Participatory practices at work: Understanding and appraising healthcare students' learning through workplace experiences

Given the extent of resources directed to healthcare professional education, it is essential to understand how learning to be a healthcare professional arises, so that those education processes can be optimized. In this chapter, one aspect of that learning is given attention: students' learning through healthcare practice, or how students learn in workplaces. Drawing on findings from studies of medical and midwifery students, the chapter outlines how these invitational qualities of physical and social circumstances can be understood in terms of 'affordances' and how learning is dependant in terms of 'engagement' or rather than on how students engage with what is afforded to them. Understanding these practices might help make healthcare students' educational experiences more effective. Workplace-based affordances can comprise the opportunity to engage in practice experiences, but can also be encouraging or inhibiting of access to the kinds of knowledge required for work.