Structural Learning Barriers in Organizations

A possible approach to analyzing organizations as learning communities goes through the identification of structural learning barriers. In this article, a distinction is drawn between factors on the group‐level and the organization‐level that are in particular assumed to inhibit learning through acquisition, exchange and application of competences. The group‐level factors included embrace relationships between colleagues, team‐embedded competences, group norms, group think, and the structure and composition of teams. Organization‐level factors discussed comprise job design and work system, reward system, organizational culture and organizational design.     

Dewey,Derrida, and ‘the Double Bind’

It is taken for granted that the complexity of the information society requires a reorientation of our being in the world. Not surprisingly, the call for lifelong learning and permanent education becomes louder and more intense every day. And while there are various worthwhile initiatives, like alphabetisation courses, the article argues that the discourse of lifelong learning contains at least two difficulties. Firstly, the shift from a knowledge‐based to an information society has revealed a concept of learning with an emphasis on skills related to information retrieval, dissemination and evaluation. Learning now is the constant striving for extra competences, and the efficient management of the acquired ones. Secondly, the discourse of lifelong learning suggests the autonomy of the learner. However, educational practices are organized in a way that ‘choosing to learn (particular things)’ has become the contemporary human condition. With reference to Marshall's notion of ‘busno‐power’, it is argued that—contrary to what one likes to believe—lifelong learning has become a new kind of power mechanism.     

Development of learning to learn skills in primary school

In Finland, schools’ effectiveness in fostering the development of transversal skills is evaluated through large-scale learning to learn (LTL) assessments. This article presents how LTL skills—general cognitive competences and learning-related motivational beliefs—develop during primary school and how they predict pupils’ CPS skills at the end of sixth grade. The six-year follow-up of 608 pupils shows that cognitive competences demonstrated in the beginning of the first grade in a learning preparedness test predict both later cognitive LTL competences and CPS, but their development is not fully determined by earlier individual differences in learning preparedness in the first grade. Motivational beliefs begin to be related to cognitive LTL performance gradually from age 10 on, and they may have a slightly stronger effect on CPS than on cognitive LTL performance. It is concluded that the development of CPS is partly depending on pupils’ initial learning preparedness and the development of their LTL skills.     

The DIYLab project (Do It Yourself in Education: Expanding Digital Competence to Foster Student Agency and Collaborative Learning) / El proyecto DIYLab (Do It Yourself in Education: Expanding Digital Competence to Foster Student Agency and Collaborative Learning)

The DIYLab project aims to promote lifelong learning by expanding students’ digital competences, autonomy and creativity through collaborative and meaningful learning. DIYLab locates students at the centre of the learning experience, turning them into the producer of their own learning material. This three-year-old project has been implemented in primary schools, secondary schools and universities in three European countries, where students create digital products that are subsequently published through a Hub or digital centre.     

Promoting Career Development through Teamwork and Mastery Learning Course Requirements in Criminal Justice Research Methods Courses

An innovative semester long small group research project, that required collecting and analyzing original data, regular written reports, and an oral presentation, was included in a senior level criminal justice research methods course to promote career development for those close to graduation. Over five years approximately 446 students were surveyed at the end of their classes to assess their response to the group project. Results suggest senior level students are capable of sustained small group participation where they utilize strategies that reflect practitioner group processes, such as decision‐making autonomy, planning, and coordinated activities. Mastery learning techniques resulted in high quality project outcomes and associated competences.     

Competences for Learning to Learn and Active Citizenship: different currencies or two sides of the same coin?

In the context of the European Union Framework of Key Competences and the need to develop indicators for European Union member states to measure progress made towards the 'knowledge economy' and 'greater social cohesion' both the learning to learn and the active citizenship competences have been highlighted. However, what have yet to be discussed are the links and the overlaps between these two competences. Based on the development of research projects on these two fields, this article will compare the two sets of competences, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It will describe how the values and dispositions that motivate and inform active citizenship and learning to learn are related to each other, both empirically and theoretically. Both these competences are tools for empowering individuals and giving them the motivation and autonomy to control their own lives beyond the social circumstances in which they find themselves. In the case of active citizenship, the ability to be able to participate in society and voice their concerns, ensure their rights and the rights of others. In the case of learning to learn to be able to participate in work and everyday life by being empowered to learn and update the constantly changing competences required to successfully manage your life plans. When measuring both these competences then certain values relating positively towards democracy and human rights are common in their development.     

