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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the arrival of Colombo Plan Scholars in New Zealand and consider ways in which their experience helped to bridge distances between “east and west”, as well as to create connections that traversed geographical and cultural boundaries.

It draws on contemporary newspaper articles to ascertain how public talk about the Colombo Plan programme shaped initial engagements between New Zealand and the scholarship holders. The paper then analyses archival files from the Department of External Affairs to present an overview of the university courses undertaken by Colombo plan scholars. The final section of the paper draws on oral and archival sources to examine individual encounters between former Colombo Plan scholars and New Zealanders.

The paper argues that while the public aims of the Colombo Plan focused on the containment of communism and the development of post‐colonial connections in the South East Asian region, individual encounters between Colombo Plan scholars and New Zealanders played a role in changing social attitudes in what had been a deeply mono‐cultural society.

The paper draws on previously unpublished archival and documentary evidence and oral sources to examine a unique aspect of the history of international education.

The article briefly covers the establishment of the Workers’ Educational Association in both England and Australia. The development of the Workers’ Educational Association of Victoria is discussed in the context of the work of Atkinson. The idealism paradigm as exemplified in the writings of Atkinson is described and the relationship between the paradigm and adult ducation is made explicit. The development of realism is then discussed including the role of Hancock where his conceptualisation of social class is made explicit. Next the reaction by Badger to the concept enunciated by Hancock and applied to adult education is described. The article concludes by discussing the role of Badger in seeking to remove the WEAV as a major provider of adult education in Victoria.

The articles published in this special edition were selected from papers offered by 82 participants at the second joint conference of the History of Education Society (UK) and the Australia and New Zealand History of Education Society. This conference was held at the University of Sydney from 8‐11 December 2008. The topic was Work! Work! Work!: Work and the History of Education! and presenters were invited to submit papers for publication on one of eight themes including: the work and play of the child; vocational education and preparing the young for work; the work and careers of teachers and administrators; and the work of teaching the young across colonial and national boundaries. These themes were built upon by two general symposia entitled: ‘A picture and a 1000 words’ where presenters, using the immediacy of the single image, offered briefer narratives to construct the notion of ‘work’ as a snapshot of different educational pasts. As such, the conference aim was to embrace many genres of history, to allow access for new scholars, whilst established writers could offer pathways for future individual and collaborative scholarship.

Technological innovation and the flexibilisation of labour markets have expanded the pool of workers engaged in globally distributed work. This paper aims to propose an analytical framework to understand and support the productive professional learning of those engaged in global work. Drawing on the theory of expansive learning in the cultural-historical activity theory tradition the study aims to stimulate and enrich the conceptual notion of work as a learning space in the discussion of workplace learning particularly in global work.

Iteration between theory and data is applied to identify the dimensions of expansion for the configuration of learning spaces in global work. Data are drawn from the experiences of 10 professionals selected by purposive sampling in Austria, Italy, the Netherlands and Singapore.

Six dimensions of expansion are identified as challenging and potentially empowering for professionals’ configuration of learning spaces in global work: social-spatial, material-instrumental, moral-ethical, political-economic, personal-professional and temporal-developmental.

The conceptual framework for the dimensions of expansion of learning spaces provides the broad strokes for reflexive curricula that democratise the learning and development of professionals in global work, who are currently underserved given the national orientation of vocational education and training and professional development ecosystems.

Electronic publishing needs a strong input of marketing thinking. Technological hype has created a sales fetish which has little evidence to support its claims. The substantive benefits when a broader perspective is taken for authors and readers are very significant, including considerably faster publication and much wider dissemination via Internet. Archival knowledge and current awareness/browsing of the body of knowledge and information require quite different marketing approaches. Little attention has been given to their discrete needs. Draws comparisons from retailing theory and from the emerging range of experimental cases from Internet pioneers to identify robust strategies for short‐ and medium‐term action by publishers. They imply a determined effort to avoid hard selling and product‐driven mindsets in favor of exploitation of the scope for interactive and integrated marketing to authors and readers alike.

The question of Britain's entry into the Common Market would appear to have been resolved. For a time it did seem as if the Government was looking before it leapt, but if we can read the signs aright, only the controversy now remains. The implications of the Common Market, both political and economic, are largely unknown to the public and if recent events among French farmers are an indication, are not entirely acceptable to those already in it.

Dr. Carlos Cuadra has been speaking recently on the challenge posed to database publishers by microcomputer technology. He suggested (during a panel discussion at the Information Industry Meeting in Chicago in May 1983) that both publishers and online service vendors should define much more clearly the terms and conditions for retaining downloaded data locally.