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Common to the effectiveness of what constitutes work-integrated learning (WIL) and work-integrated education (WIE) is how students’ experiences in tertiary educational and work settings are integrated. WIL comprises how individuals come to reconcile and construct meaning, capacities, and dispositions from experiences encountered in both settings. WIE comprises the organisation of experiences and educational interventions to assist students in intentionally integrating the two sets of experiences as part of a planned educational process. These two forms of integration are ontologically and epistemologically distinct, yet central to their processes and outcomes, which are also ontologically discrete. This paper commences by rehearsing the distinction of WIE from WIL and the centrality of integrations to both conceptions. The bases by which such integrations progress are then discussed: the provision of experiences and the process of experiencing. Considerations of the tertiary educational processes and processes of promoting learning to realise effective outcomes for students follow. These draw on findings from projects that sought seeking to integrate the two sets of experiences. The sociocultural positioning draws on a distinction between zones of potential and proximal development that accommodate what is afforded and mediated by those experiences and how learners might mediate their integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding what constitutes learning across working life and how negotiating worklife transitions can be best supported has never been more important for working age adults, their workplaces and communities. The kinds and frequencies of changes in occupational and workplace requirements have consequences for personal goals, workplace viability and communities' economic and social wellbeing. Hence, for both individual and societal purposes we need to elaborate the goals for and processes of that learning and what constitutes educative worklife experiences. Drawing on a three-phase investigation of adults' worklife learning the kinds and qualities of the educative experiences directly or indirectly guiding, supporting and extending individuals' learning and development are elaborated. This includes pathways of experiences across working life: personal curriculums. The paper reports and discusses the data from: (i) worklife narratives and follow-up interviews, and (ii) 18-month monitoring of work and learning of a cohort of workers. It furthers the case for viewing lifelong learning and lifelong education as being distinct and sperate phenomena, the interdependence among the contributions of adults, their educational experiences and those provided by their communities, leading to the explanatory concepts of personal curriculum and educative experiences to illuminate and elaborate learning and development across working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Methods Findings Discussion Conclusion Securing access to sufficient and focussed learning experiences is a perennial challenge for medical trainees. This challenge was accentuated during the COVID‐19 pandemic lockdowns and with physical isolation processes that decreased in‐person patient presentations and a shift to telehealth consultations. This situation has prompted the need to optimise the available experiences and educational responses to overcome the limitations in the number, quantum and range of available clinical learning experiences.Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with medical practice teams in four rural general practices to understand how medical trainees' education in rural general practices can be sustained in such circumstances.Key considerations included optimising the available experiences to assist medical trainees to generate the kinds of mental models needed by trainees to conduct medical work, and particularly, when it became even more restricted through remote or physically distanced consultations. It also identified lessons learnt during COVID‐19 pandemic lockdowns to inform and improve the provision of trainees' experiences in such practices.Providing experiences for trainees to participate fully in clinical activities is imperative. A sequenced set of experiences was proposed to incrementally prepare trainees to engage in and conduct clinical consultations remotely using digital technologies.Such an approach may not always be easy or possible to enact but offers a pathway of experiences most likely to lead to positive outcomes for the trainees whilst maintaining patient care and safety considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nation states need effective, accessible, and broadly engaged provisions of continuing education and training (CET) to develop the capacities of their working-age populations. Understanding what constitutes accessible and effective CET provisions, is needed to enable informed decision-making about realising governmental goals of securing a skilled, employable, and adaptive workforce. To understand what comprises that efficacy, it is necessary to capture, analyse, and reconcile the perspectives of stakeholders including government agencies, education institutions, CET educators and, most importantly, working-age adults. Reconciliation of these perspectives is essential for establishing what constitutes an effective CET ecosystem, including what kinds of CET provisions can best meet the needs of working-age Singaporeans and their workplaces. Drawing on an investigation of CET provisions in the island nation, this paper seeks to illuminate and advance how CET provisions might be enacted through an ecosystem perspective to promote employability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of curriculum as a personal journey is now timely, yet timeless and pertinent as an explanatory basis for understanding learning and development across the lifespan. It addresses a current need to explain adults' learning across working life when achieving individual, occupational, community, and societal goals. Advancing this explanation necessitate elaborating how that learning is realised and can be supported educatively. This conceptual paper presents and discusses the concept of personal curriculum to illuminate and explain pathways of adults' learning and developmental experiences across working lives. It offers a perspective of curriculum as a personal, rather than an institutional phenomenon. It also extends the concept of 'experienced curriculum' beyond periodic episodes of engagement in educational programmes to capture the continuity of educative experiences across the adult life course. Importantly, this concept liberates curriculum from the constraints of something intended, enacted and appraised within specific social settings (e.g. educational and work settings) to be more inclusive of the totality of learners' experiences. The case is made for its conceptual, theoretical and practical salience beyond a focus on institutional imperatives. Drawing upon empirical work on how working age adults sustain their employability across working lives, this conception extends discussions about what constitutes curriculum, to encapsulate the learning pathways individuals take across working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people's decision-making about postschool pathways are influenced and shaped by parents, teachers, and other familiars. Yet, these familiars are often uninformed about vocational education as it has not been part of their personal experience. Instead, they may reflect and further embed the relatively low standing of that option. The lack of access to informed advice potentially leads to privileging university entrance, and post-school pathways not aligned with young people's capacities and interests. This raises questions about whether advice, from those familiar with this educational sector and occupations it serves (e.g. vocational educators), would offer different and more helpful advice than familiars. Reported here are perspectives of and advice provided by over 300 vocational educators about educational/training course that may suit young people's needs, preferences, and ways of engaging and informing them about post-school pathways, and how to enhance vocational education's standing as a potentially viable post-school pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To provide high quality services in increasingly complex, constantly changing circumstances, healthcare organizations worldwide need a high level of resilience, to adapt and respond to challenges and changes at all system levels. For healthcare organizations to strengthen their resilience, a significant level of continuous learning is