Framing Workplace Learning

This chapter sets the scene of teacher professional learning in England and its shifting context. It reflects on the politicisation of education and the increasingly radical agenda to pursue a more extensively workplace-based model of teacher pre-service and continuing professional learning, including a brief dalliance with the notion of teaching as a master’s level profession. The chapter then explains the genesis and structure of the book, reflecting upon its four themes: the social policy context and related tensions in England; policy and practice relating to teacher learning in UK home nations and internationally; learning theory and socio-cultural perspectives on learning; and, learning across the professions including medicine and educational psychology. Before exploring these themes the chapter presents three different analytical frames for considering workplace learning. First it disaggregates it into its constituent parts: work and place and learning. In doing this it highlights contemporary struggles around binary ways of thinking about knowledge and learning, and about the theory/practice dichotomy. This leads to a discussion of the possibilities offered by ‘third space’ thinking, which draws on hybridity theory, and situates binaries in productive dialogue. A third and final analytical move from third spaces to nomadic spaces is guided by the theoretical lens of Deleuze and Guattari.