Facilitating team learning through transformational leadership

This article investigates when and how teams engage in team learning behaviours (TLB). More specifically, it looks into how different leadership styles facilitate TLB by influencing the social conditions that proceed them. 498 healthcare workers from 28 nursery teams filled out a questionnaire measuring the concepts leadership style, TLB, social cohesion and team psychological safety. Analysis was performed using structural equation modelling. The results of this cross-sectional study show that transformational leadership predicts TLB better then laissez-faire leadership, because transformational leadership is primarily related to team psychological safety and only secondarily to social cohesion while for laissez-faire leadership it works the other way around. Transformational leadership matters because it facilitates psychological safety in the team.     

Mind the gap: Dewey on educational bridge‐building

This is the first of four commentaries discussing John Dewey's short essay, ‘Education as engineering’. The essay provides a fascinating model of how the example of engineering could guide the interaction between educational research and practice. It has much in common with Herbart's ideas on how ‘pedagogical tact’ bridges the gap between theory and practice. Re‐introducing both Dewey and Herbart's ideas could help to overcome the current naivity of ‘evidence‐based’ school improvement.     

Exploring reasons and consequences of academic procrastination: an interview study

In the present study, we broadly investigated reasons and consequences of academic procrastination. Additionally, we explored whether students seeking help from student counselling services to overcome academic procrastination (counselling group) report more serious reasons and consequences of academic procrastination than students who procrastinate but seek no counselling support (non-counselling group). We conducted standardized interviews with university students (N?=?36, of which 16 belonged to the counselling group) and analysed these using qualitative content analysis and frequency analysis. The reasons and consequences of academic procrastination, each summarized in a separate category system, were manifold. The category systems consisted of 20 main categories in total, subsuming 81 subcategories, of which 32 were inductively developed. The counselling group reported more serious reasons and consequences of academic procrastination than the non-counselling group. Our results suggest considering academic procrastination as a self-regulation failure and contribute to constructing interventions tailored to students’ specific needs.     

Video-Based Analyses of Motivation and Interaction in Science Classrooms

An analytical framework for examining students’ motivation was developed and used for analyses of video excerpts from science classrooms. The framework was developed in an iterative process involving theories on motivation and video excerpts from a ‘motivational event’ where students worked in groups. Subsequently, the framework was used for an analysis of students’ motivation in the whole class situation. A cross-case analysis was carried out illustrating characteristics of students’ motivation dependent on the context. This research showed that students’ motivation to learn science is stimulated by a range of different factors, with autonomy, relatedness and belonging apparently being the main sources of motivation. The teacher’s combined use of questions, uptake and high level evaluation was very important for students’ learning processes and motivation, especially students’ self-efficacy. By coding and analysing video excerpts from science classrooms, we were able to demonstrate that the analytical framework helped us gain new insights into the effect of teachers’ communication and other elements on students’ motivation.     

Globalisation and education for sustainable development: emancipation from context and meaning

This article tries to contribute to the critical debate on the ideological and globalising potential of education for sustainable development (ESD), which exists in the research field of environmental education, by highlighting potential contradictions in the argumentation for ESD’s ideological and globalising tendency. Further, the authors of this article argue for an alternative perspective on how education policy on ESD can be seen to contribute to globalisation and homogenisation by merging two conceptualisations of ‘globalisation as connection' and the role of ‘empty signifiers' in political discourse. The ambition with the merger is not to provide a universal explanation of globalisation and ideology, instead, the intention is to outline an alternative theoretical outlook that allows for an empirical study of the processes that can be seen to feed into or interrupt the preservation of hegemony in a global setting.     

Informal math coaching by instant messaging: Two case studies of how university students coach K-12 students

The aim of this study is to describe and explore how instant messaging (IM) can be used to support informal math coaching. We have studied two projects where university students use IM to coach K-12 students in mathematics. The coaches were interviewed with a focus on how informal coaching works by examining coaching challenges, how coaching can be organized, whether coaching should be anonymous or personal, which tools can be used and how informal math coaching supports learning. Research shows that generating and answering questions are important in the process of understanding and learning, which means that both the students and the coaches can learn math through this type of project. The coaches perceive informal math coaching as complementing online math forums. For students to learn effectively, the coaches need to be able to interpret the students' competence level in order to coach on a level that is within their development zone. It seems particularly challenging to coach at the right level when using IM and, therefore, it is important to establish a personal relationship with the students.     

Translating Knowledge into Action at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB)

Abstract

Purpose: This article explores the impacts of action learning on graduates’ abilities to use interdisciplinary knowledge to solve problems, practice teamwork on the job and become change agents through study in two MSc programmes at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB).

Design/methodology/approach: Electronic questionnaires were sent to students who had graduated from the Agroecology and Management of Natural Resources and Sustainable Agriculture (MNRSA) MSc programmes between 2000 and 2007.

Findings: Both study programmes encouraged students to become change agents promoting sustainable practices through application of knowledge and methods from natural and social sciences. Agroecology graduates applied a greater range of creative research methods, and improved their capacity for holistic and systems thinking more than MNRSA graduates, while the latter were more skilled in building consensus. Graduates from both programmes increased their abilities to create a positive team environment, bring people together to express their views and take multiple views into consideration when making decisions.

Practical implications: This survey documents how action learning develops students’ skills and knowledge to handle complex social and environmental challenges and become change agents.

Originality/value: In the context of increasing challenges in agroecology and natural resource management the findings on how to translate knowledge into action are important for teaching/learning institutions dealing with education for sustainable development.     

Manifest: Strategische Bedeutung des Software Engineering für die Medizin

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Problematising Critique in Education and Child‐Rearing: Ruhloff's Scepticism

In ‘Problematising Critique in Pedagogy’ Jörg Ruhloff develops a concept of critique that is motivated by a deep concern for the state of humanity. This is a thought‐provoking development of critique, but I find myself disagreeing over, or rather simply unconvinced by, his understanding of the human condition, and, connected to this, of criticism. Referring to Nietzsche, I start by illustrating one way in which a concept of critique such as Ruhloff's may in some sense be implied in educational praxis, focusing mainly on his concern that critique is not domesticated by political, economic, or other forces. In the second section I draw on Stanley Cavell to discuss some contentious aspects of Ruhloff's construal of criticism. Here I focus on Ruhloff's claim to universality, as contained in his appeal to what he calls the condition of human rationality and to a procedure of critical‐transcendental‐sceptical deliberation over the presuppositions of different standpoints. Ruhloff's understanding of criticism exemplifies an attitude that presents itself as a hostility to the ordinary. Connected to this, I sketch a conception of scepticism that is different—viz. more dynamic—than his understanding of it as a kind of methodological tool in the service of exposing presuppositions. Scepticism needs to be acknowledged in existential terms, as inherent to the human condition: a condition of life with language. With further reference to Cavell, the importance of expression, of revealing oneself as an exemplar, can then be emphasised. I conclude, in the third section, by indicating in what sense I find that a commitment to substantial judgements is lacking in Ruhloff's conception of critique and criticality.