Elyse Eidman-Aadahl's List: Traditions in adult and workplace learning

infed (the encyclopedia of informal education) was established in 1995 at the YMCA George Williams College, London as an open and not-for-profit site. It contains readable and balanced introductions to major ideas and issues of theory practice in the area of informal education. Excellent starter resource with links for further learning.

This is a good, grounding essay on Donald Schön and reflective practice at infed, the open educational 'encynclopedia'.

This is a good overview of Chris Argyris' work and the ideas that are central to action science.

This overview of Kurt Lewin points to his development of the idea of action research as an approach to learning from experience.

This is a good overview of the concepts of communities of practice at infed, the encyclopedia of informal education.

This brief at infed discusses the distinction between organizational learning and the learning organization, while also looking at and reflecting critically on the contribution so Schon and Senge.

Drawn from an ethnographic study of insurance claims adjusters, this book launches the conceptual framework for the 'communities of practice.'  Dozens of further books put the concept to use, extend, and critique it, but this is the grounding text.

This links to a piece on Engelbart's blog that presents is a short introduction to his framing of an improvement infrastructure.

John Dewey's readable and accessible 1910 book 'How We Think' is available for download at the Internet Archive.

This is a PDF version of the Dewey classic where he theorizes experience and what it means to learn from it. There are some typos, etc. in the PDF version, though still very readable. The book is widely available, though, in libraries and for purchanse.

In this site, Etienne Wenger provides an overview and "quick start guide" for building communities of practice in a workplace or other setting. This site, as well as a new consultancy site being built, illustrate approaches to supporting CoP in practice.

In this book, Mike Rose takes a look at the intelligence and skill of the American worker on the job. This book is a good, readable reminder to balance attention to the working and service classes as well as the creative class. Interesting to read this in relation to Communities of Practice.

The IHI is a unique effort to create a cross-practice learning space for health care practitioners. Visit to learn about the effort and see how they organize their open school. Interesting to visit in along with reading Gawande.

Atul Gawande, surgeon and writer, takes up issues of performance and improvement of medical practice with a focus on the human dimensions of practitioner learning in the complex and mediated institutional settings of professional practice. In this book he focuses strong on the internal dimensions of improved practice. These themes continue in his other books such as The Checklist Manifesto. Gawande's reflection on the traditional medical practice of mortality and morbidity conferences is particularly interesting to this theme of practitioner learning. Recommended.

With a focus on schooling (but could apply to other institutions), Louis Gomez and Tony Bryk argue for a practice-centered improvement infrastructure based on networked communities. Learning/improvement/research processes strongly influenced by IHI. See also the current work of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching on improvement science: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/improvement-research/approach.

This short video with Susan Lytle, co-author of 'Inquiry as Stance: Practitioner Research for the Next Generation,' expresses the link between supporting empowered learning for teachers and valuing empowered learning for youth. The book she refers to provides an excellent introduction to theory and practice of teacher research and inquiry in the United States. The book itself is found at TC Press: http://store.tcpress.com/0807749702.shtml.

In this essay, author Susan Lytle comments on the riskiness of engaged learning among practitioners, in this case teachers, when they take on significant questions that may disrupt hierarchies and established practices in an institution. She also notes that efforts to avoid these risks may end up encapsulating and reducing the learning process to formula. For another take on that, see Bruce Nussbaum's piece on Design Thinking below.

With the motto 'Adult Learning in the Service of Student Achievement," the National School Reform Faculty®  focuses on skillful use of collaborative professional learning communities called Critical Friends Groups®. They represent, therefore, a self-organizing strategy for practitioner learning in education. Dipping into the protocols on this site might make concrete some of the self-organizing tools that communities of practice use..

The IDEO design-thinking processes fits into this line of thinking about organizational activities and processes that aim to enhance learning, creativity, and innovation within organizations with a focus on the involvement of workers/practitioners.OpenIDEO is a site that works to build and share solutions across innovation sites: http://www.openideo.com.

Bruce Nussbaum, an advocate of design thinking makes a point similar to Susan Lytle's about how formulas for process can miss the mark in terms of supporting significant learning. (BTW, the title is a little hyperbolic.)