The paper analyses the case of an innovative project on the transition between university and work. The project examined sustains two social dimensions of learning: education as a shared social institution in which university studies and work can be productively interconnected and alternated in order to enhance learning, and learning as identity projects and significant participation in situated activities. Working actively at the boundaries of communities provides relevant learning ‘loci’ for both students participating in the project and the communities involved (university and firms). Implications for the design of complex activity systems which take account of the learning value of work are discussed.
This paper describes a framework for learning where learners undergo experimentations with the phenomena at hand according to progressive and staged goals. Bowling is used as a case study in this paper. The premise for experimentations is that learners can experience hidden efficacies, including the formation of “bad habits.” A distinction is made between productivity in learning and performance in terms of learning outcomes. In other words, productivity in learning may not necessarily manifest in successful performance, hence the term productive failure. To emphasize the need for self-regulation during problem-solving process, we discuss the movements within the productive–unproductive and success–failure dimensions through three-staged self-regulatory processes and draw implications to learning and instruction.
Inquiring into the theoretical underpinnings of dietetic curriculum provides a means for further understanding who dietitians are (identity) and what dietitians do (performativity). Since dietetic curriculum exists as a structural influence on the dietetic student identity, it is worth inquiring into how such a structure is theoretically informed, especially considering that until now, this process has not be undertaken. This research attempts to illuminate how dietetic knowledge is generated and how various institutional structures reinforce this knowledge. Since dietetic education in Canada is standardized by a means of national accreditation, the accreditation texts were analyzed following a poststructural discourse analysis method. Those aspects of the Accreditation Manual concerning dietetic education were scrutinized to illuminate the presence/absence of curricular theory, knowledge assumptions, and educational values. Findings of the discourse analysis indicate that there is no explicit curricular theory framing dietetic education, learning processes are sequential and apolitical, and dietetic knowledge is decontextualized from the social world. These findings have implications for dietetic education, the scholarship of teaching and learning within the profession, and dietetic epistemology. With further attention to these issues it is hoped that dietetic educators will be encouraged to reflect on the historical and theoretical foundations of their curricula and will consider how teaching and learning, and ultimately dietetic knowledge could be enhanced through a socially integrated feminist science of food and nutrition.
Research on induction of newcomers is primarily focused on individual processes, such as acquisition of knowledge and socialization in order to create a smooth and frictionless entry period. The interest of our research, however, is the processes that happen on the organizational level. We claim that induction potentially triggers both individual and organizational learning and by drawing on practice-based theory we discuss how the interplay between individual and the organization, what we call a generative dance, ignites both kinds of learning. We focus on and describe the interplay that takes place in particular induction events and analyze the “dance” through the lens of learning. The article concludes with a brief discussion about the implications for practitioners and the challenges and future research prospects we have encountered. We draw on an empirical enquiry in two organizational settings, a Danish management consulting company and a German retail bank.
Although out-of-class communication enhances students’ learning experience, students’ use of office hours has been limited. As the learning infrastructures of the social sciences and humanities have undergone a range of changes since the diffusion of digital networks, new opportunities emerge to increase out-of-class communication. Hence, it is important to investigate the role of cyberinfrastructures as valuable alternatives or supplements to existing infrastructures in the learning process. This paper proposes that virtual office hours can be a form of cyberinfrastructure that provides new possibilities for student–faculty interaction. We examine students’ perceptions of instant messaging as a tool for offering virtual office hours and enhancing student–faculty interaction. Students report that instant messaging is a useful tool for virtual office hours because of its convenience, interactivity, and ease of use. While students only made limited use of it when it was actually offered as an alternative to regular office hours, it represents an important new avenue for interaction. We outline reasons for students’ limited use of instant messaging for virtual office hours and discuss a series of barriers and potential solutions.
This article investigates the relationship of learning and its infrastructure using Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate the acquisition of skills needed to succeed in a global economy. We explore the learning phenomenon as a way to bring forward a process of continuous improvement supported by social software. We use a commonly accepted definition of learning to evaluate different learning theories, since it seems that the definition of learning itself is not a major source of difference between learning theories. Their differences are over issues of interpretation, not over definition. The theories reviewed are used in the design of a framework to assess the infrastructure against expectations of skill proficiency using Web 2.0 tools, i.e., wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, etc. which must emerge as a result of registering in an introduction to business information and communication technologies (ICT) course in a Canadian university. In this course, we use Friedman’s (The world is flat: a brief history of the twenty-first century release 3.0, Picador, New York, 2007) thesis that the “world is flat” to discuss issues of globalization and the role of ICT. Students registered in the course are usually familiar with some of the tools we introduce and use in the course. The students are members of Facebook or MySpace, regularly check YouTube, and use Wikipedia in their studies. These tools are the tools to socialize. In our course, we broaden the students’ horizons and explore the potential business benefits of such tools and empower the students to use Web 2.0 technologies within a business context.
