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Judgement is a pivotal notion for understanding learning. But how we view judgement is crucially shaped by our favoured conception of learning. The favoured conception of learning is shown to distort judgement, while an emerging conception of learning does justice both to judgement and learning from work.

This paper aims to problematise practice and contribute to new understandings of professional and workplace learning. Practice is a concept which has been largely taken for granted and under-theorised in workplace learning and education research. Practice has usually been co-located with classifiers, such as legal practice, vocational practice, teaching practice and yoga practice, with the theoretical emphasis on the domain – legal, teaching and learning.

This is a theory-driven paper which posits a framework of six prominent threads for theorizing practice. It uses examples of empirical research to illustrate each thread.

A framework of six prominent threads for theorising practice in professional learning is suggested. It understands practices as patterned, embodied, networked and emergent and learning entwined with working, knowing, organizing and innovating. By conceptualising learning as occurring via and in practices, prominent understanding of learning are challenged. The paper discusses each thread with reference to empirical research that illuminates it and indicates the contributions of practice theory perspectives in richer understandings of professional learning and change.

This paper engages with the practice turn in social sciences to reconceptualise professional and workplace learning. It contributes to research on learning at work by supplementing current thinking about learning, particularly the socio-cultural conceptions of learning, with the resources of practice theories that attend to the regularities of practice.

There is much scepticism about the concept of lifelong learning within both the educational literature and the literature on work. Certainly, many work arrangements discourage learning, let alone lifelong learning. Nevertheless, there are also work situations in which significant learning occurs. However, even in instances where work arrangements are more favourable for learning, there does not seem to be wide recognition that this is the case. This paper suggests that this reflects the fact that learning is widely misunderstood. The common‐sense view of learning as a product gives many types of learning a bad press, including learning at work and lifelong learning. However, when the process aspects of learning are given due attention, as in the emerging view of learning outlined in this paper, much learning, including informal workplace learning at its best, is accurately described as a form of lifelong learning.

This paper aims to examine the nature of learning discovered by recent graduates participating in a symphony orchestra‐initiated development program that is designed to nurture them through the transition to becoming professional orchestral musicians.

Using a qualitative case study approach, the authors interviewed developing musicians and professional musician mentors individually and in small groups using a semi‐structured protocol. Interviews were audio‐taped and transcribed. The authors also observed musicians working together in rehearsal and in concert performance and reviewed documents on the development program, the organisation and the Australian performing arts industry.

The findings suggest that learning is better conceptualised as an embodied constructed experience with others in context. What the authors call “guided contextualising” differs from conventional discussions of skill‐based novice learning and mentorship. For musicians, the competency that is being developed is one of learning how to become, forming a sense of identity as broader musical citizens as well as becoming members of more instrumental communities.

The design and structure of the program (and alternatives emerging overseas) suggest possibilities for new collaborations towards “a living curriculum” between higher education and industry.

Rather than “employability”, the concept of “graduateness” for young adults is formative and transformative, a process that involves the seeking of various forms of identity and contextualised learning that transcends self. “Becoming” practitioners together in generative ways enhances fitness for professional practice and develops a commitment to lifelong learning.

This paper aims to analyse, through the lens of learning network theory, ways in which external VET practitioners work within private enterprises to promote learning within these organizations.

The paper is based on analyses of six case studies in two Australian States, each comprising a vocational education institute and an enterprise. In total, 34 interviews were held with four groups of participant – TAFE managers and practitioners, enterprise personnel and worker‐learners – from different industries.

The paper finds that the overlaying of an external learning system on existing learning systems brings inevitable tensions that need to be carefully managed. VET practitioners working in industry operate in two worlds with very different cultures. They need to learn how to work within different power structures, how to build around existing work and learning networks, and how to mesh in with the flow of enterprise work. In the process of working with company staff, and crossing boundaries, they may well be creating a “third space” in which new meanings can be, and have to be, constructed that go beyond the limits of either site.

The paper shows that understanding these ways of working has practical implications for VET managers and practitioners, company staff and policy‐makers in terms of how human resources are managed and how different parties work together.

The paper shows two objectives: a relatively new focus in the research literature and an extension of learning network theory in terms of external learning systems.

