Background

The practice of recognising learning through work (RLTW) has developed in the UK over many decades and takes many forms. For some, it encompasses the full range of vocationally-related education, starting with gaining a qualification through apprenticeships, specific job-related training leading to national vocational qualifications up to masters degree level, and beyond. For others it might be recognition from a professional body. Yet again, it might be undergraduate study into a profession, culminating in taught or research-based study at Masters level. Many qualifications abound, sometimes for practice-based learning as 'time served' in an occupation, sometimes specific employer-badged rewards for industry, maybe as part of a national qualification framework, possibly not!

Credit-based accreditation of work based learning can offer many opportunities for progression within work and in parallel university study. The RLTW Network Group seeks to explore and share practice across this wide field, usually through the development of university-recognised awards. Research about the progress of learners-in-work, and learning-through-work, Foundation degrees, employer-development, professional practice: all of this and more has been discussed in this group in the past three or four years.