Doing, Thinking, Teaching and Learning Numeracy on the Job: An Activity Approach to Research into Chemical Spraying and Handling

In this paper we discuss our recently completed National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) project. Between us we visited 12 work sites encompassing five industries in New South Wales and Victoria. We interviewed supervisory and operative staff, collected artefacts relevant to the numeracy of chemical spraying and handling, and made ethnographic observations. Through our data collection and analysis, we became aware of the complexities involved in actual practice, even though the calculations themselves were relatively straightforward. These complexities were strongly related to the notion of 'joint practice', workplace culture, context, and history. Drawing upon a sociocultural and historical activity theory foundation, the paper will discuss the research process, findings, analysis, and the implications for teaching and learning numeracy in the workplace as well as in institutional settings.