Denise Jackson

Stephen Billett

Janice Orrell

Faith Valencia-Forrester

This edited volume offers a range of insights about, practices of, and findings associated with, enrichening higher education students’ learning by their engagement in educational processes during and after the completion of their work integrated education experiences. That is, using post-practicum intervention to augment and enrich those learning experiences. The collected contributions here draw on the processes of trialling and evaluating educational processes that aimed to enrich the work integrated education experiences for purposes of improving students’ understandings, abilities to address workplace and occupational requirements. These processes and findings from these processes across a range of disciplinary fields including pharmacy, psychology, physiotherapy, service learning, occupational therapy, journalism and business students education speak directly to educators in both workplace and educational settings across a range of occupational sectors. These messages, which arise from educators and practitioners enacting and evaluating these interventions, offer practical suggestions as well as conceptual advances. The reach of the accounts of processes, findings and evaluations is not restricted to the occupational fields in which the interventions occurred. The lessons provided through this edited volume are intended to inform how post-practicum interventions might be enacted across a range of occupational studies.

Enriching Higher Education Students' Learning through Post-work Placement Interventions

Silvia Gherardi

Monica Kennedy

Laurie Grealish

This book addresses issues confronting universities’ attempts to integrate practice-based learning in higher education curriculum, yet which reveals the jostling of cultures which exist within and amongst the academy, industry, government and professional bodies and other educational providers. The book engages theory in practices, and draws upon research highlighting the issues and transactions that emerge with implementation of work integrated learning arrangements as uses these resources to discuss and develop further both theoretical premises and procedural contributions. The illustrative cases derive utilise metaphors of culture in their exploration of the epistemologies, structures, politics, histories and rituals which constrain program opportunity and success in making these advances. The volume comprises two main sections, the first laying out focal issues in the integration of learning and work in higher education. This section presents the issues at multiple levels of analysis and in theoretical terms. This section provides a foundation for the second section of the book which introduces a number of research studies illustrative of the issues theorised in the first. The cases highlight the practice of workplace and higher education pedagogy. They provide thick descriptions of experiences of integration and are explicitly focused on the implementation of work integrated programs in higher education. The volume commences with an introductory chapter which sets out the range of issues addressed both theoretically and through illustration in the book and a final chapter critically reviews the contributions and acts to provide a cohesive picture of the learning practices of work and higher education and the possibilities of their integration.

Jostling Cultures

Practice-based Learning in Higher Education

Learning in the workplace has come of age with the publication of this book. It shows the way for a new level of sophistication in the ways learning and work are treated. And it opens new territory for exploration in the world of learning throughout life. David Boud, University of Technology, Sydney Stephen Billett provides a comprehensive and practical model, well-grounded in theory and research, to guide learning in the workplace. This is a 'must read' for those in vocational education and training. Victoria Marsick, Columbia University Learning does not stop when you leave school or tertiary studies, but continues throughout life. The workplace is now seen as an important learning environment, and businesses and government units are encouraged to become 'learning organisations'. This is all very well in theory, but how does learning actually occur in the workplace? Drawing on research of a wide variety of workplaces in different countries, Stephen Billett analyses the strengths and limitations of 'on-the-job' learning. He outlines what knowledge individuals need and how they can best acquire this knowledge in workplace settings. He shows how to develop a workplace curriculum, and how it can be implemented in organisations of different sizes. Learning in the Workplace offers a comprehensive pedagogy for the workplace. It is a valuable reference for human resource practitioners and students in courses on professional development and adult and vocational learning.

Strategies for effective practice

Learning In The Workplace

This book addresses what is, perhaps, the single most important issue for vocational education; its relatively low standing in an era of high aspiration. The work explores the nature, extent and consequences for an educational sector that whilst having an increasingly important role in contemporary societies is seen to be of low standing across both countries with developed and developing economies. Some of the standing is associated with the occupation it serves and this is highlighted in an era of high aspiration by young people and their parents. The consequences are far-reaching. This includes how governments and community view and support vocational education, parents and familiars advise about participation in it and young peoples decision-making associated with their post-school pathways. More than describing this problem, the focus of this collection is how this issue can be redressed through the actions of supra-government agencies, governments, schools in tertiary education institutions, industry and professional bodies and employers. It sets out the quality and extent of societal sentiments in shaping how vocational education and the occupation it serves are projected, across countries, continents and cultures, and offers a range of perspectives and contributions from scholars on how this issue might be redressed. These contributions are drawn together and synthesised into sets of propositions, practices and approaches directed towards governments, schooling and tertiary education institutions, educators, researchers, industry and professional bodies and employers. In this way, the book seeks to provide an authoritative, seminal, comprehensive and central text to understand and respond to this central issue for vocational education.

