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.
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.
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.
Supporting and challenging cooperating teachers to grow in their mentoring and coaching practices with preservice teachers and also in their own work as classroom teachers, this practical guide presents and illustrates the Coaching with CARE model—a framework for reflection and action that helps cultivate a perspective on teaching that puts students at the center of teacher preparation and places value on apprenticeship and participation in learning. The CARE model takes a turn away from traditional evaluation-based "training" approaches, offering a way for cooperating teachers, and facilitators and university teacher educators who work with them, to come together to shape innovative coaching and mentoring experiences for preservice teachers. Mentoring Preservice Teachers Through Practice, building on the authors’ own work with cooperating teachers, is based on the most recent research on learning to teach and supporting preservice teachers and grounded in the realities of teacher education today. Each chapter includes questions for discussion and suggested readings that can be used to explore the focus of the chapter more deeply as well as relevant research reports published by the authors.
The concept of mimetic learning at work is outlined and elaborated in this text. That elaboration consists of an account of how securing occupational capacities has been primary associated with learning processes and an explanation of those processes. Much, and probably most, of the learning and development across individuals working lives occurs outside of circumstances of direct guidance or instruction. Yet, recent considerations of individuals’ epistemologies and developments form anthropology and cognitive science suggest that current explanations about individuals’ contributions to learning at and through work are incomplete. So, there is need for an emphasis on individuals’ processes of learning, both within and outside of situations of guidance by more experienced workers, needs to be more fully understood, and accepted as being person dependent. Contributions from anthropology, developmental studies, and cognitive neuroscience now augment those from sociocultural theory.
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.
Practice-Based Education: Perspectives and Strategies. This book draws on the collective vision, research, scholarship and experience of leading academics in the field of practice-based and professional education. It presents multiple perspectives and critical appraisals on this significant trend in higher education and examines strategies for implementing this challenging and inspiring mode of learning, teaching and curriculum development. Eighteen chapters are presented across three sections of the book: Contesting and Contextualising Practice-Based Education Practice-Based Education Pedagogy and Strategies The Future of Practice-Based Education.
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.
Teaching is changing. It is no longer simply about passing on knowledge to the next generation. Teachers in the twenty-first century, in all educational sectors, have to cope with an ever-changing cultural and technological environment. Teaching is now a design science. Like other design professionals – architects, engineers, programmers – teachers have to work out creative and evidence-based ways of improving what they do. Yet teaching is not treated as a design profession. Every day, teachers design and test new ways of teaching, using learning technology to help their students. Sadly, their discoveries often remain local. By representing and communicating their best ideas as structured pedagogical patterns, teachers could develop this vital professional knowledge collectively. Teacher professional development has not embedded in the teacher’s everyday role the idea that they could discover something worth communicating to other teachers, or build on each others’ ideas. Could the culture change? From this unique perspective on the nature of teaching, Diana Laurillard argues that a twenty-first century education system needs teachers who work collaboratively to design effective and innovative teaching.
Academic disciplines perceive tranquility and a sense of contentment differently among themselves and therefore contribute to peace-building initiatives differently. Peace is not merely a function of education or a tool that produces amicable systems, but rather a concept that educational contributions can help societies progress to a more peaceful existence. The Handbook of Research on Promoting Peace Through Practice, Academia, and the Arts aims to provide readers with a concise overview of proactive positive peace models and practices to counter the overemphasis on merely ending wars as a solution. While approaching peace-building through multiple vantage points and academic fields such as the humanities, arts, social sciences, and theology, this valuable resource promotes peace-building as a cooperative effort. This publication is a vital reference work for humanitarian workers, leaders, educators, policymakers, academicians, undergraduate and graduate-level students, and researchers.
