Raymond Smith

This book explores and progresses the concept of negotiation as a means of describing and explaining individuals’ learning in work. It challenges the undertheorised and generic use of the concept in contemporary work-learning research where the concept of negotiation is most often deployed as a taken for granted synonym for interaction, co-participation and collaboration and, hence, used to unproblematically account for workers’ learning as engagement in social activity. Through a focus on workers’ personal practice and based on extensive longitudinal empirical research, the book advances a conceptual framework, The Three Dimensions of Negotiation, to propose a more rigorous and work-learning specific understanding of the concept of negotiation. This framework enables workers’ personal work practices and their contributions to the personal, organisational and occupational changes that evidence learning to be viewed as negotiations enacted and managed, within contexts that are in turn sets of premediate and concurrent negotiations that frame the transformations on and from which on-going negotiations of learning and practice ensue. The book does not seek to supplant understandings of the rich and valuable concept of negotiation. Rather, it seeks to develop and promote a more explicit use of the concept as a socio-personal learning concept at the same time as it opens alternative perspectives on its deployment as a metaphor for individual’s learning in work.

This book explores and progresses the concept of negotiation as a means of describing and explaining individuals’ learning in work. It challenges the undertheorised and generic use of the concept in contemporary work-learning research where the concept of negotiation is most often deployed as a taken for granted synonym for interaction, co-participation and collaboration and, hence, used to unproblematically account for workers’ learning as engagement in social activity. Through a focus on workers’ personal practice and based on extensive longitudinal empirical research, the book advances a conceptual framework, The Three Dimensions of Negotiation, to propose a more rigorous and work-learning specific understanding of the concept of negotiation. This framework enables workers’ personal work practices and their contributions to the personal, organisational and occupational changes that evidence learning to be viewed as negotiations enacted and managed, within contexts that are in turn sets of premediate and concurrent negotiations that frame the transformations on and from which on-going negotiations of learning and practice ensue. The book does not seek to supplant understandings of the rich and valuable concept of negotiation. Rather, it seeks to develop and promote a more explicit use of the concept as a socio-personal learning concept at the same time as it opens alternative perspectives on its deployment as a metaphor for individual’s learning in work.

In his first volume, "Bring It Out: It's In You" (30 Affirmations for African American Boys Growing up without Their Fathers), Raymond Smith addresses the problem and answers the call to create a difference in the lives of black boys, who are forced to grow up without the love and guardianship of their fathers. Expressed through spoken word, short stories and weekly challenges, he takes the reader on a journey of self-discovery. Every word is crafted with love and kindness, revealing and unlocking their true potential on every page.

Old photographs allow us to relive the past a little and this excellent collection of more than 200 photographs of Blackburn will bring back memories for many. The author has chosen the earliest images of the town for the book from his own extensive collection of old picture postcards and used a selection of press photographs borrowed from the photo-archives of Wally and Howard Talbot to provide some very evocative images of Blackburn in the 1950s and '60s. Through these pages the reader has the opportunity to see again the old Blackburn, its industry, schools, churches, theatres and people, at work and play, and, perhaps most poignantly of all, old streets and buildings that were lost in the great demolition days of the 1960s. This is a timely volume that will appeal to all Blackburnians, young and old.

Libicki et al. argue that information collection requirements and systems for counterinsurgency are important because the community that conducts counterinsurgency crosses national and institutional boundaries and because the indigenous population plays a large role in determining the outcome of an insurgency. They then demonstrate what this focus implies for counterinsurgency requirements, collection, networking, and systems design.