The paper seeks to show the relationship between organisational structure and flexibility of training has not been well researched. Focusing on the role of recognition of current competencies, this study provides evidence of the effects of the former on the latter.

In this paper evidence was obtained by comparing six emergency service organisations using comparative case study. Data were collected through individual and group interviews and from document searches. Organisations were categorised as organistic or mechanistic based on volunteer experiences and published organisational structures. The flexibility of curriculum, delivery of training, and recognition of current competence were assessed and compared with organisational structure.

The paper finds that mechanistic organisations had high levels of insular trust and relied on training as a means of socialising new volunteers into the norms and practices of the organisation. They required all recruits to undertake the same training and did not recognise competencies acquired outside the organisation. In contrast, those organisations with a more, organic structure, had more flexible training strategies and used holistic assessment to recognise current competencies that volunteers brought to their roles.

The paper could be replicated in other industries to examine the generalisabilty of the findings. The implications for the wider issues of flexibility and responsiveness of some emergency service organisations could be an area for further investigation.

The paper shows that achieving greater flexibility in training in emergency service organisations may require organisational change in order to build trust within a work context that can involve extreme risks.

The paper concludes that, while it was the fire services that were the more mechanistic of the organisations included in the study, there was sufficient diversity in their structures to allow one to conclude that across these four cases the more organic the organisation, the more flexible was the approach to training. It is concluded therefore that an inflexible approach to training is not an essential feature of the fire service industry.

The paper seeks to show the contextualisation of call centres as a work‐specific ethnographically and culturally based community, which, in turn, influences pedagogical practices through the encoding and decoding of cultural texts in relation to two logics: cost‐efficiency and customer‐orientation.

The paper includes a qualitative, interpretive research‐based case study involving three Australian incoming customer service call centres and seven call centre managers.

The paper finds cultural texts with high management structure and control and low workplace socialisation and semiotic literacy favour constructions of meaning which prioritise qualitative (customer‐orientated logic) performance by a customer service representative (CSR) at early cultural junctures. This position subsequently transitions to favour the prioritisation of quantitative (cost‐efficient logic) performance as the CSR progresses. The shift occurs through a process of relayered knowledge constructs wherein a corresponding reduction in management control and structure of the texts is counter‐balanced by an increase in workplace socialisation and semiotic literacy.

The paper includes enriched understandings of call centre contextuality and shows that fresh perspectives on contextually influenced pedagogical practices have the potential to direct and harness more informed approaches to call centre teaching and learning, particularly in relation to the logics of cost‐efficiency and customer‐orientation.

A thought‐provoking paper for call centre managers and human resource learning and development professionals which foregrounds the concepts of work‐specific ethnographic community, cultural texts, encoding and decoding, socialisation and semiotic literacy as influential workplace teaching and learning conduits.

The paper seeks to show that narrative close call reporting is one strand of an ongoing collaborative inquiry project with 300 staff aiming to improve teamwork in operating theatres in a large UK hospital. How teams deal with close calls (“accidents waiting to happen”) reveals resourcefulness but exposes flaws, including resistance to basic safety practices such as briefing and debriefing.

In this paper over 400 issues from close call reports over two years have been thematically analysed to map a variety of (mis)communications. This paper goes beyond this descriptive level of data analysis to a deeper level, where close calls are read textually. The most common rhetorical strategies are reported, shown in around a quarter of all reports.

The paper finds that accounts are neither transparent nor objective, but offer a medium for the exercise of rhetorical strategy, a main function of which is construction and management of identity. Practitioners maintain traditional boundaries between professions by stereotyping the “other” professional in the team, serving to stabilise identity. Work is typically presented as on the edge, close to collapse, serving to shape an identity of “heroic survivors” for team members.

In the paper habitual practices that impede teamwork are challenged, such as stereotyping. Reporting can encourage “fearless speech” – regardless of position on the traditional hierarchy – that is an empowering form of “plain speaking” underpinned by moral courage.

The paper shows that close calls are typically treated instrumentally. A deeper, aesthetic and ethical reading is offered. Education in “fearless speech” in close call reports may offer a reflexive stance and new context for identity construction.