Attention to the beliefs of teachers and teacher candidates should be a focus of educational research and can inform educational practice in ways that prevailing research agendas have not and cannot. The difficulty in studying teachers’ beliefs has been caused by definitional problems, poor conceptualizations, and differing understandings of beliefs and belief structures. This article examines the meaning prominent researchers give to beliefs and how this meaning differs from that of knowledge, provides a definition of belief consistent with the best work in this area, explores the nature of belief structures as outlined by key researchers, and offers a synthesis of findings about the nature of beliefs. The article argues that teachers’ beliefs can and should become an important focus of educational inquiry but that this will require clear conceptualizations, careful examination of key assumptions, consistent understandings and adherence to precise meanings, and proper assessment and investigation of spec...

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Teachers’ Beliefs and Educational Research: Cleaning Up a Messy Construct:

Part I. Experimental Studies: 2. Experiment in psychology 3. Experiments on perceiving III Experiments on imaging 4-8. Experiments on remembering: (a) The method of description (b) The method of repeated reproduction (c) The method of picture writing (d) The method of serial reproduction (e) The method of serial reproduction picture material 9. Perceiving, recognizing, remembering 10. A theory of remembering 11. Images and their functions 12. Meaning Part II. Remembering as a Study in Social Psychology: 13. Social psychology 14. Social psychology and the matter of recall 15. Social psychology and the manner of recall 16. Conventionalism 17. The notion of a collective unconscious 18. The basis of social recall 19. A summary and some conclusions.

Remembering. A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology, Cambridge (University Press) 1964.

Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness

This paper focuses mainly on theoretical frameworks for understanding and investigating informal learning in the workplace, which have been developed through a series of large‐ and small‐scale projects. The main conclusions are included but readers are referred to other publications for more detailed accounts of individual projects. Two types of framework are discussed. The first group seeks to deconstruct the ‘key concepts’ of informal learning, learning from experience, tacit knowledge, transfer of learning and> intuitive practice to disclose the range of different phenomena that are embraced by these popular terms. The second group comprises frameworks for addressing the three central questions that pervaded the research programme: what is being learned, how is it being learned and what are the factors that influence the level and directions of the learning effort?

Informal learning in the workplace

Background. This paper explores the conceptual and methodological problems arising from several empirical investigations of professional education and learning in the workplace. Aims. 1. To clarify the multiple meanings accorded to terms such as  non-formal learning,  implicit learning and  tacit knowledge, their theoretical assumptions and the range of phenomena to which they refer. 2. To discuss their implications for professional practice. Method. A largely theoretical analysis of issues and phenomena arising from empirical investigations. Analysis. The author's typology of non-formal learning distinguishes between implicit learning, reactive on-the-spot learning and deliberative learning. The significance of the last is commonly overemphasised. The problematic nature of tacit knowledge is discussed with respect to both detecting it and representing it. Three types of tacit knowledge are discussed: tacit understanding of people and situations, routinised actions and the tacit rules that underpin intuitive decision-making. They come together when professional performance involves sequences of routinised action punctuated by rapid intuitive decisions based on tacit understanding of the situation. Four types of process are involved-reading the situation, making decisions, overt activity and metacognition-and three modes of cognition-intuitive, analytic and deliberative. The balance between these modes depends on time, experience and complexity. Where rapid action dominates, periods of deliberation are needed to maintain critical control. Finally the role of both formal and informal social knowledge is discussed; and it is argued that situated learning often leads not to local conformity but to greater individual variation as people's careers take them through a series of different contexts. This abstract necessarily simplifies a more complex analysis in the paper itself. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000709900158001/abstract)

Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work

This paper draws primarily on an ESRC‐TLRP longitudinal study of early career professional learning, which focused on the first three years of employment of newly qualified nurses, graduate engineers seeking chartered status and trainee chartered accountants. The first section introduces the theoretical and methodological base provided by previous projects, then proceeds to explore an epistemology of practice, using three dimensions: (1) four key elements of practice—situational assessment, decision‐making, actions and meta‐cognitive monitoring; (2) the mode of cognition and its dependence on time and prior learning; and (3) the context, its influence on mode of cognition and its affordances for learning. The central section presents the project’s findings on modes of learning through a new framework, which divides learning processes according to whether the object is perceived to be learning or working, then adds a list of shorter learning activities used within both types of process, including various t...

Learning from other people in the workplace

The first half of this chapter analyses the different knowledge cultures of higher education and the workplace, contrasting the kinds of knowledge that are valued and the manner in which they are acquired and used. In particular, performance in the workplace typically involves the integration of several different forms of knowledge and skill, under conditions that allow little time for the analytical/deliberative approach favoured in higher education. One consequence is greater reliance on tacit knowledge, including knowledge of how more formal, explicit knowledge is used in various practice settings. The second half focuses on transfer as a learning process, which requires both understanding and positive commitment from individual learners, formal education, employers and local workplace managers. Transfer is conceptualised in terms of five stages, whose distinctive characteristics and learning challenges are discussed in some detail. The neglect of transfer is attributed both to the cultural gap between formal education and the workplace and profound ignorance of the nature and amount of the learning involved.

Transfer of knowledge between education and workplace settings

An analysis of everyday use of the term ‘competence' is followed by a literature review. Some authors treat competence as a socially situated concept—the ability to perform tasks and roles to the expected standard—leaving its precise meaning to be negotiated by stakeholders in a macro-or micro-political context. Others treat competence as individually situated, a personal capability or characteristic. This latter concept is labelled ‘capability' and its vital relationship with socially-defined Competence is analysed. The importance for practice of representations of competence and for professional preparation of models of capability is discussed.

Michael Eraut

Papers

Informal learning in the workplace

Non-formal learning and tacit knowledge in professional work

Learning from other people in the workplace

Transfer of knowledge between education and workplace settings

Concepts of competence