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The purpose of this paper is to explore how vocational teachers’ everyday practices can constitute innovative learning spaces that help students to experience engagement and commitment towards education and thus increase their possibilities for completing their studies despite notable difficulties.

Based on two ethnographic field studies, we analyse vocational teaching situations in which teachers and students engage in daily remaking of the vocational educational training practice. It is argued that these everyday situations can be understood as innovative transformation of participation and practice.

The exploration of teachers’ practicing new learning spaces sheds light on innovation potential embedded in everyday educational practices. The paper thus challenges the celebration of radical innovation and argues that innovation emerges from everyday activities in which teachers succeed to balance continuities and discontinuities. Studying innovation as a balance between change and stability thus involves emerging, negotiated processes of learning and participation in everyday practices where people talk, interact and conduct their work and studies.

Based on the analysis, we argue that students’ engagement in education can be enhanced by transforming the educational settings on various parameters such as buildings, artefacts, emotions and experiences. Thus, innovation should be recognised as emerging everyday activities in which frontline workers like vocational teachers are drivers for innovation.

Innovative everyday activities are often invisible; however, we suggest that they can be studied and thus become visible by use of the analytic term: “boundary-pushing“.

The purpose of this paper is to describe experiences of transition from medical school to new doctor in the UK and to examine the development and evaluation of initiatives designed to lessen anxiety and assist transition.

The evaluations of two recent interventions for new doctors are reported, one at organisational and one at the individual level: first, a longer induction programme; and second, provision of a library of medical textbooks on smartphones (the “iDoc” project). The paper also reports on mindfulness training designed to help trainees' well‐being.

These initiatives address different aspects of transition challenges (related to roles and responsibilities, cognitive and environmental factors). Benefit can be gained from multiple approaches to supporting this time of uncertainty.

Given the link between transition, doctor stress and patient safety, there is a need to review existing strategies to ameliorate the stress associated with transition and seek novel ways to support new doctors. The authors argue that diverse approaches, targeted at both the organisational and individual level, can support new trainees, both practically and emotionally.

The paper reports initiatives that support transition, of value to medical schools, deaneries, researchers and trainees themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities for expansive learning during organisational change. It considers the introduction of “lean production” as a disturbance to the existing work practices.

The paper considers two case studies of “lean production” training with production workers in manufacturing firms. Data for the study consisted of semi-structured interviews, observations of workers during work and training. Engeström’s third-generation cultural historical activity theory was used as the key theoretical tool for analysis.

The study found that the introduction of and training for “lean production” did not lead to expansive learning. The training did not afford spaces to address the fundamental contradictions between the “earning a living” and ”productivity” motives of work.

Further research on the different kinds of “spaces” for learning could lead to greater insights into the affordances of expansive learning in workplaces. In particular, the concept of “third space” is useful in such an endeavour.

Training designed to increase productivity could integrate more discussions about what workers themselves should expect to gain from increased productivity.

The paper presents a critical perspective on recent case studies of workplace training at a time when workforce development and “lean production” are uncritically promulgated as beneficial. It highlights the opportunities that exist for critical educators to make interventions in the interests of the workers.

This paper aims to highlight the value of research contributions that have focused on making visible the knowledge of those historically excluded from formal knowledge-making. It identifies key bodies of theory that have grounded these analyses, and questions whether we can fully do justice to this project if we continue to rely on established “canons” of social science theory.

The article reviews research contributions to Researching Work and Learning conferences over the past decade, aimed at identifying those who have been invisible as makers of knowledge. It then considers a body of critique that our dominant epistemologies within the social sciences are rooted in unequal global and local power relations.

In the literature on workplace learning, a few theoretical paradigms forged in the global north seem to predominate. The article concludes that we need to re-centre our sources of knowledge-making to what Homi Bhabha has called an “ex-centric” site, if we are to develop more inclusive theorizations of work and learning, and more socially just ways of working and learning in the future.

The article invites researchers to reflect critically on their use of theory, and to be more proactive in developing theories with an angle of vision outside of the geo-political centre, so as to better understand the diversity of work and learning globally.

The paper aims to explore the possibility of advancing a Singaporean way of learning within the continuing education and training landscape in Singapore.

Using the vehicle of a narrative interview and extending the boundaries of autoethnography, the paper uses personal reflection and interpretation to explore the issues of Singaporean identity amidst the diversity in the globalised Singapore of today.

The paper uncovers the growing latent discomfort of Singaporeans as they navigate historical legacies of Colonialism and question what it means to be schooled in Western systems whilst being Asian. With the supplanting of Asian languages and the seeming superiority and dominance of Western talent, systems and knowledge, Singaporeans are looking to express a greater sense of what being Singaporean could mean.

Upon manoeuvring and exposing the invisible, the paper concludes that there is an impetus to forge a “Singaporean way”, although how this would manifest itself is, as yet, unknown.

Although Singapore has a very visible presence globally for its economic achievements, the paper allows for an often under-represented voice of a native Singaporean to be heard. The liberties taken here with the narrative inquiry mode also allow space for a deeper exploration of identity, pride and conflict in a Singaporean today.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the current context of social work as a profession and some of the major transition factors that are affecting social workers and social work organisations.

The paper first explores what social work is, and how it has developed as a profession. It reflects on social work academia and the place of social work educators and researchers. It then goes on to consider three factors that are having a major influence on social work as a profession: concepts of risk; personalisation; and the multi‐disciplinary environment.

