Free agent learners: the new career model and its impact on human resource development

Changes in the job market are affecting how employees view their current positions and careers leading to more employees (so-called ‘free agents’) developing portfolio careers. To maintain their long-term employability, free agents need to continually enhance and expand their expertise, knowledge-base, reputation and networks, and it has been argued that this will influence how employees view and approach their workplace learning. This article reports the findings of qualitative research aimed at exploring the free agent concept, the implications for workplace learning and the implications for human resource development (HRD) functions in organizations. The research used a convenience sample of 11 organizations from three continents, with data collected from senior HRD executives through telephone and face-toface interviews and e-mails. The results highlighted how some employees are changing their attitudes towards workplace learning, particularly those considered ‘high potential’ or working in ‘high tech’ positions. The research also identified how organizations are increasingly viewing learning as a means of attracting and retaining high quality employees, with implications for HRD functions in terms of a greater emphasis on delivery methods for learning beyond traditional training and greater emphasis on career development activities.     

The Impact of Emotions on Student Achievement in Synchronous Hybrid Business and Public Administration Programs: A Longitudinal Test of Control‐Value Theory*

Synchronous hybrid delivery (simultaneously teaching on‐campus and online students using Web conferencing) is becoming more common in higher education. However, little is known about students’ emotions in these environments. Although often overlooked, emotions are fundamental antecedents of success. This study longitudinally examined the role of students’ emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom), perceptions of control, value, and success in synchronous hybrid learning environments. In particular, the investigation assessed students’ self‐reported enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom as predictors of their program achievement and successful technology use. Students were recruited from synchronous hybrid MBA and MPA programs. Control‐value theory of emotions was used as the theoretical framework. Paired samples t‐tests revealed that the achievement domain, compared to the technology domain, yielded higher mean scores for control, value, enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom. In addition, mixed ANOVAs indicated an interaction effect in which group means for program boredom were significantly higher for on‐campus students than for online students. Intercorrelations in each domain showed that perceived success was positively related to enjoyment and negatively related to anxiety and boredom. Technology‐related anxiety was also found to fully mediate the positive effect of control on perceived success in using technology.     

The role of students’ emotions in formal feedback situations

A growing, but still relatively small body of research underscores the importance of attending to students’ experiences and emotions in higher education. One specific context in which emotions have a focal role is formal feedback situations. The aim of this paper is to provide a literature overview on the role of emotions, in sociology in general and learning in particular, and to draw on this literature in order to tentatively suggest how the role of students’ emotions can increasingly be accounted for in the context of feedback situations. The claim of the paper is that emotions should not be considered as hindering learning. Rather, it underlines the focal role of emotions in learning as being a natural part of it. The paper suggests that learning activities such as ‘feedback preparation activities’ and ‘feedback-on-the-feedback’ can be helpful in order to acknowledge students’ emotions in formal feedback situations.     

‘My work is bleeding’: exploring students’ emotional responses to first-year assignment feedback

This paper explores the emotional responses that assignment feedback can provoke in first-year undergraduates. The literature on the link between emotions and learning is well established, but surprisingly research on the relationship between emotions and feedback is still relatively scarce. This article aims to make an additional contribution to this emerging field. Semi-structured interviews with 24 first-year undergraduate students from the Humanities and Social Sciences department in a post-1992 institution were conducted. The interview narratives identified how the emotional impact of feedback was related to: prior experiences of education, the significance participants attached to the feedback received on their first assignment and how their interpretations of feedback comments were linked to beliefs about themselves as learners. The implications of these experiences on student ‘belonging’ and learning are discussed. The underlying themes that emerged from the findings are the polarised emotions of anxiety and confidence. Based on the findings, the paper concludes by making recommendations for reconceptualising feedback on first-year assignments. It suggests that a holistic assessment approach, which incorporates timely feedback indicating if students are ‘on the right lines’ with low-stakes assignments, is a practice that may both reduce anxiety and increase confidence to support students.     

Insights into teacher learning about pedagogy from an international group of teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities

This article examines teacher professional learning about pedagogy for teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities within broader teacher education and pedagogical frameworks for this group of learners. The article presents and discusses findings from a USA–England research project, involving classroom observations and interviews with nine teachers of students with severe intellectual disabilities from four specialist public school settings, intended to explore teachers’ pedagogical decision-making and learning. The theoretical lens of situated learning and the conceptual lens of evidence-based practice are used to contextualise and examine the teachers’ views about the what, how and when they learn about pedagogical approaches and strategies. Teachers emphasised the situated and interactional nature of their learning, particularly highlighting the personal responses of students and their relationship with these students. They use this knowledge and understanding to adapt evidence-based strategies and programmes and inform their pedagogical decisions. This affords the concepts of ‘situated generalization’ and ‘practice based evidence’ an influential role in how teachers engage in the process of pedagogical decision-making. An implication for teacher educators is the need to support teachers in making connections of new pedagogical understandings and skills with the individual learning profiles and responses of their students with severe intellectual disabilities.     

