Abstract:

Innovations in technology have since long been the foundation of industrial development. However, recent years intensive development of digital technology is now rapidly transforming the way we live and work giving rise new to new vocations as well as the disappearance or transformation of others. The ongoing digitalization challenges the relevance and content of traditional vocational educations aiming at filling the competence demand of the labor market. Integrating work experiences in education is essential when developing vocational programs. In Sweden, therefore, workplace-based learning, WBL, is an important part of the vocational programs within the upper secondary school and adult education. The intention with WBL is to contribute to students development of vocational identity, an understanding of the vocational culture and what makes you part of the professional community at the workplace. After completing a vocational program, the students are expected to have acquired the knowledge and skills required for work in the specific branch. The vocational teachers are responsible for assessing the learning outcome of the WBL in relation to the school curriculum. However, it is the workplace curriculum (Billett, 2006) and resources that shape the learning practices in the workplace.

So far the knowledge of how the implementation of new technology and digitalized business models in organizations change work and workplace-based learning is limited. This paper is a contribution to this knowledge gap, focusing on salespersons checkout practices in physical stores. The aim is, from a retrospective view, to explore and enlighten what values technology and information technology is attributed to in work-based education and learning in checkout practices. The Theory of Practice Architectures (Kemmis et al., 2014) is used as a theoretical lens and analyzing tool, and the methodological design is based on analyses of data from an empirical study including 32 cashier and salesperson training videos (retrieved from the Internet) produced between 1917 – 2018, complemented with interviews of 10 salespersons working in checkout practices based on cloud-based point of sale, POS, platforms.

Some preliminary results show that from the start, the training of salespersons at the checkout focus on developing the right working methods and routines, communication and customer service skills, and a good behavior. All activities evolve from the POS platform, the "building structure" of the checkout practice, demanding engagement in a digital conversation in parallel with an analog conversation with the customer during the end-of-purchase process. Still, the introduction to the POS platform and cash register window is restricted to a brief instruction of which buttons to push. The learner is expected to "stir himself" into the digitalized checkout practice, that is, how to interact with the cloud-based POS platform.

Keywords:

Technology, Information Systems, Workplace-based Learning, Digitalization, Retail, Salespersons, Checkout Practices, Theory of Practice Architectures.