This article provides some insight into the constraints on the potential of recognition of prior learning (RPL) to widen access to educational qualifications. Its focus is on a conceptual framework that emerged from a South African study of RPL practices across four different learning contexts. Working from a social realist perspective, it argues that RPL needs to be seen as a specialised form of pedagogy that enables navigation across different cultures of knowledge; this is inevitably a contested process because it questions dominant forms of knowledge and modes of knowledge production. The research found that a range of contextual factors impact on the feasibility of RPL, including the nature of the disciplinary domain and its associated knowledge structures, but the "inner workings" of the practice also need to be taken into account. Drawing on Cultural Historical Activity Theory , the article presents a conceptual model of RPL as a specialised, boundary-crossing practice for engaging complex sociologies of knowledge, and it offers three generic configurations of practice, each requiring its own "artistry of practice". It concludes that further theoretical work is required in order to adequately conceptualise what is identified as the "specialised discourses of experiential knowledge".