Ebook: Practice-based Learning in Higher Education: Jostling Cultures

This book addresses issues confronting universities’ attempts to integrate practice-based learning in higher education curriculum, yet which reveals the jostling of cultures which exist within and amongst the academy, industry, government and professional bodies and other educational providers. The book engages theory in practices, and draws upon research highlighting the issues and transactions that emerge with implementation of work integrated learning arrangements as uses these resources to discuss and develop further both theoretical premises and procedural contributions. The illustrative cases derive utilise metaphors of culture in their exploration of the epistemologies, structures, politics, histories and rituals which constrain program opportunity and success in making these advances. The volume comprises two main sections, the first laying out focal issues in the integration of learning and work in higher education. This section presents the issues at multiple levels of analysis and in theoretical terms. This section provides a foundation for the second section of the book which introduces a number of research studies illustrative of the issues theorised in the first. The cases highlight the practice of workplace and higher education pedagogy. They provide thick descriptions of experiences of integration and are explicitly focused on the implementation of work integrated programs in higher education. The volume commences with an introductory chapter which sets out the range of issues addressed both theoretically and through illustration in the book and a final chapter critically reviews the contributions and acts to provide a cohesive picture of the learning practices of work and higher education and the possibilities of their integration.

This book discusses and elaborates on how practice-based pedagogy can effectively co-exist with the practices and interests of academia. In doing so, it lays bare the tensions between learning in workplace practices and the cultures that contribute to the complex relationships required for successful implementation in higher education. It does so in an attempt to resolve an approach within which university students may enjoy the learning inherent in the practice of work whilst pursuing robust higher education qualifications.

The contributions here variously explore the epistemologies, structures, politics, histories and rituals that both support and constrain opportunity and success in students’ experiences. They illuminate the issues, practices and factors that shape the processes and outcome of educational efforts to integrate experiences in both practice and educational settings, each of which has their own distinct cultures, practice within their communities.