This book focuses on relations among subjectivity, work and learning that represent a point of convergence for diverse disciplinary traditions and practices. There are contributions from leading scholars in the field. They provide emerging perspectives that are elaborating the complex relations among subjectivity, work and learning, and circumstances in which they are played out.
Practice-based learning—the kind of education that comes from experiencing real work in real situations—has always been a prerequisite to qualification in professions such as medicine. However, there is growing interest in how practice-based models of learning can assist the initial preparation for and further development of skills for a wider range of occupations. Rather than being seen as a tool of first-time training, it is now viewed as a potentially important facet of professional development and life-long learning. This book provides perspectives on practice-based learning from a range of disciplines and fields of work. The collection here draws on a wide spectrum of perspectives to illustrate as well as to critically appraise approaches to practice-based learning. The book’s two sections first explore the conceptual foundations of learning through practice, and then provide detailed examples of its implementation. Long-standing practice-based approaches to learning have been used in many professions and trades. Indeed, admission to the trades and major professions (e.g. medicine, law, accountancy) can only be realised after completing extended periods of practice in authentic practice settings. However, the growing contemporary interest in using practice-based learning in more extensive contexts has arisen from concerns about the direct employability of graduates and the increasing focus on occupation-specific courses in both vocations and higher education. It is an especially urgent issue in an era of critical skill shortages, rapidly transforming work requirements and an aging workforce combined with a looming shortage of new workforce entrants. We must better understand how existing models of practice-based learning are enacted in order to identify how they can be applied to different kinds of employment and workplaces. The contributions to this volume explore ways in which learning through practice can be conceptualised, enacted, and appraised through an analysis of the traditions, purposes, and processes that support this learning—including curriculum models and pedagogic practices.
Comprising 15 chapters the book offers perspectives from Finland, Germany, New Zealand and Australia and across a range of occupations and places of work. Individually and collectively these chapters make important contributions to learning about the self and agency at work and about learning work tasks.
This book explores and progresses the concept of negotiation as a means of describing and explaining individuals’ learning in work. It challenges the undertheorised and generic use of the concept in contemporary work-learning research where the concept of negotiation is most often deployed as a taken for granted synonym for interaction, co-participation and collaboration and, hence, used to unproblematically account for workers’ learning as engagement in social activity. Through a focus on workers’ personal practice and based on extensive longitudinal empirical research, the book advances a conceptual framework, The Three Dimensions of Negotiation, to propose a more rigorous and work-learning specific understanding of the concept of negotiation. This framework enables workers’ personal work practices and their contributions to the personal, organisational and occupational changes that evidence learning to be viewed as negotiations enacted and managed, within contexts that are in turn sets of premediate and concurrent negotiations that frame the transformations on and from which on-going negotiations of learning and practice ensue. The book does not seek to supplant understandings of the rich and valuable concept of negotiation. Rather, it seeks to develop and promote a more explicit use of the concept as a socio-personal learning concept at the same time as it opens alternative perspectives on its deployment as a metaphor for individual’s learning in work.
An incisive account of the relationship between language and identity, illuminating the role of language in racism, sexism, colonialism and similar social forces.
"This book analyses the challenges of globalisation and uncertainty impacting on working and learning at individual, organisational and societal levels. Each of the contributions addresses two overall questions: How is working and learning affected by uncertainty and globalisation? And, in what ways do individuals, organisations, political actors and education systems respond to these challenges?Part 1 focuses on the micro level of working and learning for understanding the learning processes from an individual point of view by reflecting on learners’ needs and situations at work and in school-work transitions. Part 2 addresses the meso level by discussing sector-specific and organisational approaches to working and learning in times of uncertainty. The chapters represent a broad range of branches including public services (police work), the automotive sector and the health sector (elderly care). Finally, Part 3 addresses the macro level of working and learning by analysing how to govern, structure and organise vocational, professional and adult education at the boundaries of work, education and policy making."
The International Handbook of Research in Professional and Practice-based Learning discusses what constitutes professionalism, examines the concepts and practices of professional and practice-based learning, including associated research traditions and educational provisions. It also explores professional learning in institutions of higher and vocational education as well the practice settings where professionals work and learn, focusing on both initial and ongoing development and how that learning is assessed. The Handbook features research from expert contributors in education, studies of the professions, and accounts of research methodologies from a range of informing disciplines. It is organized in two parts. The first part sets out conceptions of professionalism at work, how professions, work and learning can be understood, and examines the kinds of institutional practices organized for developing occupational capacities. The second part focuses on procedural issues associated with learning for and through professional practice, and how assessment of professional capacities might progress. The key premise of this Handbook is that during both initial and ongoing professional development, individual learning processes are influenced and shaped through their professional environment and practices. Moreover, in turn, the practice and processes of learning through practice are shaped by their development, all of which are required to be understood through a range of research orientations, methods and findings. This Handbook will appeal to academics working in fields of professional practice, including those who are concerned about developing these capacities in their students. In addition, students and research students will also find this Handbook a key reference resource to the field.
This book focuses on the emerging area of partner-driven work-integrated learning inclusive of university or industry stakeholder development, and the integration of these two major stakeholders. It explores the significant interrelationship between university and school needs in this area of research. It uses a cross-institutional approach and focuses on local communities that educational providers interact with, to highlight and discuss the issues identified in various case studies. By doing so, this book aims to create a community of practice that explores work-integrated learning from an integrated stakeholder perspective, and develops a working model to extend existing understanding in this area through integrating the ideas explored in the various chapters.
This book analyses and elaborates on learning processes within work environments and explores professional learning. It presents research indicating general characteristics of the work environment that support learning, as well as barriers to workplace learning. Themes of professional development, lifelong learning and business organisation emerge through the chapters and contributions explore theoretical and empirical analyses on the boundary between working and learning in various contexts and with various methodological approaches. Readers will discover how current workplace learning approaches can emphasise the learning potential of the work environment and how workplaces can combine the application of competence that is working, with its acquisition or learning. Through these chapters, we learn about the educational challenge to design workplaces as environments of rich learning potential without neglecting business demands. Expert authors explore how learning and working are both to be considered as two common aspects of an individual’s activity. Complexity, significance, integrity and variety of assigned work tasks as well as scope of action, interaction and feedback within its processing, turn out to be crucial work characteristics, amongst others revealed in these chapters. Part of the Professional and Practice-based Learning series, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in workplaces as learning environments: those within government, community or business agencies and within the research communities in education, psychology, sociology and business management will find it of great interest.
