Lorna Unwin
Biographic Data
| ID | 4139220 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lorna Unwin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lorna |
| FAMILY NAME | Unwin |
| SIGNATURE | UNWIN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leicester |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4755-7004 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 85 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Creating thresholds for success and ‘underachievement’: A critical policy history of public examinations in England
We are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also wish to thank Suzie Clement for her assistance with the design of the figures in this paper. This work was supported by the Nuffield Foundation, an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation
Expertise as a ‘capacity for action’: Reframing vocational knowledge from the perspective of work
Occupational expertise has always been constituted and afforded recognition and status in work contexts, however, these contexts are becoming increasingly interconnected and interrelated, underpinned by, ‘intangible assets’. To explore this complex process and its implications for vocational education and training (VET), this article uses the concept of expertise as a ‘capacity for action’ and its emphasis on the communicative dimension of expert…
The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training
The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an in-depth guide to the theories, practices, and policies of vocational education and training (VET). With contributions from a panel of leading international scholars, the Handbook contains 27 authoritative essays from a wide range of disciplines. The contributors present an integrated analysis of the complex and dynamic field of VET. \n \nDrawing on the most recent research, thinki…
Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training
Working and learning in times of uncertainty
There is a great deal of stimulating material and discussion in this edited collection for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the fields of adult education, vocational education and tra
A new start? Negotiations of age and chrononormativity by older apprentices in England
The decision to start a new career might seem an unusual one to make in later life. However, England has seen a steady rise in numbers of workers undertaking an apprenticeship in their fifties and sixties, through a government-funded policy initiative opening up training to adults at all stages of the lifecourse. At the same time, in most Western contexts, the amalgamation of ‘older’ and ‘apprentice’ presents a challenge to normative understandin…
Continuity and Change in English Further Education: A Century of Voluntarism and Permissive Adaptability
This paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges' need to respond to student demand in a continued climate of voluntarism and lack of policy commitment to the education of young peo…
Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives
Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives
1. Introduction: Communities of Practice - A Contested Concept in Flux? Jason Hughes, Nick Jewson and Lorna Unwin 2. Critiquing Theories of Learning and Communities of Practice Alison Fuller 3. Lost in Translation: Communities of Practice: The Journey from Academic Model to Practitioner Tool Jason Hughes 4. From Communities of Practice to Mycorrhizae Yrjoe Engestroem 5. Including the Missing Subject: Placing the Personal Within the Community Step…
Apprenticeships and Regeneration: The Civic Struggle to Achieve Social and Economic Goals
Apprenticeship has always played both a social and economic role. Today, it forms part of the regeneration strategies of cities in the United Kingdom. This involves the creation and management of complex institutional relationships across the public and private domains of the civic landscape. This paper argues that it is through closely observed analysis of these meso-level developments (in contrast to studies of national systems) that we can rev…
Mind the gap: Personal and collective identities at work
This paper explores three different ways in which workers experience and react to managerial attempts to mould and shape their identities. It provides illustrations of three theoretically-derived identity modalities: ‘dramaturgical selves’; ‘conformist selves’; and ‘resistant selves’. The paper shows how the relationship between personal and collective identities is at the heart of these modalities, and how they are formed as a reaction to manage…
Creating and using knowledge: An analysis of the differentiated nature of workplace learning environments
This paper argues that contemporary workplaces give rise to many different forms of knowledge creation and use, and, as a consequence to different forms of learning and pedagogical approaches. Some of these are utilised to the benefit of the organisation and employees (though not, necessarily, in a reciprocal manner), but others are buried within everyday workplace activity. The discussion builds on earlier work where it was argued that organisat…
Grooving to the same tunes: Learning, training and productive systems in the aerobics studio
Closing the productivity gap with other nations has become a mantra of public policy in the UK. Promoting participation in learning and training is seen as the principal means of narrowing the gap. While tracking episodes of training is relatively easy, it is not clear what is learnt, by whom and why. This article examines these questions among a specific occupational group - exercise to music instructors - whose numbers have grown significantly …
Safety in stereotypes? The impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of their post‐compulsory education and labour market opportunities
This article examines the impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of the educational and labour market opportunities available to them after they complete their compulsory schooling in England. Its findings are based on a study of the views of girls and boys about the government‐supported ‘Apprenticeships’ programme, which, because it reflects labour market conditions, is highly gendered and also segregated by ethnicity. The res…
Older and wiser: Workplace learning from the perspective of experienced employees
This paper explores the (changing) role of older, experienced employees in the workplace in terms of their own needs and opportunities for learning and in the context of changing organizational expectations. It draws on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning and the notion of 'learning as participation' as starting points for examining the types of learning opportunities experienced by older workers. The discussion relates the natur…
