The Workplace — a Landscape of Learning

The following outline of a workplace landscape of learning is one way of charting some of the learning resources outside of the current educational system. Whereas learning in schools has been extensively researched, workplace learning has enjoyed less attention from educational researchers. The purpose of this chapter is to describe key learning resources at the workplace. Vocational students tend to prefer learning their profession in the workplace rather than at school. In the dual system of vocational training in the Scandinavian countries, students spend part of their four years of training in a workplace and part of it at school. In a Danish questionnaire survey, the majority expressed a preference to learning their profession in a workplace rather than at school (Nielsen, 2003a). Similarly, a Norwegian study found that more than 90% expressed how they preferred the workplace to the school (Mjelde, 2003).