The dynamics of online learning at the workplace: Peer-facilitated social learning and the application in practice

Research stresses the importance of social components in learning. The social contact with peers and tutors stimulates reflection and supports higher processes of learning necessary for the internalisation and application of new knowledge. However, merely proposing opportunities for interaction does not necessarily lead to fruitful discussion and collaboration. Social presence and facilitation are key concepts for successful mutual learning. Both are represented in Murphy’s collaboration model; social presence forms the basis of collaboration on which discussions and co-construction of knowledge evolve. Facilitation supports the entire collaboration process. In this paper, an adjusted version of Murphy’s model was applied to analyse 1085 comments shared in an online course between career practitioners of a public employment service. The results show that without a dedicated tutor, learners can still be involved in collaborative learning and co-construction of new knowledge provided that the topic under discussion is highly relevant and controversial. Learners themselves take over social presence and facilitation activities, but less frequently than when a professional tutor facilitates discussions. Ex post summative evaluation revealed that only a few learners applied the gained knowledge in the long-term. As comparisons with related research suggest, higher facilitation support leading to a higher cognitive interaction with the learning could have better supported the transfer to practice.     

Reflection,realignment and refraction: Bernstein's evaluative rules and the summative assessment of reflective practice in a problem-based learning programme

ABSTRACT

Reflective practice is an essential component of experiential learning and is embedded within the curriculum at York Law School, where the undergraduate law programme is delivered using a problem-based learning model. Using qualitative data from a survey of the markers of one of the summative reflective tasks, and Bernstein's evaluative rules as a theoretical frame, this article explores the assessment traps exposed by this type of assessment. Thematic analysis of the markers’ statements introduces ‘reflection’, ‘realignment’ and ‘refraction’ as three of the potential effects of the summative assessment of reflective practice.     

Visible pedagogic work: parenting,private tutoring and educational advantage in Australia

This article explores parents’ use of private tutoring services for their primary school children in Sydney, Australia's largest city. Using Bernstein's theories of invisible and visible pedagogies, we look, through the eyes of a small group of middle-class Chinese-background interviewees, at the tensions between certain pedagogic forms associated with private tutoring and schooling in contemporary contexts of educational competition. We show how some parents are openly seeking more explicit, visible forms of instruction through using private tutoring, to compensate for the perceived ‘invisible’, pedagogically progressive approach of Australian primary schooling. We argue that these parents’ enlistment of supplementary tutoring is a considered approach to their identification of a mismatch between (apparently) relaxed, child-centred classroom practices, and the demands of the more traditional examinations that regulate entry points to desired educational sites such as academically selective high schools and prestigious universities. Our findings show how paid tutoring is a contemporary pedagogic strategy for securing educational advantage, not just a ‘cultural’ practice prevalent among certain migrant communities, as it is often characterised. We suggest that an analytic focus on pedagogy can help connect issues of class, culture and competition in research on home–school relationships, offering a productive way for the field to respond to the tensions these issues engender.     

Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education

The importance of reflection in higher education and across disciplinary fields is widely recognised and it is generally included in university graduate attributes, professional standards and programme objectives. Furthermore, reflection is commonly embedded into assessment requirements in higher education subjects, often without necessary scaffolding or clear expectations for students. Despite the rhetoric around the importance of reflection for ongoing learning, there is scant literature on any systematic, developmental approach to teaching reflective learning across higher education programmes/courses. Given that professional or academic reflection is not intuitive, and requires specific pedagogic intervention to do well, a programme/course-wide approach is essential. This paper draws on current literature to theorise a new, transferable and customisable model for teaching and assessing reflective learning across higher education, which foregrounds and explains the pedagogic field of higher education as a multi-dimensional space. We argue that explicit and strategic pedagogic intervention, supported by dynamic resources, is necessary for successful, broad-scale approaches to reflection in higher education.     

Engineers' professional learning: a practice-theory perspective

With the increasing challenges facing professional engineers working in more complex, global and interdisciplinary 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 and 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.     

The body and pedagogy: beyond absent,moving bodies in pedagogic practice

Following the corporeal turn in social theory, this paper explores how the body is implicated in pedagogic practice and leaning. Focusing on the body has usually been recognised as part of the regulative rather than instructional discourse in schools. Work has begun to redress the mind–body imbalance through the ‘corporeal device’ developed from Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’, the fundamental relay through which social inequalities are reproduced in schools. To properly recognise the way bodies act as pedagogic relays requires a robust understanding of persons as multi-sensorial acting beings. Examples for choreographic pedagogy are used to illuminate the complex and multimodal features of instructional discourse and to suggest how the moving body could be enlisted to enhance students’ access to formal academic discourses and better understand why some young people fail to achieve in schools.     

