This study explored the interdependent, developmental relationship between individual work and learning and the cultural-historic processes structuring post-industrial work. The purpose of this study was to inform the debate about the changing nature of work and to contribute to new pedagogies that are more aligned with how people work and learn in post-industrial occupations.

This was a qualitative case study of the emerging new media occupation in Washington, DC. The research consisted of seven months of field work and in-depth interviews with seven individuals who entered the media in traditional media occupations, and eight individuals who entered through new media endeavors.

The data were used to develop work and learning vignettes or interpretative storeis of each participant's developmental trajectory through the media. The vignettes contained rich accounts of individual learning as well as examples of how new media has changed the meaning of work and learning for the fifteen participants. The vignettes also provided a lens onto how the new forms and meanings of work and learning may lead to occupational development in the media.

This study found an emerging new media division of labor that was accompanied by new career strategies, new epistemologies, and new identities that cannot be described in conventional terms like journalist, employee, or entrepreneur. This study found that these and other changes have decoupled journalistic knowledge from the institution of journalism and distributed it more broadly in society. This has resulted in disruptive change and occupational development in the media. As more people take up new media technologies and cultural practices to learn and solve significant personal and social problems, similar results are predicted for other professions, to include educators.

Because new media is broadly distributing new capacity to generate and reproduce knowledge throughout society this study concluded that occupational development in the media may result in a new cultural and technical infrastructure to hasten the emergence of the knowledge society. Recommendations were offered for how adult educators may help to broadly distribute the complimentary capacity to learn.