Editorial

Citation

Kekäle, T. and Cervai, S. (2008), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2008.08620aaa.001

Editorial

Welcome to the 20th volume of Journal of Workplace Learning – we invite you to share our adventures as the new editors of this title. Despite our new ideas and ambitions as new editors, we firstly want to say that we intend to maintain the high standards of Darryl Dymock in the past seven years. In our opinion, Journal of Workplace Learning has much to thank him for; we wish him all the best in his new challenges. We also hope that readers will, in general, be able to recognize the inheritance of his editorial line in our work while also recognizing that new directions are being taken. So, no great changes are expected; we aim to make careful but visible improvements in some places but without undoing Darryl’s good work. The Editorial Advisory Board of this journal is key to its continuity, but in time we will also invite some new board members in order to share the increasing amount of review work. For there indeed is work to be done, the influx of manuscripts is currently very good and we feel very confident in our editorial task. Again, this is partly due to authors, partly to the fine support we have got from the publisher, Paula Fernandez and, after her recent return to the real world of learning (we also wish her all the best), the new publisher, Nancy Rolph. While on the topic of the board, we also mourn the loss of a long-time board member Rod Gerber. A tribute by Darryl Dymock is published in this issue.

In the foreseeable future we think that the Journal of Workplace Learning will continue to provide a venue for the presentation and discussion of research and findings related to the workplace as a site for learning. Its scope will encompass formal, informal and incidental learning in the workplace for individuals, groups and teams, as well as work-based learning, and off-the-job learning for the workplace. This focus on learning in, from and for the workplace also brings with it questions about the nature of interventions that might assist the learning process and of the roles of those responsible directly or indirectly for such interventions. Also relevant are such topics as assessment of workplace learning, knowledge management, and the growth of the learning individual within the workplace.

For the purposes of editorial continuity we want to keep the term “workplace” broadly defined and not limited to enterprises within which there is a clearly defined training function. At the same time we would not want to emphasize learning in purpose-built institutions such as schools, while we accept the idea that these too are workplaces. A broad scope and variety of viewpoints is our aim. Our personal backgrounds might make it appropriate for us to expand the journal’s editorial scope from traditional workplace learning towards learning in innovating and learning in distributed settings as well as social and psychological facets of learning. We are also planning to expand our coverage of relevant conferences; as we are two, we hope to be able to take the Journal of Workplace Learning to new conferences and research associations.

Since workplace learning cannot be considered without reference to its context, another aim of the journal is to explore the organizational, policy, political, resource issues and other factors which influence how, when and why that learning takes place. Articles will also therefore present research and discussion on the roles of management and human resource developers in learning and training, and on government and management policies and strategies that impact on workplace learning.

In this issue, there are some examples of what we have in mind. To open this issue we have selected a critical article by Dean Stroud and Peter Fairbrother on the failure of trade unions to catch onto the workplace learning. Their case studies point out that trade union involvement in skill formation and workplace learning is often marginal, and contributes to the perpetuation of traditional sector practices and regressive learning provisions. Next, Lori Long, Cathy DuBois, and Robert Faley provide research evidence to support a wider use of collecting and analysing trainee reactions especially in online training. The third article of this issue, by Piritta Leinonen and Johanna Bluemink, studies knowledge that is shared among team members. In this paper they describe how members of a distributed team explain the knowledge that they assume to be shared and how the assessment of knowledge is then related to these explanations. The issue is completed by a paper by Nina Cole that questions the rules-of-thumb of training length suggested in the literature by proposing that extended training over these standard practices in her test sample still improves learning.

We believe this selection of papers to be both broad in scope and suitably thought-provoking. We hope you enjoy the issue too and are already looking forward to the next.

Tauno Kekäle, Sara Cervai