required. Given the interdependence required amongst healthcare professionals and stakeholders when providing healthcare, this learning needs to be collaborative, as a prerequisite to operationalizing resilience in healthcare. As particular elements of collaborative working, and learning are likely to promote resilience, there is a need to explore the underlying collaborative learning mechanisms and how and why collaborations occur during adaptations and responses. The aim of this study is to describe collaborative learning processes in relation to resilient healthcare based on an investigation of narratives developed from studies representing diverse healthcare contexts and levels.Methods: The method used to develop understanding of collaborative learning across diverse healthcare contexts and levels was to first conduct a narrative inquiry of a comprehensive dataset of published health services research studies. This resulted in 14 narratives (70 pages), synthesised from a total of 40 published articles and 6 PhD synopses. The narratives where then analysed using a thematic meta-synthesis approach.Results: The results show that, across levels and contexts, healthcare professionals collaborate to respond and adapt to change, maintain processes and functions, and improve quality and safety. This collaboration comprises activities and interactions such as exchanging information, coordinating, negotiating, and aligning needs and developing buffers. The learning activities embedded in these collaborations are both activities of daily work, such as discussions, prioritizing and delegation of tasks, and intentional educational activities such as seminars or simulation activities.Conclusions: Based on these findings, we propose that the enactment of resilience in healthcare is dependent on these collaborations and learning processes, across different levels and contexts. A systems perspective of resilience demands collaboration and learning within and across all system levels. Creating space for reflection and awareness through activities of everyday work, could support individual, team and organizational learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both government reports and academic literature concur in claiming that the low standing of vocational education and training (VET) and the occupations it serves in the community is a major problem for increasing the engagement in this educational sector in an era of high aspiration. An initial analysis from a project capturing school students, school teachers and parents' perspectives of what informs young people's post-school choices found parents and teachers were key. Yet they often lacked informed and impartial exposure to or advice about VET and the occupations it serves. To identify whether this lack of familiarity was a key basis for shaping decision-making away from VET, a further analysis was undertaken drawing on the perspectives of vocational educators. That analysis showed, however, that exposure to VET and the occupations it serves does not, of itself, mean that the person providing advice is any more informed about or inherently encouraging of young people to engage in VET. Instead, vocational educators' perspectives were more aligned with those of school teachers and parents of school-aged children than those of school students. The key finding here is that rather than relying upon the contributions that arise to engagement with familiars (i.e. parents and teachers), a process approach is required to provide impartial and comprehensive advice about and experiences with diverse post-school pathways and occupations to young people and to have mechanisms that allow their capacities, interests, and aspirations to be engaged with this advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing global concern about providing effective continuing education and training (CET) to support and sustain the employability of working-age populations. More than enhancing workplace viability and employability, CET also assists in achieving governments' economic and social goals. Educational institutions organise CET provisions based on intended goals, resources, capacities, and institutional imperatives. However, working-age adults' effective engagement and worthwhile outcomes are likely to be strongest when what is afforded them is aligned with their goals, needs and readiness to participate. Thus, what constitutes effective CET provisions can be best understood by appraising them through how they secure individuals' engagement and meet their needs. Drawing on an investigation of CET provisions in Singapore, this paper seeks to illuminate and appraise what constitutes qualities of effective CET provisions in relation to addressing issues of relevance, accessibility and quality of engagement with educational experiences. Through analyses of interview and survey data, the motivations for informants' CET participation, their preferences and requirements for effective engagement in CET including desirable qualities of teachers were identified and delineated. Given that adults elect to participate in CET to achieve personal and professional outcomes, the findings provide bases for designing, enacting and evaluating effective CET programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transitions adults negotiate across their working lives need to be further understood for governments, workplaces, and the community to effectively support these adults. Through analyses of worklife history interview data with 30 working age adults, distinct kinds of changes comprising these transitions have been delineated as representative of changes that have person-particular meanings and impacts. This delineation represents understandings of processes and outcomes for adults' learning and development. These transitions have specific kinds of scope, duration, and impacts in terms of continuity/discontinuity with individuals' earlier activities and knowing. Transitions can be objectively observed, captured, and represented by a complex of personal, institutional, and/or brute factors. Understanding the changes comprising these worklife transitions and how they can be supported and facilitated requires accounting for societal factors as well as individuals' personal histories and legacies and impacts of maturation. A schema representing six kinds of changes is presented and illuminated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competence in contemporary working life requirements is increasingly aligned with electronically mediated tasks and work roles: ie, the digitalisation of work. This alignment necessitates workers learning and utilising the conceptual knowledge and ways of working needed for this work. This knowledge is often distinct from and displaces workers' existing ways of knowing, which threatens their competence and sense of self. Yet, it can be difficult to access, learn and practice, requiring it to be mediated through interventions making it knowable. For working age adults, this often needs to occur through work activities for efficacy and practical reasons. These worklife learning issues are discussed here from a cultural psychological perspective, drawing on studies of contemporary work and human cognition, considerations for how these forms of knowledge can be made accessible and their processes of knowledge construction be supported. Four key propositions are advanced: (a) this knowledge needs to be made accessible to be engaged with and learnt; (b) that can often best occur in work settings; (c) workers' occupational subjectivities need accommodating; and (d) electronically mediated forms and artefacts offer means to make that knowledge accessible and support its learning. Hence, learning, work and digitalisation are reciprocally aligned in promoting both the initial and ongoing development of workers' capacities. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic? The knowledge required for work constantly changes.Digitalised work has changed the requirements of much work and many occupations.Conceptual and symbolic knowledge are required for competence in digital kinds of work.Many studies have illustrated the impact of digital technologies across a range of occupations and industry sectors.What this paper adds? An elaboration of how the knowledge to be learnt and ways of knowing have changed in digital work.Considerations of the implications of the changes for worklife learning (lifelong learning).The importance of digitalised artefacts mediating access to this knowledge through symbolic representations.Implications for practice and/or policy Working age adults need to be able to access the kinds of knowledge required for digitalised work.Worksites and work practice are potentially the optimum circumstances for accessing and learning this knowledge across working life.The ability of this knowledge to be represented symbolically is a key basis for workers ongoing learning of digitalised work requirements.Digital technology offers means for the conceptual representations to be made accessible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Ageing populations are increasing the demand for geriatric care services. As nursing schools respond to this demand, more high-quality clinical placements are required, and aged care homes offer suitable placement sites. Although an aged care experience for students is beneficial, the basis for effective implementation of these placements is yet to be fully established. The aim of this study was to explore faculty staff perspectives on the challenges associated with providing effective clinical education in aged care homes for first-year student nurses. Methods: An exploratory qualitative study was performed. Fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted with program leaders of nursing degree programs (n = 4), course leaders (n = 6) and practice coordinators (n = 5) in three Norwegian universities. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings were reported using the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR). Results: Five themes were identified regarding the perceived challenges to implementing effective clinical education in aged care homes: (1) low staffing levels of registered nurses limit the capacity to effectively host students; (2) prevalence of part-time teachers can compromise the quality of students' learning experiences; (3) tensions about the required qualifications and competencies of nurse teachers; (4) variation in learning assessments; and (5) lack of quality assurance. Conclusions: These challenges signal key areas to be addressed in quality assurance for effective aged care placements. Further research into the minimum staffing levels required to support student learning in the aged care setting is required. Methods for developing shared practices to facilitate learning in aged care homes need to address the prevalence of part-time teaching appointments. Further research into the levels of qualification and competence required to support student learning in aged care facilities can assist with setting standards for this sector. Finally, academic-practice institutions must engage with government officials and national nursing bodies to develop national standards for clinical education in aged care homes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Australia, the relatively low standing of vocational education and the occupations it serves is of growing concern. This standing is held to contribute to an increased number of young people preferring to engage in higher education and to look past vocational education as a potential post-school pathway. Consequently, there are skill shortages in some occupations, as young people who might be suited to them are now completing university degrees instead, including those with no clear alignment with occupations or employment outcomes. To redress this imbalance, it is necessary to identify factors shaping young people's decision-making about post-school pathways and preferred occupations. The findings of a project investigating these factors and how they might be addressed are presented and discussed here. Central are interactions with familiars, including parents, teachers and peers. However, the degree by which interactions are informed, engaged and influential differed. Teachers may need to be impartial and students' deliberations about post-school pathways more widely informed. Strategies to achieve these outcomes were evaluated by informants, leading to suggestions for policy initiatives. These included government's role in championing vocational education and how schools might more effectively inform and support students' decision-making about post-school pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education students are increasingly engaging in work experiences, often directed towards enriching their study and promoting employability. Considerable institutional and personal resources are directed towards these experiences. It is important, therefore, to identify how to utilise them in achieving particular educational purposes. An earlier study found the optimum time for educational interventions is after students had completed work experiences, as they can share, compare and engage critically with those experiences. As these interventions are premised on student engagement, it is important to understand: (i) the reasons why and (ii) means by which they prefer particular interventions. This paper discusses the findings of a survey of higher education students from healthcare disciplines that sought to address those two issues. Students reported a preference for processes assisting them gauge and further develop their occupational capacities and readiness to secure employment and practice effectively once employed. Those interventions led, facilitated or guided by teachers or experts (i.e. clinicians), were preferred over student-organised and led ones. These students place lower value on peer assistance and feedback. This finding contradicts recent literature indicating being assessed by peers is greatly valued. It is these findings and discussions that are elaborated here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Quantitative study of first responders' perceived competence in tunnel fire safety. • Qualitative study of first responders' actual competence in tunnel fire safety. • First responders' perceived competence is discussed against their actual competence. • First responders' self-reported competencies predict inaccurately the real competencies of the fire and rescue services. • Competence-enhancing activities are necessary to improve first responders' actual competencies in tunnel fire safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses experiences of racism and racial discrimination of seven refugee immigrants attending different courses at two Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes in South East Queensland, Australia. In doing so, the paper draws from two studies that focused on resettlement of refugee immigrants in Australia. A transformative psychosocial approach is used to explore the students’ experiences of racism and racial discrimination at the TAFE institutes. Acknowledging the historical constructions of racism in Australia, the paper proposes an anti-racism framework to buttress the students against experiences of racial discrimination at the TAFE institutes. The proposed anti-racism framework has three components; theNational Anti-Racism Strategy, the vocational and education system and TAFE institutes and individual refugee immigrant students. TheBubalamai Bawa Gumadais suggested as a possible anti-racism strategy that could enable the refugee immigrant students challenge racial discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context Learning to prescribe is challenging for junior doctors. Significant efforts have been made to improve prescribing education, especially in view of the high rates of prescribing errors made by junior doctors. However, considerations of educational options often overlook the fact that learning to prescribe and prescribing practices rely on practice-based interactions with informed practitioners, such as pharmacists and consultants. Pharmacists have long made important contributions to developing prescribing capacities. Objectives The present study examines the potential of everyday co-working between junior doctors and pharmacists, in conjunction with consultants, as an accessible means of developing effective prescribing practices. Methods A qualitative interview study was conducted in an Australian tertiary hospital using thematic analysis to explore junior doctors', pharmacists' and consultants' perspectives on how co-working supports learning to prescribe in an acute tertiary hospital setting. Participants included 34 practitioners, comprising junior doctors ( n = 11), consultants ( n = 10) and pharmacists ( n = 13). The thematic analysis was informed by workplace learning theory. Results Learning to prescribe was found to be a highly interdependent process. In particular, junior doctors were dependent on co-working with consultants and pharmacists. Three interrelated themes related to co-working and learning to prescribe in the workplace were identified: (i) prescribing readiness of junior doctors; (ii) need for guidance, and (iii) the challenges of pharmacists co-working as outsiders. Conclusions Co-working with pharmacists and consultants contributes positively to junior doctors' prescribing practices. However, co-working is complex