This project aims to find out about the nature of changing contemporary learning-work relationships and arrangements. It focuses particularly on how learning and work are, or could be, integrated in a range of different learning-work contexts. The research questions are:

1. What are the range of different modes and contexts by which learning and work are or can be integrated?
2. What are the different influences on the ways in which integration takes place and the extent to which it does?
3. What are learners’, teachers’, and employers’ views about, and experiences of, learning-work integration?
4. What can our learning about integration of learning in different contexts and occupations tell us about the different purposes of learning?
5. What does this mean for how vocational curricula and pedagogy can be constructed today?  (E.g. how businesses and industry work can with educational institutions to create curricula  and pedagogy that is relevant and responsive to each other, and fit for purpose in knowledge society terms).

We are particularly interested in what can be termed the “sub-professions” – people who can be considered knowledge workers but who are not in the obvious or more traditional professions and whose formal learning includes learning below degree-level on the Qualifications Framework. It is particularly important to understand aspects of learning-work integration in knowledge society terms in practice for these occupational groups because they are often among the more vulnerable in the labour market and because they tend to be less involved in the articulation of knowledge society accounts.