The roots of Paulo Freire’s Praxis

This paper examines how local knowledge is employed in environmental adult education in a community‐based ecotourism project in an island community in southern Thailand. The study is based on field research and analysis of project websites, media reports and documents. Situated at the intersection of global tourism and a local Thai–Malay Muslim fishing community, the ecotourism project functions as an alternative tourism development model challenging dominant practices of mass tourism. In the project, tourists stay as guests in local homes, and learn firsthand from family and community ecotourism guides. The informal ecotourism ‘curriculum’ for tourists centres on local knowledge of tidal and marine ecosystems, environmental conservation efforts, local culture, and traditional livelihood activities. Tourists learn experientially to understand and appreciate this local knowledge, and in the process, contribute to the sustenance of the community, to the preservation of culture, and to the conservation of the marine resources upon which the community depends. Members of the ecotourism project, for their part, have engaged in a wide range of adult learning over the project’s lifespan. This learning includes skills and knowledge in ecotourism management, environmental conservation, cross‐cultural exchange and political activism. Although the advent of mass tourism on the island now threatens to overwhelm the local community, the capacity for environmental adult education, adult learning and political activism built up over many years by members of the ecotourism project will likely help to moderate, if not control, the deleterious effects of future commercial development.     

Web-enhanced case-based activity in teacher education: a case study

Recent work in case-based reasoning (CBR) reinforces the importance of situated learning, expert cases, and authentic tasks and activities for novice learners. As novices engage CBR environments, they apprentice in the experts’ practices while developing the understanding, knowledge and skill of a given community. This study examined how prospective teachers, as novices in a semester-long course, engaged and developed expert-like practices using the case knowledge of experienced teachers who teach with technology. By engaging experienced teachers’ knowledge and skill via Web-enhanced cases, prospective teachers refined their understanding of teaching culture and teaching with technology as they transitioned to the teaching community.     

Learning among Older Professional Workers: Knowledge Strategies and Knowledge Orientations

A growing body of research and policy focused on ??older workers?? is attempting to address perceived concerns that older workers?? skills are declining, along with their participation in employment and in employment-related learning opportunities. The discussion here seeks to contribute to this research. Its focus is the learning of older professional workers, about comparatively little has been published. The article presents research conducted in Canada involving 60 personal interviews with older Certified Management Accountants (CMAs). This qualitative study was designed to understand older professionals?? participation in learning through their reports not only of when, how and why they participated in specific learning activities, but also through their stories of practice and work, their understandings of knowledge, and how they view themselves as knowers and as knowledge workers. The findings showed that older CMA professionals appeared to position themselves deliberately as knowers, performing particular knowledge orientations aligned with their work priorities, and to resent external provisions for and assessments of their ??learning??. Four orientations appeared most prominently, which are here described as ??consolidating??, ??outreaching??, ??re-positioning??, and ??disengaging??. The concluding section argues that far from withdrawing from learning, these older professionals are particularly strategic in what, when and how they engage. In fact most are astute in employing diverse strategies and resources in knowledge development, according to the knowledge orientation they adopt in their practice. These understandings may suggest ways to more effectively recognise and support older professionals?? learning in organizations and professional associations.     

侗族稻鱼共生生计方式与非物质文化传承与发展——以贵州省黎平县黄岗村为例

通过对侗族社区的田野调查,从＂稻—鱼—鸭＂共生生计方式在侗族文化中的地位和价值的人类学分析入手,发现侗族社会生活中的糯米与鱼不仅仅是侗族村民本体赖以生存的重要物质条件,同时也是侗族文化载体赖以生存的重要条件之一,甚至可以说是它已经作为一个小的文化系统在承载和构建起侗族文化。最好的和最理想的非物质文化遗产保护方式就是将活态的非物质文化遗产放在其生存环境内加以保护和传承,而侗族传统稻鱼共生生计正好构成了侗族非物质文化遗产的生态环境与传承场。     

Service-Learning Programs and the Knowledge Economy: Exploring the Tensions

Community service-learning (CSL) programs are proliferating in Canadian higher education. University programs promote students’ experiential learning in community as part of a course; students most often engage in unpaid work in not-for-profit organizations and reflect on that experience in relation to their classroom learning. However, programs tend to occupy an ambivalent position in higher education—they are seen as important, but at the same time are often under-resourced and treated as marginal to universities’ core activities. This paper argues that the contradictory position of service-learning is partly related to the bifurcated view of theoretical and practical knowledge perpetuated in knowledge economy discourse. Drawing on interviews with service-learning program leaders, it explores their responses to knowledge economy discourse. Findings suggest varying levels of resistance; some leaders comply with university pressures to engage in transactional approaches to service-learning, while others seek to integrate theoretical and practical knowledge through the creation of hybrid learning networks. This paper outlines the reasons for and implications of different responses and suggests that socio-cultural learning theories can inform pedagogical approaches within programs.     

