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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.

Research is starting to suggest the value of professional learning networks (PLN) in terms of supporting educators in their practice. But further research is needed into how teachers’ on-going learning and practice development can be supported by features unique to a PLN. To fill that gap, the research described in this chapter examined the ways in which opportunities and supports for educators embedded within a unique multi-layered PLN enhanced and strengthened their knowledge and practice. Across one-year of a longitudinal project, we gathered multiple forms of evidence to trace 18 teachers’ experiences. Findings reported in this chapter identified conditions in the PLN overall that were combining to support teachers’ inquiry-oriented learning and practice. In addition, the authors conducted an in-depth analysis of one teacher’s experiences. The detailed analyses of this embedded case further uncovered how supports at different “grain sizes” (i.e., across the year; out-of-class activities; reflections in/on practice) were combining to foster shifts in her practice and transformative learning over time. The authors conclude with implications for conceptualizing how a multi-layered PLN can be structured to support teachers’ professional learning and practice development.

The chapter evaluates the value of practice-based teaching and learning on a UK postgraduate unit and describes the development of conceptual models for the student practice-based experience.

Student experience is explored through the use of an in-depth case study. Student understanding is explored through an exit survey of students.

Student experience of the unit was positive and negative. Positive experiences stem from good client communications, a motivated student team, and the buzz of a real project. Positive experiences appear to lead to a perception of pride in outcomes and personal transferrable skills. Negative experiences stem from the lack of life experience, language difficulties, client unavailability, lack of subject knowledge, and literature gaps which left students feeling ill-equipped to deal with the international group context. Negative experiences lead to stress and poor group development.

The study is based on a single simple case. The methodology has sought to reduce problems with internal validity and bias. The data collection and analysis methods are repeatable and we encourage other academics to test our conceptual models and conclusions.

Conceptual models for positive and negative experience are proposed.

The study suggests there is a balance to be sought between providing a positive student experience and practical learning. Practice-based learning adds significant value to the student in terms of improved understanding of hard and soft tools, but may need to be based upon positive and negative experience.

Currently, the world is experiencing the highest levels of displaced peoples ever recorded by The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2016). Consequently, greater numbers of refugees and asylum-seekers are being resettled in host nations in Anglophone and some European nations. An increasing body of literature is examining the consequences for educational systems as this new and increasingly diverse cohort of students enters various education sectors – preschools, schools, universities and adult education. Despite a surge of interest in this area, however, the practical and theoretical implications for school leaders’ practices and praxis remain under-examined and under-theorized. Moreover, scholarship on leadership for diversity fails to capture the complex nature of leading learning for refugee students who too frequently are homogenized and essentialized under the umbrella of immigrant or culturally diverse students. This chapter contributes to filling a critical gap in our knowledge in these areas.

How might deeply embodied student experiences and nonhuman agency change the way we think about learning theory? Pushing the conceptual boundaries of practice-based learning and communities of practice, this chapter draws on student experiential fieldwork ‘on Country’ with Indigenous people in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, to explore the peculiar silence when it comes to more-than-human ¹ features of situated learning models. As students engage with, and learn from, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, they become open to the ways their learning is co-produced in and with place. The chapter builds a case for an inclusive conceptualisation of communities of practice, one that takes seriously the material performativity of nonhuman actors – rock art, animals, plants and emotions in the ‘situatedness’ of socio-cultural contexts. As a co-participant in the students’ community of practice, the more-than-human forms part of the process of identity formation and actively helps students learn. To shed light on the student experiences we employ Leximancer, a software tool that provides visual representations of the qualitative data drawn from focus groups with students and field diaries.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss two different learning approaches to lean through a sensemaking lens.

This is comparative case study within one organisation, and a qualitative analysis of interview data, participative observations and documents.

Although this study found that both practices promoted lean thinking in the organisation, the “calculating lean approach” has an approach oriented towards one profession, namely, medical doctors, whereas “doing lean” has a more multi-professional-oriented approach.

This research enriches the literature on workplace learning in relation to lean, seen from a practice-based perspective. The authors argue that “The calculating lean approach” and its use of data presentations is best suited to persuade the powerful doctors to join, when working with small improvements. “The doing lean approach,” on the contrary, is more suited to promote more comprehensive changes from the bottom up that require a deeper understanding of lean among all the professions involved.

This paper aims to examines responsible management (RM) practice and the learning processes that underpin its development. It presents a conceptual framework to highlight the relationship between the learning experience of the individual and their capacity to develop responsible practice.

This conceptual paper synthesises knowledge from studies of how managers learn for ethical and responsible practice. A scoping review of peer-reviewed academic papers was conducted using key search terms that included “responsible management learning” (RML), “ethics”, “Human Resource Development (HRD)”, “responsible management (RM)”, “responsible leadership (RL)” and “work-based learning”. Analysis resulted in development of a conceptual framework of RML processes.

The review of studies concerned with how individuals learn to manage “responsibly” identified a range of learning processes that are necessary for the development of responsible practice. These learning processes are presented in a conceptual model that offers insights for the design of HRD interventions. Learning for responsible practice is presented as occurring in learning spaces where the learner/manager experiences a combination of learning processes. These are found to include situated, social and experiential learning that is “transformative”, potentially “troublesome” and “reflexive” such that learners develop responsible values and practices.

The paper contributes to the field of management development by focussing on the intersection between what is known about how individuals learn for ethical and responsible practice and the implications for work-based learning pedagogies. The paper will be of interest to HRD professionals tasked with fostering a responsible and ethical culture within organisations.

