Part II - How professionals learn - the practice! What the empirical research found

This study takes a look at how professionals actually learn, once they are in practice. It reports on the range of experiences and events that practitioners had found particularly formative in helping them become fully competent professionals; this point often not having been reached until long after their formal professional training had ended. An attempt is made to relate the formative experiences reported to particular theoretical approaches to learning. The experiences are classified into a number of general kinds of "learning mechanism" and these are placed within a "taxonomy of informal professional learning methods." The results of the research should be of use both to professional developers and to individual professionals. They should assist developers in their planning of placements or post-formal training. They should help individual professionals to maximise their professional learning, by seeking out particular kinds of experience and making the most of those that come their way.