Lifewide learning in the city: novel big data approaches to exploring learning with large-scale surveys,GPS, and social media

ABSTRACT

Despite UNESCO’s Learning Cities agenda, which argues for the mobilisation of resources to promote education across all sectors and environments, there is little evaluative research on Learning City engagement which is both naturalistic and empirically rigorous. The research on informal adult learning in urban contexts is particularly sparse. This paper provides a case study of informal learning and lifewide literacies amongst Glaswegian adults using three distinct approaches to data collection: a household survey capturing rich data on learning attitudes, behaviours, and literacies; GPS trails that track mobility around the city; and the capture of naturally occurring social media. The work operationalises Learning City indicators, and explores domains beyond education, some of which have not previously been considered in surveys of adult learning, for example, physical mobilities and transportation patterns. We use theoretical concepts of social identity and capital to situate inclusion within explanatory frameworks of marginalisation in less tangible domains of informal learning using multi-stranded data. A triangulated analysis of city-wide participation in lifewide learning reveals a demographic picture of groups marginalised from learning opportunities and practices. We conclude with a call for new approaches to exploring learning participation which offer novel methods to evidence informal learning and lifewide literacies.     

A social perspective on teaching and learning in the context of computer-mediated communication in teacher education

Abstract

In a context where ever greater emphasis is placed on the need to exploit the potential of information and communications technology, this article argues the need for a theoretical underpinning to such developments. In higher education, the emphasis is often placed on the assumed improved cost-effectiveness associated with ‘flexible’ and ‘independent’ student learning as one of the major benefits, although such notions as flexible and independent learning tend to be taken for granted. It is argued further that even where benefits to learning are emphasised, these are often founded on relatively impoverished views of learning. Often such views fit with a technocentric and positivist perspective on learning, emphasising as they do individualism, information delivery and a limited role for the tutor. This article outlines an alternative theoretical perspective based upon Vygotskian social psychology, activity theory and social practice. Such a perspective is characterised by an emphasis on interaction, communication and collaboration. Learning itself is seen as an aspect of participation in communities of practice, in which the human relationships between teachers and students are seen as fundamental. The theory is exemplified with reference to the use of computer-mediated communication in teacher education using FirstClass computer conferencing software.     

Speaking the unspoken in learning analytics: troubling the defaults

Abstract

Assessment and learning analytics both collect, analyse and use student data, albeit different types of data and to some extent, for various purposes. Based on the data collected and analysed, learning analytics allow for decisions to be made not only with regard to evaluating progress in achieving learning outcomes but also evaluative judgments about the quality of learning. Learning analytics fall in the nexus between assessment of and for learning. As such it has the potential to deliver value in the form of (1) understanding student learning, (2) analysing learning behaviour (looking to identify not only factors that may indicate risk of failing, but for opportunities to deepen learning), (3) predicting students-at-risk (or identifying where students have specific learning needs), and (4) prescribing elements to be included to ensure not only the effectiveness of teaching, but also of learning. Learning analytics have underlying default positions that may not only skew their impact but also impact negatively on students in realising their potential. We examine a selection of default positions and point to how these positions/assumptions may adversely affect students’ chances of success, deepening the understanding of learning.     

Exploring connections between identity and learning

Abstract

Learning is situated in the practices of communities, such that children learn by participating in the communities they inhabit. Learning through participation in the practices of a community influences interpretation of and engagement with the social world, and has implications for the identity of the learner as a participant in a community. In this article, the connection between learning and identity will be explored from a sociocultural perspective. Children participate in many communities and must appropriately generalize learning across communities such as home and school. Research in the connection between identity and learning in schools will be reviewed because in many countries where schooling is mandatory it is an important context for this generalization. Then the paper will explore the choice of when and how to generalize across contexts and whether this choice is conscious. Lastly, the paper will propose some ways that the connection between learning and identity may complicate this generalization.     

