Conditions for Employee Learning and Innovation – Interweaving Competence Development Activities Provided by a Workplace Development Programme with Everyday Work Activities in SMEs

The aim of this article is to investigate how the formal competence development activities provided by the Production Leap, a workplace development programme (WPDP), were interwoven with everyday work activities and to identify the conditions that enabled learning and employee-driven innovation that contributed to production improvement, in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Sweden. The study adopts a qualitative case approach and draws on evidence from research conducted in four manufacturing SMEs that participated in this Swedish WPDP. Funded by EU authorities, WPDPs provide competence development activities to SMEs in order to boost their production capabilities and/or promote innovation. The findings reveal that the competence development activities provided by the programme triggered learning in everyday work activities and fostered the development of different approaches to employee-driven innovation in the enterprises. The conclusion is that it is essential to consider that employee-driven innovations may take different forms and involve functions that can support innovative learning that goes beyond minor adjustments to the existing standards of production. Moreover, employee-driven innovation may impose new demands on management leadership skills. The findings provide important guidance for future WPDPs, for vocational education and training or university activities that are customised to SME contexts to promote production capabilities, and for SMEs that aim to strengthen employee-driven innovation.     

The lesson as a pedagogic text: A case study of lesson designs

In the 19th century, a shift in classroom technology from monitoring to recitation was staged in several European countries. The analysis draws on late 19th- and early 20th century lesson plans that were produced as part of the final teacher examination by students at two Swedish teacher training colleges, in order to explore how the lesson was restructured as a pedagogic text in the course of this transformation. The argument focuses upon the structure and transformation of the lesson designs, the discursive pattern of the text, the narrative involved, and the message or moral reflected in the text. The inquiry demonstrates that a classroom technology originally advocated in order to enhance the teacher's control of pupils and to influence children's minds, thoughts and morality became one instrument in the creation of a school for symbolic representation and meaning-making in a rapidly changing world of modernity.     

Young primary students making sense of text and illustrations about how refuse can become soil

Explanatory pictures and models are frequently used in teaching and learning situations. However, it seems to be simply assumed that they are always beneficial. In this article results from an investigation with 16 Swedish pupils aged 7–9 year are presented based on an analysis that has examined how well this assumption holds up. Concepts from multi-modal theory have been used to investigate how young learners deal with illustrations and text from an early reader booklet about composting domestic refuse. The analysis suggests that expectations that illustrations facilitate the meaning-making of young pupils may be exaggerated. Although the booklet claimed to provide interactive support between image and text most of the examples show pupils ignoring pictures or misinterpreting vital information about composting in both the verbal and non-verbal material. The illustrations did not compensate for the most crucial deficiencies in the written text.