Abstracts - Earli

development practices (see also Kember, 2000, Knapper, 2003, Prebble et al., 2004; Atkins, 2006)and reflect complementary research directions (Kreber, 2006; Naidoo, 2006). They explore theways in which workplace environments, particularly when represented as activity systems, favourcertain formations and consider implications for the professional development that is necessary forenhanced teaching and learning quality. There are significant implications here for the organisationand functioning of universities, colleges and regulatory agencies.Formal and non-formal professional learning: three studies of university teachersPeter Knight , The Open University, United KingdomThis paper reports on quantitative and qualitative investigations, involving nearly 3000 UK highereducation teachers between 2004 and 2006. The three main studies were: 1. Part-time teachers inthe Open University: 2401 respondents plus 229 respondents from full-time staff teaching andotherwise supporting student learning. 2. Professionals into teaching: 32 informants from nursing& allied professions and from construction & allied professions. 3. The effects of postgraduatecertificates study (the EPGC study): 238 informants from 12 UK universities. Consistent withresearch into formation in other professions, data support a view of professional formation as anon-formal social processes centred on activity in the workplace. They describe formationprocesses, practices, affordances, barriers, motivation and frustrations. The EPGC studyilluminates the place of formal learning processes. Two main conclusions are: 1. There are thingshere that can be supported by formal educational provision but equally the quality of theworkplace environment as a whole is central to the quality of professional learning. From aconcern with the design of courses, this view of formation moves to a concern for job andworkplace design. 2. While professional knowledge may, to some degree, be located in individualsit is also located in teams and systems – it is distributed and not concentrated. Nor is it ‘a "thing",or a system, but an ephemeral, active process of relating … [and] we go beyond managingknowledge as a thing to also managing knowledge as a flow. To do this we will need to focusmore on context and narrative, than on content’. (Snowden, 2002: 3, 5). This challenges taken-forgrantedassumptions and implies radical re-vision of arrangements for professional formation thatare based on the taken-for-granted views, which are no longer tenable – or no longer tenablewithout robust, research-informed defence.Learning in the academic workplace: newcomers and assessment practiceJeff Jawitz, University of Cape Town, South AfricaThe conventional view that academics learn through informal learning in the workplace impliesthat such learning happens by chance and is unstructured. In this paper I report on a study into hownew academics learn to judge student performance in complex assessment tasks. The study wasconducted at a research intensive historically white university in South Africa. Three case studieswere undertaken in academic departments that reflect varying relationships between teaching,research and the profession. Using the work of Bourdieu and Lave and Wenger, I analysed howassessment practice formed part of the communities of practice that constituted the fieldsassociated with these academic disciplines. Drawing on interviews with academics across all threedepartments, I explored how new academics engaged with the assessment practices in theirdepartments and developed their confidence to judge student performance of complex assessmenttasks. In each of the case studies, it was possible to identify a paradigmatic learning trajectory,which, in some cases more than others, provided a structured "learning curriculum" (Wenger,1998) for new academic staff. Learning to judge student performance happened throughparticipation in a series of assessment practices along this trajectory. The path of the learning– 788 –