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Purpose – This paper aims to problematise practice and contribute to new understandings of professional and workplace learning. Practice is a concept which has been largely taken for granted and under-theorised in workplace learning and education research. Practice has usually been co-located with classifiers, such as legal practice, vocational practice, teaching practice and yoga practice, with the theoretical emphasis on the domain – legal, teaching and learning. Design/methodology/approach – This is a theory-driven paper which posits a framework of six prominent threads for theorizing practice. It uses examples of empirical research to illustrate each thread. Findings – A framework of six prominent threads for theorising practice in professional learning is suggested. It understands practices as patterned, embodied, networked and emergent and learning entwined with working, knowing, organizing and innovating. By conceptualising learning as occurring via and in practices, prominent understanding of learning are challenged. The paper discusses each thread with reference to empirical research that illuminates it and indicates the contributions of practice theory perspectives in richer understandings of professional learning and change. Originality/value – This paper engages with the practice turn in social sciences to reconceptualise professional and workplace learning. It contributes to research on learning at work by supplementing current thinking about learning, particularly the socio-cultural conceptions of learning, with the resources of practice theories that attend to the regularities of practice.

This paper explores a dilemma in continuing professional learning: the way learning is typically inscribed in continuing professional education (CPE) frameworks differs from that elicited from practice. It examines these differences in relation to both different underlying assumptions about learning and varying epistemological perspectives and, as well as the different purposes of CPE frameworks of professional bodies and organisations. It suggests that the dominant adoption of narrower conceptions of learning in professional organisations' frameworks ignores understandings about work and learning emerging from recent research in the field of workplace learning and focuses on a view that may privilege formal provision. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research directions in developing alternative continuing professional learning frameworks.

With the increasing challenges facing professional engineers working in more complex, global and inter-disciplinary contexts, different approaches to understanding how engineers practice and learn are necessary. This paper draws on recent research in the social sciences from the field of workplace learning, to suggest that a practice theory perspective on engineers' professional learning is fruitful. It shifts the focus from the attributes of the individual learner (knowledge, skills and attitudes) to the attributes of the practice (interactions, materiality, opportunities, challenges). Learning is thus more than the technical acquisition and transfer of knowledge, but a complex bundle of activities that is social, material, embodied and emerging. The paper is illustrated with examples from a research study of the learning of experienced engineers in the construction industry to demonstrate common practices-site walks and design review meetings-in which learning takes place. KeywordEngineers' practice; professional learning; workplace learning; practice theory; engineering education.

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