This article provides a meta-analysis of research conducted on distributed leadership from 2002 to 2013. It continues the review of distributed leadership commissioned by the English National College for School Leadership (NCSL) (Distributed Leadership: A Desk Study, Bennett et al., 2003), which identified two gaps in the research during the 1996-2002 period. The review found that the studies had been unable to conceptualise distributed leadership or empirically outline its application. The two research gaps identified by Bennett et al. (2003) constitute the focus of the present review, which attempts to determine whether recent research has been able to fill these gaps. Based on the findings of the present meta-analysis, the authors recommend directions for future studies on distributed leadership.

Changing technologies and competition in the field of information and communication technology (ICT) are challenging the learning of individual workers and teams alongside and through work. Organisations call for employees' autonomy and self-directedness executed by agile operations and low hierarchies, where learning is also increasingly the responsibility of the individuals and teams themselves and occurs in practice without strong control of the organisation. Therefore, the multidimensional concept of selfdirected learning becomes essential in the context of learning at work. In this study, we examine how employees in the ICT sector describe self-directed learning practices in the context of workplace learning. Our data consist of interviews with ICT employees in two organisations, which undergo an applied discourse analysis. The workers talked about self-directed learning as an obliged, creativity-enhanced as well as flexible and fast-paced practice. Self-directed learning was also described as a practice tied to work itself. The paper concludes with a discussion on how these partly conflicting discourses about selfdirected learning practice in work could be considered in practices related to enhancing such learning in the ICT field. Suggestions for future investigations are also presented.

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Purpose -The paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the course of it as perceived by the designers themselves. The aim is also to examine their learning through the various individual and social processes, which take place in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach -The ethnographic approach in this paper, with its use of combined and qualitative data gathering and analytical methods, was selected to approach the aim described above. Observations in two Finnish high-tech companies and interviews with 18 designers were conducted. The observations and interviews were analysed with help of combined methods of analysis, such as phenomenographic, narrative and ethnographic analysis. Findings -The findings in this paper suggest that in redefining designers' work and learning, four central themes are important: design practice is learning in itself; there is a close relationship between formal and practical knowledge in designers' learning at work; previous work experience plays an essential role in learning; and design practices and learning should be seen as shared, situated and contextualized. Practical implications -In the paper general suggestions concerning the guidance of workplace learning are given, and the challenges of guiding and assessing workplace learning in the vocational education context are examined. There is a clear need for more effective integration between education and working life. Originality/value -The paper illustrates that individual and social practice and learning in the workplace should be analysed as interdependent and intertwined.

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In this article we describe various ways in which power is exercised between personnel in a hospital operating theatre. We aim to investigate how the forms of discursive power and workplace learning are intertwined with each other by utilizing an ethnographic approach in the fieldwork. Our data were collected mainly through observations and interviews with surgical residents, physicians and nurses. In the article we describe the delicate ways in which power is exercised and resisted in everyday practices. We argue that there is a close relationship between learning and manifestations of power, together with the various forms of these manifestations and the restrictions that may be placed on them. Additionally, we show how learning takes place in terms of finding, experimenting with and transgressing participatory agency among nurses and residents in the work community.

Hospitals, and surgical operating theatres (OTs) in particular, are environments in which inter-professional teamwork and learning are essential to secure patient safety and effective practice. However, it has been revealed in many studies that inter-professional collaborative work in hospital organisations faces many challenges and constraints. In this study we examine surgical operations as participatory practices from the perspective of inter-professional learning and cooperation. We ask what kinds of shared practices enable learning and collaboration within the surgical operating team. We used an ethnographic approach to data collection including observations and interviews of surgical residents and nursing staff. Observations were conducted in the OTs of one nonacademic hospital in Finland in 2007. The transcripts and episodes were analysed qualitatively. We suggest that inter-professional teamwork can be implemented by collegial support, transgressing professional roles and sustaining an inclusive atmosphere. There is a need to strengthen and develop the practices of interprofessional education, not only in formal educational but, especially, in practical clinical settings.

Taking an approach to learning in the workplace as a phenomenon situated and accumulated in the course of work activities and everyday practice, the purpose of this study was to investigate how workers (development engineers and designers) themselves perceive the role of experience in work and learning. The empirical material consists of interviews with 18 employees in two enterprises in Finland. Narrative analysis of the holistic core stories yielded four thematic categories. The categories indicate that learning from experience plays an essential part in coping and learning along with other people, in understanding holistic work processes and in creating a personal perception of one's work and the learning that takes place in its course. It is suggested that the essence of learning through experience in everyday practice challenges the employers, first, to pay attention to the maintenance of a collaborative working atmosphere, second, to arrange possibilities for the continuous analysis of tasks within working teams and networks and, third to see their experienced fellow workers as mentors in order to harness the know-how embedded in teams and organisations to better benefit all workers. Experience as embedded and situated in practiceLearning at work is fast becoming a primary focus for scholars and practitioners in adult education. Significant numbers of private organizations and public agencies are seeking to improve their performance and competitiveness by adopting more flexible organisational structures and by introducing new ways of working based on information technology and communication. Knowledge-sharing with colleagues and the