Editorial

Citation

Dymock, D. (2007), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 19 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2007.08619haa.001

Editorial

This is the last issue of the Journal of Workplace Learning for which I will be responsible as Editor. After seven years in the role I have decided to step down in order to spend more time on my own research and writing. Emerald Group Publishing have appointed Professors Tauno Kekäle and Sara Cervai as Editors for the 2008 issues.

Over the period of my editorship, I have been privileged to have been supported and encouraged by numerous people who have contributed to maintaining and increasing the international reputation of the journal. I am particularly grateful to the members of the Editorial Advisory Board, whose names appear on the inside front cover, many of whom have been in that role for the whole of the time I have been Editor. Almost without exception they have been timely and considered in their responses, conscious that their comments were intended to help authors develop their papers to publishable standard, rather than simply be critical. Nevertheless, there have been more direct messages when authors did not follow the basic guidelines for presenting research or where they had not aligned their papers with the journal’s objectives.

The Journal of Workplace Learning has also benefited from the efforts of a number of Guest Editors, who gave quite a lot of their time to ensuring that the quality of the journal was maintained. Richard Dealtry in his role as Corporate University Editor continued to provide substantive articles on professional practice in that important sphere of workplace learning. There have also been a number of individual guest reviewers who readily contributed their individual expertise when specialist knowledge was required.

At the publishers, Stephanie Puesey taught me the ropes when I first took over from the very experienced John Peters, and after that time I was kept on track, in the nicest possible way, by Nancy Rolph, Lucy Sootheran, and most recently by Paula Fernandez and Adam Smith. It has been good to work with them all, and I certainly learned a lot. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I found my own research, scholarship and teaching considerably enhanced by my involvement as an Editor.

I have been grateful for the expressions of support and anecdotal indications from researchers in many parts of the world that the Journal of Workplace Learning is well regarded as a scholarly publication. In the first issue I edited, volume 12, number 5, published in 2000, I wrote:

I see the purpose of the Journal of Workplace Learning as problematising the workplace as a site for learning, that is, taking a critical stance on the intended and unintended learning that occurs in the workplace, on the managerial, organizational and individual factors that influence the nature of learning (some of which is undertaken as “training”), on the planned and unplanned outcomes of learning interventions, and on how such outcomes are assessed. …

Ultimately the articles in the Journal of Workplace Learning should challenge our beliefs and practices about learning in, from and for the workplace.

I like to think that the “critical stance” has been evident in every issue, including in the four papers in this one, and that our beliefs, understandings and practices have been challenged if not changed, as a result of the research that has been presented in the pages of the Journal of Workplace Learning while I have been Editor. I wish the new Editors all the best as they work with the authors and the Advisory Board to continue to explore the complex concept we call “workplace learning”. No doubt the journal will continue to be: Good Reading!

Darryl Dymock