What We are Missing in Studies of Teacher Learning: A Call for Microgenetic,Interactional Analyses to Examine Teacher Learning Processes

Much of the work in the Learning Sciences and Computer-Supported Collaborated Learning communities have focused on understanding and designing for learning in collaborative spaces. This work utilizes methods such as Interaction Analysis and has attended to multiple dimensions and timescales of learning. It has redefined ideas about knowledge and competence and how they are acquired, thus providing important insights into the process of learning and the design of learning environments. However, we have not in the same way advanced our knowledge of teacher learning. Our understanding of the process and mechanism of teacher learning in in collaborative professional development (PD) environments is still quite thin. In this paper, we discuss how utilizing methods from Interaction Analysis, in particular, can offer insight into the process of teacher learning in these contexts. We illustrate how adopting a lens that shifts away from asking whether teachers are progressing toward a researcher-defined goal, toward one that asks how learning occurs in the moments of interaction, and the meaning it has for participants as they work to achieve PD goals, has the potential to shed new light on learning in teacher PD.     

Subjectivity, Learning and Work: Sources and Legacies

Individuals’ dispositions have long been held to direct and energise cognition in ways that shape how they experience and respond to events in the social world. Therefore, a consideration of these dispositions is likely to be helpful in understanding the inter-psychological processes between individual and social world that frame contemporary socio-cultural accounts of learning. Here, the specific concern is to elaborate the sources, legacies and potency of individuals’ dispositions in the learning of occupational practice through these processes. Having reviewed ideas about the dispositional underpinnings of individuals’ construal and construction of the knowledge required for work, these conceptions are exercised through illuminating the roles dispositions play in the process of constructing the knowledge required for an occupational practice (i.e. hairdressing). The study reported here combines workplace ethnography and problem-solving tasks to identify the source of these subjectivities, how they shape individuals’ cognitive processes at work tasks and their learning through participation in vocational practice. In all, it identified how individuals’ dispositions arise through socially-shaped life histories or ontogenies, albeit in person-dependent ways. The participants’ conceptions, preferences and procedures that shape their learning and the enactment of their practice were found to be products of earlier socially-derived experiences, thereby making them personally-subjective. These personally-subjective dispositions were identified as shaping how these individuals engage in work, learning and the ongoing remaking of work activities, because they influence inter-psychological processes that comprise the immediate experiences that constitute the enactment of these activities. So, this suggests that the sociogeneses of knowledge and learning likely includes personally unique social contributions that arise through ontogeny.     

Transforming knowledge to knowing at work: the experiences of newcomers

This paper explores how newcomers experience their transition to work as they strive to move from a position of ‘educational’ knowledge to professional knowing. Hence, we focus on how newcomers learn to transform knowledge to knowing at work. We do this through the analysis of two ethnographic case studies: one with a focus on new office workers and the other on newly employed paramedics. In our analysis, we approach knowledge as a question of knowing through practise. This enables us to recognize the complexities of learning at and for work and learning and knowing as integrated processes, where learning is situated, relational and mediated. We find that newcomers’ learning occurs through social interactions and participation, not simply by joining in but involving complex interactions to first find and grasp the pathways or the ‘codes’ (established organizational culture) that enable fruitful participation. Getting access to colleagues and thus, established practice is already considered important support for newcomers to learn to enact ‘educational’ knowledge professionally. However, we find that what is most important for newcomers is how they become knowledgeable as they recognize that it is not their educational knowledge, but working out how to engage and participate in the social practices, that counts.     

Editorial

Leadership for learning (LfL) is conceived as a network rather than as a centre within the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. This paper explores what is understood by the term network, both within LfL and in the wider educational and research communities, and how these understandings are reflected in a number of projects carried out under the aegis of LfL over the last three years. The paper draws out the key distinguishing features of these activities and, using the five principles of leadership for learning, explores the degree to which these activities have contributed to the creation and transfer of new knowledge. The paper concludes by proposing a model for knowledge-building which draws on the work of LfL and suggests ways in which this model may be of use to the wider educational community.     

