The Sage Handbook of Workplace Learning - Softcover

'Over the past decade, workplace learning has become one of the major areas of development for business, management and education. Yet ideas about it are diverse and complex and its practice is affected by competing influences and differing perspectives. This essential guide brings together many of the world's leading scholars to clarify and explore the various concepts and approaches in ways that will benefit practitioners, researchers, educators and policymakers alike'

Tom Nesbit
Simon Fraser University

"I would recommend it to both serious academics and those who frivolously wish to sample the topic." (Fiona Reeve London Review of Education 2011-11-01)

As a nurse, manager and now researcher concerned with healthcare education I found this volume interesting and thought provoking... this volume provides a starting point to explore the evidence underpinning workplace learning, and encourages a wider appreciation of different perspectives and different work places. (Nigel Davies)

This Handbook provides a state-of-the art overview of the field of workplace learning from a global perspective. The authors are all well-placed theoreticians, researchers, and practitioners in this burgeoning field, which cuts across higher education, vocational education and training, post-compulsory secondary schooling, and lifelong education. The volume provides a broad-based, yet incisive analysis of the range of theory, research, and practical developments in workplace learning.

The editors draw together the three essential areas of Theory; Research and Practice; and Issues and Futures in the field of Workplace Learning. In addition, final chapters include recommendations for further development.

Key researchers and writers in the field have approached workplaces as the base of learning about work, that is, work-based learning. There has also been emerging interest in variations of this idea such as learning about, through, and at work. Many of the theoretical discussions have centred on adult learning and some on learners managing their own learning, with emphasis on aspects such as communities of practice and self directed learning.

In Europe and Australia, early work in the field was often linked to the Vocational Education and Training (VET) traditions with concerns around skills, competencies and 'on the job' learning. The idea that learning and workplaces had more to do with real lifelong and lifewide aspects than traditional "training" regimens has emerged in the last decade. Since the mid 1990s, the field has grown world-wide as an area of theory, research, and practical work that has not only expanded the interest but has also legitimized the area as a field of study, reflection, and progress.

The SAGE Handbook of Workplace Learning draws together a wide range of views, theoretical dispositions, and assertions and provides a leading-edge presentation by key writers and researchers with insight into the field and its current state. It is a resource for researchers and academics interested in the scope and breadth of Workplace Learning..