Contemporary accounts of learning emphasise the importance of immediate social partners such as teachers and co-workers. Yet, much of our learning for work occurs without such experts. This paper provides an understanding of how and why new home care workers use scaffolding to learn and enact safe manual handling techniques in their workplaces,…

National systems of vocational education and training around the globe are facing reform driven by quality, international mobility, and equity. Evidence suggests that there are qualitatively distinctive challenges in providing and sustaining workplace learning experiences to international students. However, despite growing conceptual and empirical…

Health care organizations are facing rapid changes, frequently involving modification of existing procedures. The case study reported here examined change processes and learning in a health care organization. The organizational change in question occurred in the emergency clinic of a Finnish central hospital where a new action model for…

There is considerable current interest in error-friendly corporate culture, one particular research question being how and under what conditions errors are learnt from in the workplace. This paper starts from the assumption that errors are inevitable and considers key factors which affect learning from errors in high responsibility organisations,…

The research discussed in this article focuses on workplace learning in industrial manufacturing work. Everyday work episodes contributing to workplace learning are investigated in four companies operating in the Finnish and Swedish package-supplier sectors. The research adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach. Interviews with employees and…

This article discusses the relation between experience and learning in the context of recognition of prior learning (RPL) and from an experiential constructivist perspective. The study is based on a case of in-service training, based on RPL, in the care sector for elderly people. The data consist of interviews with actors in this process, which…

Vocational training and skills are playing an increasingly important role in the developed economies. However, both the vocational education structure and the underlying philosophy and culture of education and training vary from country to country. What is clear, though, is that employers play a crucial role in all cases; this paper explores the…

In this continuously changing contemporary economy, companies have to be able to anticipate technological innovations and to compete with other companies worldwide. This need makes important a company's ability to evolve through its employees' learning and through continuous development. Securing and retaining skilled employees plays an important…

To prepare students for effective workplace learning, it is necessary to have insight into the contextual characteristics that affect students' developing interest. Aiming at students to become self-regulated learners, teachers should act as mindful coaches, encouraging their students to monitor the quality of collaborative group work. A field…

This paper analyses and discusses different constraints on workplace learning, vocational development and formation of identity. We ask how the learning and development of vocational identities are related to the various learning constraints and restrictions present in the socio-cultural contexts of the workplace. The study utilizes 20 interviews…