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The purpose of this paper is to show how a typology of participating patterns is developed to deepen understanding of participation in formal adult education and the relationship between current workplace and educational programmes.

The approach takes the form of conceptual work based on a qualitative analysis of 89 cases studies covering 113 participating employees in small and medium‐sized enterprises in 12 European countries.

Five main types of participation patterns in formal adult education are identified. When employed participants focus on their education, they may complete their formal programme (“Completing”), overrule an earlier decision to leave the educational system (“Returning”) or look for a starting‐point to change their professional career (“Transforming”). When focusing on employment, employees may use formal adult education for “Reinforcing” their earlier career decisions. Here, four subtypes are proposed. Finally, employees may enjoy their studies for features not available at work (“Compensation”).

The typology was based on qualitative data; the sample does not claim to be representative. However, it could become the basis for a quantitative survey design.

The typology is likely to be of value in a wide array of fields such as whether the employer organisation should offer support, or whether there should be an economic return to education.

The typology builds on a life‐cycle model and combines it with the relationship between the educational programme and the workplace. It is not restricted to certain groups of learners or formal programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of recognition in learning processes among female nurses, social and health care assistants and occupational therapists working with people with dementia and other age‐related illnesses.

The paper highlights the need to experience recognizing learning spaces among social and health care workers dealing with elderly care. Such learning spaces are crucial/imperative in order to come to terms with emotionally stressing experiences from daily work, and in order to be prepared for future challenges, such as new tasks or patients with a complex diagnosis. Drawing on Nordic research into health and care work, it is argued that, particularly in work fields which are mentally loaded or which are not held in high esteem culturally, this condition seems to be important.

The main argument is that learning is related to recognition – especially when it comes to groups of professionals, who are low ranked in the workplace hierarchy and therefore seldom experience recognition in their daily work. According to interviews with members of the mentioned professional groups, learning spaces, in which the medical and professional hierarchies are suspended, promote learning processes.

Axel Honneth's critical theory of recognition is used as the theoretical framework for understanding more generally the relational nature of human learning processes and the need for recognizing contexts. The paper concludes that this need is particularly imperative in health and care work for the elderly, but may also promote learning more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate individuals' learning and propensity for changing their job situation during downsizing in a company.

A case study was carried out in an industrial company that had undergone major downsizing to adapt to changes in production. Approximately 100 employees retrained at the company's training program and 350 employees received notice to quit their jobs. Data for this study consisted of qualitative interviews with 20 workers who faced different transition situations.

Three general learning trajectories labeled stayers, leavers and reemployed leavers emerged as a consequence of the downsizing. The stayers were the individuals who remained at the company and later retrained to new jobs. The leavers were the individuals who more or less voluntarily left the company to start a new career. The reemployed leavers were dismissed and left involuntarily but were later reemployed at the company.

In cases of downsizing it is important that the organization meets latent wishes for change and considers differentiated reactions connected to age, length of employment, former education, etc., among workers who face different transition situations.

The results imply that the learning trajectories were shaped through participation, thus learning, in the transition program and workplace activities. Each worker has a specific history of experience that shapes their disposition to learning and in which way they are able to adjust to a new job situation.

This paper aims to explore what Chinese doctors have learned in authentic medical practice, what they want to learn, and the dynamics behind their professional learning in working contexts.

The paper uses Narrative Inquiry, qualitative data which were collected by open‐ended face‐to‐face interviews and participative observation. Seven doctors from three hospitals in Shandong province were purposefully invited. Each participant was interviewed at least once, and all interview recordings were transcribed into research texts. The author narrated and re‐narrated stories of one chosen participant named Li Hengyang (pseudonym).

The paper finds that Chinese doctors divided their learning into two kinds: “professional” and “non‐professional”. The intrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of medical knowledge and techniques was attributed to “professional” and the extrinsic‐motive‐driven learning of “other things” was treated as “non‐professional”. The resultant force of intrinsic and extrinsic motives caused a performance disorder, a vague sense of professional identity, and involuntary expressive behaviours. The author finally pointed out that Chinese doctors' professional learning in working contexts is, to some extent, identity‐oriented.

Single theoretical perspective constrained the analysis; future research may use different theoretical perspectives besides Goffman's theatrical performance theory.

The paper presents identity‐oriented learning of Chinese doctors and the dynamics behind it, which have practical implications for Chinese doctors, medical professional educators and national medical policy makers.