Narratives of ‘doing,knowing, being and becoming’: examining the impact of an attachment-informed approach within initial teacher education

The Scottish Government’s vision of improving outcomes for children prioritises attachment theory and research in promoting children’s well-being across children’s services. This theme is also noted as increasing international relevance. Our narrative research springs from the experience of designing and delivering the first course within initial teacher education in Scotland to focus on the application of attachment theory to the role and identity of the teacher – particularly, in supporting children vulnerable through experiences of trauma and adversity. We capture students’ ‘real time’ learning moments through reflective journaling during school experience within the analytic ‘Doing, knowing, being and becoming’. Emergent themes include: looking behind and responding to behaviours, making links with ‘lived lives’, understanding teachers’ potential as attachment figures and ‘secure base’, understanding the relevance of adult attachment theory and resilience/self-care to teachers’ emotions and their own attachment experiences.     

Exploring ‘learning lives’: community,identity, literacy and meaning

This article explores the term ‘learning lives’ by reporting on three research projects conducted by members of the Oslo‐based research group TransActions. By stressing the term ‘learning lives’ within a range of social ‘educational’ contexts, the article aims to look at learning within and across different learning sites exploring the positioning and repositioning of learner identity across these different ‘locations’. We emphasise how the individual learner relates to other people and objects, drawing on deeper trajectories or narratives of the self as it exists within and outside the immediate learning contexts. We pay attention to processes occurring between people which we find significant for the individual's identity, literacy and learning. By doing so we hope to make explicit the mobilisation of resources within and across specific contexts, in the ‘learning lives’ of Norwegian youngsters.     

The influence of situational emotions on the intention for sustainable consumer behaviour in a student-centred intervention

Within the curriculum guidelines for Bavaria, we designed a hands-on educational programme for teaching sustainability with regard to agriculture, food and consumerism, partly implemented on a farm as an out-of-school learning setting. The participants were fifth graders (N?=?176). The research followed a quasi-experimental design and used the subscale consumerism of the General Ecological Behaviour Scale and situational emotions (interest, well-being, boredom) to focus data collection activities. The study monitored the students’ knowledge increase and their Inclusion of Nature in Self (INS) scores as possible influencing factors on environmental behaviour. After participation in the programme, while we found that the students intended to consume in more environmentally friendlier ways, this intention did not persistent over a seven-week time span, nor did it relate to the INS or knowledge scores. There was, however, a high correlation with positive situational emotions like interest (r?=?.46, p???.001) and well-being (r?=?.39, p???.001), and a negative correlation with boredom (r?=??.42, p???.001). We conclude that the ‘effect’ of the programme immediately measured after the intervention was strongly linked to situational (short-term) emotions, and should be considered in educational planning as well as the evaluation of sustainability teaching and learning.     

Relating to the ‘Other’: transformative,intercultural learning in post-colonial contexts

In this paper we use Transformative Learning Theory as a lens for making sense of teachers’ learning from study visits to the Global South. Transformative Learning theory is made up of two main elements: the form of transformations and the processes that support transformations. ‘Life changing’ experiences as expressed by study visit participants have been interpreted as transformational, but questions about who and what are transformed, and whether this is at the expense of the ‘Other’, are rarely addressed. Drawing on data from a project investigating study visits for UK teachers to Gambia and Southern India, we analyse the form that changes take and discuss whether these can be seen as transformational. We argue that without an explicit focus on relational forms of knowledge about culture and identity, self and other, the potential for transformations in how we relate to, and learn from, each other in postcolonial contexts is severely diminished.     