For HRD practitioners, this paper highlights the importance of work-based learning intervention design. What is suggested is that not all HRD interventions are likely to provide the learning conditions required for the development of “responsible practice”. A review of research into RML points to the need for interventions that offer a deep, personal, situated and transformative learning experience. There are organisational implications that arise from the type of learning found to develop responsible practice. For example, facilitating managers skills and awareness of how they learn such as: developing reflective practices and supporting developmental/collaborative networks that examine existing workplace practices. HRD professionals will need to recognise the need to support individual's learning for responsible practice given that it may entail questioning existing practice, and confronting troublesome knowledge, such as recognising where areas of irresponsibility exist. This may have implications for wider HR practices such as line management support, reward and performance management.

The paper contributes to the field of management development by focussing on the intersection between what is known about how individuals learn for ethical and responsible practice and the implications for work-based learning pedagogies. The paper will be of interest to HRD professionals tasked with fostering a responsible and ethical culture within organisations.

The combination of mobile devices and innovative tools offers new possibilities for the development of a community of practice for design makers. Mobile learning has become an essential method that design makers should adopt. The main content of this study is to explore the characteristics of learning behaviors and learning needs of creative design makers' group in forming a community of practice in the era of mobile learning.

This study conducted questionnaire research on the potentially associated or directly associated population of design makers. The process of the study also combined observational and interview studies to compensate for the lack of questionnaire research.

Based on the support of mobile learning technology, design makers share and co-create to achieve individual development and evolution of learning organizations, and produce creative value. Design-maker communities of practice form common communities in the framework of informal organizations to support continuous individual learning. Convergent interests or concerns in making things, real-world contexts based on makerspaces and hands-on practice based on real projects are the basis for forming design-maker communities of practice. A variety of open-source hardware, software and platforms that can support mobile learning are important for the development of design-maker communities of practice. The design-maker community of practice needs group factors, activity development, physical and technical resources, spatial support and institutional norms to enhance learning behaviors and satisfy learning needs.

The discovery and construction of these associated factors can help creative design practitioners form a lasting and virtuous organizational development. This study facilitates the formation of a social network for learning and knowledge sharing among design-maker communities of practice. It enhances the innovation ability and enthusiasm of design makers according to the population characteristics and learning needs of design makers. This study also facilitates the generation of a positive adaptive maker culture and maker spirit within design maker organizations.

Although the number of studies that investigate supply chain sustainability learning has increased, little is known about the way sub-suppliers build knowledge and learn sustainability practices. Thus, moving beyond merely investigating the accumulation of knowledge, this research explores sub-suppliers’ knowing that supports the learning of sustainability practices in a multi-tiered food supply chain.

In the conduct of this interpretive research in South Brazil, two ethnographies were completed during 74 days of observations to understand similarities and differences between certified and non-certified sub-suppliers with respect to sustainability practices. As part of our research conducted in the context of poultry production, secondary data and data gathered through semi-structured interviews with representatives of the buyer and first-tier supplier firms were used to provide a better comprehension of the multi-tiered supply chain context. Then, we executed an interpretive textual analysis.

Our investigation explored six vignettes to reveal ways of learning sustainability practices in terms of waste management, biosecurity and animal welfare. Although the buyer firm requested these practices, we noted that the first-tier supplier was responsible for translating the practices to sub-suppliers. Moreover, we found that sustainability learning was shaped by the sub-supplier context embodied in knowledge through knowing. The ways of learning were related to sharing knowledge between experts and novices with the support of material practices; however, knowledge was also gained by unlearning some knowledge shared by the supplier. Sustainability practice learning, thus, was performed in a space of learning via knowledge creation among practitioners.

Recognising how sustainability learning happens in a multi-tiered supply chain context can help managers to develop plans to implement sustainability practices that will broaden their sustainability knowledge.

Unlike previous studies on supply chain sustainability learning, we reveal ways that sustainability practices emerge from knowledge that results from sub-suppliers’ knowing. We also explain how unlearning can consciously occur in several situations of sustainability learning.

The paper aims to explore the changing influences and relevance of passive and experiential methods of learning within what can be described as a new era of entrepreneurial education. What still largely remains unaddressed in the literature is how are entrepreneur's best educated and developed in a manner which can have a direct impact on their personal and business development.

The paper suggests that learning is action oriented, and that entrepreneurs are not merely “doers”; they are “practitioners”. An integral part of being a “practitioner” is the use of practice to help move the firm beyond the “adaptive” learning which takes place in naturally occurring non‐contrived learning occasions. The paper is theoretical in its intent and adopts a social constructionist view of knowledge and learning. The research approach is informed by practitioner‐based practice and research, education and participation as a process of social learning.

The development of experiential knowledge in entrepreneurs is an incremental process that evolves throughout the course of their working lives. This means that attempts to stimulate “real life” experience through formal modes of passive education and training are unlikely to have a strong influence or impact on the development of the entrepreneur as a practitioner.

The paper sets out to develop an argument against the traditional “passive” means of business education, by suggesting that entrepreneurs who are exposed to passive learning are spectators rather than active participators.

The paper contributes to our current understanding of entrepreneurial learning by recognising that entrepreneurial learning in the context of higher education takes place beyond the domain of the classroom learning experiences, through experiential and discovery‐based learning which questions traditional orthodox pedagogies. The paper illustrates how knowledge is constructed through a situated practice of knowing, and demonstrates how a practice‐based perspective might be useful for the study of entrepreneurial education.