Developing Membership in the Education of Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students in Inclusive Settings

This article discusses the importance of membership in the inclusive education of deaf/hard-of-hearing (D/HH) students. Membership refers to being an integral part of the classroom and school communities. Membership is a key philosophical concept in inclusion that may influence how classroom teachers and teachers of D/HH students share their expertise and how they work with students and each other. Membership can be contrasted with "visitorship." When programs treat D/HH students as visitors, these students face greater barriers to obtaining a quality education in classes with hearing students. A social constructivist perspective of learning and teaching that requires students in the classroom to interact with one another and the teacher may best promote learning and is consistent with a focus on membership. We suggest that inclusion is possible, but to sustain students as full members of their classes and school, programs must go beyond placement and communication access issues. To facilitate membership, inclusive programs must carefully address teacher attitudes, teacher roles and relationships, student knowledge and curriculum, structural barriers, extracurricular activities, community relationships, and parental support.     

Beyond the tools: analysing personal and group learning environments in a university course / Más allá de la tecnología: análisis de los entornos de aprendizaje personales y grupales de estudiantes en una asignatura universitaria

Abstract

In this paper we present the results of a naturalistic study carried out with higher education students which describes their learning environments when working on academic tasks in groups and individually. In this study we want to analyse how they organize their learning activities and knowledge processes (reading, reflecting and sharing) and how these learning processes are integrated into their Personal Learning Environments (PLE). In order to achieve that, students had to reflect about the basic ‘components’ that make up their learning process: reading (using not only by text but also multimedia), doing/reflecting (creating cognitive artefacts) and sharing (discussing, showing, and offering and receiving feedback from and to a community of reference). Students formed relationships between those components and any technological tools they used and created mind maps to represent their PLEs. The main objective is to try to understand how PLEs are organized and how they are perceived by learners, not from a technological perspective but from a learning perspective. The main results confirm the strong nature of PLEs as a pedagogical approach with a strong technological base. In addition, those results suggest a close relationship between students’ beliefs and expectations regarding academic tasks as well as the importance they give to each component in their learning process.     

Inclusive pedagogy in action: getting it right for every child

A key assumption underpinning formative assessment strategies is that individual pupils must be fully involved in the process. While such engagement and attention on the individual is important, studies suggest that teachers do not always readily engage with formative assessment as a reciprocal process which involves pupils. Additionally, a focus on individual differences between pupils can be problematic if the work that is set for some is differentiated to such an extent that they are not able to participate in classroom activities with others. Inclusive pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning that attends to individual differences between pupils but avoids the marginalisation that can occur when pedagogical responses are designed only with individual needs in mind. Using participant observation and video footage from three classrooms that captured ‘learning moments’ identified by teachers and pupils, this study documents how the professional craft knowledge of teachers develops as they learn to use what their pupils have to say about learning in the context of whole class teaching. By concentrating on the findings from one site, this paper shows how teachers can use what they learn from listening to pupils’ self-assessments of their learning in ways that meet the standard of inclusive pedagogy.     

Software for managing complex learning: Examples from an educational psychology course

Inquiry-based instruction including problem-, project-, and case-based methods often incorporate complex sets of learning activities. The numerous activities run the risk of becoming disconnected in the minds of learners and teachers. STAR.Legacy is a software shell that can help designers organize learning activities into an inquiry cycle that is easy to understand and pedagogically sound. To ensure that classroom teachers can adapt the inquiry activities according to their local resources and needs, STAR.Legacy was built upon four types of design principles: learner centered, knowledge centered, assessment centered, and community centered. We describe how a STAR.Legacy constructed for an educational psychology course helped preservice teachers design and learn about effective inquiry-based instruction. This work was supported by grant #R305F60090 from the Department of Education. The authors thank the educational psychology students for their contributions to this paper and Amy Ryce for her editorial talents.     

Students’ strategies for learning identities as industrial workers in a Swedish upper secondary school VET programme

The aim of this article is to investigate the learning strategies vocational students use to become part of a work community, and how these strategies are related to the formation of a vocational identity at the workplace. Conducting qualitative interviews, data were collected from 44 industrial programme students from six upper secondary schools. The findings revealed five recurrent strategies used by the students for learning vocational identities as industrial workers. The students took individual responsibility for their own learning, asked questions to gain deeper vocational knowledge, searched for role models in the work community, positioned themselves as a resource to the work community, understood and used humour and jokes in order to become a member of the community. The conclusion is that the students actively develop learning strategies to adapt their behaviour to the norms and ideals of the industrial work community. In the process of develop the vocational identities as industrial workers, the students’ vocational habitus is transformed to better fit the industrial work community. The integration of the notions of agency and habitus demonstrates the dynamic nature of students’ participation in work communities; simultaneously, the students reproduce social structures that promote vocational identities.     

