Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. and Kekale, T. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 26 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-01-2014-0002

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 26, Issue 2

Our attempt in finding research that has both scientific and practical management implications continues in our twenty-sixth volume. While a big part of research is traditionally done in companies, and in JWL increasingly in schools and hospital organizations, this issue brings you some articles that we have recognized to have a significant impact in our own professional world, managing academic organizations, too.

In our daily work of university management, we have been faced with some “quality” problems when using temporary teachers; they have not known the practices and processes of the university, and thus both have not been able to follow them nor to tell the students what the actual processes are. In editing this issue, we have, for the first time, come to see this as a significant workplace-learning problem, as Gunnar Augustsson proposes in his article. While studying company settings, he even noted that it may be the company’s intent not to include them in all the learning opportunities the organization might offer; the temporary workers seldom participate in department meetings, and so on. Thus, in this article we find one important implication for our own professional life.

Also the next article, by Lene Bjerg Hall-Andersen and Ole Broberg, offers insight to our daily grind at university management. One of the issues we have been fighting with for a long time are the invisible knowledge domain-based “silos” of departments and faculties, so it is very difficult to manage the learning – indeed, continuous improvement – at university level. We feel we definitely must test their suggestions of “supporting initiatives and constant readiness to alter or counteract when an initiative’s shortcomings appear or undesired learning loops arise” in attempting to change the culture of our university towards a more cohesive unit over the long term.

The third article in this issue continues in the activity-based learning study tradition that we have attempted to promote in our nineteenth volume by a guest-edited (Yrjö Engeström and Hannele Kerosuo) special issue (Vol. 19 No. 6). Research along this strand is very seldom offered to us for publication. We feel that the study of work and its implications for learning, through activity systems makes a very good framework for case studies. Therefore, we are glad to receive Tjongabangwe Selaolo and Hugo Lotriet’s account on a constructive improvement process where the main objective was to find a solution to a current learning problem that “manifested itself in slow system uptake and lack of meaningful work practice improvement.” This work was conducted, and the learning model is presented, in best activity theory tradition.

The last input in this issue is Sari Metso and Aino Kianto’s account on 285 graduating Finnish vocational students’ views on their workplace learning periods. The theory in organizing the vocational studies with obligatory workplace practice is that professional skills must be learned in a professional real-life environment. Metso and Kianto indeed find that motivational factors (e.g. performance orientation and self-efficacy), and organizational factors (e.g. guidance, psychological climate and knowledge acquisition) had a direct and positive impact on the students’ development of professional skills, while the prior experience has practically no effect and attitudinal factors had only a partial mediating effect. In these holiday times, these findings should give us something to think about how the vocational studies are organized.

Sara Cervai, Tauno Kekäle