This article sets out to argue that organisations can learn but that they cannot do so in their own right without infrastructural support. This article further examines the notion that individuals in organisations also require the cognitive participation of the organisation itself as a learning entity to learn. The close reliance and affiliation required between individuals and organisations to enable their learning from one another are discussed. In continuation of this, specific examples are provided through the industry sector of information systems development (ISD) projects to illustrate of how organisations can learn. Finally, the question of how one identifies organisational learning is analysed. Following on from the ISD and its use in the analogy of organisational learning, the article discusses an organisational empirical research project currently being undertaken by the authors, which utilises blogs. Though there are many potential organisational learning connotations associated with blogs, they could be perceived as a type of information system. The ongoing research being undertaken with the company using the blogs will attempt to identify indicators of learning at the individual, group and organisational levels. The significance of the issues explored in this article lies in the fact that it addresses an ISD approach to study how an organisation learns, and why this perspective is useful towards understanding the process of organisational learning. This article contributes to the organisational learning debate through an illustrative industry example of ISD projects. In doing so, we wish to argue that though individual learning can occur in ISD projects, the collective nature of projects primarily engenders the interpretive aspect of organisational learning. We further believe that it is the interactive nature of an ISD project that allows an organisation to learn in tandem with project members as exemplified through the stages of a project life cycle. We feel that this article contributes to the ISD and organisational learning literature in terms of linking both concepts together.
Practicing teachers in high-SES and low-SES communities completed a survey that assesses the strength of teachers’ support for professional development (PD), with the goal of determining the extent to which PD initiatives in low-SES communities face obstacles not evident in more affluent areas (N = 150). A multiple regression analysis was conducted on the factor scores produced by the survey, Teachers’ Attitudes about Professional Development (TAP). Support for PD was higher in high-SES communities than low-SES ones, and higher among elementary teachers than secondary teachers in both communities. To the extent that teachers’ attitudes about PD influence the effectiveness of PD initiatives, these attitudes present difficulties in low-SES communities beyond those evident in high-SES areas. Needed are professional-development models, and research that tests them, to determine how best to overcome obstacles that teachers’ attitudes likely cause in PD initiatives in low-SES communities.
The changing higher educational landscape in Europe creates new learning infrastructures and transforms existing ones. Students are thus provided with new possibilities and challenges. Through the case study of a newly developed common curriculum for the social sciences of a public university in Austria, this article discusses the interacting social agents, elements, and tools of a flexible and interactive technology-enhanced learning model. In doing so, the transnational, national, and local infrastructural conditions and challenges are critically examined from a socio-technological perspective. Selected evaluation and survey results highlight students’ learning practices, usage behavior, and suggestions to improve their learning situation. The article concludes that student-centered learning models focusing on flexibility and interactivity can support the stable implementation of a common curriculum and its technology-enhanced learning infrastructure for the social sciences at public universities with high student numbers.
The Brisbane Media Map is both an online resource and a tertiary-level authentic learning project. The Brisbane Media Map is an online database which provides a detailed overview of about 600 media industry organizations in Brisbane, Australia. In addition to providing contact details and synopses for each organization’s profile, the Brisbane Media Map also includes supplementary information on current issues, trends, and individuals in the media and communication industry sectors. This resource is produced and updated annually by final-year undergraduate Media and Communication students. This article introduces the Brisbane Media Map, its functionality and systems design approach, as well as its alignment with key learning infrastructures. It examines authentic learning as the pedagogical framework underpinning the ongoing development work of the resource and highlights some synergies of this framework with participatory design principles. The Brisbane Media Map is a useful example of an authentic learning approach that successfully engages students of non-traditional and non-design areas of study in human–computer interaction, usability, and participatory design activities.
Ontario’s current education system is struggling with the task of fully including children with disabilities in the regular classrooms of their neighbourhood school. While many educators understand that it is wrong to deny admission to publicly funded schools because the child may be Black or female, they nonetheless feel that segregation of students with disabilities is warranted and not discriminatory. This paper will present the stories of two groups of people, separated by 150 years, who have been discriminated against by the public education system in Ontario. Archival data will tell the story of the experiences of Black parents in Ontario in the early to mid 1800s, and an interview with the mother of a child with cerebral palsy will represent the voices of those with disabilities. An examination of their experiences using a narrative format seems to suggest that the institution of education has never welcomed difference in any form and at issue is not whether education can ever welcome students with disabilities, but whether it was created to be anything but an exclusive enterprise.