Learning as peripheral participation in communities of practice: A reassessment of key concepts in workplace learning
This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of Lave and Wenger's concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ as a means of understanding workplace learning. It draws on recent ESRC‐funded research by the authors in contemporary workplace settings in the UK (manufacturing industry and secondary schools) to establish the extent to which Lave and Wenger's theories can adequately illuminate the nature and process of learning at work. The …
The significance of individual biography in workplace learning
In this paper we address a perceived gap in the workplace learning literature, for there is very little writing which successfully integrates the issues of individual learners into predominantly social theories of learning. The paper draws upon data from four linked research projects to address this problem. Following an analysis of the theoretical problems and a possible solution, the paper identifies and discussed four overlapping individual di…
Learning as Apprentices in the Contemporary UK Workplace: Creating and managing expansive and restrictive participation
Situated learning theory provides a rich conceptual framework for analysing the processes by which apprentices become (full) participants in a community of practice. This article uses case study evidence from the UK's Modern Apprenticeship programme to show how this framework can be developed by identifying features of expansive and restrictive participation which help distinguish between different approaches to apprenticeship. We suggest that th…
Vocational Education, Training and Employment for Young People in England and Wales: Journeying through a gendered landscape
This paper explores the gendered landscape of vocational education and training in England and Wales. At the start of the 21st century, young people in England and Wales can still choose between leaving school at the age of 16 or remaining in full-time education. Having made that key decision, however, they then face a further bewildering set of choices, for each route then sub-divides into a number of pathways. For some young explorers, the jour…
Credentialism, national targets, and the learning society: Perspectives on educational attainment in the UK steel industry
The United Kingdom has devised a set of National Learning Targets to be achieved by 2002. Revised from an earlier set of National Targets for Education and Training (NTETs), the latest ones embrace 11-21-year-olds, adults and employers and promote a credentialist approach to both economic and social development. Their primary purpose, according to the National Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets (NACETT) is to make the country mor…
Making better sense of post‐16 destinations: A case study of an English shire county
This paper summarizes and reports on a study of the patterns of destinations followed by eligible leavers at the end of year 11 for 59 of the 61 secondary schools in the English Midlands county of Derbyshire. The study examines the data for more than 10 000 eligible leavers in 1991 and 1992 by use of multiple regression analysis, examining patterns of association between three main destination categories (staying on, becoming economically active,…
Learning as peripheral participation in communities of practice: A reassessment of key concepts in workplace learning
This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of Lave and Wenger's concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ as a means of understanding workplace learning. It draws on recent ESRC‐funded research by the authors in contemporary workplace settings in the UK (manufacturing industry and secondary schools) to establish the extent to which Lave and Wenger's theories can adequately illuminate the nature and process of learning at work. The …
Grooving to the same tunes: Learning, training and productive systems in the aerobics studio
Closing the productivity gap with other nations has become a mantra of public policy in the UK. Promoting participation in learning and training is seen as the principal means of narrowing the gap. While tracking episodes of training is relatively easy, it is not clear what is learnt, by whom and why. This article examines these questions among a specific occupational group - exercise to music instructors - whose numbers have grown significantly …
The significance of individual biography in workplace learning
In this paper we address a perceived gap in the workplace learning literature, for there is very little writing which successfully integrates the issues of individual learners into predominantly social theories of learning. The paper draws upon data from four linked research projects to address this problem. Following an analysis of the theoretical problems and a possible solution, the paper identifies and discussed four overlapping individual di…
Older and wiser: Workplace learning from the perspective of experienced employees
This paper explores the (changing) role of older, experienced employees in the workplace in terms of their own needs and opportunities for learning and in the context of changing organizational expectations. It draws on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning and the notion of 'learning as participation' as starting points for examining the types of learning opportunities experienced by older workers. The discussion relates the natur…
Safety in stereotypes? The impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of their post‐compulsory education and labour market opportunities
This article examines the impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of the educational and labour market opportunities available to them after they complete their compulsory schooling in England. Its findings are based on a study of the views of girls and boys about the government‐supported ‘Apprenticeships’ programme, which, because it reflects labour market conditions, is highly gendered and also segregated by ethnicity. The res…
A new start? Negotiations of age and chrononormativity by older apprentices in England
The decision to start a new career might seem an unusual one to make in later life. However, England has seen a steady rise in numbers of workers undertaking an apprenticeship in their fifties and sixties, through a government-funded policy initiative opening up training to adults at all stages of the lifecourse. At the same time, in most Western contexts, the amalgamation of ‘older’ and ‘apprentice’ presents a challenge to normative understandin…
Continuity and Change in English Further Education: A Century of Voluntarism and Permissive Adaptability
This paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges' need to respond to student demand in a continued climate of voluntarism and lack of policy commitment to the education of young peo…
Mind the gap: Personal and collective identities at work
This paper explores three different ways in which workers experience and react to managerial attempts to mould and shape their identities. It provides illustrations of three theoretically-derived identity modalities: ‘dramaturgical selves’; ‘conformist selves’; and ‘resistant selves’. The paper shows how the relationship between personal and collective identities is at the heart of these modalities, and how they are formed as a reaction to manage…
Creating and using knowledge: An analysis of the differentiated nature of workplace learning environments
This paper argues that contemporary workplaces give rise to many different forms of knowledge creation and use, and, as a consequence to different forms of learning and pedagogical approaches. Some of these are utilised to the benefit of the organisation and employees (though not, necessarily, in a reciprocal manner), but others are buried within everyday workplace activity. The discussion builds on earlier work where it was argued that organisat…
Making better sense of post‐16 destinations: A case study of an English shire county
This paper summarizes and reports on a study of the patterns of destinations followed by eligible leavers at the end of year 11 for 59 of the 61 secondary schools in the English Midlands county of Derbyshire. The study examines the data for more than 10 000 eligible leavers in 1991 and 1992 by use of multiple regression analysis, examining patterns of association between three main destination categories (staying on, becoming economically active,…
Creating thresholds for success and ‘underachievement’: A critical policy history of public examinations in England
We are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also wish to thank Suzie Clement for her assistance with the design of the figures in this paper. This work was supported by the Nuffield Foundation, an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation
Apprenticeships and Regeneration: The Civic Struggle to Achieve Social and Economic Goals
Apprenticeship has always played both a social and economic role. Today, it forms part of the regeneration strategies of cities in the United Kingdom. This involves the creation and management of complex institutional relationships across the public and private domains of the civic landscape. This paper argues that it is through closely observed analysis of these meso-level developments (in contrast to studies of national systems) that we can rev…
Credentialism, national targets, and the learning society: Perspectives on educational attainment in the UK steel industry
The United Kingdom has devised a set of National Learning Targets to be achieved by 2002. Revised from an earlier set of National Targets for Education and Training (NTETs), the latest ones embrace 11-21-year-olds, adults and employers and promote a credentialist approach to both economic and social development. Their primary purpose, according to the National Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets (NACETT) is to make the country mor…
Making better sense of post‐16 destinations: A case study of an English shire county
This paper summarizes and reports on a study of the patterns of destinations followed by eligible leavers at the end of year 11 for 59 of the 61 secondary schools in the English Midlands county of Derbyshire. The study examines the data for more than 10 000 eligible leavers in 1991 and 1992 by use of multiple regression analysis, examining patterns of association between three main destination categories (staying on, becoming economically active,…
Credentialism, national targets, and the learning society: Perspectives on educational attainment in the UK steel industry
The United Kingdom has devised a set of National Learning Targets to be achieved by 2002. Revised from an earlier set of National Targets for Education and Training (NTETs), the latest ones embrace 11-21-year-olds, adults and employers and promote a credentialist approach to both economic and social development. Their primary purpose, according to the National Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets (NACETT) is to make the country mor…
Vocational Education, Training and Employment for Young People in England and Wales: Journeying through a gendered landscape
This paper explores the gendered landscape of vocational education and training in England and Wales. At the start of the 21st century, young people in England and Wales can still choose between leaving school at the age of 16 or remaining in full-time education. Having made that key decision, however, they then face a further bewildering set of choices, for each route then sub-divides into a number of pathways. For some young explorers, the jour…
Learning as Apprentices in the Contemporary UK Workplace: Creating and managing expansive and restrictive participation
Situated learning theory provides a rich conceptual framework for analysing the processes by which apprentices become (full) participants in a community of practice. This article uses case study evidence from the UK's Modern Apprenticeship programme to show how this framework can be developed by identifying features of expansive and restrictive participation which help distinguish between different approaches to apprenticeship. We suggest that th…
The significance of individual biography in workplace learning
In this paper we address a perceived gap in the workplace learning literature, for there is very little writing which successfully integrates the issues of individual learners into predominantly social theories of learning. The paper draws upon data from four linked research projects to address this problem. Following an analysis of the theoretical problems and a possible solution, the paper identifies and discussed four overlapping individual di…
Older and wiser: Workplace learning from the perspective of experienced employees
This paper explores the (changing) role of older, experienced employees in the workplace in terms of their own needs and opportunities for learning and in the context of changing organizational expectations. It draws on Lave and Wenger's (1991) theory of situated learning and the notion of 'learning as participation' as starting points for examining the types of learning opportunities experienced by older workers. The discussion relates the natur…
Learning as peripheral participation in communities of practice: A reassessment of key concepts in workplace learning