Examination involving students as peer examiners

The main interest in this article is students’ involvement in assessment as a part of growth towards self‐directedness in learning. In order to enhance students’ development of autonomy in learning, a project involving ‘older’ students as peer examiners for ‘younger’ students was designed and carried out. Students in the sixth semester in a PBL‐based Master’s program of Medical Biology participated, together with faculty, as examiners of fifth‐semester students. The examination and the assessment situation was carefully designed based on learning theories, empirical evidence and experiences underpinning student‐centred learning, especially in the form of PBL used at the faculty. The project was evaluated and analysed in order to understand students’ learning processes related to the responsibility for assessing peers. The situation of the peer examiners was interpreted based on their own experiences with statements from the students assessed and faculty involved in the assessment. Evaluations from six occasions, spring and fall, 2003–2005, were included in the study. The findings suggest that involving students in assessment as equal partners with faculty makes it is possible for students to apprehend the metacognitive competences needed to be responsible and autonomous in learning. The peer examiners experience motivation to learn about learning, they acquire tacit knowledge about assessment and they learn through being involved and trusted. The student‐centred educational context, which requires responsibility throughout the programme, is recognized as very important.     

Double gestures of inclusion and exclusion. Notions of learning outcomes,autonomy, and informed choices in Swedish educational and vocational guidance

Taking as its vantage point a citation from the critical educationalist Thomas Popkewitz, “double gestures of inclusion and exclusion,” the aim of this article is to describe and contextualize the project of inclusion in Swedish educational and vocational guidance, and to identify and to analyze the potentially excluding discourses that may be inherent in that project. Empirically, the article starts with an account of how career counselors describe the desired learning outcomes of their professional activities. The accounts are given in interviews where they comment on the conditions for migrant youth in the transition from school to work, and the professional considerations that follow from these conditions. Among these desired learning outcomes, learning to be an autonomous individual capable of informed choosing is the most central. The emphasis of autonomy and informed choosing is in several ways related to the goal of work life and societal inclusion; on the other hand, a perceived lack of autonomy during the process of choosing secondary education is allegedly ascribed to the category of immigrants, and the immigrant condition. Thus, in the project of inclusion, a potentially excluding way of describing the migrant other is articulated, and “the double gestures of inclusion and exclusion” are hence performed. Still, it is also held that the pursuit of autonomy – as an end goal for the counseling and guiding process – is not unconditional, and it is recognized that certain conditions call for the development of other counseling strategies and learning outcomes.     

SRL in Online Cooperative Learning: implications for pre-service teacher training

The aim of this article is to investigate the relation between self-regulated learning and online collaborative environments. Based on the study of a blended course for trainee teachers, it explores the potential of the online collaborative component of the course for the practice and development of Self-Regulated Learning. The study made use of two questionnaires, developed within the TELEPEERS European project, to evaluate the potential support to SRL provided by technology-enhanced learning environments. The results provide information about the aspects of SRL practised in our environment. These include social competences, such as communication and negotiation with tutors and peers, emotional and motivational aspects, such as keeping up motivation and maintaining and restoring a positive working attitude, and cognitive and metacognitive skills such as management of time and learning environment and reflection on learning outcomes. The study also suggests the need to consider not only the SRL of the individuals involved in the learning process, but also the SRL of the whole community, that is, the result of the mediation between individual autonomy and group collaboration.     

Community education as citizen organising for democratic accountability

This article focuses on the role of adult education in community development initiatives that intentionally aim at more general and equitable power-sharing arrangements at local and regional levels. It argues that community-based learning is a necessary component of community development and the rejuvenation of democracy. In the new millennium, citizens participating in civil society need the vehicle of a city-wide broad-based organisation to act for the attainment of these goals. Adult education in North America was founded on citizen action—often around migrant issues: adequate shelter, jobs, English language acquisition, poverty, and urbanisation. Responses to common needs in the Mechanics Institutes, Citizens' Forums, and the Antigonish Movement are only a few examples of how citizen learning changed lifeworld conditions. In this unsettled and unsettling historical moment, as we move from late modernity or post-modernity to some version of a “new world order”, the potential contributions of critical adult education to the future well-being of a global civil society are becoming increasingly apparent. Identifying and assessing means of resistance to the escalating encroachments of international finance and administrative power into the domains of individual and community autonomy is one practical role for adult education.     