and is influenced by differing understandings of prescribing practices. These insights assist in informing how co-working can be enacted routinely in hospital settings to promote safe and effective prescribing practices. Consideration should be given to when and how co-working between junior doctors and pharmacists is initiated, including during medical school. In clinical settings, strategies such as having pharmacists attend ward rounds and adopt a role of learning facilitation rather than error identification may augment everyday opportunities for co-working and learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How home care workers (HCWs) adapt their classroom training to their workplaces is central to their own safety and that of their care recipients. A case study approach was adopted for this inquiry into HCW training in Australia, where new workers were directly observed and interviewed in their workplaces following classroom training. Findings from the study advance four contributions: (a) learning is person-dependent, (b) artefacts in the form of written materials afford a valuable form of learning support; (c) opportunities for these workers to meet, share and refresh their knowledge are important for further development of occupational capacities; and (d) more organisational support for such socially isolated workers' learning is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competency-based approach to vocational education is premised on narrow and dated conceptions of human functioning, performance and development. Its adoption is more driven by administrative concerns about measurable outcomes than educational processes and outcomes. Informed by educational science and earlier debates, this article discusses the goals for and approaches to realising the outcomes that governments and supra-governmental agencies want. It emphasises the centrality of (1) experiences promoting students’ learning, (2) understanding the goals to be achieved by vocational education, and (3) aligning these with educational processes. Common to individuals, their communities, workplaces, professional associations and government needs are the development of applicable and adaptable occupational capacities. Yet these cannot be secured or assessed through competency-based education. The capacities required for current and emerging occupational practice necessitate a focus upon processes, not measurable outcomes. Hence, there is need to focus on learners’ personal practices and educational processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – Apprenticeships are now usually seen as a model of education focused on occupational preparation, albeit manifested in different ways across nation states. However, throughout human history, the majority of occupational preparation has been premised upon apprenticeship as a mode of learning. That is, a preparation arising mainly through apprentices’ active and interdependent engagement in their work, rather than being taught or directly guided by more experienced practitioners. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – A review of literature. Findings – A way of considering apprenticeship as a mode of learning as well as a model of education. Research limitations/implications – Three elements of considering and supporting apprenticeship as a mode of learning. Practical implications – Practice curriculum, practice pedagogies and personal epistemology. Social implications – A way of considering apprenticeship as a mode of learning as well as a model of education. Originality/value – A way of considering apprenticeship as a mode of learning as well as a model of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Context Learning through work has long been important for the development of health care workers' occupational competence. However, to effectively utilise this mode of learning, its particular qualities and contributions need to be understood and optimised and its limitations redressed. Concepts Optimising the experiences health care workplaces provide, augmenting their potential for learning and promoting workers' engagement with them can, together, improve workers' ability to respond to future occupational challenges. Importantly, such considerations can be used to understand and appraise workplaces as learning environments. Here, the concepts of practice curricula and pedagogies, and workers' personal epistemologies (i.e. what individuals know, can do and value) are described and advanced as practical bases for optimising learning in and for health care workplaces now and for the future. Conclusion Such bases seem salient given the growing emphasis on practice-based provisions for the initial preparation and on-going professional development of health care workers' capacities to be effective in their practice, and responsive to occupational innovations that need to be generated and enacted through practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing how adults learn through work is central to understanding their development across working lives. That development is important for their personal trajectories, and ability to contribute, sustain and advance the interests of their workplaces, and collectively to the social and economic viability of their communities and nations. This paper uses data about work and learning from a large national survey, to validate and elaborate findings from earlier qualitative enquiries into learning through work conducted by the author. The simple intent is to gauge the degree to which findings from the two are consistent. The descriptive, quantitative analysis indicates informants refer to learning through their everyday work activities occurring more frequently than when being guided by more experienced co-workers, experts or supervisors. Also identified is the pedagogic potential of work in terms of discretion and kinds of problem-solving available for these workers. Yet, these opportunities for learning are distributed asymmetrically on the bases of indicators such as levels of education, age, occupational status and working in particular occupations and industry sectors. These factors contribute to both the frequency and kind of learning opportunities afforded to workers through their everyday activities and interactions. Much of what is proposed within earlier qualitative inquiries about how learning arises through work is upheld here, but advanced further in terms of evidence about how opportunities for working and learning are distributed. Moreover, these quantitative data offer insights about the ways in which affordances of workplaces are distributed, thereby raising considerations of how the organisation of work activities plays a role in distributing these opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Editors' note: In this Toolbox, Professor Stephen Billett applies his extensive experience in the areas of vocational and workplace learning, from a broad spectrum of professions and disciplines, to the fi eld of clinical education. In doing so, he opens a doorway into the wider education literature in this area, and a fresh and insightful perspective on learning for clinical practice and work-based learning. Consistent with much of the wider education literature, he uses the broad term 'knowledge' to encompass everything that individuals might know, be able to do and value - not just what they know. Although discussed separately, these three forms of knowledge are considered to be interdependent, and together determine the 'readiness' of individuals to engage with, and learn from, their experiences in any given situation. Billett stresses the importance of aligning experiences with what those practising the profession are expected to know, do and value (capacities we might express as intended learning outcomes, competencies or expected professional activities). He also highlights the importance of sequencing educational experiences so that learners move from concrete to abstract conceptualisation, from single to more complex and combined tasks, and from developing appropriate values and other dispositions to applying these in their subsequent learning and practice. This Toolbox offers a set of theoretical tools that are complementary to, but rather different from, those in the clinical education literature. We hope it will be useful to all clinical teachers and will promote further discussion and reflection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of workplace support is central to how and what is and can be learnt at work. Hence, the distribution of those experiences is an important factor in the quality of workplace learning experiences. The study reported and discussed here aims to identify differences in levels of support and opportunities