This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of Lave and Wenger's concept of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ as a means of understanding workplace learning. It draws on recent ESRC‐funded research by the authors in contemporary workplace settings in the UK (manufacturing industry and secondary schools) to establish the extent to which Lave and Wenger's theories can adequately illuminate the nature and process of learning at work. The …
Safety in stereotypes? The impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of their post‐compulsory education and labour market opportunities
This article examines the impact of gender and ‘race’ on young people's perceptions of the educational and labour market opportunities available to them after they complete their compulsory schooling in England. Its findings are based on a study of the views of girls and boys about the government‐supported ‘Apprenticeships’ programme, which, because it reflects labour market conditions, is highly gendered and also segregated by ethnicity. The res…
Creating and using knowledge: An analysis of the differentiated nature of workplace learning environments
This paper argues that contemporary workplaces give rise to many different forms of knowledge creation and use, and, as a consequence to different forms of learning and pedagogical approaches. Some of these are utilised to the benefit of the organisation and employees (though not, necessarily, in a reciprocal manner), but others are buried within everyday workplace activity. The discussion builds on earlier work where it was argued that organisat…
Grooving to the same tunes: Learning, training and productive systems in the aerobics studio
Closing the productivity gap with other nations has become a mantra of public policy in the UK. Promoting participation in learning and training is seen as the principal means of narrowing the gap. While tracking episodes of training is relatively easy, it is not clear what is learnt, by whom and why. This article examines these questions among a specific occupational group - exercise to music instructors - whose numbers have grown significantly …
Mind the gap: Personal and collective identities at work
This paper explores three different ways in which workers experience and react to managerial attempts to mould and shape their identities. It provides illustrations of three theoretically-derived identity modalities: ‘dramaturgical selves’; ‘conformist selves’; and ‘resistant selves’. The paper shows how the relationship between personal and collective identities is at the heart of these modalities, and how they are formed as a reaction to manage…
Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives
Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives
1. Introduction: Communities of Practice - A Contested Concept in Flux? Jason Hughes, Nick Jewson and Lorna Unwin 2. Critiquing Theories of Learning and Communities of Practice Alison Fuller 3. Lost in Translation: Communities of Practice: The Journey from Academic Model to Practitioner Tool Jason Hughes 4. From Communities of Practice to Mycorrhizae Yrjoe Engestroem 5. Including the Missing Subject: Placing the Personal Within the Community Step…
Apprenticeships and Regeneration: The Civic Struggle to Achieve Social and Economic Goals
Apprenticeship has always played both a social and economic role. Today, it forms part of the regeneration strategies of cities in the United Kingdom. This involves the creation and management of complex institutional relationships across the public and private domains of the civic landscape. This paper argues that it is through closely observed analysis of these meso-level developments (in contrast to studies of national systems) that we can rev…
Continuity and Change in English Further Education: A Century of Voluntarism and Permissive Adaptability
This paper argues that the evolution of further education colleges in England is marked by both continuities and change, and provides evidence to show that they retain many of the characteristics and the underlying rationale present at the turn of the twentieth century. A defining characteristic remains the colleges' need to respond to student demand in a continued climate of voluntarism and lack of policy commitment to the education of young peo…
Working and learning in times of uncertainty
There is a great deal of stimulating material and discussion in this edited collection for researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the fields of adult education, vocational education and tra
A new start? Negotiations of age and chrononormativity by older apprentices in England
The decision to start a new career might seem an unusual one to make in later life. However, England has seen a steady rise in numbers of workers undertaking an apprenticeship in their fifties and sixties, through a government-funded policy initiative opening up training to adults at all stages of the lifecourse. At the same time, in most Western contexts, the amalgamation of ‘older’ and ‘apprentice’ presents a challenge to normative understandin…
The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training
The Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training offers an in-depth guide to the theories, practices, and policies of vocational education and training (VET). With contributions from a panel of leading international scholars, the Handbook contains 27 authoritative essays from a wide range of disciplines. The contributors present an integrated analysis of the complex and dynamic field of VET. \n \nDrawing on the most recent research, thinki…
Wiley Handbook of Vocational Education and Training
Expertise as a ‘capacity for action’: Reframing vocational knowledge from the perspective of work
Occupational expertise has always been constituted and afforded recognition and status in work contexts, however, these contexts are becoming increasingly interconnected and interrelated, underpinned by, ‘intangible assets’. To explore this complex process and its implications for vocational education and training (VET), this article uses the concept of expertise as a ‘capacity for action’ and its emphasis on the communicative dimension of expert…
Creating thresholds for success and ‘underachievement’: A critical policy history of public examinations in England
We are grateful to anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We also wish to thank Suzie Clement for her assistance with the design of the figures in this paper. This work was supported by the Nuffield Foundation, an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation
Sociology (17 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Education Systems and Policy (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Innovative Education and Learning Practices (8 works) · Higher Education Learning Practices (7 works) · Economics (6 works) · Geography (6 works)