工作场所学习与绩效:整合教学、研究与咨询的实践领域——访罗纳德·雅各布斯教授

在终身学习理念的影响下,工作场所自然成为学习的重要空间。一般而言,工作场所学习的时间比学校学习的时间还要漫长,因此,对工作场所学习这一研究领域的重要性怎么强调也不为过。个体可以通过工作场所学习实现自我价值、促进其生涯的发展;组织可以通过工作场所学习提升整体的竞争力和实现其持续性发展;当社会的经济和结构处于转型阶段,工作场所学习更成为促进个体和组织适应环境变化和主动创新的重要措施。借在美国学习的机会,笔者访谈了人力资源开发领域的著名学者雅各布斯(Ronald L.Jacobs)博士,他在访谈中论述了多个与人力资源开发专业相关的问题,并认为工作场所学习与绩效咨询是人力资源开发重要的实践领域,他整合了在该领域的教学经验、研究主题和咨询项目,实现了三者的互动和连通,多维度地促进该领域的发展。雅各布斯博士,美国伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校(University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,简称UIUC)人力资源开发专业教授,另外还担任该校教育学院国际事务处主任一职,他在各类期刊发表了百余篇论文,出版了六本人力资源开发方面的书籍。1994年,雅各布斯博士获得了由美国培训与开发协会(ASTD)颁发的教学科技研究奖;1995年,人力资源开发学会(AHRD)表彰了他在学术上对人力资源开发领域的卓越贡献。从1998年到2001年,他担任《人力资源开发季刊》(Human Resource Development Quarterly)(SSCI来源期刊,且为人力资源开发领域的主要学术期刊)的主编,现在仍担任该杂志的客座编辑。雅各布斯博士还担任ASTD工作场所学习与绩效(Workplace Learning and Performance)认证机构的顾问委员,并于2012年当选为新一届人力资源开发学会主席。雅各布斯博士早在1987年就提出"结构化在职培训"这一概念,并著有《员工岗位培训手册》(StructuredOn-the-Job Training),该书成为很多人力资源开发实践者和培训师的参考书,且被翻译为简体中文、繁体中文、韩文与阿拉伯文等多种语言,他早期的研究着重于研究结构化在职培训的经济效益,协助组织做出与培训相关的决定。目前,韩国就业及劳动部已在全国范围内实施大规模"结构化在职培训"试行计划,以帮助本国中小型企业提高竞争力。雅各布斯博士在人力资源开发领域整合了系统理论、工作场所学习、绩效咨询等理念,并在ISO10015培训质量标准中完善了绩效分析与投资报酬率等概念。雅各布斯博士曾受邀至荷兰乌特列支大学、台湾师范大学、新加坡南洋理工大学、华东师范大学等高校担任客座教授或特聘教授。他有三十多位博士学生现供职于全球各大学人力资源开发及相关领域的教授。雅各布斯博士多年来积极参与对实践的指导工作,他为许多企业组织与政府机构提供过咨询,包括通用汽车、荷兰航空公司、雅培、现代汽车、希捷、莫顿盐业、科威特国家石油公司、沙特阿拉伯国家石油公司等。雅各布斯博士参与的咨询项目通过开发工作场所绩效系统来满足对员工的能力需求,擅长采用合作研究整合其咨询活动、学术研究和教学为一体。雅各布斯博士喜欢航海、高尔夫,以及他在伊利湖畔别墅的夏日时光。     

Understanding leading as travelling practices

In this paper, we propose the concept of leading as travelling practices in order to understand how enhanced pedagogical practices ‘catch on’ in educational sites. Drawing on parallel case studies in Australia, Sweden and Norway, we analyse how leading practices moved within and between settings, transforming the discursive, material and social conditions for teaching and learning. We examine the composition and ecological connections of these leading practices with professional learning and pedagogical practices in schools and pre-schools. We conclude that practice-informed lens can shed new light on the spread of practices, which foster the conditions necessary for transformed pedagogy.     

Positive emotions: passionate scholarship and student transformation

This paper challenges the practical and conceptual understanding of the role of emotions in higher education from the twin perspectives of transition and transformation. Focusing on the neglected area of positive emotions, exploratory data reveal a rich, low-level milieu of undergraduate emotional awareness in students chiefly attributed to pedagogic actions, primarily extrinsically orientated, and pervasive throughout the learning experience. The data conceive positive affect as oppositional, principally ephemeral and linked to performative pedagogic endeavours of getting, knowing and doing. A cyclical social dynamic of reciprocity, generating positive feedback loops, is highlighted. Finally we inductively construct a tentative ‘emotion-transition framework’ to assist our understanding of positive emotion as a force for transformational change; our contention is that higher education might proactively craft pedagogic spaces so as to unite the feeling discourse, the thinking discourse (epistemological self) and the wider life-self (ontological) discourse.     

Becoming a problem: Behaviour and reputation in the early years classroom

How does it happen that some children acquire a reputation as a ‘problem’ in school? The article discusses some findings of a qualitative study involving children in the Reception year (ages 4–5). The research focused on problematic behaviour as this emerged within, and was shaped by, the culture of the classroom. A key question for the research was: what makes it difficult for some children to be, and to be recognised as, good students? Using an analytic framework derived from discourse and conversation analysis, we identify some critical factors in the production of reputation, including: the ‘discursive framing’ of behaviour; the public nature of classroom discipline; the linking of behaviour, learning and emotions; the interactional complexities of being (seen to be) good, and the demands on children of passing as the ‘proper child’ required by prevailing discourses of normal development, as coded in UK early years curriculum policy and pedagogy.     