for applying knowledge in workplaces among factors of age-, gender-, and occupation-related cohorts of employees across a range of levels of employment. A convenience sample of 459 employees from different occupations, companies and workplaces participated in this cross-sectional exploratory study. Comparisons between categories of age and occupation are based on the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test and comparisons regarding gender are performed with the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test. The results propose that for this sample neither age nor gender, but level of employment is the crucial factor. Put simply, the evidence suggests that those in better jobs, regardless of age or gender, receive more support for workplace learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning in the circumstances of practice stands as the commonest and most enduring way occupational capacities have been learnt across human history, and, likely, are currently learnt. Yet, a comprehensive account of this means of learning remains absent, which limits the legitimacy of workplaces as sites of learning, the learning arising from them and understandings of how to organize, promote and evaluate that learning. When advancing this account, it is necessary to avoid being constrained by the discourse of schooling and orthodoxies of schooled societies, which can distort considerations of learning through practice on its own terms. When reviewed, anthropological and historical literature on learning occupational practices outside of educational provisions offers fresh suggestions including that such an account likely comprise elements of practice curriculum and pedagogies and personal epistemologies, albeit set within particular complexes of cultural, societal and situational factors. A key distinction arising from such a review is the emphasis on individuals’ active processes of learning and how these are enacted in the circumstances of practice, rather than on teaching or instruction. Such a distinction runs deep in this literature and has consequences for conceptions of understandings and efforts to promote and improve learning through practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Effective interprofessional work is premised on high levels of shared understandings (i.e. intersubjectivity) among those who are co-working. In particular, when quick or seemingly spontaneous responses are required for urgent or immediate action, what is termed as 'shared intuition' is highly desirable. Much of the required intersubjectivity can arise ordinarily through everyday healthcare collaborations, such as through joint problem-solving. Yet, a concern is how best to develop these capacities in circumstances when co-working is temporary, fleeting and partial, and also when the goals to be achieved are ambiguous and uncertain, and the processes indeterminate. To achieve the kinds and levels of intersubjectivity required for these non-routine forms of care and intermittent interprofessional working, therefore, likely requires particular curriculum and pedagogic interventions within practice settings. These interventions may be used to shape the organisation and sequencing of experiences for interprofessional work through which can arise a foundation of shared understanding of concepts, procedures and values. Yet, to assist the articulation, sharing, appraising and elaborating shared disciplinary and personal-professional positions, values and procedures, specific pedagogic interventions may also be required, albeit their exercise being embedded in co-working practices in healthcare work activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a transcript of an electronic mail conversation between Olle Ten Cate of the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands and Stephen Billett from Griffith University in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. In the conversation the two discuss competency-based professional training in medicine and its roots, significance and limitations and reflect on the potential of competency-based medical education.

The standing of vocational education is salient for how it is perceived by those who sponsor, participate in and work within it and how its provisions are supported and administered. Yet, this standing continues to be intractably low, compared with other education sectors, more so in some countries than others. The consequences for this low standing can be profound. Serially, moreover, it has been the voices and sentiments of powerful others (e.g. aristocrats, theocrats, bureaucrats and academics) that have long been privileged in discourses about the standing of occupations and their preparation. In perhaps most instances, this privileging has and continues to come at a cost to the standing, processes of and goals for this important educational sector. Indeed, the legacies of earlier sentiments about and conceptions of different kinds of occupations and their preparation are now deeply embedded in societal discourses and variously sustain and constrain the standing of vocational education. At its strongest, concepts such the Berufs concept in the German speaking world does much to sustain and elevate vocational education. Elsewhere, this lowly standing generates constraints that comprise efforts to control and micro-manage those who teach and learn. Adopting a historical approach, this paper offers a brief and partial account of how, across time, sentiments of powerful others have shaped the standing of vocational education and its proposes and practices, often for purposes of power and control. Instead, it is proposed that for vocational education to realise it purposes necessarily requires it to be informed by and directed more by the interests of those learning about – teaching and practice – these occupations. In addition, the need for societally based (i.e. governmental) imperatives to ameliorate the long-standing consequences of these sentiments for vocational education is proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Accounts and analyses of vocational educators' practice, provided through the contributions to this special issue, illustrate how centrally-generated and prescriptive policies and practices and those teachers' reactions to them have come to characterise contemporary vocational education. The application of often centralised institutional architectures, their measures and procedures, along with the quest for measurable outcomes, commonly appear to deny the diversity of interests, intents and capacities of those who engage with these provisions as students, apprentices and teachers. These centralised kinds of provisions then can generate tensions between those who seek to enact educational experiences (that is, teachers) and those who have devised the policies and practices that act as 'practice architectures' that both enable and constrain vocational educators' work. Rather than addressing the key global problem of the standing of vocational education, and its teachers and students, these centralised measures often seem to contribute to, reproduce, and sustain the low standing of vocational education and focus on securing institutional goals. In turn, this low standing beggars vocational education by limiting the capacity to engage teachers, students and industries, thereby undercutting its ability to fulfil its potential. The articles in this special issue reinforce the need for a mature vocational education system where teachers have the capacities and are granted the legitimacy to practice in ways that meet local needs and adapt to local circumstances in which they teach and their students learn. Instead of being pre-occupied with exercising the architecture of control and compliance, those in government and in industry might best direct effort to granting greater autonomy to vocational educators and by taking action to redress the poor societal sentiment towards vocational education through championing its worth and contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that concerns regarding the growing impact of ageing populations on workplace productivity and on welfare budgets have led to several government supported measures intended to retain and upskill older workers in several countries including Australia. It states that a survey of over 250 mature-age workers in mainly professional and administrative roles has identified strong interest and belief in their capacity to engage in learning required to maintain their employability.

