The aim of this study was to examine the differential effects of specific types of supervisor support on transfer of training, taking into account established trainee characteristics, such as trainees’ motivation to learn, motivation to transfer, and training self-efficacy. More specifically, nine types of supervisor support were examined (pre-training information, role modelling & facilitation, request sharing, favourable attitude, coaching & feedback, openness, involvement & accountability, work coverage, and training participation). In addition, the mediating effect of training retention is explored, as learning outcomes may present an intervening variable that connects supervisor support to transfer of training. A time-lagged design was used to investigate the relationships in the proposed model and it was evaluated using partial least squares path modelling (PLS-PM). Data was gathered in Belgium through online questionnaires at three points in time from 111 participants of work-related training. Participants were employees from a retail organisation and different government agencies. Results indicate that only supervisors’ accountability and involvement positively predicted employees’ transfer of training three months after training. In addition, it was found that supervisors’ involvement and accountability had an indirect effect on transfer of training through training retention.

In vocational education, workplace simulations (WPS) have been implemented to ensure a better connection between the educational setting and the labour market. Moreover, WPS are supposed to motivate students and promote self-directed learning. So far, however, not much is known about the way students experience these WPS. The aim of the present exploratory case study was to investigate students’ perceptions and preparedness for WPS and explore what factors they perceive to be relevant for their learning in these simulations. Forty students from three different pre-vocational secondary schools participated. Semi-structured group interviews were conducted and thematic analysis was used to examine the qualitative data. The results revealed that authentic WPS can increase student motivation and engagement. Learner characteristics regarded as relevant in WPS were motivation, responsibility, independence and discipline. For students, the presence and guidance of the teacher played an essential role in their working and learning effectively. They felt limited in making choices to direct their own learning. Assessment criteria were not transparent enough for students. Concluding, we found that students perceived factors closely related to self-regulated and self-directed learning to be relevant for their learning; however, these learning activities and processes have not yet been sufficiently promoted and supported in the investigated vocational schools. The study highlights design dilemmas for vocational practice and offers indications in how to match both learning environmental characteristics and teacher support tailored to learners’ needs.

Over 25 years ago, Brown and Duguid (Organisation Science, 2(1), 40–57, 1991) highlighted the differences between the way organisations formally describe and delineate jobs and the actual practices of their employees. This paper combines ideas from their seminal contribution with theories of ‘job crafting’ and identity to examine the agentic behaviour of employees in low-grade, ‘dirty work’ as they utilise their expertise and practices to (re)frame their occupational identities and challenge their prescribed job boundaries. The evidence for the paper comes from a qualitative study of hospital porters in the UK’s National Health Service. It argues that this combined theoretical approach provides a potential research and employment framework to challenge the abstracted and stereotypical conceptions of the expertise related to low-grade jobs.

The aim of this study was to investigate the transfer of learning of professional competences from vocational colleges to the workplace context in vocational education. Concretely, the study examined the relations between the professional competences learned at school and the use and further development of those competences at the workplace during the practice module in vocational education programmes in Spain. The study analysed individual, educational design and work environment factors that facilitate or hinder transfer of learning. The study took a multidimensional approach to professional competences by observing four dimensions: hard-specific, hard-generic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. The data collection drew from a questionnaire administered to students of vocational education programmes (N = 379) after they had completed the practice module scheme. A moderation analysis was applied to observe the effect of individual, educational design and workplace factors on the relation between the competences learned at school and those used at the workplace. The findings showed that compulsory placement, school-work alignment, work-based supervisor, access to resources and task complexity are significant moderators between the competences learned at school and those used at the workplace. The study highlights the coherence between the school and workplaces and work environment characteristics as factors conducive to transfer of learning.

The preparation of future professionals for practice is a key focus of higher education institutions. Among a range of approaches is the use of simulation pedagogies. While simulation is often justified as a direct bridge between higher education and professional practice, this paper questions this easy assumption. It develops a conceptually driven argument to cast new light on simulation and its unarticulated potential in professional formation. The argument unfolds in, and is illustrated via, three accounts of a simulation event in an Australian undergraduate nursing program. This begins with a familiar approach, moves to one that problematizes this through a focus on disruption, culminating in a third that draws on socio-material theorisations. Here, simulation is conceived as emergent, challenging stable notions of fidelity, common in simulation literature. New possibilities of simulation in the production of agile practitioners and learners in practice are surfaced. This paper extends and enriches thinking by providing distinctive new ways of understanding simulation and the relationship it affords between education and professional practice, and by illuminating the untapped potential of simulation for producing agile practitioners.

