Workplace Learning for Changing Social and Economic Circumstances

Helen Bound is Associate Professor, Institute for Adult Learning at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.Anne Edwards is Professor Emeritus, Department of Education at the University of Oxford. Karen Evans is Professor Emeritus, Institute of Education at University College London.Arthur Chia is Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Ageing Research & Education at Duke-NUS Medical School.

'This collection, curated by internationally renowned academics, brings together contributions from world-leading scholars to identify, theorise, evidence and illuminate the pressing contemporary challenges in workplace learning and vocational education and training research. This highly recommended book offers researchers, policymakers and practitioners in different countries a refreshing range of perspectives and insights that will enrich and augment their own interests and work.'Alison Fuller, Professor of Vocational Education and Work, University College London, UK'This is a refreshing book for where human intervention increasingly shapes and conflates the socio-cultural and environmental spheres. The contributing authors problematise central workplace learning themes within this context of uncertainty in which participants act both as agents and supplicants within such theoretically and practice-based informed spaces as digitisation, shifting identities, group collaboration, increasing knowledge and skill complexity, and rapidly changing definitions of work. The book is a ‘must-read’ for researchers, educators and policy makers.'Peter Rushbrook, Adjunct Associate Professor (VET), Charles Sturt University

• Section 1: Theoretical framing 1. Complexity theory: a key to understanding emergent learning and judgements in workplaces 2. Liminality, uncertainty and troublesome knowledge in learning at work 3. Datafication of work and learning: what it is, why it matters and how we can deal with it 4. New interpretations of class and power in work and learning: contributions of a mind, culture and occupation perspective 5. Cultural-historical understandings of transitions in changing workplaces 6. Socratic ignorance in processes of learning with technology Section 2: Investigating workplace learning for changing circumstances 7. Utilising pedagogically rich activities to meet emerging workplace learning challenges 8. Shaping the relationship between working and learning in digitalised working environments 9. Equipping and assessing learners for the ever-changing workplace: practices, assessment and evaluative judgement 10. Vocational teachers’ identity construction at the interface of work and education: workplace-oriented VET teacher training 11. Meaning-making in a trial of sector wide change 12. Workplace learning for fair work on digital labour platforms Section 3: Implications for practice 13. How do public policy professionals work and learn? Exploring a missing dimension in workplace learning research 14. Problem identification in Change Laboratories: workplace learning to eradicate homelessness 15. Working and learning in client-facing interprofessional project teams as 'fractional ontological performance': Insights from consulting engineering 16. Innovations and learning at work: local factors and contributions 17. Leadership in crisis: learning to lead beyond command and control