Communicating in Education and Training

Abstract

This article maintains that the focus of learning and training at all levels is moving increasingly towards the individual ‐‐ how the individual learns and the influences of his or her environment on learning. It suggests that, among the increasing wealth of research into educational technology, the emphasis needs now to be placed on the learning process and the learning environment. But the learning processes and environments have to be seen as part of an educational scenario which is changing rapidly. Education at all levels, together with training at the adult level, and the resources devoted to these purposes will continue to be under direct challenge. To make learning more effective, the questions of contacts and connections by and with media must be examined and assessed. For effective communication the methods and the processes have to be matched to objectives. The article concludes that the rapidly changing technology of communications is helping to shift the balance from an emphasis on what has been largely a one‐way system of communication to one in which the individual learner is increasingly in control and in which the learning process itself, rather than the teaching system, has become the focus.     

Lifelong education and the workplace: a critical analysis

This paper contains an analysis of policy formulations which underlie the work of the ‘Leeds Adult Learners at Work’ project (1991‐93). The overall aim of the project was to assess the contribution that broadly based Employee Development training schemes organized through the workplace can make towards achieving the internationally recognized goal of ‘lifelong learning’. The paper follows Ball (1990) in seeing policy as a contested arena in which different actors struggle to impose their views. This involves an analysis of competing discourses. However, the discourse interfaces with a socio‐economic system in which individual adults find their day‐today lives increasingly constrained. First, an analysis is made of the economic context of education and training policy in terms of the international division of labour, the apparently contradictory processes of deskilling and reskilling, and mass unemployment. A critical analysis follows of the rhetoric which identifies education and training as a panacea for economic crisis, extending into the field of adult education and training for employed people some of the insights gained by policy analysts in the school and further education arenas. It is argued that there are indeed a number of significant interventions in the field (e.g. by educational institutions, employers, trades unions, TECs) but that there is a distinct lack of overarching policy direction. It is concluded that there is a need to develop a policy discourse which locates paid work as an important arena in which lifelong learning can be developed, while recognizing the complex divisions of labour within society and the learning needs of people largely excluded from paid work.     

Highlights of the montreal convention. (August 27–31, 1973)

This article reviews classroom research on cooperative‐learning techniques. These are instructional methods in which students work in 4–6 member, heterogeneous teams to master prescribed academic material or to carry out a group project or discussion. The review is focused on the four cooperative‐learning techniques in widest use in classrooms, although less widely used methods are also discussed. Only studies which took place over a period of at least two weeks are reviewed. It is concluded that: (a) Cooperative learning methods are generally more effective than control methods in increasing student achievement, but the effects arc not consistent. Some evidence suggests that highly structured cooperative methods are best for basic skills, while more open‐ended methods are best for higher‐order skills. (b) Cooperative learning methods have generally positive effects on student inter‐ethnic relations, mutual concern, self‐esteem, liking of school, and other variables.     

Translating Key Competences into the School Curriculum: lessons from the Polish experience

Over the last 20 years, Poland has gone through a major transition process in which the challenges for education in terms of new approaches to learning and teaching have been compounded by broader changes such as the democratisation of structures and processes and the major economic and social changes. This article is a case study that examines the early stages of significant shifts in the learning and teaching process, the stepped approach that was taken and the different international influences. It was decided to focus on the top-down, policy level actions in order to trace how influences have shaped current policy on outcomes-based approaches and key competences, which are increasingly implemented in schools today. The Polish education and training system has been through a complex series of reforms, many simultaneously. The introduction of outcome-based approaches and key competences is part of much broader reforms that have affected mindsets and attitudes by having addressed the structure of the system (e.g. the length of compulsory education), school governance, the roles of principals and teachers, teacher training, etc. Parents' expectations have evolved and students are growing up in a much more connected environment with Internet and social networks and an exponential development of access to ICT and the need for digital competences and a range of key competences for lifelong learning and work (Gordon et al., 2009). Although change has taken place at all levels and in all sub-sectors of the system, this article focuses on general education in primary and secondary schools.     

Learning moves home

Residence halls at large institutions are increasingly becoming sites for powerful undergraduate learning experiences. A study of living‐learning programs at four research universities—the prelude to a nationwide project—tells an important story.     