Creating opportunities for untethered learning

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the use of mobile devices by teachers in two Australian schools. It builds on a theoretical framework which considers the location of mobile learning with respect to time and space. The research used a qualitative methodology in which observations, interviews and document analysis were conducted. The study found that the physical and virtual spaces that were used were different from those used in other lessons. Mobile learning facilitated autonomous learning by students, collaboration with their peers and engagement in topics of interest to them. The study found that students and teachers adopted new roles when using the devices, and were untethered from their conventional learning spaces of the classroom. Learning changed in nature and was aligned with contemporary practices in education.     

Towards a learning or a certified society? Contradictions in the New Labour modernization of lifelong learning

This paper examines the ‘Learning Society’ goal espoused by the new Labour government and inherited from preceding Conservative administrations. Section one notes the wide‐ranging consensus on this Learning Society target. Agreement reaches further than education and training (learning) policy to include other areas of policy associated with the proposed reform of the welfare state. Whether the social and administrative changes under previous Conservative governments ‐ changes that can be conceptualized in different ways the paper briefly indicates ‐ amount to the end of the welfare state is discussed in section two. The position of post‐compulsory or ‘lifelong’ learning in relation to compulsory or ‘foundation’ learning in the new ‘post‐welfare’ or Contracting State is then discussed in section three. Contradictions in New Labour's programme of modernizing lifelong learning are exposed. In conclusion, the question is posed how far a New Labour government will be prepared to reverse previous Conservative substitution of the market for representative democracy in the new type of Contracting State, or whether it will merely extend and further consolidate it. Throughout, evidence is presented, particularly from post‐compulsory education and training, to argue that the new government is bent upon pursuing the latter option.     

Reciprocal learning in teacher education between Canada and China

ABSTRACT

The Preservice Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning Programme has been developed on a vision of bridging the East and West dichotomy by harmonising Eastern learning with Western knowledge. This programme is one of the two foundations for Xu and Connelly’s 7-year Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership in teacher education and school education in 2013-2020. The Programme, ‘provide[s] an exceptional cross-cultural experience with international engagement … to broaden teacher candidates’ horizons for a society of increasing diversity in today’s globalized world’. This article’s purposes are to discuss how reciprocal learning is both a concept and an approach for international and cross-cultural teacher education and school education and to present the learning outcomes and educational significance of the East-West reciprocal learning programme in teacher education. The Programme has created opportunities for both pre-service and in-service teachers to understand and appreciate a culture and educational system different from their own, thereby reciprocally contributing to educational opportunities for those they teach. The research theory and method utilised in this work are found in a companion paper in this special series and are briefly discussed below in the project overview and later in a discussion of student outcomes. This work has implications for other school settings where increasing immigrant student population and cultural diversity have become the norm.     

Cooperative learning across classrooms in electronic Learning Circles

This paper discusses electronic Learning Circles on the AT&T Learning Network¹ in the light of cooperative learning theory. Findings reported for students in cooperative learning settings were also found for teachers who participated in Learning Circles on the Learning Network. Teachers acquired knowledge, developed new instructional strategies, increased their self-esteem and developed professional and personal relationships with their peers. Computer networking provides a mechanism for developing cooperative learning among students in distant locations and at the same time provides a vehicle for the professional development of teachers within the classroom environment.     

An overview of educational policies in the countries of Latin America during the 1990s

