A Vision of Integrity and the Mission of Performance Improvement

The performance improvement professional, as well as those in Human Resource Development, Organizational Systems Development, Sociotechnical Systems Development, Total Quality Management, and Training and Education, are all uniquely positioned in their companies to facilitate the value of ethical awareness throughout the workplace. We certainly can be ethically informed and can conduct research studies on ethical issues in performance improvement. In practice, ethical standards for the practice of our craft should arise from within the membership of our profession. Ethical standards for our clients ought to arise from the organizations in which we work. We can help them. We must decide if we will pursue those challenges. Those of us who choose to work on this task should spend time grounding ourselves in the empirical research and normative ethical theory that comprise the field of business ethics. Then we ought to design and develop a more refined ethical heuristic based upon empirical and rational writings and on the work of subject matter experts and ethicists. Finally, we ought to use and model these ethical standards ourselves as we practice our craft.     

Trainers,Performance Technologists,and Environmentalists Originally published in 1991, PIQ 4.2

Performance technology is expanding its horizons. We have witnessed an increasingly wider-ang]e concern which has moved from a focus on task components to jobs, and from those to organizational concerns—a movement from the microscopic to the big picture. In making this transition, there are important lessons to be learned from environmentalists: they encourage us to think globally and act locally. By expanding from a concern with micro-level performance improvement to a focus where the primary clients and beneficiaries include concerns for performance improvement on all levels—individual, organizational, and client/societal—we too can think globally, act locally, and also improve our contributions at all levels. This article presents expanding horizons, building upon current models and understandings to develop both strategic thinking and practical tools for both doing our jobs right as well as defining the right job to be done in the first place. The world has shifted, and it is up to us to be increasingly responsive and responsible.     

The Department as Double Agent: The Call for Department Change and Renewal

The well-known and respected Pew Foundation recently suggested four prerequisites for departmental change and renewal—a dedication to teamwork, collective dialogue and inquiry about effective teaching, a commitment to quality control and rewarding collective goals, and the leadership of a purposeful chair (Pew Foundation, 1996, pp. 7-9). Many realities that surround academic programs work against these critical conditions for renewal: conflicting faculty interests, turbulent environments, unclear institutional goals, to name a few. This paper examines teamwork, teaching, quality, and leadership as means to mitigate the contradictions and enhance department renewal.     

The indigenous worldview of Yupiaq culture: Its scientific nature and relevance to the practice and teaching of science

Is science an invention of European thought, or have legitimate scientific bodies of knowledge and scientific ways of thinking emerged separately in other cultures? Can indigenous knowledge systems contribute to contemporary science teaching? Here we describe evidence from the Yupiaq culture in southwestern Alaska which demonstrates a body of scientific knowledge and epistemology that differs from that of Western science. We contend that drawing from Yupiaq culture, knowledge, and epistemology can provide not only a more culturally relevant frame of reference for teaching science concepts to Yupiaq students, but also a potentially valuable context for more effectively addressing many of the recommendations of U.S. science education reform initiatives. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 35: 133–144, 1998.     

An investigation on the effects of using interactive digital video in a physics classroom on student learning and attitudes

Interactive digital video provides students with control of computer visualization techniques and allows them to collect, analyze, and model two-dimensional motion data. Activities that use these techniques were developed for students to investigate the concept of frames of reference in various real-life situations. This investigation examines the effect on student learning and attitudes of using these materials in an introductory college physics course. The study measured students' computer attitudes and found improvement in students' feelings of comfort in using computers after completion of the activities. We found students' prior computer experience did not influence their perceptions of the activities. The majority of participants perceived discussion and the computer visualization techniques as being very effective in helping them learn, Students' understanding of the physics concepts were assessed and the participants' scores were compared with nonparticipants' scores. Although analysis of variance statistical procedures revealed no significant differences between the two groups, the results of this study indicate that sophisticated instructional video software can be perceived as easy to use and effective by students who are novices and experts in using computers. Thus, interactive digital video tools and activities have the potential to provide physics teachers with the latest technology to bring the active process of learning physics to their classroom. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 34: 467–489, 1997.