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Purpose: Asking whether we should regard the learning organization as a tautology and, thus, of questionable utility, the purpose of this paper is to assess the ur-definition of the concept furnished by Senge. It seeks to demonstrate, particularly to those unaware of a textual-analytic approach, how claims that have academic authority can have poor explanatory power, with attendant risks. Design/methodology/approach: Using a post-structuralist methodology, by illuminating unarticulated assumptions and questioning bald assertions, this paper exposes sub-textual bias and a lack of rigour characterizing the prescription of the learning organization. This legitimizes alternative and more inclusive narratives. Findings: This paper finds the learning organization furthering a managerialist interest under the guise of enabling the achievement of employee's and employees' desires. As such, it is in the tradition of improvement-offering management fashions. In offering the promise of a sort of liberation for employees, it ignores and facilitates systemic dysfunctions, both internal and external. Originality/value: By introducing the suggestion that the learning organization might be usefully interrogated as a paralogism, this paper encourages a critical appreciation of learning, not as an unalloyed good but as a potentially repressive tool. A fortiori, the learning organization.

Bringing about significant change in a mature and successful work-integrated learning (WIL) scheme is quite a difficult thing to accomplish. The University of Surrey, which has a long established WIL scheme based on year-long professional training work placements, has embarked on a programme of research and development aimed at adapting and enhancing its WIL model for learning by adopting a life-wide concept of learning and curriculum. The intention is to develop a new University Award through which an individual's life-wide learning enterprise can be encouraged, supported, valued and publicly recognized. This paper describes the concepts that are intended to inspire change and the initial steps to try to turn a good educational idea into new organizational practices. (Contains 3 figures and 13 notes.)

The idea of metalearning was originally used by John Biggs (1985) to describe the state of 'being aware of and taking control of one's own learning'. This paper explores the concept through collaborative enquiry involving researchers and higher education teachers. An evolved conception is proposed in which metalearning is a subconcept within metacognition and self-regulation. It is perceived as a sort of creativity that is best displayed by proactive self-regulators for whom deliberate self-regulated learning is a way of life. This conception is consistent with the 'awareness' and 'taking control of' elements of Biggs' original definition. The utility of the concept is in helping people to connect thinking about their own learning (metacognition and their wider imagination) to actions and behaviours that engage them in learning strategically.

This article addresses the challenge of developing new conceptual knowledge to help us make better sense of the way that higher education is approaching the "problem" of representing (documenting, certifying and communicating by other means) students' learning for the super-complex world described by Barnett (2000b). The current UK solution to this problem is the higher education progress file which comprises a transcript, a process (personal development planning--PDP) and the products (records and claims for learning that underlie PDP). The progress file has the potential to embody the disciplinary and transdisciplinary modes of knowledge formation and learning defined and characterized by Gibbons "et al." (1994). Our primary focus is on learning for the transdisciplinary world and the way PDP might be used to represent this learning. Descriptions and examples are given of five different curriculum assessment models that are being used to support this type of learning. Different PDP implementation models pose different challenges for assessment. While the paper is written from a UK perspective, the issues raised are germane to any higher education system that seeks to value and reward transdisciplinary knowledge and learning. (Contains 2 figures and 10 notes.)

Educational systems' academic and occupational training may be categorized as compartmentalized (tracked), systematically connected (linked), or fully integrated (unified). Such a typology might be used to model strategic change at higher levels of the UK system of postsecondary training. Successive governments have employed numerous agendas leading to a more unified system. (Contains 68 references.) (MLH)

Examines the strategic move in British higher education to a national quality assurance plan based on academic standards. Discusses the policy proposals of the National Committee of Inquiry in Higher Education and the Quality Assurance Agency. (SK)

Maclagan describes a workshop on ethics in management decision making and suggests that "extreme" case studies are irrelevant to the workplace and should not be used. Jackson argues that the process of decision making and the function of case studies justify the use of such material. (SK)