Issues arising from an ageing society, a low fertility rate and growing need for a skilled work force have seen increased government commitment to improving the participation rate of mature-aged workers. Education and training are seen as a principal strategy to increase the employability of these workers, yet participation in training is low and declines with age. Based on a study of 8 mature-aged participants enrolled in an accredited training program, this paper focuses on their learning needs and motivations. The findings identify a range of institutional and personal factors that shaped their participation. Given the diversity of personal factors highlighted within this small sample, it is unlikely that creating one policy or training approach would address the education and training needs of this cohort. Hence, there is a need to understand more fully how the diverse needs of mature-aged workers can be accommodated within the vocational education and training system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not having clear pathways, or the social means and personal capacities to make a productive transition from schooling, can inhibit young people's participation in social and economic life thereafter. This paper advances an analysis of how policy documents associated with senior schooling from across Australian states address the needs of students who are most at risk of not securing productive transitions. The review identifies that many of the goals emphasised the autonomy of students in taking control of their own transitions. However, such individualistic views downplay the importance of the mediating role that access to cultural, social and economic capital is likely to play in the negotiations involved in making a productive transition. Thus, the needs of 'at-risk' students who may have limited access to the forms of capital offering the best support for these negotiations are not well acknowledged in the policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes lifelong learning as a socio-personal process and a personal fact. As such, it is conceptually distinct from an educational provision, which constitutes one kind of institutional fact. In making this distinction, this article seeks to elaborate a major flaw in the precepts for conceptualisation and enactment of the report Learning through Life, thereby proposing it as being ill-informed, partial, of limited use and dangerous as it could lead to the misrepresentation, marginalisation and undermining of a broadly premised provision of adult learning. The emphasis on educational provisions rather than individuals' learning and the diversity of settings in which individuals learn stand as major flaws that seemingly arise from the authors' perspectives and stakeholder interests. Largely neglected throughout is the scholarship on adult learning and development across individuals' life courses. Instead, miscellaneous and unhelpful sources inform the report. The overall recommendations reflect a view of human development that was abandoned decades ago as being unhelpful, and whose rejection is more now pertinent than ever. Moreover, it largely rehearses in educational discourse and unquestioningly the value of taught courses, ignoring the importance and ubiquity of learning experiences outside of courses. Across the report's discussion, and shaping its recommendations, lifelong learning is presented as an institutional rather than a personal process. It is erroneously claimed to be something that social institutions do rather than individuals. In doing so, a misinformed and inaccurate account of lifelong learning emerges and a narrow conception of how learning might best be promoted and supported is advanced. The great threat within this document is to promote a form of learning support that lends itself to regulation and control. The peril here is that other circumstances and settings in which learning occurs will be ignored or marginalised. In all, not only is this report an opportunity lost, but it also represents a significant threat to an important and viable field of human and societal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When individuals select a particular occupation, they, their families and the community invest significant resources in their preparing for, learning about, and effective participation in that occupation. Yet, given the high attrition rates during that preparation and high levels of early separation from occupations, selection of occupations is shown to be frequently flawed with accompanying costs all around. Hence, it is important to understand more about how individuals select their occupation. This paper is based on a consideration of earlier studies and a current inquiry into student nurses' engagement with their occupation. It notes that individuals' bases for engagement are multi-fold, personally distinct and shaped by experiences within their life history or ontogeny. Moreover, individuals make occupational choices at various distances from the actual practice of the occupation itself. Seemingly, the more remote from actual practice the decision-making occurs, the greater this choice is premised on ideals, rather than actualities of the occupation. Hence, given the importance of compatibility and negotiations between the person and occupation constituting the vocations with which individuals come to identify, understanding occupation as a practice rather than an ideal becomes salient. The paper concludes that the importance of aligning personal interests and capacities with particular occupations through proximal access is critical. That is, individuals need to experience the occupation and its practice before significant levels of personal and societal investment are expended, and through successful participation it may well then become adopted as vocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations among learning, work and subjectivity are discussed here to offer explanations about how individuals direct their learning throughout their working lives. These explanations are salient for informing policy and practice about learning for, through and throughout working life. The prospects for realising the kinds of goals that governments, employers and workers themselves want to achieve through their ongoing learning can be explained through understanding what motivates, directs and sustains that learning. Central here is the role that individuals' subjectivity plays in explaining the relations between individuals, their work and their learning for work, and the relationships among them. Four distinct conceptions of self are presented and discussed in terms of how that subjectivity is represented across and within perspectives informing considerations of work and learning. These different conceptions aim to open up and energise the emerging discussion about the role of self or subjectivity in relations among learning, subjectivity and work. Proposed here is the view that the self arises through social experience and stands as the personal basis that mediates relations about work and learning throughout working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perennial debate concerning the so-called ‘theory-practice gap’ pervades health professional education. It is uncertain whether this gap – the notion that knowledge gained in university does not translate well into the workplace – is unavoidable or if it is a manifestation of the learning approaches used and the cultures operative in the two locations. This paper examines how nursing students’ knowledge and skills gained within university clinical laboratories transfer into the reality of the clinical environment. A series of one-on-one interviews were conducted over a two year period with second and third year nursing students ( n = 28) participating in a preceptorship clinical placement model at one healthcare organisation. This paper focuses on data from the students' first interview. Data were transcribed and imported into NVivo 8 for thematic analysis. Four key themes emerged, including: ‘How I learn’ which focuses on students’ perceptions of their learning preferences; ‘Lack of engagement – it’s not real’ which concerns a perceived lack of authenticity of clinical laboratories; ‘Lack of affordances’ relating to the learning opportunities available in the clinical setting; and ‘Teacher Impact’ which focuses on the influence of individual teachers on student learning. The ‘parallel universes’ of academia and the workplace create dissonance for students as they juxtapose the authenticity of the clinical laboratories with the reality of professional healthcare practice. Transfer is inextricably linked with the individuals’ learning preferences, the affordances the workplace offers to students, and the willingness of staff to provide exciting, engaging learning opportunities. The challenge for health professional education is to provide a model of clinical education that meets not only the needs of