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Transitions in professional learning: contexts and cultures

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Venue: Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street

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Transitions are now recognised as highly significant learning spaces, whether those transitions are educational – moving from one level of education to another – or professional – moving into a professional role from education, or between institutions, or from one geographical location and another, or from one level of responsibility and another. They are often multiple (many transitions at the same time) and also dreaded. In both higher education and professional work, they are understood to be the problem of the individual, such that the primary challenges of transition are understood to be psychological or emotional or even learning issues which need to be managed and resolved on a personal level. However, recent research on transitions in the workplace has demonstrated that there are other perspectives available to us to understand transitions. Drawing on research with graduates of computing and with doctors, I will explore alternative ways of conceptualising transitions as non-linear, sociomaterial and multiple.

Biog

Miriam Zukas is Professor of Adult Education and Executive Dean of the School of Social Science, History and Philosophy. Her research interests include academics, academic work and learning; professional workplace pedagogies; doctors' learning in transition;  professional learning in transitions; adult higher education.

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