The long and winding road: Routine creation and replication in multi-site organizations

Prior research on organizational routines in the ‘capabilities’ literature has either studied how new routines are created during an exploratory process of variation and selection or how existing routines are replicated during a phase of exploitation. Few studies have analyzed the life cycle of new routine creation and replication as an integrated process. In an in-depth case study of England’s Highways Agency, this paper shows that the creation and replication of a new routine across multiple sites involves four sequential steps: envisioning, experimenting, entrenching and enacting. We contribute to the capabilities research in two ways: first, by showing how different organizational levels, capabilities and logics (cognitive and behavioural) shape the development of new routines; and second, by identifying how distinct evolutionary cycles of variation and selective retention occur during each step in the process. In contrast with prior research on replication as an exact copy of a template or existing routine, our study focuses on the replication of an entirely new routine (based on novel principles) that is adapted to fit local operational conditions during its large-scale replication across multiple sites. We draw upon insights from adjacent ‘practice research’ and suggest how capabilities and practice studies may complement each other in future research on the evolution of routines.     

Creation of new routines in physical education: second-order reflection as a tradition-challenging form of reflection stimulated by inquiry-based learning

ABSTRACT

The time we live in is characterised by social and cultural changes, but teaching in physical education (PE) does not necessary match these changes. Consequently, the present project explored how second-order reflection (SoR) as a tradition-challenging and developing form of reflection can be stimulated by an inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach in physical education teacher education to transform current pedagogy to align with social and cultural changes. SoR fosters development and learning by inter-professional collaboration and inter-professional dialogue and is an extended form of higher-order thinking (HoT) including critical thinking and problem-solving. The project explored how an IBL approach stimulated a group of pre-service teachers (n?=?32) developing their professional practice by using SoR. Data were generated through video observations and audio recordings of the pre-service teachers’ discussions, reflections and actions during the IBL unit. Furthermore, written reflections regarding the challenges were collected. All data were inductively analysed in order to identify and extract common themes and patterns in relation to SoR. The analyses of the data revealed that during the IBL approach the pre-service teachers used both reflection at first and second-order level. Reflections in the form of technical and practical considerations were common, while examples of SoR were seen especially in the phases of IBL where the pre-service teachers used new theoretical knowledge and experiences from other contexts than PE. Consequently, the findings supported that IBL enhanced the second-order reflective skills of some of the pre-service teachers. However, with further use of guiding and facilitation of the IBL process or keeping the pre-service teachers to their challenges, hypotheses and plans, the methodology has even more potential to enhance the second-order critical reflection of the participants; thereby developing their coming practice to be more reflective, engaging and probably motivational.     

Commonwealth Media

Television, Censorship and the Law, by Colin R. Munro (208 pp.---$22.00)

Characteristics of Local Media Audiences, by Ray Brown (130 pp.---$23.00)

Newspapers as Organizations, by Lars Engwall (288 pp.---$29.0O)

Broadcasting and Youth (London: Calouste Gulbenian Foundation, 98 Portland Place, London W1N 4ET, 1979---£1.70 or about $4.00, paper)

Carl Gardner, ed. Media, Politics & Culture: A Socialist View (London: Macmillan/Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanties Press, 1979---$21.50/9.75)

Asa Briggs, Governing the BBC (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1979---£10.00 or about $22.00)

Graham Cleverley's The Kettering Standoff: A Study of a Strike (Southhamption: Aeropagus, 1978---price not given, but available in hardback and paper)

Paul Hoch's The Newspaper Game: The Political Sociology of the Press (London and New York: Marian Boyars Ltd., 1974, released US in 1979---$10.00)

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC Information Services, Ottawa, Ontario K1A ON2, Canada---available free on request, paper)

Australia: Henry Mayer tells us of nine recent publications on page     

The Forerunners of a New Era

This article explores the relationship between historicality and historiography, with particular focus on the tension between claims of the historicality of broadcast events and later absences in broadcast historiography. It analyses two types of claims of historicality: first as a provider of images of history in the making; and second, as a kind of prototype, a forerunner of a new era in which television has a central position in a global society. Looking at the production and organization of the broadcast of Yuri Gagarin's return to Moscow in April 1961, the article argues that historiography is often too bound up in the present and remains blind to perspectives falling outside the dominant narratives of the current. The claims of being forerunners, on behalf of the agents involved in producing the broadcast, fit poorly with later historical events and are perhaps nothing more than the ruins of an anticipated future. But as such it may teach us just as much about the forgotten aspects of television history as it does about our practices of writing it.     

The Use of ICT Tools in Mathematics: A Case-control Study of Best Practice in 9th Grade Classrooms

Results are reported from a study in which teachers' views of highly achieving ninth grade classes in Norway (KappAbel national competition winners) were compared with teachers' views of average achievement classes with regard to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and pedagogical practices. The main purpose of the study was to answer the following questions: What differential role does ICT play in the two kinds of classes as it relates to learning performance in mathematics, and how does the use of ICT relate to teachers' reported views and pedagogical practices? The key findings of the study are the following: First, KappAbel teachers were more likely to have studied math at universities whereas the control teachers were more likely to have studied at colleges. Second, KappAbel teachers were more likely to emphasize reasoning-oriented as compared with instrumental- or rule-oriented teaching of mathematics. Third, KappAbel teachers do perceive weaker general effects of ICT in relation to learning than control teachers; however subject specific ICT tools like spreadsheets are more used for purposes of exploration and research than in control classes. It is the teacher-guided student activity that makes the difference.     

“Actually, I May be Clever Enough to do it”. Using Identity as a Lens to Investigate Students’ Trajectories Towards Science and University

We have followed a group of students in the potential pipeline for science through their last years of upper secondary school and in the context of a university mentorship program. The student group is defined by their choice of Mathematics at A-level which is mandatory for admission to tertiary STEM education in Denmark. Rich data (repeated interviews, questionnaires (pre-and post-) and observations) from 14 target students have been collected. Using Late Modern identity theory as a lens, we have analysed students’ identity narratives in order to establish their trajectories in relation to university in general, and towards science studies and science careers in particular. We find that the diversity of students’ educational identity narratives can be characterized and their trajectories understood in terms of a Four Factor Framework comprising: general identity process orientations (reflecting, committing, exploring), personal values, subject self-concepts and subject interests. In various ways these constructs interact and set the range and direction of the students’ searches for future education and careers. Our longitudinal study suggests that they have enough permanence to enable us to hypothesize more or less secured paths of individual students to tertiary science (or other areas of academia).