Current Concerns and Strategies For Enhancing That Standing

The Standing of Vocational Education and the Occupations It Serves

This book provides a fresh account of the changing nature of work and how workers are changing as result of the requirements of contemporary working life. It explores the implications for preparing individuals for work and maintaining their skills throughout working life. This is done by examining the relations between the changing requirements for working life and how individuals engage in work.

Work, Change and Workers

This book discusses what constitutes vocational education as well as its key purposes, objects, formation and practices. In short, it seeks to outline and elaborate the nature of the project of vocational education. It addresses a significant gap in the available literature by providing a single text that elaborates the scope and diversity of the sector, its key objectives (i.e. vocations and occupations), its formation and development as an education sector, and the scope of its purposes and considerations in the curriculum. The volume achieves these objectives by discussing and defining the concept of vocational education as being that form of education that seeks to advise individuals about, prepare them for, and further develop their capacities to perform the kinds of occupations that societies require and individuals need to participate in—and through which they often come to define themselves. In particular, it discusses the distinctions between occupations as a largely social fact and vocations as being a socially shaped outcome assented to by individuals. As people identify closely with the kinds of occupations they engage in, the standing of, and the effectiveness of vocational education is central to individuals’ well-being, competence and progress. Ultimately, this book argues that the provision of vocational education needs to realise important personal and social goals.

Purposes, Traditions and Prospects

Vocational Education

Margaret Somerville

Tara Fenwick

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.

Understanding Learning through Working Life

Work, Subjectivity and Learning

Laurent Filliettaz

This book generates a comprehensive account of ways in which practice-based learning has been conceptualized in the Francophone context. Learning for occupations, and the educational and practice-based experiences supporting it are the subject of increased interest and attention globally. Governments, professional bodies, workplaces and workers are now looking for experiences that support the initial and ongoing development of occupational capacities. Consequently, more attention is being given to workplaces as sites for this learning. This focus on learning through work has long been emphasised in the Francophone world, which has developed distinct traditions and conceptions of associations between work and learning. These include ergonomics and professional didactics. Yet, whilst being accepted and of long standing in the Francophone world, these conceptions and traditions, and the practices supporting them are little known about or understood in the Anglophone world, which is the dominant medium for scientific and educational discussion. This book addresses this problem through drawing on accounts from France, Switzerland and Canada that make accessible and elaborate these traditions, conceptions and practices through examples of their applications to occupationally related learning. These accounts offer variations and culturally-specific developments of these traditions, but collectively emphasize a preoccupation with how both work and learning need to be understood through situated considerations of persons enacting their work practice. In this way, they offer noteworthy and worthwhile contributions to contemporary global considerations of learning through work.

Conceptions, Traditions and Practices

Francophone Perspectives of Learning Through Work

Hans Gruber

Christian Harteis

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.

International Handbook of Research in Professional and Practice-based Learning

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.

Models, Traditions, Orientations and Approaches

Learning Through Practice

Stephen Hay

Sue Thomas

Jill Ryan

Cheryl Sim

Greer Johnson

Leaving school, whether to move on to training, work or education, is a fundamental rite of passage the world over. This volume draws on a wealth of international sources and studies in its analysis of the ‘transitions’ young students make as they move on from their secondary schooling. It identifies how these transitions are planned for by policymakers, enacted by school staff and engaged with by students themselves. With data from a range of nations with advanced industrial economies, the book delineates how the policies relating to these transitions need to be conceived and implemented, how the transitions themselves are negotiated by young people, and how they might be shaped to meet the varied needs of the students they are designed to help. The authors argue that the relationship, often complex, between what schools provide in the way of preparation, and the ways in which students take up what is on offer, is the crucial nexus for understanding the experience of transitions by young people, and for enhancing that experience. With a host of case studies of transition policies themselves, as well as evaluative data on how they were received by the school leavers whom they were designed for, this valuable addition to the educational literature deserves to be read by all those with roles in preparing the young for their journey into a complex adult world full of pitfalls as well as opportunity.

Stephen Billett

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