Learning to promote health at an emergency care department: identifying expansive and restrictive conditions

This article reports on the findings of a planned workplace health promotion intervention, and the aim is to identify conditions that facilitated or restricted the learning to promote health at an emergency care department in a Swedish hospital. The study had a longitudinal design, with interviews before and after the intervention and follow-up interviews one year after the intervention. Data were collected through individual interviews with employees and managers, in total 69 interviews. In addition, data were collected from documents. The study provided insight into conditions which were found to act as expansive and restrictive reinforcements for learning to promote health. The conclusion is that the workplace health promotion intervention was shaped by conditions that existed outside the local workplace level which restricted the workplace health promotion. Nevertheless, collective employee-driven activities had the capacity to facilitate learning for change in order to create a health-promoting workplace. The advantage of combining theories of learning and workplace health promotion provided a holistic analytical view of learning to promote health at work and helped to uncover and monitor changed conditions during a planned workplace health promotion intervention.     

Professional learning between past experience and future work

This paper deals with the professionalization of human service work. It analyses learning processes and identity development in the emerging profession of child care with concrete examples from empirical research, based on a life history approach. It discusses examples of careers mainly based on students’ life experience, pointing out that their immediate success in the workplace may inhibit an even better qualification they had been spurred to critical reflection. It further follows a sample of students through their theoretical education and trainee periods, illuminating their changing identification with and understanding of their future work, and their learning of professional knowledge and competences. The conclusion is that the new 3.5 year education in child care pedagogy clearly improves the professional competences of child care, but it also identifies a set of further specific challenges to be met for the development of real professional competences.     

高校智慧学习空间:内涵、发展与趋势

新媒体新技术支持下的高校各学科教与学的变革越发受到重视,作为教学载体的学习空间从传统型向智慧型的演化成为人们的关注焦点,是未来学习环境改革的重要方向。以对现有相关文献和应用实例的深入分析为基础,总结并提出了高校智慧学习空间的特征与结构模型;采用关键词共现分析等方法,对近年来高校智慧学习空间的建设与发展开展了探究;剖析了高校智慧学习空间在实际建设中存在的一些问题,并预测了其发展趋势。     

Locating learning in teachers’ communities of practice: opening up problems of analysis in records of everyday work

Research spanning more than two decades points to the benefits of vigorous collegial communities, yet relatively little research examines specifically how professional communities supply intellectual, social and material resources for teacher learning and innovations in practice. This paper examines the theory-building potential of audio- and videotaped records of situated interaction among teachers in the course of everyday work. The paper employs a small segment of a larger data set to chronicle analytic dilemmas and opportunities and to introduce a scheme for theorizing about the nature and significance of professional community for teacher development and school reform.     

Theorising partnerships for site-based education development in vocational education and workplace learning

Abstract

Site-based education development now constitutes a common approach to preparing learners for particular occupations, enabling them to secure employment and at the same time achieve broader social, economic and personal outcomes. New forms of partnerships, other than traditional vendor–client relations, are necessary to achieve such multi-faceted goals. This can be achieved by recognising and appropriately integrating pedagogical contributions in different sites to cater for learning needs. Accordingly, professionals from educational institutions need to actively collaborate and engage with a range of key personnel to form partnerships for the purposes of harnessing and facilitating learning opportunities within the constraints of given sites. An action research process enables participating partners to work towards and achieve agreed outcomes. Outcomes addressing areas causing concern are developed and discussed ‘on site’, forming site-based education development. Using a collaborative action research methodology that addresses issues identified by those in particular sites, solutions can be made visible and problems worked through. This enables the partners to achieve agreed outcomes developed during the life of the partnership. Outcomes and possible training areas are developed and discussed by key partners, particularly those in workplaces. In this article, we draw on intersecting sets of understandings around the philosophy of site-based education development, founded mainly on two overarching theories of workplace learning and practice architectures, to theorise partnerships for site-based education development. Some findings and ideas from two exemplar action research projects are presented to exemplify the key concepts.     

