Theories about how adults learn go back to the ancient world. Vocational education in the UK has changed over time to be placed predominantly into universities. There is a paradox in the way that ‘codified’ and ‘situated’ knowledge is used and understood in medical education that could lead to a disintegrated learning environment for students. Theories of workplace learning have come to the fore because the nature of learning has changed to embrace learning across a lifetime and accept that knowledge and skills change rapidly throughout professional life. Recontextualisation is a workplace learning framework that may help to explain how learning takes place and how knowledge and concepts shift and change in the clinical workplace. Should we now expand our thinking beyond behaviourism and simulated learning to place it in the clinical workplace? Should teachers of clinical communication facilitate learning in the workplace across a continuum that spans the whole undergraduate curriculum and beyond, into postgraduate education?. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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