Stephen Billett Books

Focusing on the evolving nature of work, this book explores how contemporary demands reshape both workers and their skills. It analyzes the interplay between changing work requirements and individual engagement through diverse disciplinary lenses, including psychology, sociology, and anthropology. The research highlights the implications for vocational education and lifelong learning, stemming from a long-term project initiated in the 1990s. Supported by various funding sources and contributions from workplaces, it aims to deepen understanding of work as both a social institution and a personal vocation.

Mimetic learning is explored as a vital aspect of acquiring occupational skills, emphasizing that much of this learning occurs independently of direct guidance. The text highlights the importance of understanding individual learning processes, influenced by personal experiences and insights from anthropology, cognitive science, and developmental studies. It critiques traditional views on workplace learning, advocating for a broader perspective that acknowledges the unique contributions of individuals, both in guided and unguided contexts.

Focusing on the integration of practice-based experiences in higher education, this book explores how such experiences enhance student learning and employability. It discusses the growing demand for graduates to transition smoothly into their professions, reflecting global educational trends. Key goals include identifying the educational value of these experiences, proposing effective integration strategies, and highlighting successful pedagogic practices. Additionally, it emphasizes the development of students' personal epistemologies to enhance their learning within practical settings and their academic programs.

"Developing Learning Professionals: Integrating Experiences in University and Practice Settings" examines how blending classroom learning with practical experience can create skilled graduates. Based on research from Australia, it explores pedagogical practices, institutional partnerships, and various perspectives on work-related learning in higher education.

This volume considers, rethinks and reorganizes how support for learning across working life can be best conceptualized, organized and enacted. It considers educational and learning support processes that include approaches that fit well within working lives and workplaces, and support work and learning as a co-occurrence. These are the key focuses for individual and collective contributions to this edited volume, which provide discussions about what constitutes learning across working lives and how this differs from lifelong learning and lifelong education. Accounts of learning across the working lives of social workers, doctors working in hospitals and in general practice, teaching, aviation, nursing, mining, aged care and more. These accounts advance a range of ways in which workers’ learning across working lives is being supported and how this support is also linked to other changes, such as to the occupational practice in which they engage.