Helping students learn ‘how to learn’ from texts: Towards an ITS for developing metacognition

Intelligent tutoring systems have most frequently concentrated on imparting domain knowledge. However, there is another important aspect to learning. This is the meta level knowledge abouthow to learn a domain. Metacognition is a very important feature of learning. It consists of being aware of and regulating one's own cognitions.Good students have full control over their learning and see it as a planful and purposive activity. They reflect on their learning activities, are aware of a variety of strategies, and they oversee and monitor the application of these strategies, i.e. they are proficient in metacognitive activities. This paper describes a computer based system that helps students to learn these important self regulation skills. Students work with the system in pairs, and they can use it with any text from which they wish to learn. Apart from being used as a study aid, the system is being used as a tool to gather data about students learning processes.     

When are powerful learning environments effective? The role of learner activities and of students’ conceptions of educational technology

The goal of this chapter is to outline a theoretical and empirical perspective on how learners’ conceptions of educational technology might influence their learning activities and thereby determine the power of computer-based learning environments. Starting with an introduction to the concept of powerful learning environments we outline how recent developments in information and communication technologies might be used to implement these environments technologically. In the next step we refer to several exemplary empirical studies to argue that the power of computer-based learning environments will largely depend on very detailed aspects of the learning activities within these environments. In order to design these environments so that they elicit effective learning activities, it is necessary to analyze the factors that determine learners’ goals and their choices of processing strategies. The focus of this paper is on one of these factors, namely on learners’ instructional conceptions with regard to educational technology and its use in instruction. Up to now, there has been nearly no research conducted within the educational community addressing the issue of how this particular type of instructional conceptions determine learning activities. Therefore, we review several relevant findings from neighboring fields like epistemological beliefs, attitude research, human computer interaction, or cognitive modeling. We use this review to demonstrate that there are numerous findings outside the educational technology community that deserve much more resonance in this community than they currently receive.     

The evolutionary design of a Knowledge Network to support knowledge management and sharing for lifelong learning

Knowledge Management (KM) and knowledge sharing are important factors that support lifelong learning, and enable people to continue developing throughout their careers. The concept of a Community of Practice ( Wenger, 2000 ) is attractive in drawing together people whose work shares similar aspects, and consideration is given here to how technology can be used to develop and support such a community. In this paper, concepts from the Community of Practice literature are used to consider the development of a software environment for people working as a community in the area of lifelong learning. The intention was to design the system in an evolutionary way, using a minimal set of essential elements which would be elaborated according to user feedback. Three key design questions are considered: Who can contribute resources to such a system? What happens to existing practices? How is the community engaged? We conclude that, in lifelong learning, knowledge management supported by a software environment offers a good way to bring together communities, resources and experience, but to achieve these benefits, great care needs to be exerted in introducing the system and maintaining existing work practices.     

Using Community Artifacts to Support Novice Math Teacher Educators in Teaching Prospective Teachers

Despite the centrality of math teacher educators (MTEs) in teacher education, we know little about the nature of professional learning opportunities for MTEs to develop and enhance the knowledge needed to teach prospective teachers. Existing models for supporting MTEs in developing their knowledge and practice do not address how to prepare novice MTEs in initially learning to teach prospective teachers. We present a professional learning model we have been pursuing for supporting novice MTEs and the generation of and role for community artifacts, namely lesson plans, in that model. We outline the process by which we implement, analyze, and collectively revise lesson plans so that they are continually improved over time to serve as artifacts that better instantiate what members of the local community are learning about how to support novice MTEs through identification of their problems of practice. Finally, we problematize the model we are investigating and propose implications of this model and questions raised by our work with the goal of inviting further discussion about supporting novice MTEs.

     

虚拟学习社区中个体隐性知识的建构

个体隐性知识主要是通过非正式学习获得的,虚拟学习社区作为非正式学习环境的一种重要形式,能够为个体隐性知识的建构提供便利条件。本文主要从非正式学习的视角来讨论如何利用虚拟学习社区来促进个体隐性知识的建构问题。