Exercising autonomy in the workplace is a prerequisite for the acquisition of complex perceptual, judgement, and decision making skills widely agreed to be criteria of vocational expertise. It has wide workplace relevance. Despite the importance of autonomy for developing vocational expertise there is virtually nothing on methodologies for…

Newly appointed lecturers joining teaching-focussed environments can encounter significant challenges to sustain a successful research career. Some of these challenges pertain to the existing work culture and the suitability of mentoring. At the same time, success in academia is typically associated with the "academic super-hero" model…

This article takes the author's personal experience of being a Head of Department (HOD) in an English University, and frames this experience as a transition narrative. The format draws on the work of Sandra Acker, who framed her own experience as a Head of Department in Canada, in three areas. Utilising literature both on Higher Education…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how the Nordic model, featuring highly regulated trade union-employer collaboration, has enabled the building of learning organizations through a co-generative learning model involving both practitioners and action researchers. Design/methodology/approach: A literature search on the Nordic sociotechnical…

Occupational health physiotherapy is an evolving clinical speciality which requires advanced clinical practice skills and organisational knowledge. There is a dearth of studies in the literature addressing frameworks for occupational health physiotherapy practice. In response, the Association of Chartered Physiotherapists in Occupational Health…

The paper suggests ways to benefit student learning online by improving staff training. The paper challenges the assumption that classroom based pedagogy applies to online teaching, with alternative ways that resolve the stress and confusion during the pandemic in the move to permanent blended teaching in the coming year. The paper is the 'front…

On May 10th, 2020 the Prime Minister announced a phased return of some children to school in England from June 1st. Schools had been closed to all but vulnerable and keyworker children since March 20th, meaning that most children have been educated at home for a period of 10 weeks, and some year groups are not expected to return to school until…

The Intercultural Product Pitch OIL (Online International Learning) Project set out to broaden the international experience for a small cohort of undergraduate students by enabling them to collaborate on a series of activities that would raise intercultural awareness and improve key communication skills. The project involved collaboration between…

This article addresses questions of workplace democracy, particularly in relation to school education. Following Luciano Canfora in treating democracy as "the rule of the many", it traces the post-1945 rise of workplace democracy, and its post-1979 decline. Analysing the constitution of contemporary schooling in England, the article…

"The Politics of Teacher Professional Development: Policy, Research and Practice" provides innovative insights into teachers' continuing development and learning in contemporary western contexts. Rather than providing a list of "how-tos" and "must dos," this volume is premised on the understanding that by learning…

This paper focuses on a context where interdisciplinarity intersects with interprofessionality: the work of children's services professionals who address the needs of children identified as vulnerable. It draws on evidence and perspectives from two disciplines--educational studies and health care--to consider the issues and challenges posed by…

The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three…

This article presents an analysis of gender identity within the context of lifelong learning. Constructed specifically around individual experiences of occupational apprenticeship in English professional football, it draws on a re-reading of data collected in the early 1990s to depict the way in which a group of young men were socialised into…

This brief paper outlines the work of the Tripartite Steering Group on Job Satisfaction, which has set up a series of projects to explore ways in which the content and organization of work could be changed to meet individual needs for satisfaction from work. This is not to ignore the contribution of other features of the work and its environment…

Discusses the comments by headteachers in Oxfordshire (England) on various aspects of their professional work-life in order to determine the difficulties and challenges confronting rural headteachers in a contemporary school system. Focuses on the internal and external issues, staff and staffing issues, and the serious difficulties headteachers…