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The study aims to examine the issues relating to workplace learning at the upper secondary school level. This study is based on the two questions. How should the professional/peer-learning community or PLC be developed and deployed to help strengthen in-service teacher training? The second question is what are the success factors which contribute to the continuity of the PLC within the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) context?

This study, considered as a case study, is based on BMA’s in-service teaching training program which took place from August 2014 until September 2016. Observations and interviews represent the key tasks undertaken for this study. Observation focuses on the PLC adaptation for a teacher network and key activities relating to actual teaching and learning. Interviews with teachers and students help evaluate the suitability of the PLC’s use as a component of in-service teacher training for workplace learning. The application proposal to international funding helps outline how the data from the observation and interviews should be grouped and analyzed.

The PLC’s implementation involves a network of teachers (those teachers who traveled to Finland for pedagogical training), the selection of a common theme (i.e. a polluted waterway reflecting environmental phenomena) allowing various different subject teachers to work together and actual teaching and learning across schools with students through project work. The results of the interviews demonstrate that a PLC is a potential alternative for BMA’s in-service teacher training. The PLC allows teachers to share their experience and knowledge while simultaneously strengthening students’ life skills through the PLC’s applications.

The case study demonstrates the process through which the PLC is successfully deployed. The BMA applied the PLC alongside and in collaboration with the actual student teaching and learning, instead of separating them because the PLC was regarded as training. PLC is dependent on: the willingness of the teachers to work together, their ability to come up with a common topic that they can link their knowledge, enable several subject teachers to work together, an effective planning process to gradually involve the students in problem-based learning and public recognition to demonstrate their success.

The PLC appears to benefit workplace (or school) learning and development for both teachers and students. Additionally, the use of the PLC in this case study points to an alternative for future in-service teacher training at BMA schools. When compared with the existing practice of sitting in a room and listening to an external expert without much interaction, participating teachers feel that the PLC helps them become more motivated, through experience and knowledge sharing.

The contribution to research is the knowledge on the PLC’s implementation for in-service teaching training (as part of workplace learning). Moreover, the PLC should be applied simultaneously with actual teaching and learning through project work. Three notable lessons learned from comparing the effectiveness of the PLC use between BMA and Finnish schools point to the importance of pre- and in-service teacher training with the focus on continuous dialogue and open communication, familiarity with integrated lesson plan and teacher autonomy.

Globally, growth in the number of students from diverse backgrounds entering university requires broader understanding of how persistence and success is enacted at an individual lived level. We know very little about how learners draw on ‘internal capabilities’ when persisting in higher education; these capabilities are not innate but instead develop in interaction with an individual's environment (social, cultural, familial and political) and are informed by existing access to forms of capitals. Exploring how internal capabilities and capitals inform the act of persistence contributes much needed alternative perspectives to the issue of educational participation. This chapter outlines how the work of Amartya Sen and Pierre Bourdieu can be usefully combined and utilised within the higher education setting. In presenting this theoretical fusion, this chapter defines one approach to exploring what learners bring to the higher education field (capitals) and how existing capabilities are actioned to support relative success within this environment. Details of how this approach was applied within one study are provided and conclusions are drawn relating to wider applications of this methodological approach.

The UK housing system has undergone major transformations over the last four decades. It has been privatised and fragmented as a result of the rise and dominance of neoliberal and managerial principles. These changes have led to the expansion of homeownership (in the hands of millions of individuals), the development of a not-for-profit sector divided into a multitude of small housing associations and the decline of local authorities which have lost their powers of building, regulating and sometimes even planning for new homes. At the same time, a counter-trend based on regulation and incorporation has favoured greater centralisation at national level. The housing system is not alone in that respect. The UK welfare state in general has been submitted to the same principles and forces over the same period that have aimed at fragmenting the erstwhile extensive powers of local authorities. Nevertheless, the pendulum appears to be swinging in the other direction: local authorities once side-lined are reclaiming some of their lost powers and are determined to have an active role again. This chapter examines how the housing system has become fragmented in the context of the transformation of the UK welfare state, and how the power of local government has been deliberately fragmented. It also reviews the consequences of this transformation on housing conditions and provision; finally, it raises the question of recent trends and policy choices possibly leading to the defragmentation of the system in the future.

Scholars have been sounding the alarm of novice teacher turnover crises for decades. South Africa is soon to be facing an educational catastrophe because of a shortage of experienced teachers. Globally and in South Africa, novice teacher attrition is high, and teachers entering the classroom often described feeling isolated and unsupported.

This qualitative study was underpinned by an interpretative phenomenology approach. The author reviewed the literature and newly emerged findings of novice teacher mentoring support needs through the theoretical lens of the Ubuntu philosophy “I am because we are” which emphasises the importance of interconnectedness and community. Using semi-structured interviews, this study aimed to explore novice teacher mentoring needs from an Ubuntu perspective.

Novice teachers report feeling overwhelmed with the complexities of teaching in their early careers and express the desire to be formally mentored by a knowledgeable “elder” teacher. This paper argues that a competent mentor who values Ubuntu in their mentoring could offer collaboration, respect, compassion and support to novices that may keep them in the profession. This paper further explores the potential benefit of a prescribed Ubuntu-orientated mentoring programme to formalise mentoring for novices. In addition, it explores the school micro-community from the Ubuntu principles to support novices.

While there is a plethora of studies about mentoring novice teachers, literature from an Africanised Ubuntu perspective is scarce. Perhaps the time has come to find African solutions to our African problems.

Using sex education at Shepparton South Technical School (South Tech) as a prism, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the Victorian Technical Schools Division policies and practices during the 1970-1980s.

The paper draws on a documented history of South Tech by using a blended methodology consisting of interviews, media-centred debates and a range of documentary sources.

The Technical Director, Edward “Ted” Jackson's 1970 policy empowered principals as educational leaders, in partnership with their community, to develop courses responding to student needs. This paper analyses a controversy concerning sex education in 1980 that brought such courses under the scrutiny of the Victorian public.

Identifying the policies and practices of a sex education course that proved successful in the past enhances the development of contemporary courses.

Victoria's former secondary technical schools provide an important insight into current social and vocational problems.

School sex education has the potential to evoke a range of personal and political reactions. While it is usually agreed that sexuality should be ‘done’ in school, few agree on the best way of ‘doing’ it. This article provides a personal account of the development of sex education at Shepparton South Technical School, Victoria, Australia from 1973‐1985. It is supported by interviews with the people involved in those events and archival materials, including media reports. It also documents the efforts of extreme right activists to discredit and stop programmes, and the State Liberal government’s attempt to formulate a policy on sex education. First I provide a general background to technical schools in Victoria in the 1970s followed by a discussion of Shepparton South Technical School specifically. I then discuss the development of the sex education (social biology) programme, the pivotal role of the Social Biology resource Centre, and the networks involved. I also describe the attacks on the programme in the late 1970s, and their origins and impact. I conclude with a discussion of the outcomes of this intense public scrutiny, and the demise of social biology and the secondary technical schools, the ‘techs’ in the 1980s.