university and clinical staff, but most importantly, the needs of students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across advanced industrial economies, programs in higher education are increasingly becoming occupationally specific and universities are being seen as providers of 'higher vocational education'. With this have come expectations that graduates from these programs will enjoy smooth transitions into professional practice. Aligned with these expectations is an educational emphasis on providing students with access to and engagement in authentic instances of practice, and an expectation that these will be effectively integrated within higher education programs. Consequently, it is important to understand how these kinds of educational purposes and processes can be realised, and how higher education students' experiences in both university and practice settings should be best organised and integrated to realise these purposes. This article discusses the worth of these educational purposes and bases for realising the effective integration of these work experiences. This discussion includes considerations of the kinds of curriculum and pedagogic practices needed to be enacted to secure this educational worth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes are perhaps the most heterogeneous of the nation's educational sectors. However, TAFE institutes' capacity to provide inclusive education is constrained by their curriculum focus and pedagogical practices and culturally premised assumptions that may inhibit learning for students from diverse cultural backgrounds and life experiences. This paper reports from a study that investigated the experiences of learning for African students from refugee backgrounds in TAFE institutes. Adopting phenomenological methodology, the study illuminates ways in which the students' earlier and current experiences shape their learning at TAFE institutes. The findings indicate that, while greatly appreciating being in a safe environment, African students from refugee backgrounds nevertheless experience racial discrimination and social exclusion as they resettle in Australia. Also, the pedagogical practices at TAFE institutes do not always recognise or accommodate the students' socio-cultural backgrounds and refugee life experiences. In all, the 'experienced curriculum' created unhelpful dissonances for these students. Consequently, the paper argues that in order to benefit more fully from their educational experiences in TAFE and also to effectively engage more in the wider Australian society activities, including employment, these students require particular interventions from these institutes and those who teach in them. It is proposed that a social inclusive transformative learning approach intervention is required for African students from refugee backgrounds to attain meaningful educational outcomes in TAFE institutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article conceptualizes and elaborates what constitutes learning experiences. It does so from a perspective that centres on experiences as arising through relations between social and personal worldsyet also acknowledges the mediation of brute facts (i.e., nature). The social contributions are twofold, yet quite distinct. First, there are immediate social experiences that are projected by the particular socially and culturally derived events (i.e., activities and interactions) that individuals encounter, often in circumstances shaped by socially situational and physical factors. Second, there are socio-personal legacies, comprising individuals' cognitive experience, that arise through their ongoing engagements with social experiences throughout life histories. Although socially derived, these legacies are person dependent and may be personally idiosyncratic. Of importance, they shape how individuals construe and construct what they experience during, engage with, and learn from these events. Learning experiences, therefore, comprise a negotiation between the suggestions of social and physical world and individuals' construal of what the world projects. These negotiations are also shaped and mediated by brute facts, such as maturation. Underpinning this conception of learning experiences are interdependencies between the social and personal contributions, which are negotiated in ways that are necessarily relational in terms of the exercise of personal agency and the suggestion of social and physical forms. It is through these negotiations that individuals' change or learn and society's norms and practices are remade and transformed. Given this duality, the activities and interactions that comprise learning experiences stand as important bases for understanding (a) individual change or learning and (b) the ongoing process of remaking cultural practices. It also extends the concept of interpsychological processes as being relational and needing to include the contributions and mediations of brute facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides an account of the inter-psychological processes that constitute learning through work. It does this by drawing on deliberations about the relative contributions of the immediate social world (i.e., workplace setting) that individuals encounter and the personal premises for individuals’ learning. This account is realised through analyses of workers’ experiences of working and learning in both large and small enterprises. Together, these premises and their contributions are used to elaborate how learning through work proceeds as a process of relational interdependence between the affordance of the workplace and the engagement of workers. This relational process is evident in work of different kinds, from the labours of coalminers through to the entrepreneurial activities of small business operators. Instances of learning through work are elaborated through studies that identify how workplaces’ affordances—those that invite workers in particular ways to participate, access support and reward—are generated and projected. These contributions to engaging in and learning through work can be conceptualised as the immediate social contribution or experience that is shaped by cultural and situational factors and the social legacies that shape how individuals construe, engage in, and learn through those practices. It concludes by discussing issues related to both the inter-psychological process and outcomes (e.g., inter-subjectivity) arising from learning through work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper evaluates the need and prospects for older workers to develop and deploy effective and critical personal epistemologies in order to maintain workplace competence, successfully negotiate work transitions and secure ontological security in their working life. Furthermore, it addresses different ways of reflecting by workers, which types of reflection are appreciated by workplace managers and how these relate to the work situation and other contextual factors. A personal epistemology is an approach to and a practice of learning directed by individuals, often for purposes that are important for them. This seems particularly salient for older workers as both the institutional and brute facts (Searle 1995) that comprise workplace affordances and maturation factors, respectively, may not be supportive of their attempts to maintain competence in their working lives. Instead, as both individual agents and parts of collective actions, the exercise of personal epistemologies premised on critical reflection stands as a means for older workers to understand and respond to the changing requirements of work life. These propositions are introduced and elaborated using a study of older workers' capacities to be critically reflective of their practice and enact workplace change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals actively and continually construct the knowledge required for their working lives. Two outcomes arise from this constructive process: (i) individual change (i.e. learning) and (ii) the remaking of culturally-derived practices comprising work. These arise through a relational interdependence between the contributions and agency of the personal and the social. The relationship is interdependent because neither the social nor personal contributions alone are sufficient. The social experience is important for articulating and providing access to work performance requirements. However, personal factors such as individuals’ capacities, subjectivities and agency shape how workers interpret and engage with what they experience and, consequently, how they learn and remake practice throughout their working life. This case is elaborated through a discussion about learning with considerations of