The implications of these factors and the kind of transitions they are driving are discussed in the context of some of the potential implications for professional learning.

The paper does not aim to provide a comprehensive overview of all the factors that are affecting contemporary social work – the aim is to offer contextual information to help the reader consider some of the forces at play in social work. The paper does not introduce new empirical evidence, rather it identifies gaps in the existing evidence about these key influential factors.

The implications of social work in transition for society are that efficacy may be impeded if the profession is too inward looking.

This paper draws from the empirical and conceptual work of others – here the aim is to provide a broad overall context within which to consider the more detailed implications set out in further papers in the present issue.

The paper focuses on current debates about police professionalism. It explores the nature and meaning of what has been termed “old” professionalism, which focuses on the role of the police as “professional crime fighters”, and then assesses the extent to which there has been a transition to a “new” professionalism centred on enhanced accountability, legitimacy and evidence‐based practice. The paper aims to show how the recent attempt to embed this “new” professionalism within policing in England and Wales is likely to be compromised by the broader political and economic context of police reform.

The paper is based on a review of key contributions to the debates about police professionalism in the USA and the UK.

The paper provides important insights into the way in which there are competing and conflicting meanings attached to police professionalism and argues that claims that there have been significant transitions from one form of professionalism to another need to be treated with caution. The paper also emphasises the uncertain trajectory of the development of police professionalism in England and Wales in the future as a result of the complex interplay between the different elements of the coalition government's police reform programme.

The paper demonstrates the multiple meanings of the term “police professionalism” and the challenges that surround developing professional policing.

The present study aims to focus on workplace learning and understanding learning as creation (Kessels, 1995, 1996, 2001; Verdonschot, 2009; Billett and Choy, 2013) to bridge the gap between education and practice addressing the complex real world issue of poverty and social exclusion in The Netherlands. When researchers and practitioners are confronted with the dynamic complexity of the real world (Mahoney and Sanchez, 2004), it becomes evident how limited the ability of researchers and managers is to fully comprehend, describe, explain and (perhaps) predict the world as it is and as it is becoming. A mission of reconnecting theory-building from the outside and theory-building from the inside requires a process of interconnected research and practice in which interactions between managers and researchers have a purposeful focus on theory-building.

The study is an example of engaged scholarship as proposed by Van de Ven and Johnson (2006) and a baseline study of a time series design from 2001-2008 comparing the effects of a “current treatment” in social work in The Netherlands at t0; explaining the collaborative design between practitioners, innovation consultants and scholars of a “new treatment”; and measuring the effects on social quality at t1.

The paper provides insight in the level of social quality of clients in a situation of poverty and social exclusion. Lessons learned from workplace learning as creation in social work practice provides input for improving work practices through training and development of social workers.

Early notions for a potential new “treatment” have clearly not been fully dealt with in this baseline study. As stated this base-line study aims at overcoming the lack of insight in the client’s life-world and open the black box to gain fresh insights. This is clearly just a first step of a much longer learning and creation process. Now that more insight in the clients life world is available, engaged researchers have proposed a new, more productive mindset of clients in a situation of poverty and social exclusion that they should not be regarded as a “granite base”, but rather as “architects and builders” of their own life–worlds, with the social services as the “main contractor” to build trust, empower by helping to explicate personal survival strategies and planning for social inclusion (Van Damme, 1999). The limited number of respondents (N = 31) in this study is a limitation of this study, and findings cannot be generalised. Findings are no more than early indications and are not representative for other populations. Further research on a larger scale and in other research settings is needed.

Implications are that design principles for a new and more participatory and socially oriented approach for workplace learning as creation should include the role of building trust in establishing relational quality between the public service organisation, other institutions and the client. First indications are that trust and empowerment may better enable clients in a situation of poverty and social exclusion to take charge of the design of their own lives and to construct and co-construct it accordingly. The role of actors from social services to build trusted relations, empower and co-construct an improved reality bear both elements of social learning, through dialogue (construct and co-construct knowledge = to know) and elements from social empowerment as part of the social quality concept (to act). Understanding the effects of the “current treatment” as input for workplace learning allows for an improved connection between practice and theory on workplace learning and social quality, thereby making a decisive contribution in closing the gap between real-world complex issues and education.

A better understanding of the aspects of social quality and social exclusion from theory and from social work practice.

The original contribution of the research is the provision of insight into the complexity of workplace learning in social work when dealing with poverty and social exclusion. The focus on both the process of learning, as well as the outcome of learning, can be considered original.

This study examined and traced the relationship between, and the influence of, the official standards documents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the related day-to-day lesson planning and implementation of a pair of co-teachers. Using a case study methodology alongside a conventional content analysis we traced the processes of how these policy texts (the Standards of Learning [SOLs] for World History) were connected to and activated within the daily routines of these teachers who taught struggling students in a high-stakes testing context. The findings illustrated how the policy texts and discursive practices emerging from the State’s SOLs constituted a level of pedagogical governance that saw these teachers organize instruction clearly designed to support student recall on the end of year multiple choice test. Our work recognized the power of policy texts as they interact with teachers. The significance of unpacking policy documents in order to examine issues of power, symmetry and potential areas of negotiation in the planning and implementation of instruction for teacher educators is discussed.