes from observation of a qualification portfolio class 070905:1]

The above scene shows how knowledge (including knowledge about knowl-edge) is, to paraphrase Turnbull (2000, p. 215), necessarily a social product: amessy, contingent and situated outcome of group activity. The immigrant and thecoach together organize and manage the immigrant’s resources in terms of skills.The 10-week course is full of appeals ‘to write down everything’; to explicate one’sskills in ‘the best possible way’. Not surprisingly, this ambition to document as


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much as possible collides with the ambition in the project to ‘validate as early aspossible’ after arrival. Also, while agency is partly ascribed to the immigrant whomust reflect on his or her skills and knowledge and document these, it is the coa-ches who decide what counts as skills and what does not.

Notwithstanding the qualification portfolio’s intention to motivate partici-pants and give them a sense of pride in their accomplishments, its value as ameans of managing and regulating immigrants’ careers on the labour marketand thereby integrating them into society remained questionable:

One could say that the qualification portfolio is the activity that is leastrelated to any clearly defined levels of requirement. Most other activitiesare coupled to some form of trade and industry requirements, very oftenin the form of different certificates, or sometimes to secondary education.[Educational expert AD061127:14]

Thus, not even the actions of producing a qualification portfolio became con-nected to the actions of supporting immigrants into employment.

How it all ended: mapping instead of validating——projects instead of astabilized procedure

When the V/I project ended in 2008, the project representatives hailed its out-come as a success. In line with the project plan, over 500 ‘validations’ had beenperformed. An internal evaluation was commissioned and according to itsreport, 70% of the participants ended up in work, studies, or other activitiessuch as internships, which might lead to work or further studies in the future.

However, most of the activities performed had been qualification portfolios(see Table 2). As these were described in the contracted educational service pro-vider’s information material as ‘a basis for a future assessment of skills andknowledge’, they did not necessarily correspond to the initial intention of vali-dating immigrants’ prior learning resulting in a document that could act as atool for regulating and managing the person’s education, training and employ-ment. Furthermore, the role of this and similar documents in stabilizing and

Table 2. The results of the project

Occupational assessment (women in parenthesis) Total

Construction 132 (2)

Health care 35 (25)

Restaurant 14 (3)

Automotive engineering 64 (0)

Transport (Truck driver) 22 (1)

Welding 24 (0)

Total 247 (31)

Qualification portfolio (women in parenthesis) 315 (155)

Source: Internal Project Report.


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holding together an array of relations was not fulfilled, as the relations changeduntil they became disconnected. First, it was difficult for the participants in theproject to distinguish between the maps that the PES case workers had beenproducing all along as a result of their assessments of the immigrant jobseekersand the documents produced as part of the V/I project. Second, as the projectended, actions that had become connected were disconnected again as theephemeral project organization dissolved. Subsequently, validation did notbecome a stable object——an action net and/or an actor-network.

Discussion and conclusions

Using a combined actor-network and action net perspective (Czarniawska,2004), the study presented here framed a project of introducing a validationprocedure as a case of organizing through which certain actions and actors wereto be connected and their connections stabilized as a viable, taken-for-grantedand in time black-boxed action net. While the project manages to connectbriefly various actions and actors, the ephemeral nature of the project meantthat such connections changed shape or dissolved. Subsequently, the object-nessof validation has been weakened significantly.

Although it has been argued previously that the validation of prior learningshould be regarded as a process rather than a result (Michelson, 1996), littleattention has been paid to how such a process is enacted in practice. In thisstudy, I focused exactly on this aspect, showing that it can hardly be seen as aprocedure, not to speak about its results. The public officials, assessors and immi-grants try together to make sense of the procedure and its tools, and the neces-sary compromises led to a practically non-existent result.

Examining the micro-political processes whereby the project’s representativesattempted to enrol and mobilize, human and non-human actors into supportingtheir particular version of validation helps to understand the influence of mun-dane everyday organizational activities and interactions which easily pass unno-ticed when validation is treated in a taken-for-granted procedure.

In contrast to the AISI project described by Fenwick and Edwards (2010),which seems to have become a stable action net, which produced a consolidatedactor-network, no procedure for validating prior learning of recent immigrantsto Sweden was in place. Actions, objects, intentions and desires were connectedto one another——briefly and weakly——and then disconnected again as the V/Iproject was terminated. Employing an action net approach helps illuminate howinnovations fail. Such an approach reaches to the nitty-gritty, mundane organiz-ing actions, whose results are not yet known and networks are not yet in place.

