El desarrollo de conocimientos a través de diferentes espacios en entornos laborales: una visión del Reino Unido

This article will discuss the notion of spaces as learning contexts and explore how this concept can enhance our understanding of experiential learning in work-related settings. This article aims to consider how employees learn and develop their knowledge through different pathways, and through the different learning spaces in which they are building on their knowledge. The research has demonstrated that employees develop their knowledge through different environments that are often associated with different types of learning spaces: (1) formal learning spaces/academic spaces (which relate to learning through formal courses) and (2) experiential learning  spaces (which relate to learning experientially, e.g. from day to day workplace activities). The articles draws on the concept of the learning space as a framework for illustrating the interplay between employees’ learning styles and different types of learning environments.En este trabajo se discutirá la noción de espacios como contextos de aprendizaje y se explorara cómo puede este concepto mejorar nuestra comprensión del aprendizaje experimental en los entornos laborales. Este artículo tiene por objeto reflexionar sobre cómo los empleados aprenden y desarrollan sus conocimientos a través de diferentes vías y de diferentes espacios de aprendizaje en los que se construye su conocimiento. Las investigaciones han demostrado que los empleados desarrollan sus conocimientos a través de diferentes ambientes que se asocian a menudo con diferentes tipos de espacios de aprendizaje: (1) los espacios de aprendizaje formal / espacios académicos (que se relacionan con el aprendizaje a través de cursos formales) y (2) espacios de aprendizaje experiencial (que se relacionan con el aprendizaje por experiencia, por ejemplo, de actividades del día a día del lugar de trabajo). El artículo se basa en el concepto del espacio de aprendizaje como marco para ilustrar la interacción entre los estilos de aprendizaje de los empleados y los diferentes tipos de ambientes de aprendizaje

Managing the student experience in English higher education: differing responses to market pressures

This paper reports on recent research aimed at assessing how the management of the undergraduate student experience in English higher education is changing in the light of the new tuition fee regime introduced in 2012, as well as other government policies aimed at creating market-type pressures within the higher education sector. A distinction was observed between the research-intensive universities studied – defined here as institutions where research income comprised 20 per cent or more of total turnover, with correspondingly strong positions in published research-based rankings – and universities largely dependent on income from teaching, with weaker market positions. Broadly speaking, the latter group were responding to market pressures by centralizing services, standardizing procedures, and strengthening management controls over teaching processes. The research-intensive universities tended to work within existing institutional cultures to respond to students' needs. Organizational change here usually took the form of creating more coherent functional groupings of student services, rather than comprehensive reorganizations. It appears to us that these different responses to a changed environment point to the creation of two distinct English university types, one strongly managerial with 'student as customer' orientations, and a smaller group with less centralized, more collegial cultures

Social inclusion, participation and citizenship in contexts of neoliberalism: examples of adult education policy and practice with young people in the UK, The Netherlands and Ireland

This chapter focuses on contexts where public discourses regarding the education of young adults have been dominated by socio-economic perspectives, with a focus on the role of employment-related learning, skills and chances and with active participation in the labour market as a key concern for policy makers. A focus on ‘employability’ alone has been linked to narrow conceptualisations of participation, inclusion and citizenship, arising in the context of discourse shifts through neoliberalism which emphasise workfare over welfare and responsibilities over rights. A key critique of such contexts is that the focus moves from addressing barriers to participation to framing social inclusion predominantly as related to expectations of ‘activation’ and sometimes, assimilation. Key target groups for discourses of activation include young people not in education, employment or training (‘NEET’), while in- and exclusion of migrant and ethnic minority young people are often framed within the complex and contradictory interplay between discourses of assimilation and experiences of discrimination. These developments influence the field of adult education aimed at young people vulnerable to social exclusion. An alternative discourse to ‘activation’ is the promotion of young people’s skills and capabilities that enables them to engage in forms of citizenship activism, challenging structural barriers that lead to exclusion. Our chapter considers selected examples from EduMAP research in the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland which indicate that as well as framing the participation of young people as discourses of ‘activation’, adult education can also enable and facilitate skills related to more activist forms of citizenship participation

Rethinking the learning space at work and beyond: The achievement of agency across the boundaries of work-related spaces and environments

This paper focuses on the notion of the learning space at work and discusses the extent to which its different configurations allow employees to exercise personal agency within a range of learning spaces. Although the learning space at work is already the subject of extensive research, the continuous development of the learning society and the development of new types of working spaces calls for further research to advance our knowledge and understanding of the ways that individuals exercise agency and learn in the workplace. Research findings suggest that the current perception of workplace learning is strongly related to the notion of the learning space, in which individuals and teams work, learn and develop their skills. The perception of the workplace as a site only for work-specific training is gradually changing, as workplaces are now acknowledged as sites for learning in various configurations, and as contributing to the personal development and social engagement of employees. This paper argues that personal agency is constructed in the workplace, and this process involves active interrelations between agency and three dimensions of the workplace (individual, spatial and organisational), identified through both empirical and theoretical research. The discussion is supported by data from two research projects on workplace learning in the United Kingdom. This paper thus considers how different configurations of the learning space and the boundaries between a range of work-related spaces facilitate the achievement of personal agency