Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. and Kekäle, T. (2015), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 27 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-01-2015-0002

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 27, Issue 2

Readers of the Journal of Workplace Learning have read many times in this space about our editorial philosophy of collecting accepted articles into “thematic” issues. Because we are a journal specializing in research into workplace learning, at least once a year the theme is inevitably “workplace learning”. It is with this idea in mind that we have selected the articles for this issue.

In the first of our “new” articles in this issue, Jairo Borges-Andrade reports on before-and-after quasi-experimental design, which was used to assess the effect of time of work practice on learning work requirements. The municipal workers in this study showed learning of knowledge and skills, but not much change in their attitudes toward public administration. Next, we publish a study by Timothy Mavin and Wolff-Michael Roth carried out in collaboration with an airline and designed to investigate five different modes of a job performance learning pattern currently in use. They state that:

[…] classroom-based instruction showed varying levels of support with pilots […] but by providing real workplace examples – in the form of videos – where pilots were forced to actually assess, it was possible to improve participants’ engagement.

To decrease our backlog of articles that were not ready through refereeing in time for the Researching Work and Learning special issue 2013, and because the article builds nicely on our theme in this issue, we also publish here Hannele Kerosuo’s article “Knotworking and the visibilization of learning in building design”. Knotworking, referring to “tying, untying and retying of separate threads of activity”, seems an interesting approach to help discussion across groups of professionals, for example, in construction and architecture; however, Kerosuo states that much research remains to be done.

In the fourth article, we turn the angle around, with a study about learning organizations in India. The sample for this study by Saniya Chawla consisted of 300 faculty members from 50 Indian higher educational institutes. The study finds that particularly, “resonant leadership style”, in addition to three other independent variables of intrapreneurship, knowledge management and total quality management, bears significant implications for educational institutes’ learning.

We finish with a practitioner article – a look at the Flipped Learning method and its use in workplace learning. This method should assure deep learning because it includes not only learners’ own work but also discussion and reflection facilitated by the trainer. The method is gathering interest in classroom education, but as Zane Berge shows, there may be valuable learning improvement gained through this method even in workplace.

We hope this compilation tickles your interest and leads into further scientific and practical discussions in these and other workplace learning topics.

Sara Cervai and Tauno Kekäle, Editors