Although Chinese doctors' training and education have been explored a lot, their professional learning in working contexts was rarely studied before.

This article aims to analyze emergent learning practices for globalizing work through two research questions: “What are the conceptualizations of work represented by the Virtual Factory and how do they mediate globalizing work?” and “What is the potential of expansive learning efforts to expand conceptualizations towards the emergent learning practices of globalizing work?”.

Cultural‐historical activity theory is applied, specifically the historical tool‐mediated activity, concept formation and the zone of proximal development. A dynamic hierarchy of conceptualizations forms the framework for expansive learning efforts. Data were gathered by ethnographic and development interventionist methods from a distributed engineering design project.

The paper finds that, historically, multi‐layered conceptualizations of work face developmental challenges in globalizing work. Expansive learning efforts enhance the emergent learning practices when orienting global participants to motivating “why” and “where‐to” conceptualizations. In order to turn emergent practices into sustainable learning practices, material representations need to be created to mediate the bottom‐up and top‐down conceptualizations at the interfaces of distributed work.

Emergent learning practices are studied longitudinally through concrete work in transformation. The learning approach emphasizes developmental interventions at global workplaces.

Expansive learning efforts at different levels of conceptualization, may be supported by tools that mediate and sustain emergent learning practices.

Global workplace learning should be a concern of those involved with corporate social responsibility.

Emergent learning practices offers a new approach for studies of globalizing work through its multi‐layered conceptualizations of work.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate ways in which university students are introduced to disciplines and thence to the professions based on those disciplines.

E‐mail interviews with a broad sample of university teachers in a variety of professional disciplines formed the basis of a grounded theory approach to identification of analytically distinct themes.

Four different approaches were identified from the interview data, labelled as academic, apprenticeship, affective, and experiential. While these themes represent distinct approaches to introductory classes in professional fields, and have been described independently in the paper, in practice most teachers would use combinations of them.

The research represents a first stage in investigating approaches to introducing students to a discipline and profession. No claim is made to randomness, completeness or representativeness of the sample, which indeed was heavily based on colleagues in the broad area of pedagogy and teacher preparation.

Teachers of introductory classes in professional disciplines can recognise their own approaches in the themes identified, and can consider a broader range of approaches based on the complete results. Workplace supervisors can consider diverse approaches utilised in academic settings.

Findings can contribute towards an awareness of the effect of introductory approaches to disciplines and professions in university classes, with potential implications for the way that university‐trained professionals are accepted into the workplace.

The research, unusually, shifts the focus from the end stage of professional education at university to the initial level. The investigation may form the basis of further research.

The purpose of this paper is to compare theoretical conceptions that reclaim and re‐think material practice – “the thing” in the social and personal mix – specifically in terms of work activity and what is construed to be learning in that activity.

The paper is theory‐based. Three perspectives have been selected for discussion: cultural‐historical activity theory (CHAT), actor‐network theory (ANT), and complexity theory. A comparative approach is used to examine these three conceptual framings in the context of their uptake in learning research to explore their diverse contributions and limitations on questions of agency, power, difference, and the presence of the “thing”.

The three perspectives bear some similarities in their conceptualization of knowledge and capabilities as emerging – simultaneously with identities, policies, practices and environment – in webs of interconnections between heterogeneous things, human and nonhuman. Yet each illuminates very different facets of the sociomaterial in work‐learning that can afford important understandings: about how subjectivities are produced in work, how knowledge circulates and sediments into formations of power, and how practices are configured and re‐configured. Each also signals, in different ways, what generative possibilities may exist for counter‐configurations and alternative identities in spaces and places of work.

While some dialogue has occurred among ANT and CHAT, this has not been developed to compare more broadly the metaphysics and approaches of these perspectives, along with complexity theory which is receiving growing attention in organizational research contexts. The paper purports to introduce the nature of these debates to work‐learning researchers and point to their implications for opening useful questions and methods for inquiry in workplace learning.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the idea of practice‐based innovation and to propose a framework that can be used to conceptualize and analyze practice‐based innovation processes in organizations.

The argument is driven by conceptual analysis and theoretical synthesis based on theory and research on innovation, organizational change, individual and organizational learning.

The proposed framework portrays practice‐based innovation as a cyclical process of adaptive and developmental learning driven by contradictions and tensions between explicit and implicit dimensions of work processes.

The paper adds to previous research through its focus on practice‐based innovation and the conceptualization of this notion in terms of learning in and through everyday work. It thus creates connections between innovation research and research on workplace learning.