Assessing Key Competences across the Curriculum — and Europe

The development of key competences for lifelong learning has been an important policy imperative for EU Member States. The European Reference Framework of key competences (2006) built on previous developments by the OECD, UNESCO and Member States themselves. It defined key competences as knowledge, skills and attitudes applied appropriately to contexts. Now most Member States have incorporated key competences, or similarly broad learning outcomes, into their school curriculum frameworks. This is a necessary but insufficient step towards implementation; for the effective development of learners' key competences, assessment must also change. This article focuses on the challenge of assessing cross-curricular key competences in primary and secondary education. It is based on a major study for the European Commission (Gordon, et al., 2009), which drew on information gathered and validated with the help of experts in each of the 27 EU Member States. The study's typology of assessment provides a basis for reviewing some recent developments in Member States. Present challenges and innovative responses are addressed, including ‘unpacking’ key competences, ‘mapping’ them to contexts and ‘accessment’ of their full scope and range. Policy developments are considered in the context of the author's work with the European Commission's Thematic Working Group on the assessment of key competences. The article concludes with considerations for policy and practice.     

Cultural Factors in the Structure and Context of European Engineering Studies

Bilateral, trilateral and even quadrilateral exchange programmes are becoming increasingly common in European undergraduate and postgraduate engineering curricula. Such programmes provide students with opportunities to enrich their scientific, linguistic and cultural profiles. This paper examines and compares the cross-cultural differences within the teaching and learning contexts (not contents) of different engineering study programmes in France, Britain and Germany. The authors relate variations in key variables such as evaluation, teacher-student relationships, student autonomy, the scope of studies and motivation to Geert Hofstede‘s four dimensions of national culture’—Power Distance, Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism and Masculinity. The authors conclude that Hofstede's four dimensions do appear to have explanatory power, and suggest further directions for future research. It is the authors' intention that their research project ultimately be of benefit to engineering students taking part in exchange study programmes. The authors welcome any readers who wish to cooperate and collaborate with them in further research and development work.     

Teacher Competence Frameworks in Europe: policy-as-discourse and policy-as-practice

This article analyses the growing focus on teacher competences in European policy discourse against the backdrop of global convergences in education reforms. It traces key ideas, policy recommendations, peer learning and documents which underscore the relevance of teacher quality for education improvement, as recently stressed in the European Commission Communication and Staff Working Documents Rethinking Education. The intertwining of teacher competence frameworks with other areas of education policy is outlined — key competences in school education, the quality of initial teacher education, and the continuous professional development of teachers — teasing out reasons for their central role. Some insights from research and peer learning then explore key implications in the defining and implementing of teacher competence frameworks in national education systems. A comparative viewpoint further analyses current policy trends about teacher competences across European national contexts, in discourse and practice. In order to do so, a framework of analysis takes into account system features as key variables affecting national policy — roles and responsibilities of stakeholders, governance and education cultures, and the status of the teaching profession. Across the variety of policy practices, the analysis endeavours to trace some emerging patterns and trends, highlighting paradigmatic national examples, with some food for thought.     

The Validity and Reliability of Assessments and Self‐assessments of Work‐based Learning

Recent developments in British higher education have included taking a close look at work‐based learning, in particular its assessment (and its integration within academic programmes of study). However, two questions which are still continuously being asked are (a) to what extent are assessments of work‐based learning valid and reliable, and (b) can they count towards the award of university degrees and diplomas? These questions are becoming increasingly important as there seems to be a growing trend for students to assess their own learning at the workplace (through reflection and analysis and the use of diaries and self‐development journals). This article addresses the above issues by drawing on classical test theory (for an understanding of the fundamentals of validity and reliability) and by examining how the different notions of validity and realiability may be applied in the context of assessments (and self‐assessments) in the workplace. The article concludes that, under certain stated conditions, it is indeed possible to determine whether assessments (and self‐assessments) of work‐based learning are valid, reliable — and comparable.     

Workplace changes and workplace learning: advantages of an educational micro perspective

This paper analyses two perspectives, a macro and a micro perspective, on changes in the workplace in relation to workplace learning. It critically evaluates what kind of phenomena both perspectives can account for. Research from a macro perspective focuses on changes in economy or on organisational change. It helps to explore the role of lifelong learning and workplace learning in society as well as to define required competences in different professions. Research from a micro perspective focuses on individual reactions to changes in one’s own workplace. It helps to explain how changes in daily work affect knowledge and skills on the individual or group level. It is argued that the micro perspectives is advantageous if educational goals are pursued which aim at fostering workplace learning and competence development. Examples for empirical research are provided which illustrate the potential of a micro perspective on workplace changes and workplace learning.