Experiential learning styles remain popular despite criticisms about their validity, usefulness, fragmentation and poor definitions and categorisation. After examining four prominent models and building on Bergsteiner, Avery, and Neumann's suggestion of a dual cycle, this paper proposes a twin-cycle experiential learning model to overcome…

The qualification of adult educators is a central aspect of the quality of adult education. However, within current policy discourses and adult education research on the professional development of prospective adult educators, little attention is paid to teacher qualification when compared to other fields of education and training. In this study,…

This article takes a psychological perspective on organisational learning, putting "reflection" into the centre of attention. We argue that (1) organisational learning is based on individual and team learning at work, (2) reflection is the driving force that leads to organisational learning and (3) cumulation of the staff's reflection outcomes…

The study described here is based on the work of creative writing students engaged in life writing for a piece of assessment in a distance-learning course. Using the finished assignment pieces themselves, the students' reflective commentaries on their completed task, and a follow-up questionnaire, the analysis was designed to explore the…

The topic of informal learning and work has quickly become a staple in contemporary work and adult learning research internationally. The narrow conceptualization of work is briefly challenged before the article turns to a review of the historical origins as well as contemporary theories and methods involved in researching informal learning and…

This paper describes a research project investigating the workplace learning experience of information technology (IT) workers in Hong Kong. The research project explored in depth the workplace learning experiences of 65 IT workers from three different work sites. It went beyond the identification of workplace learning methods and resources…

This paper considers the bottom-up vision of the learning society. Unlike the top-down approach, the bottom-up approach does not start by specifying the purposes of learning which should direct the development of the learning society, but from observing interactions among learning individuals as agents. While in the relevant literature and…

This article contributes to current debates about professional doctorates from a lifelong learning perspective, focusing on those who choose to undertake a doctoral programme in mid- or late career and their responses to the challenge of demonstrating their "doctorateness" as evidenced in their previous and continuing professional work. It is…

This research arose from our involvements in adults and community education, adult literacy, youth issues, and in researching the new movement in Australia for the inclusion of "generic skills" in education and training curriculum. We recruited twenty-two practitioners in Adult and Community Education (ACE) in a participatory action research…

This study investigated supervisees' perceptions of the learning processes and outcomes of professional supervision. Two hundred and sixty-four psychology graduates involved in the process of professional supervision for registration responded to a mail survey regarding their supervisor's approach to supervision, their own approach to supervision…

Recent research on learning in work situations has focused on concepts such as 'productive learning' and 'pedagogy of vocational learning'. In investigating what makes learning productive and what pedagogies enhance this, there is a tendency to take the notion of learning as unproblematic. This paper argues that much writing on workplace learning…

Drawing on the work of Foucault, and to a lesser extent actor-network theory, this article examines some of their methodological and theoretical implications for conceptions of workplace learning. We suggest that workplaces need to be examined for the spatio-temporal ordering of practices and the actors drawn into them in order to move beyond the…

Portfolio work has become recognized as a significant if under-researched form of work emerging in changing work structures. This article presents findings of a qualitative study of nurses and adult educators who function as 'portfolio professionals', in that they contract their services to multiple employers and organizations. Proceeding from…

Interviews with 53 part-time adult students in Hong Kong showed no consensus on what constitutes good teaching. Their perceptions of teaching were framed by conceptions of learning on a continuum from reproduction to self-determination. Position on this continuum was correlated with preference for didactic or facilitative teaching. (Contains 22…

T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" articulates a view of lifelong learning as a process of grappling with questions about identity and existence. This contrasts with the dominant policy discourse of lifelong learning as a straightforward task of acquiring government-sanctioned skills, knowledge, and attitudes. (Contains 44 references.) (SK)