In this paper we want to examine the construct of the Learning Society in its economic and social context in the UK. We will argue that the policy rhetoric which makes up the current discourse of the ‘learning’ society is both powerfully normative and unhelpfully reductionist and that it displaces and masks issues of inequality. The discourse of the Learning Society has conflated the achievement of increased levels of participation for 16‐ to 19‐year‐olds with the insertion of market mechanisms and relations and the assertion of self‐interest. This has meant that issues of exclusion, polarization and social justice have been systematically neglected. The Learning Society provides, we suggest, for a redrawing and relegitimation of patterns of exclusion. In particular, in a time of social crisis, middle‐class retrenchment (masked as familial duty) has re‐asserted itself, in part, through a specific, particular engagement with the Learning Society in order to ensure advantage and distinction. As Connell (1996: 5) puts it, this ‘is the point on which the politics of education markets mainly turns’. Thus, we believe it is critical to address the question, ‘Whose Learning Society'? We shall attempt this through a preliminary examination of data collected from a cohort of 16‐year‐olds who are in the process of transition from statutory schooling into a post‐16 education and training market (ETM), and deploy their ‘emergent narratives’ to problematize the normative simplicities of the Learning Society.     

Adult learning for citizenship: towards a reconstruction of the social purpose tradition

This paper seeks to review and re-frame the idea of social purpose adult education in the context of a contemporary Risk Society and the interface between modernist and postmodernist influences on learning. After interrogating and critiquing the social purpose tradition in adult education, it relates this to the changing nature and widening scope of adult learning within a developing Learning Society. The paper puts forward the idea of Adult Learning for Citizenship as a way of maintaining and reconstructing social purpose learning within a Risk Society and as a necessary challenge and counter-focus to the dominant discourse of Lifelong Learning shaped by the economic imperative and framed very much in terms of human capital. In developing this argument, the paper proposes a new framework for Adult Learning for Citizenship which consists of four different but overlapping dimensions of social purpose learning: learning for inclusive citizenship, for pluralistic citizenship, for reflexive citizenship and for active citizenship. Within this framework, it develops new rationales for social purpose adult learning linked to instructive examples of practice from a range of international contexts. In conclusion, it examines the implications of such a framework for the praxis of adult educators.     

Facilitating conditions for farmer learning behaviour in the student-to-farmer university outreach

Purpose: This study elucidates on how faculty supervision support to students during farm placements and other facilitating conditions influence farmer learning in the student-centred university outreach.

Methodology/Design/Approach: Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of 283 farmers who had previously hosted students of Gulu University in the student-to-farmer university outreach. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse how faculty supervision support to students in combination with other facilitating conditions affect the formation of intentions for learning and actual farmer learning behaviour.

Findings: Faculty supervision support in the student-to-farmer outreach was found to significantly influence formation of intentions for learning (β?=?0.380; t?=?5.263; P?β?=?0.182; t?=?2.081; P?Practical implications: Faculty supervision support to students is critical to fostering lasting learning relationships in university outreach. Thus, it needs to be a part of the transformation agenda of the higher education sector for improved community linkages and innovation.

Theoretical implications: Empirical data obtained from the context of student-centred university outreach is used to extend the model of facilitating conditions.

Originality/Value: The study addresses how faculty supervision support together with farmers’ perception of student attitudes and the value of the learning content influence farmers’ learning behaviour during university outreach.     

