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Recent figures show that half the world’s refugees are children, with young people now representing more than 50 percent of victims of global armed conflict and displaced persons. Increasing numbers of refugee youth are entering their host nations’ compulsory and postcompulsory educational systems having experienced frequent resettlements and disrupted education, which in turn, pose major barriers for educational and future employment. The consequences of these experiences raise pressing equity implications for educators and educational systems. However, the picture is not uniformly bleak. Employing Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, field and capital, Yosso’s concepts of community cultural wealth and photovoice methods, this chapter draws on studies of refugee youth of both genders from diverse ethnic and faith backgrounds, conducted in regional Australia. It examines how everyday spaces for learning, for example, church, faith-based and sporting groups and family can play a crucial role in enabling young people to build powerful forms of social and cultural capital necessary to successfully access and negotiate formal education and training settings. Its findings suggest first that everyday spaces can act as rich sites of informal learning, which young refugee people draw upon to advance their life chances, employability, and social inclusion. Second, they suggest that how one’s gender and “race” intersect may have important implications for how refugee youth access social and cultural capital in these everyday spaces as they navigate between informal learning and formal educational settings.

An increasing amount of research and debate has emerged over the last few years, emphasising the need for developing digitally competent, literate, able, skilled, capable people within a constantly changing technological and online environment. Existing definitions and perspectives in this area go beyond the use of technological tools or media for the creation of a digital literacy mindset, which develops throughout one's life. However, Higher Education strategies have not yet caught up with this agenda.

A student survey with Library and Information Science students from three higher education institutions in Scotland, Ireland and Greece was conducted as a basis of empirical data to support the theoretical propositions of the study. The survey centred on the technical and higher-level digital competences of students and drawing from students' self-perceived digital competences for learning and for the everyday life digital context, addressing e-leisure, e-learning, e-democracy, e-government and e-health activities. The survey critically enabled students to assess digital competences from their perspectives as digital participants.

Students' self-assessment of digital competences were lacking in a number of areas, which involved the development of information literacy, digital creation, digital research and digital identity management. In addition, students' digital competences were found to be linked to previous experiences within the everyday life digital environment. The higher the self-perceived digital competence levels of students were on the basis of dealing with everyday life digital tasks, the more likely they were to also develop high self-perceived digital competence in other digital areas related to their education.

Higher education has not fully embraced digital competences as a core, fundamental literacy which addresses both technology mastery and a digital citizenship mindset. As emerging models begin to challenge traditional teaching and learning paradigms, with global connectivity and personalised approaches, existing digital divides may be further accelerated. This requires revisiting digital competences with emphasis on the diversity of the contexts where it develops and of the learners involved, in the overall continuum of learning for life.

Reports and discusses the findings of an investigation that examined the efficacy of guided learning in the workplace. The investigation comprised the trialing of guided learning strategies and an analysis of the learning occurring in five workplaces over a period of six months. The guided learning strategies selected for investigation were questioning dialogues, the use of diagrams and analogies within an approach to workplace learning emphasising modelling and coaching. Throughout the investigation, critical incident interviews were conducted to identify the contributions to learning that had occurred during these periods, including those provided by the guided learning. As anticipated, it was found that participation in everyday work activities (the learning curriculum) was most valued and reported as making effective contributions to learning in the workplace. However, there was also correlation between reports of the frequency of guided learning interactions and their efficacy in resolving novel workplace tasks, and therefore learning. It is postulated that some of these learning outcomes could not have been secured by everyday participation in the workplace alone. Further, factors associated with the readiness of enterprise and those within it were identified as influencing the likely effectiveness of guided learning at work.

This paper aims to focus on academic library managers’ learning practices in the context of cooperative work supported by computational artefacts. Academic library managers’ everyday work is mainly cooperative. Their cooperation is supported predominantly by computational artefacts. Learning how to use the computational artefacts efficiently and effectively involves understanding the changes in everyday work that affect managers and, therefore, it requires deep understanding of their cooperative work practices.

Focused ethnography was conducted through participant observations, interviews and document analysis. Ten managers from a university library in Sweden participated in the research. A thematic method was used to analyse the empirical material. Computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) and work-integrated learning was used as the conceptual lens.

Five learning practices were identified: collaboration, communication, coordination, decision-making processes and computational artefacts’ use. The findings show that learning is embedded in managers’ cooperative work practices, which do not necessarily include sufficient training time. Furthermore, learning was intertwined with cooperating and was situational. Managers learned by reflecting together on their own experiences and through joint cooperation and information sharing while using the computational artefacts.

The main contribution lies in providing insights into how academic library managers learn and cooperate in their everyday work, emphasizing the role of computational artefacts, the importance of the work context and the collective nature of learning. It also highlights the need for continual workplace learning in contemporary knowledge work environments. Thus, the research generates contributions to the informatics field by extending the understanding of managers’ work-integrated learning in their everyday cooperative work practices supported by computational artefacts’ use. It also contributes to the intersection of CSCW and work-integrated learning.