The study shows that the circulation of the idea of ‘validating prior learning’requires the construction of relations between various human and non-humanelements, including persons, groups, organizations, interests, desires and mate-rial objects such as PopwerPoint presentations, application letters and pictureson the Internet. These alliances can only be achieved through a chain of transla-tions joined by the idea that the new validation process can serve a variety ofinterests. However, just as different objects and humans attempt to act uponand to adapt to one another, they also ignore, misuse, challenge and reinventone another (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010, p. 116). In this case, the V/I project


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representatives did not succeed in stabilizing their version of validation. Thus,once the project ended, validation activities ceased and the network disinte-grated.

The results mirror other similar projects run in Sweden where many attemptsat creating a process for validating prior foreign learning have not producedparticularly durable action nets or an actor-network. The practice of runninglabour market projects aimed at supporting target groups identified to have aweak position on the labour market tends to create structures that cater for theneeds of the project, not the needs of the persons targeted by the project (seealso Diedrich, 2011). Projects are, by definition, ephemeral, and as they come toan end, financial resources are discontinued and people, groups and organiza-tions return to their ‘real work’. More importantly, the connections betweenactions are enabled by relations adapted to the project, and not to the stableaction nets and networks already in place.

The particular institutional setting of the project (the Swedish welfare state’slogic, guiding the settlement of refugees and other immigrants) may limit thepossibilities of generalizing the findings to other national contexts or otherfields of interest——the accreditation of prior learning in universities, for exam-ple. However, similar results may be expected from studies of other processes oforganizing that seek to enact their particular version of validation as a tool forpromoting social equality.

This study contributes to the critical literature that argues for a greater focuson power issues in the context of validation. However, while previous studieshave argued that validation is the outcome of power relationships (Andersson &Guo, 2009), I show that the circulation of the ideas of validation, and the effortsto materialize and stabilize these as models or tools, are intrinsically politicalprocesses through which power is constructed in the first place. Most of theactivities described constituted attempts at controlling and governing, of creat-ing new, or supporting already existing alliances. Power is one of the outcomesof translation processes. Thus, while previous studies of validation have treatedvalidation methods as an outcome of power relations, this article shows howvalidation constructs such power relations in the first place.

Also, while previous research has argued that the success or failure ofvalidation of immigrants’ prior learning is often influenced by prejudice againstforeign skills and knowledge (Edwards, Armstrong, & Miller, 2001; Guo, 2010),the present article shows that what validation becomes is also influenced by thepractical constraints and contingencies embedded in socio-material organizingpractice. The difficulties currently experienced in the work with validation ofrecent immigrants’ prior learning in Sweden can be explained more clearly bythe emphasis on procedural efficiency, acting against the laudable intention of amore comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneous nature of theimmigrants’ skills and knowledge.

Contrary to expectations that validation will solve all problems of socialinjustice by putting greater emphasis on the lifelong learning of all citizens(Bjørnavold, 2000; Butterworth, 1992; McIntosh, 2005; Peters, 2000; Tudor,1991), the analysis indicates that the doing of validation in practice can reinforcesocial injustice by formalizing the immigrants’ weak position on the labourmarket——by putting them through extensive continuous assessments or placingthem in unfavourable categories. The study thus confirms earlier research


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suggesting that validation, notwithstanding its positive intentions, in practiceoften means that people are subjected to alternative forms of discrimination orexclusion (see e.g. Fejes & Nicoll, 2008; Harris, 1999).

For those who consider the validation of prior learning to be the answer tosocial injustice, the results of this study may be disappointing. However, valida-tion is neither inherently discriminating, nor is it inherently good. The enact-ment of validation is an everyday, practical accomplishment, constantlynegotiated and deferred (see also Usher, Bryant, & Johnston, 1997).

The sociology of translation tells us that all innovations are local and situated,and the a-priori creation of general concepts and rules does not help to under-stand and explain such local phenomena. This study is therefore only a first steptowards exploring how various versions of validation are translated into practice.Further studies in other settings, including other national and/or institutionalcontexts, are necessary.

Notes

1. Presentation by the Director General of the Swedish National Commission for Validation (Valider-ingsdelegationen) on ‘The Swedish Model of Validation’ in Stockholm, Sweden, in October 2007.

2. Source: Internal project report.

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Translating validation of prior learning in practice