From designing artifacts to learning science: A dialectical perspective

How students come to know phenomena in terms of abstract concepts and theories through hands-on activities remains one of the open problems in science education. In this study, we develop a theory of learning science through design activities by employing a dialectical view of human activity that explicitly combines the mental and material in the same, irreducible unit of analysis. Dialectical contradictions embodied by this unit, here conceptualized as resistance experienced from a first-person perspective, constitute the inner forces that drive designing. Drawing on a large database of artifact designing constituted during a four-month unit on simple machines, we examine how resistance, in its dialectical relation to contradiction contributes to the unfolding design process and to the learning of scientific concepts and manual process skills during design. First, an inner contradiction emerges in the designers' lifeworlds as an unintended outcome or a breakdown and thereby changes the perceived world of a designer collective. Second, the dialectic of contradiction and resistance realized in this manner constitutes a moment unfolding culture of science in its concrete form embodied in individual designers and therefore contributes to the production and reproduction of culture. We conclude with a reflection on the implications our study makes to a non-dualist view of knowing and learning. SungWon Hwang is a research fellow of Science Education Research Center at Hanyang University in Korea. She received her Ph.D. from Seoul National University in 2002 and conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of Victoria. Her research projects are focused on the dialectical, embodied nature of human practice, learning, and identity in science activities, recently in the situation of crossing the boundaries of culture and language. She is a co-author of the book, Participation, Learning, and Identity: Dialectical perspectives (Lehmanns, 2005) with Wolff-Michael Roth, Yew Jin Lee, and Maria Ines M. Goulart. Wolff-Michael Roth is Lansdowne Professor of Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Victoria. His research focuses on knowing and learning science and mathematics across the lifespan and from kindergarten to professional practice. His recent publications include Toward an Anthropology of Graphing: Semiotic and Activity Theoretical Perspectives (Kluwer, 2003), Talking Science: Language and Learning in Science Laboratories (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), Doing Qualitative Research: Praxis of Method (SensePublishers, 2005), Learning Science: A Singular Plural Perspective (SensePublishers, 2006), and, with A. C. Barton, Rethinking Scientific Literacy (Routledge, 2004).     

Connections between learning experience,study behaviour and academic performance: a longitudinal study

Background:?Whilst past studies have established the joint influence of student learning experience and study behaviour on academic achievement, few attempts have been made to determine their causal ordering in a longitudinal framework.

Purpose:?This study explored the reciprocal relationship between learning experience and study behaviour, and examined their relative impact on university students' academic performance.

Sample:?Participants were 396 undergraduate students from a university in Hong Kong (191 men, 205 women).

Design and methods:?Students' learning experience and study behaviour were evaluated using the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory (LASSI). A two-wave cross-lagged structural model was constructed to examine the reciprocal effects between learning experience and study behaviour measured over a 12-month period.

Results and conclusions:?The findings showed that after controlling for previous academic achievement, student learning experience measured at Time 1 exerted significant influence on study behaviour measured at Time 2, and study behaviour measured at Time 1 also exerted significant impact on learning experience at Time 2. Both constructs were significantly predictive of current academic performance.

Conclusions:?Results from this study outlined linkages between learning experience and study behaviour in influencing academic achievement. As the current study is based on students from a single university, further studies with different student populations are recommended. The implications of fostering motivation and enhancing university learning experience are discussed.     

Engineering learning objectives and computer assisted tools

ABSTRACT

The different technology fields have increased in complexity, especially during the last two decades, giving place to the concept of Complex Technology. An example is Electronics also characterised as a horizontal technology being incorporated in many products and processes of other technological areas. Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives and the revised version of Bloom disciples, which have been used by several experts in pedagogy, suffers from a generalist character and are not adapted to technology learning. In this article an engineering learning taxonomy is presented. Also a computer learning assisted tool called ISETL (Integrated System for Electronics Technology Learning) has been developed to facilitate the Electronics fundamentals understanding. ISETL has been evaluated taking into account not only the results of the theoretical assessments but also through the results obtained in the laboratory. These results demonstrate the advantages of this approach and can be depicted by the progressive improvements registered in student performance.     

Lifelong Cyberlearning System: A Pilot Project for the ‘Learning Society’ in the ROC

Abstracts

English: Lifelong Learning is an important national policy in the ROC, and a significant goal in our educational reform policy is to establish a ‘Learning Society’ based on the concept of lifelong learning. This paper is intended to provide a broad overview of the current status of developments moving us towards the Learning Society, and to elucidate a special pilot project: The Lifelong Cyberlearning System. This project is sponsored by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the ROC.     

