Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. and Kekäle, T. (2012), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 24 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2012.08624daa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 24, Issue 4

As promised in one of our previous editorials, we have now come to a thematic issue considering workplace learning in schools. Our editorial line emphasizes that we will not print articles on institutional learning or general school pedagogy, but of course schools are also workplaces. As workplaces they offer an interesting topical angle: historically, the main task of a school is to preserve, to teach the pupils subjects that have been accepted over time. As we have found in our own research, this makes school cultures relatively slow to change over time. At the same time, schools as organizational and legal units undergo pressures as any company would, which require learning and renewal.

The author of the first paper, Wilfried Admiraal, points out in his article “The sense of community in school scale” that another interesting aspect of schools is their specialist organization nature. He writes: “Teaching is still seen as isolated work. More insight in how to ascertain collaborative workplace conditions in school might further ideas on workplace learning for school teachers.” This is another issue we have seen in our research in school organizations: there often exists a school culture, but it does not necessarily contain much discussion of the work of the teacher. Indeed, it often seems that the teachers jealously hide their competences and methods from their peers. Admiraal suggests and tests a research method to measure the sense of community among teachers.

In the second article, a study by Nahid Naderi Anari concludes that there were positive significant correlations between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction, between motional intelligence and organizational commitment and also between job satisfaction and organizational commitment among the teachers sampled for the study. In the Professional Practice article, Iris Snoeck studies the development of the properties of a teacher in her article “The inservice-teacher-training in Flemish schools: does practice make a (more) perfect teacher? A perspective on coaching and evaluating.” In her study, she points out a response from the interviewees that may relate to the sense of community: during the workplace training of would-be teachers, learning “assignments are sometimes insufficiently attuned to the workplace”. Teacher training concentrates on classroom skills, not the community development.

The article by Karissa Horton, “Workplace Learning for the Public Good: Implementation of a Standardized, Competency-Based Curriculum in Texas WIC”, looks at the experience of implementing a workplace learning program in Texas WIC (Women, Infant, and Children) agencies. The good practices reported in the article include the importance of planning at multiple organizational levels, candidate selection, flexible implementation design, managerial buy-in, preceptor knowledge and availability, open communication, and the establishment of clear expectations and timelines.

We hope you have an interesting time studying these research findings!

Sara Cervai, Tauno KekäleEditors