A tentative return to experience in researching learning at work

This paper explores possibilities for more democratic approaches to researching learning in and through everyday workplace practices. This links with a concern with who is able to speak in representations of learning at work, what is able to be spoken about and how knowing, learning and experience are inscribed in theories of workplace learning. I propose that Rancière’s notion of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, which draws attention to an aesthetic dimension of experience, knowledge and politics, provides a useful way of exploring learning in and through everyday workplace practices. The approach points to the possibility of knowledge without hierarchies and a shift from a knowledge – ignorance binary. An understanding of experience as aesthetic enables accounts of learning which counter the story of destiny in literature on learning in and through everyday practice. It also points to a very different way of doing academic research. The presupposition of equality is the point of departure in this approach and the purpose of research is the verification of equality (rather than the verification of oppression). The paper makes a significant contribution to literature on learning in and through everyday workplace practices by disrupting a prevailing view that knowledge is necessarily tied to identity

Adult learning and education in Spain and Portugal: an interpretative study of doctoral theses (2006-2018)

This article presents a cartography of the field of research in adult learning and education (ALE) via a comparative study of academic production at doctoral level in Spain and Portugal based on a systematic documentary analysis of the summaries of doctoral theses concluded between 2006 and 2018. The aim is to advance the state of the art of research on ALE in recent doctoral theses in both Countries and highlight trends of contemporary knowledge construction in the field of continuing education of adults. Two analytical strategies are applied: i) a characterisation of the doctoral theses' abstracts by a constructed grid with general and specific categories; and ii) a quantitative strategy of identifying frequencies in the grid for 18 keywords, 6 frameworks and paradigms and 12 associated to concepts. The mapping of priorities and absences in doctoral research at Higher Education Institutions (HEI) demonstrate that in Spain, there is a tendency to present the role of ALE closely related to assisting individuals and groups to adapt to the educational system, to society and to labour demands. In Portugal an unresolved tension between the adaptation of adults to society through ALE and the conscientization of adults by ALE to transform society remains.National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology [UIDB/05739/2020]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Personal Social Networks and the Cultivation of Expertise in Magic: An Interview Study

The purpose of the present study was to examine expertise in magic by interviewing 16 prominent Finnish magicians who were identified earlier through a social network analysis of 120 Finnish magicians. A semi-structured interview was administered that addressed the participants’ histories; their relationship to magic, the nature of their expertise, the networked development of expertise, their engagement with magical expertise and their motivation for cultivating such expertise. The results indicated that expertise in magic is cultivated, to a great extent, by informal networks of expertise without formal training. The participants had become excited about magic as children and started to pursue an expertise in the field from a relatively early age (4 to 14 years). In accordance with other domains of expertise, it had taken about 10 years of cultivating skills and competencies before becoming professional in the field, with a few exceptions. Ego-centric network analyses revealed that there were three or four magicians who had significantly shaped the Finnish field of magic and affected most of the participants’ development and career. Most of the participants were clustered, forming a core of Finnish magicians, and those magicians working abroad and collaborating with international magicians were located at the periphery of the Finnish network or formed an isolated network of clusters within it