Teachers' knowledge work in collective practice development: Approaches to introducing assessment for learning at the school level

Collective approaches to practice development are increasingly common in the teaching profession. Such initiatives frequently involve groups of teachers taking responsibility for introducing, sharing and developing new pedagogical resources and for aiding their integration into existing practices. This article explores teachers’ knowledge work as a component of collective practice development, and investigates how engagement with knowledge is constructed in different school environments. Drawing on research that followed an Assessment for Learning (AfL) project in a Norwegian city, the article examines how two groups of lower secondary teachers worked to support the introduction and development of AfL resources at their respective schools. The analysis reveals how their knowledge work was framed in different ways through available organisational roles and resources, and discusses the implications for initiatives aimed at collective practice development at the school level.     

Social work learning spaces: the Social Work Studio

This paper explores the contribution of a physical learning space to student engagement in social work education. Drawing on a constructivist methodology, this paper examines the findings of a survey conducted with students and staff in a social work and human service programme about their experiences of a Social Work Studio learning space. The analysis identified that students and staff who used the Studio reported that students were emotionally, cognitively and behaviourally engaged in the space, which enriched their development as social work and human service practitioners. The researchers concluded that the Social Work Studio is a useful tool for enhancing social work student engagement and increasing their confidence to address the ‘real-life’ challenges they may face as social work practitioners.     

"江表儒宗":会稽贺氏之家风与家学

六朝世族门第之长盛不衰 ,与其家风、家学有关。会稽贺氏兴自汉代 ,历经六朝绵延至隋唐 ,数百年间代有才人 ,成为江东著姓 .贺氏门风尚忠义、倡孝友 ;在学术上则世传礼学     

Developing healthcare practice through action learning: individual and group journeys

Action Learning is now a well established strategy for reflective inquiry in healthcare. Whilst a great deal is know about action learning there has been inadequate research on the process of learning that takes place, and the impact that this holds for individuals, groups or organisations. This article reports on the findings of 15-month action learning program based in a special care nursery. A realistic evaluation of the program uncovered individual and group journeys and provide evidence that action learning is an effective strategy in practice development.     

Action learning and executive education: achieving credible personal,practitioner and organisational learning

Action learning involves balancing the often conflicting forces between working knowledge and academic knowledge. This paper explores the experience of executive learners; academics and external contributors involved in action learning at the postgraduate level. The executive learners are members of cohorts on two masters programmes based in Ireland. The programmes adopt an action learning methodology. Action learning supports a reflective culture for the executive learners and an enriched understanding of their workplace. The challenges associated with action learning are explored. The understanding of best practice in the facilitation of action learning for executive learners is enriched for practitioners and academics. The use of narrative structuring provides an insight into the reality of action learning for executive learners. If action learning is to be successfully integrated into executive education, then there needs to be high levels of communication, commitment and trust between the executive learners; academics and external contributors.     

Microcultures and informal learning: a heuristic guiding analysis of conditions for informal learning in local higher education workplaces

This article contributes to knowledge about learning in workgroups, so called microcultures in higher education. It argues that socially constructed and institutionalised traditions, recurrent practices, and tacit assumptions in the various microcultures influence academic teachers towards certain behaviour. In line with this perspective, we present a heuristic with the potential to differentiate various types of microcultures: the commons, the market, the club, and the square. The heuristic is based on a socio-cultural perspective and research on collective action. Its purpose is to assist academic developers to fine-tune their approaches while engaging with colleagues, but also to aid further inquiry into how institutionalised norms and traditions influence academic teaching and student learning.     

Digital analytics in professional work and learning

In a wide range of fields, professional practice is being transformed by the increasing influence of digital analytics: the massive volumes of big data, and software algorithms that are collecting, comparing and calculating that data to make predictions and even decisions. Researchers in a number of social sciences have been calling attention to the far-reaching and accelerating consequences of these forces, claiming that many professionals, researchers, policy-makers and the public are just beginning to realise the enormous potentials and challenges these analytics are producing. Yet, outside of particular areas of research and practice, such as learning analytics, there has been little discussion of this to date in the broader education literature. This article aims to set out some key issues particularly relevant to the understandings of professional practice, knowledge and learning posed by the linkages of big data and software code. It begins by outlining definitions, forms and examples of these analytics, their potentialities and some of the hidden impact, and then presents issues for researchers and educators. It seeks to contribute to and extend debates taking place in certain quarters to a broader professional education and work audience.