The radical economic, social and cultural changes experienced by the labour market within recent decades have helped to highlight the central role played by the learning process in individual career development and organizational success. In such fast-moving working contexts, skills and competencies rapidly become outdated and need to be…

Purpose: This conceptual paper aims to argue that times, spaces, bodies and things constitute four essential dimensions of workplace learning. It examines how practices relate or hang together, taking Gherardi's texture of practices or connectedness in action as the foundation for making visible essential but often overlooked dimensions of…

Understanding how best to assess expertise, the situational variations of expertise, and distinctive qualities of expertise that arises from particular workplace experiences, presents an important challenge. Certainly, at this time, there is much interest in identifying standard occupational measures and competences, which are not well aligned…

Competency-based training (CBT) for pilots was formally introduced in 1999 by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) for training leading to the issue of aeroplane private and commercial pilot licences. This initiative followed the Australian government's introduction of CBT policy for vocational and workplace training in the late 1980's.…

This paper investigates the role of personal networks in academics' learning in relation to teaching. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 11 academics, this study examines, first, how and what academics learn through their personal networks; second, the perceived value of networks in relation to academics' professional development; and, third,…

This study was undertaken to better understand the range of learning practices that academic librarians use throughout their careers, and to explore the ways library schools give students the opportunities to engage in learning methods that they are likely to use in their careers as librarians. The study uses semi-structured interviews with…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to reveal and analyse dominant learning processes in emergency response work from the fire-fighters' point of view, and how fire-fighters develop their competence. Design/methodology/approach: This study adopted an explorative approach using participant observation. The objective of this open-minded approach…

This research set out to explore perceptions about the concept of an emergent learning space within private organisations, as the current literature on learning does not adequately differentiate between organised learning and emergent learning. The research objectives explored the existence of, and perceived level of organisational encouragement…

This article discusses workplace participatory practices: the reciprocal process of engaging in and learning through work. The reciprocity between the affordance of the workplace (its invitational qualities) and individuals' engagement in the workplace is proposed as a means of understanding how learning through work proceeds. How workplaces…

The aim of the research reported in this dissertation is to describe how experienced secondary school teachers learn at work in an informal environment. The study is part of a larger research project aimed at providing a conceptual framework of teacher learning in the workplace as it takes place both in informal and formal learning environments.…