Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 26 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-11-2013-0099

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 26, Issue 1

Dear readers,
Welcome to the twenty-sixth volume of Journal of Workplace Learning. We are confident this volume will once again be a good compilation of interesting research articles that bring light to the complicated processes of learning in the workplace, and different methods of management of knowledge and support of learning. We see again an increasing number of good submissions in the ScholarOne pipeline, after a couple of quieter years. It is also excellent to see that there are several returning authors, creating a continuum of thinking on the pages of JWL, helping to form on their part the line of the journal.

This issue is loosely compiled of articles studying the learning of teaching professionals. We kick off the twenty-sixth volume with a new study by Cathrine Filstad, a specialist on organizational socialization from Norway (see JWL, Volume 16 No. 7 and Volume 23 No. 6), studying the three-way conceptual relationship between political struggle for control, sensemaking, and sensegiving in a Norwegian bank. This article gives many practical insights, among others that top management’s exclusion of middle management in the decision process may result in middle managers not being able to make sense of the new knowledge vision. The article also contains an interesting theoretical background, and is very readable for young researchers.

Next up, we share with you Adeline Yuen Sze Goh’s similarly theoretically interesting, although completely different, article from Brunei. Using Bourdieu’s conceptual tools “habitus” and “fields”, to help extend Lave and Wenger’s “communities of practice”, this paper focuses on the holistic learning experiences of trainee teachers when they move from doing peripheral tasks that require less responsibility to central tasks that usually require mastery in handling the task, both in teacher college and in work-life practice. Indeed, Goh’s findings further speak for taking a more holistic approach in understanding workplace learning.

The third article is by Torbjørn Waaland, an author publishing, like Filstad, a succession of his research articles with us. Continuing with the themes published previously (JWL, Volume 25 No. 5), this time he reports on the moderating influence of professionally educated staffs, in order to understand the influence of cognitive tasks on mentoring provided. The findings from 275 pre-school teachers indicate, among other issues, that mentoring provided to colleagues among teachers is more probable when the preschool teachers are confronted by cognitive tasks at work.

Finally, there is an article by Nino Pataraia, Anoush Margaryan, Isobel Falconer, Allison Littlejohn, and Jennifer Falconer, entitled “Discovering academics’ key learning connections: an ego-centric network approach to analysing learning about teaching”. There has not been a recent article in JWL utilizing the social network analysis method; this network perspective makes Pataraia et al.’s approach fresh and interesting. The study focuses on how academics learn new teaching practices from through their personal networks, and how the composition of their networks might hinder or benefit the development of their professional teaching practice.

We feel we have a strong first issue of a new volume at hand, and we hope you are inspired and enlightened by the articles we have selected. Enjoy reading!

Sara Cervai and Tauno Kekäle