This chapter is the introductory chapter to a book that explores the nature and veracity of the concept of negotiation as a means to describe and explain the socio-personal practice of learning in and through work. The chapter has two objectives. First, it outlines and discusses the conceptual perspectives underpinning the book’s exploration and locates these ideas and challenges within the socio-cultural constructivist context of work-learning research and the key issues in which the book is immersed and on which it builds. Central to this is argument about the inadequacy of the concept of negotiation as it has been commonly deployed in work-learning research as a metaphor and synonym for interaction. Such use is deemed insufficient to the task of accurately capturing the socio-personal qualities of work-learning practice. A primary focus is the ‘personal’ that emphasises the need of grounding understandings of work-learning in the person of the worker, the self-in-action, who is the locus of learning and who ‘brings together’ the range of resources that generate learning within the social press of transforming practice for the goals that drive work. Second, The Three Dimensions of Negotiation framework is briefly outlined. This framework conceptualises negotiation specific to its deployment as a means of investigating work-learning beyond understandings of the concept that typically align with its use in business and legal contexts. The framework is fully elaborated through chapters five, six and seven where each of the dimensions is respectively addressed. In this chapter one, the framework is sketched as a foregrounding of the focus and purpose of the whole of the book – which is the further development of the concept of negotiation for its use in work-learning research. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.
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