intersubjectivity, personal epistemologies, pedagogy and curriculum as experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a lack of applied research, social partnerships are increasingly being adopted by both government and non-government agencies to meet localised needs in education and other fields. This article discusses the findings of an investigation of how social partnerships can best be formed, developed and sustained over time. Earlier work identified partnerships arising from community concerns, governmental enactment and negotiation between community and government agencies. However, across these distinct kinds of social partnerships, the partnership work that was central to their operation was particularly relevant. In the study reported here, researchers engaged with ten longstanding social partnerships to elicit, synthesise and verify the principles and practices underpinning their work. The principles and practices that are proposed as most likely to assist the effective formation, development and transformation of social partnerships over time comprise building and maintaining: (i) shared goals; (ii) relations with partners; (iii) capacity for partnership work; (iv) governance and leadership; and (v) trust and trustworthiness. These principles stand as ideals and goals to guide the development and continuity of social partnerships that can support important educational initiatives, and provide bases for evaluating partnership work. However, rather than being benign, this work and these practices are often underpinned by contested relations as much as collaborative work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As many, perhaps most, high-school students engage in paid part-time employment, there is available in any Australian senior school classroom a range of work experiences that can be used to assist students to consider and reflect on working life and post-school pathways. Furthermore, these experiences are more readily available and authentic than those provided through school-organised work experience programmes. In order to understand the effectiveness of such experiences, students and teachers in six schools across two Australian states participated in processes of guided reflection on these experiences. Consistently, across cohorts of students in all of these schools, the authentic workplace experiences of paid part-time work were identified as assisting in securing a range of educational purposes associated with students' learning about work, the world of work and post-school options and pathways. Key variables in the likely success of this initiative were the facilitative capacity of teachers, their knowledge and valuing of working life outside schools and students' capacities and readiness to engage in reflection on their paid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the debate over reform to national vocational education and training systems has shifted from a focus on the supply-side of VET—qualifications structures, national training schemes and institutional structures—to demand for training by industry and the role of employers in increasing the skills levels of the workforce. Yet, enhancing employer demands for training has proved to be a perennial problem for governments of all political complexions in the developed world. Approaches to securing enterprise investment in training by governments form a continuum from low-level intervention to compulsion and regulation, and range from approaches which attempt to secure voluntary commitment through to legislating enterprise expenditure on training. Voluntary commitment is often seen as the most desirable and self-sustaining approach, but is difficult to secure from enterprises. As a result, governments have often experimented with policies of compulsion to make employers invest in training such as training levies. However, decisions about expenditure on training ultimately depend on individual employer's interests, values and commitments. Improving and enhancing employers' perceptions of the value of training are vital to increasing the levels of expenditure. This paper discusses the range of government approaches to encouraging employers to invest in training and development that are to be found in the developed world. It argues that compulsory employer levies are rarely successful and that increasing the level of investment in training by employers is more likely to be achieved through more subtle policy mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A greater acknowledgment of relational interdependence between individual and social agencies is warranted within conceptions of learning throughout working life. Currently, some accounts of learning tend to overly privilege social agency in the form of situational contributions. This de-emphasises the contributions of the more widely socially sourced, relational, and negotiated contributions of both individual and social agency. As these accounts fail to fully acknowledge the accumulated outcomes of interactions between the individual and social experience that shape human cognition ontogentically and that also act to remake culture, they remain incomplete and unsatisfactory. In response, this article proposes a consideration of the role for individual agency (e.g., intentionality, subjectivity, and identity), the ways in which it is socially shaped over time and serves to be generative of individuals' cognitive experience, and its role in subsequently construing what is experienced socially. This agency also enacts a relational interdependence with social and historical contributions. Through advancing the conception of relational interdependence, this article aims to balance views that currently privilege particular social influences in conceptions of learning for work and throughout working life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances some bases for a workplace curriculum. These are premised on conceptions of curriculum as intents directed to individuals’ progression towards full and effective workplace performance, yet whose enactment is shaped by workplace factors and is ultimately experienced by workers as learners. So whether the intentions will be realized is likely premised on the support (affordances) for their enactment by interests within the workplace. Workplace affordances, like those in educational institutions, emphasize the role that the norms and social practices that comprise workplaces play in regulating individuals’ engagement in and learning through work. The degree to which these affordances invite, structure, support, and guide participation, and are likely to engage workers in the kinds of thinking, acting, and learning required for effective workplace performance, is important for developing effective vocational practice. The conception of an ideal curriculum directed towards full participation is subject to the affordances of the interests of managers, co‐workers, and factors affecting production, as well as the intentionalities of worker‐learners themselves. These concepts may well provide ways of thinking about curriculum more broadly as participatory practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on dualities in both the process and outcomes of participation in work. Firstly, the process of participation in work activities and interactions draws on contributions of both individuals and the social world in ways that are variably interdependent, that is, relational. The affordances of workplaces shape the array of experiences individuals are able to access and, they in turn, elect how they engage, construe and construct what is afforded them. Both the social and individual contributions are exercisable with different degrees of intensity, focus and intentionality, thereby making the process of participation in work a relational one. Secondly, and consistent with these processes, the outcomes of workplace participation also comprise dualities. These are individuals’ learning or change, on one hand, and the remaking and transformation of cultural practice that comprises work, on the other. In illuminating and elaborating these concepts, this paper draws upon the initial findings of an inquiry that is mapping the working lives of groups of three workers in each of four workplaces. The aim is to understand how these relational interdependences shape the participation, learning and remaking of work practices in these workplaces. Further, the paper identifies the exercise of both affordances and engagement for each participant within their workplaces. The findings emphasise the distinctive bases by which the groups of workers engage with their work and construct meaning and remake practice as a result of that engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]