Training may be the preeminent pedagogical model of the 21st century, yet its many contexts remain largely undertheorized as sites of communication shaped by embodied experiences and technological mediators. Training occurs at all life stages, in both formal and informal educational settings. Athletes train to enhance strength or agility. Young children are trained in fine motor skills and toilet use. And while all humans undergo training of some kind, the term increasingly applies to non-human learners. In addition to pets and circus animals, machine learning relies on training data to perform tasks, from chatbots to text-to-image generators. These technologies have become essential tools in classrooms and workplaces, creating a feedback loop between human and machine learning.
This research aims to explore the sociotechnical assemblages of training contexts, within three distinct communities of practice. My work in experiential education positions training as a mode of job preparedness, especially within postsecondary programs that aim to bridge classroom learning and professional practice within the broader context of digital media and remote labour, where job preparedness increasingly unfolds across virtual platforms and networked environments. In this setting, I explore how training regimes shape students’ subjectivity and labour futures under the logics of employability. 2) I also investigate training as physical fitness, with a focus on group exercise classes as sociotechnical assemblages in which human bodies are disciplined and optimized through interactions with apps, algorithms, and spatial design. 3) Finally, I examine the function of training data in machine learning systems, especially in the development of large language models (LLMs), where “learning” occurs through processes that reproduce normative linguistic patterns and social hierarchies.
Drawing on interviews and discourse analysis of key training documents within each community of practice, this work aims to develop a postdisciplinary theory of training as a pedagogical framework that is deployed across the three representative communities of practice.
- Nathaniel Laywine, Assistant Professor, York University