Knowledge utilization is politically “hot” because it informs decisions on improving the quality of care in nursing homes (NHs). The difficulties encountered in implementing evidence-based knowledge into practice may be explained by contextual factors. Contextual factors are crucial to understanding the process of knowledge utilization; how the evidence’ is implemented and received locally by identifying facilitators, as well as barriers to change. This article is based on an evidence-based education intervention executed by four teams of two facilitators with care staff, which aimed to prevent the use of restraint in nursing home (NH) residents with dementia in 24 NHs in Norway. The study used a mixed method design combining cluster randomized controlled trial (C-RCT), participatory action research (PAR) and ethnography, where the aim was to document and examine the success or failure of the education intervention. The empirical material for this paper is primarily based on a post –intervention ethnographic investigation in three NHs in the sample, to investigate the relationship between an education intervention and staff culture. The ethnographic investigation gave a setting and context-specific plausible explanation of why the educational intervention failed or succeeded. This study has shown that the social process of knowledge utilization is influenced by contextual factors such as staff culture, patient mix and milieu as well as structural conditions. The NH conditions are not stable, but rather moving and constantly changing as a response to variation in the staff culture, the patient mix, the resources available and the nursing homes current situation. Therefore, the evidence in connection with staff culture could be understood as “a ball of clay” molding itself differently when coming in touch with staff culture and their collective and individual experiences. Potential for a successful process of knowledge utilization has to do with timing and organizational readiness, which is difficult to foresee when planning an education intervention.

Learning to become trade workers requires developing the ability to make practical workplace-based judgments, often centred around difficult to articulate trade’know-how’ or tacit knowledge. Apprentices learn discipline specific ways of doing, thinking, feeling and being from experts, peers and through interactions with occupational artefacts and environments. Hence, distinct and specialised trade or discipline specific socio-cultural and socio-material factors influence how processes are followed, tools or equipment are deployed, materials are made or assembled and workplace relationships are transacted. Consequently, learning practical judgment is but one facet of expertise contributing to occupational identity. This article reports on apprentices’ perceptions of how they ‘learnt a trade’ and provides direction for the enhancement of learning occupationally-delineated practical judgment.

This paper attempts to explore an analogy between individual and organizational learning within experiential learning theory (ELT). The focus is on both the possibility of identifying a learning subject that learns in action, and on the genesis process behind the learning of a suggested learning subject at organizational level. The exploration uses an empirical study of a global software communication organization. The research adopts a qualitative approach, with data from three middle-management layers of a research and development (R&D) unit with 5,000 employees. During the study, shifts of emphasis occurred between two organizational logics, which required work-integrated learning. Metaphorically speaking, the organization was portrayed as ‘teeming with interaction’, and a growing wave of change decisively altered both the thinking and work processes within the organization. The organizational learning process is theoretically understood as an ‘augmented intense interaction’ around a specific content. The subject that learns and upholds the outcome is suggested to be the teeming activity, comprehended as a living organism. In practice, the awareness of an organization as a body that teems with interaction has potential to offer new understanding about how to manage change.

Preservice teachers’ professional vision is an important indicator of their initial acquisition of integrated knowledge structures within university-based teacher education. To date, empirical research investigating which factors contribute to explaining preservice teachers’ professional vision is scarce. This study aims to determine which factors are related to preservice teachers’ incipient professional vision and may constitute necessary conditions for development processes. The participants were 55 preservice teachers who completed a questionnaire investigating their individual characteristics and opportunities used for learning and a video-based tool assessing their professional vision regarding generic pedagogical knowledge of teaching and learning. We conducted multiple regression analyses to identify relevant factors. The results showed that the number of attended courses on teaching and learning and the level of interest in the content are closely related to higher levels of professional vision. No relation was found with practical experience. It is concluded that professional vision is related to conditions of content-specific knowledge acquisition, as provided in formal teacher education programs.

Policymakers worldwide consider participation in adult learning beneficial for employability, in particular for specific target groups. However, still little is known about the effect of adult learning pursued by low-qualified young adults on their employment prospects. On the basis of a Flemish longitudinal database, we study the determinants and effects of work-related adult learning and adult learning not related to work. We make a distinction between formal learning and informal learning and between enrolment duration and qualification attainment. We control for background characteristics, human capital, school leaving age and entry into the labor market and run two path models. The analysis results contradict the general observation that adult learning is primarily a matter of high-qualified people. Among the low-qualified, lack of human capital does not hamper but encourages participation in adult learning. In addition, gender differences exist in participation in adult learning with men participating more often in work-related adult learning and women being more likely to attain a qualification in adult learning not related to work. Finally, our results indicate that participation but not qualification attainment in adult learning has an impact on employment prospects for low-qualified young adults.