Understanding transitions in professional practice and learning: Towards new questions for research

The purpose of this article is to critically examine, within the context of professional practice and learning, diverse theoretical approaches that are currently prominent in researching transitions and to propose future directions for research. Much research to date on professional transitions has focused on predicting them and then preparing individual practitioners to navigate transitions as sites of struggle. The article begins by describing work contexts integral with professional transitions: regulation, governance and accountability; new work structures; and knowledge development. The discussion then examines transitions research in developmental psychology, lifecourse sociology, and career studies. These perspectives are compared critically in terms of questions and approaches, contributions to understanding professional transitions, and limitations. The implications for educators are a series of critical questions about research and education directed to support transitions in professional learning and work. Future directions and questions for research in professional transitions are suggested in the final section, along with implications for supporting professional learning in these transitions. The article is not intended to be comprehensive, but to identify issues for the reader’s consideration in thinking about various forms of transition being experienced by professions and professionals. The discussion theory-based, exploratory, and indicative rather than definitive

Performative ontologies. Sociomaterial approaches to researching adult education and lifelong learning

Sociomaterial approaches to researching education, such as those generated by actornetwork theory and complexity theory, have been growing in significance in recent years, both theoretically and methodologically. Such approaches are based upon a performative ontology rather than the more characteristic representational epistemology that informs much research. In this article, we outline certain aspects of sociomaterial sensibilities in researching education, and some of the uptakes on issues related to the education of adults. We further suggest some possibilities emerging for adult education and lifelong learning researchers from taking up such theories and methodologies. (DIPF/Orig.

Normalising standards in educational complexity: A network analysis

The proliferation of transnational workplace sites has strengthened the demands for consistent standards of practice and operation. These are increasingly applied and regulated internationally through technologies such as ISO 9000. Workplace learning programs have been designed to reduce variation in skills and procedures at the local level, and to increase individuals’ compliance with regulatory manuals, audit forms, error reports etc. Yet at the same time, a key emphasis for organizations attempting to survive amidst global competition is to increase innovation across different units and different operation levels. This push for innovation has been coupled with ideals of a learning organization wherein all employees are supposed to learn continuously, e.g. to increase variation. This paper explores the organizational tension between centrally imposed demands for both standardized practice and innovative challenges to existing standards that often produces complete separation of design and execution functions, sometimes into sites located in different countries. It shows how in practice, workers continue to experiment and learn in ways that deliberately subvert reductionist standards measures, or that produce local innovations that are unrecognized by these measures

Women learning in garment work: Solidarity and sociality

Abstract: This article explores processes and possibilities for critical learning in the workplace, with a focus on workers labouring in what are often exploitive and dehumanizing conditions. The argument is based on a study of work-life learning of women, mostly new immigrants, employed long-term at an Alberta garment manufacturing plant. It is argued that their negotiations of work conditions are nested in various areas of learning associated with everyday practices, small communities, labour organizing processes, and English learning classes. These areas are argued to have generated forms of solidarity emerging through learning about sociality, resistance, and personal worth. These solidarities appear to be configured by energies of both transformation and reproduction that are threaded together and generated simultaneously as women learned to survive within the system while supporting one another in a vital interdependent social network. The discussion explores how these dynamics unfolded, and their effects on how different women positioned themselves and their knowledge

Understanding relations of individual-collective learning in work: A review of research

Abstract: A review was conducted of literature addressing learning in work, focusing on relations between individual and collective learning published in nine journals during the period 1999-2004. The journals represent three distinct fields of management/organization studies, adult education, and human resource development: all publish material about workplace learning regularly. A total of 209 articles were selected for content analysis, containing a range of material including reports of empirical research to theoretical discussion. Eight themes of individual-collective learning were identified through inductive content analysis of this literature: individual knowledge acquisition, sensemaking/reflective dialogue, levels of learning, network utility, individual human development, individuals in community, communities of practice, and a co-participation or co-emergence theme. The discussion notes apparent lack of dialogue across the fields despite similar concepts, the ontological and ideological differences among the themes of learning currently in circulation, and the low frequency of analysis of power relations in the articles reviewed

Co-production in professional practice: a sociomaterial analysis

Co-production, typically defined as services and products that are planned and delivered in full conjunction with clients, has become a popular policy discourse and prescription for professional practice across a wide range of public services. Literature tends to herald the democratic and even transformative potential of co-production, yet there is yet little empirical evidence of its processes and negotiations at the ‘chalkface’ of everyday practice. This article adopts a sociomaterial theoretical frame of professional knowing-in-practice to analyse these negotiations, drawing from a case study of community policing. The argument is situated in terms of implications of these co-production practices for professional learning

Developing organizational practices of ecological sustainability: A learning perspective

Purpose This article discusses issues and strategies of developing practices of ecological sustainability in organizations. Three questions guide the discussion: How are practices of social responsibility and ecological sustainability developed and maintained in organizations? What learning in particular is involved in developing practices of ecological sustainability in organizations? How might this learning be fostered by organizational leaders? Methodology/Approach The article draws from literatures in ecology, ecological learning and corporate social responsibility to describe the nature of ecological sustainability, intents and approaches of organizations developing it, and their challenges. Case examples drawn from studies of small business are examined to explore successful strategies of developing practices of ecological sustainability. These examples are analysed from a learning perspective. Findings Challenges that hinder adoption of ecological sustainability practice include low stakeholder understanding and support, low management focus and strategy, and insufficient cost-benefit analysis. Organizations confronted these challenges by emphasizing education and enabling conditions that fostered learning in everyday action (decentralization, diversity, connections, shared focus, constraints, and feedback.) Research implications The discussion shifts the emphasis from corporate social responsibility (CSR) – which has become a broad, contested area of multiple meanings – to ecological sustainability, and shifts the focus from measurement and reporting (prominent in CSR literature) to learning. Practical implications Strategies are suggested for organizational leaders to enable conditions for learning that support practices of ecological sustainability. Originality/value of paper With the learning perspective, and particularly with the focus on ecological learning models based in complexity science, the article demonstrates a unique link between learning approaches and practices of ecological sustainability

Pondering purposes, propelling forwards

This article, based upon the closing plenarydelivered to the recent conference of Professional Practice, Education and Learning, reflects upon the developments of the ProPEL network over the past seven years and its possibilities for future directions. To provide some context for these reflections, the article begins by outlining key challenges facing contemporary professions and their education. Against these, I consider themes and emphases that have characterised ProPEL initiatives and the papers presented to its conferences. Then, I compare these to the sorts of questions and issues that appear to be most urgently debated in other scholarly communities concerned with changing professional work and knowledge, particularly the dramatic transformations of professional roles through new digital technologies and artificial intelligence, transnational demands and new organisational forms.The article ends with questions for educators researching professional practice: where we need more focus, where perhaps we need less, and what may be productive ways forward