Exploring students’ conceptions of science learning via drawing: a cross-sectional analysis

ABSTRACT

This cross-sectional study explored students’ conceptions of science learning via drawing analysis. A total of 906 Taiwanese students in 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade were asked to use drawing to illustrate how they conceptualise science learning. Students’ drawings were analysed using a coding checklist to determine the presence or absence of specified attributes. Data analysis showed that the majority of students pictured science learning as school-based, involving certain types of experiment or teacher lecturing. In addition, notable cross-sectional differences were found in the ‘Activity’ and ‘Emotions and attitudes’ categories in students’ drawings. Three major findings were made: (1) lower grade level students conceptualised science learning with a didactic approach, while higher graders might possess a quantitative view of science learning (i.e. how much is learned, not how well it is learned), (2) students’ positive and negative emotions and attitudes toward science learning reversed around middle school, and (3) female students expressed significantly more positive emotions and attitudes than their male counterparts. In conclusion, higher graders’ unfruitful conceptions of science learning warrant educators’ attention. Moreover, further investigation of girls’ more positive emotions and attitudes found in this study is needed.     

Who ‘owns’ the university? Institutional autonomy and academic freedom in an age of knowledge capitalism

The neoliberal reframing of universities as economic engines and the growing emphasis on ‘third stream’ commercial activities are global phenomena albeit with significant local variations. This article uses the concept of ‘ownership’ to examine how these processes are impacting on institutional self-understandings and academic–management relations. Drawing on ethnographic research from New Zealand, including recent disputes between academics and management, we ask, ‘who owns the modern university’? In conclusion, we show how debates over ownership provide a lens for examining wider tensions around institutional autonomy and academic freedom.     

Regulation of emotions in socially challenging learning situations: an instrument to measure the adaptive and social nature of the regulation process

Self-regulated learning (SRL) research has conventionally relied on measures, which treat SRL as an aptitude. To study self-regulation and motivation in learning contexts as an ongoing adaptive process, situation-specific methods are needed in addition to static measures. This article presents an ‘Adaptive Instrument for Regulation of Emotions’ aimed at accessing students’ experiences of individual and socially shared regulation of emotions in a socially challenging learning situation. The instrument, grounded in self-regulated and socially regulated learning theory, comprises four interrelated components: the socio-emotional challenges experienced in a collaborative learning situation; individual and group-level attempts to regulate the immediate emotions evoked by the challenges; the personal goals; and goal attainment pursued in that situation. The theoretical foundation of the instrument and its components are outlined and some reliability issues illustrated. The limitations but also educational potential of the instrument to understand regulation of emotions in socially challenging learning situations are discussed.     

Fostering communities of teachers as learners: disciplinary perspectives

Education research in learning and teaching has alternated historically between periods in which subject matter disciplines were used as the organizing framework for investigation and implementation, and other periods in which the content areas nearly disappeared in favour of a quest for generic principles of instruction that could transcend disciplinary boundaries. There are few examinations of how these factors interact in the context of specific classroom‐ and pedagogy‐centred school reform. The papers that follow in this issue of JCS examine this issue through the lens of the pedagogic reform, ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’. This introduction outlines the key characteristics of this reform and describes the main issues in subsequent examinations of teachers learning to implement ‘Fostering a Community of Learners’ in science, social studies, English language arts, and mathematics.     

The political dimension in ESE: the construction of a political moment model for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension

This article departures from the understanding of environmental sustainable education (ESE) as a political project that consists of dissonant and conflicting voices. The aim of the article is to understand how affection, i.e. bodily sensations, transform into political emotions in teaching and learning settings. The article offers a philosophical and empirically based model called the ‘political moment model’ for analyzing bodily anchored political emotions in teaching and learning of the political dimension. The model was developed in response to an empirical case study where the data were somewhat confusing. In order understand the empirical data, we used parts of Mouffe’s theory of the political and various scholars’ work on political emotions and placed these aspects in a pragmatist standpoint of experience, emotions and meaning making. The model helped to investigate students’ experiences of the political dimension in situations where they experienced affection, i.e. bodily sensation, and emotions in connection with reflections and discussions about how to handle public issues of sustainable development. The article ends with a theoretical discussion of the findings in order to understand the political dimension in teaching and learning activities and to discern possible directions for future research on political moments in ESE.     

Emotions and the practicum: the cooperating teachers’ perspective

The paper reports some of the findings of a qualitative case study that examined the perceptions of the role of cooperating teachers as they supported pre‐service teacher colleagues. The study revealed a number of significant issues related to professional learning and teachers’ ‘ways of knowing’. One of the most significant results to emerge was the emotional dimension of the role of the cooperating teachers. Previous studies related to education per se have identified an ‘emotional dimension’ for the students and teachers, respectively. However, there has been limited research that identifies this important aspect of pre‐service teacher education programmes for the school‐based teacher educator. This paper explores issues related to the emotional intensity of the role through the ‘voices’ of the cooperating teachers as they describe the roller‐coaster ride of emotions that the practicum generates. Discussion will address the implications of such findings in light of the increasing demands of teachers’ work and the complexity of their workplace.