Technology student learning preferences and the design of flexible learning programs

The learning preferences of three hundred and thirty eighttechnology students enrolled in sub-degree programs at an Australian institution of Technical andFurther Education were tested using the Canfield Learning Styles Inventory (CLSI). The results have been interpreted in a learning preferences framework and providesupportive evidence for the preferences factors of print-nonprint, collaborative, dependent,and autonomous learning identified by Sadler-Smith & Riding (1999). Although theresearch focussed on learning preferences the analysis also indicated support for theWholist-Analytic cognitive style proposed by Riding & Cheema (1991). Genderdifferences were shown for the Interest subscales of the CLSI. Age-group differenceswere shown for several Conditions of Learning and Modes of Learning subscales.Implications for the design of training programs, and the skillsthat may need to be developed in technology learners to enable effective use offlexible delivery, are also discussed.     

Building a bridge between Western and Eastern worlds: reciprocal learning programmes that create reflective practice,hope and prosperity in education

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the Reciprocal Learning Programmes between Western and Eastern educational systems through a Sister School project as well as, a Reciprocal Learning Programme through preservice programs between a Canadian university and a Chinese university. Benefits of the Reciprocal Learning Programs include reflective practice of content and pedagogical learning, cultural and societal learning, globalisation and emotional and social impact. Qualitative documentation demonstrates that educational, social and cultural dimensions are cultivated and nurtured through the Reciprocal Learning programs and have positively affected the students, educators and leaders involved in the project. Criteria for success in the programs included professional and personal commitment, educator inquiry, vulnerability, organisational commitment and multi-dimensional partnerships.     

Beyond labels: what are the salient features of lesson study and learning study?

ABSTRACT

Lesson Study and Learning Study are popular teacher professional development models across the world. Drawing on an extensive review of research and literature, this paper aims to identify the features of the two models to contrast and establish their similarities and differences particularly with regard to their application in practice. The paper focuses on their impact on teaching and learning as well as the rationale behind the process of Lesson Study and Learning Study. Four major distinctions between the two models are revealed: ways of identifying a topic for teaching, views and methods for understanding student learning, the focus of teacher collaboration on lesson design and implementation, and the overall instructional design. The paper concludes that the two models appeal to different practitioners depending on their aims and objectives in teaching and learning as well as their broader perspectives on education. In addition, this paper suggests that the two models could complement each other to improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning in different contexts.     

Facilitating social learning in teacher education: a case study

It is increasingly recognised that social learning by teachers can stimulate professional development. In this study, we search for the social behaviour patterns which can act as a catalyst for professional development, with an explicit focus on student teachers’ learning. Based on the ‘Dimensions of Social Learning (DSL) Framework’, including 4 dimensions and 11 indicators of social learning, the present study explores the social configuration of one network of primary teachers (n?=?12), student teachers (n?=?12) and teacher educators (n?=?2). Two research questions guide this exploration: (1) What patterns of social behaviour in teacher networks are likely to lead to professional learning? (2) What network facilitation guidelines can be discerned to assist teachers and teacher educators wishing to optimise student teachers’ professional development? Data collection consisted of video recordings, reflective notes and semi-structured interviews with network members. The findings paint a picture of how social learning in teacher networks is related to the group’s social configuration. Observation criteria and student facilitation guidelines are suggested to support professional development within teacher networks. For each dimension in the DSL Framework, one point of attention is discerned to optimise students’ learning in teacher networks.     

Enhancing transfer of learning through post-course reflection

Abstract

This article investigates how a structured post-course follow-up reflection activity affects the depth of reflection and facilitates the transfer of learning. The research is reflective, based on the findings from the Action Learning Management Practicum, a 3^rd year paper at Massey University, New Zealand. The initial reflections at the end of the course generally went no deeper than students “noticing”, or “making sense” of the experiences. With the benefit of distance and time away from the course, the students' reflection was deep and insightful. The findings suggest that the post-course reflection activity enables participants to “make meaning” from their experiences with the benefit of time and distance from the initial post-course reflection, thus enhancing the transfer of learning. The article argues for an extension and adaptation to Kolb's “Experiential Learning Cycle” model in relation to the time of reflection based on the empirical evidence provided.