Discussions on learning in organizations are characterized by the diversity of perspectives involved and the variety of their disciplinary roots. This is an effort to identify the roots of some metaphors employed in this literature. It is argued that cross-metaphor conversations can contribute to the richness of discussions in the field. Some specific instances where more than one metaphor is employed are identified. The promises of certain “disruptive devices” to facilitate such desirable cross-metaphor interactions are briefly explored.
In a line of research employing a survey instrument, the Critical Thinking Belief Appraisal , teachers supported critical-thinking (CT) activities more for high- than low-advantage learners, likely exacerbating a “rigor gap” implicated in persistent achievement gaps. Such beliefs were less likely to be espoused by expert teachers than randomly selected ones, and teacher-education programs mitigated these beliefs but did not expunge them, suggesting a need for interventions that foster belief change. Six issues were found to be associated with support for low-CT activities with low-advantage populations—learners’ prior knowledge, time constraints, influence of parents, influence of colleagues, learners’ level of motivation, and learners’ level of ability. The rigor gap may be ameliorated through teacher-education practices that encourage teachers to (a) reflect on their existing beliefs, their experiences as students, their field experiences, classroom scenarios, and models of best practice, and (b) create instructional plans featuring high-CT activities for low-advantage learners.
A framework, termed the RSP, is proposed. It is mainly for analyzing and explaining how learning occurs. This framework is grounded in the social-cultural perspective, in particular, in the thinking of both Vygotsky and Popper. Although the thinking of Popper is generally not referred to as having a social-cultural orientation, mostly due to misunderstanding, he and Vygotsky are defensibly complementary. In a nutshell, Vygotsky’s social-cultural (inter-psychological) plane is enriched by Popper’s distinction between physical and conceptual-abstract worlds, while Popper’s mental world is enhanced by Vygotskian and post-Vygotskian work emphasizing personality, that is, the whole self. Integrating and expanding on both Vygotsky and Popper, the RSP framework further unpacks how learning occurs as dialectical interactions between the Worlds of reifications (R), selves (S), and phenomena (P). The World of Reifications (R) extends Popper’s World 3 by emphasizing the developmental nature of conjectures to theories. The World of Selves (S) now extends Popper’s World 2 from cognitive dimensions to the whole individual. And the World of Phenomena (P) extends Popper’s World 1 to include the relationships between objects forming phenomena, including the physical, social, and spiritual dimensions. The interactions among the three Worlds result in five learning outcomes: cognition, metacognition, action, reflective action, and epistemic cognition. It is contended that these five outcomes are necessary criteria for holistic learning. The framework is then applied to analyzing various issues such as resolving lethal mutations, identity, and learning as becoming.
To survive in and adapt to dynamic, turbulent, and complex environments, organizations need to engage in learning. This truism is particularly relevant for army organizations in times of war and armed conflict. In this article a case of army operations during World War II is analyzed on the basis of Őrtenblad’s integrated model of the learning organization and Argyris and Schön’s theory of action approach. Among others, it is found that survival of and adaptation to combat conditions is possible through single-loop learning, provided that this learning takes place in an open and productive learning climate. This and other conclusions have important implications for theory and practice of organizational learning under conditions of hierarchy and discipline.
It is believed that language is an innate ability and, therefore, spoken language is acquired naturally and informally. In contrast, written language is thought to be an invention and, therefore, has to be learned through formal instruction. An alternate view, however, is that spoken language and written language are two forms of manifestations of the same inner language and that under certain circumstances, they both are acquired the same way. Nevertheless, in reality, the motor mechanisms for speech mature earlier than the ones needed for reading and writing, and, therefore, spoken language gains precedence and is acquired earlier than the written language. Based on this rationale, it is hypothesized that if the option to communicate through oral language is restricted, and children are made to communicate only through written language, we can expect written language skill to emerge with greater force. This hypothesis was put to test by conducting a pilot study in which children’s option to communicate with each other in the classroom was limited to written language for brief periods. One group of fourth graders were allowed to communicate with each other for half an hour a day, 4 days a week, for a period of one semester only through written language. No talking was allowed during this period. A comparison group of children were not restricted in this way. We labeled this project “Drop Everything and Write” (DEAW). Both the groups were administered pre- and post-tests of reading and spelling. After one semester of this program, children in the DEAW program achieved significantly higher scores on tests of vocabulary, reading comprehension, and spelling than the comparison group. The DEAW group also improved greatly in written language use. The results are interpreted to support the hypothesis.
Current research on e-learning that focuses predominantly on instructional programming, and on various hardware and software, essentially neglects the more socio-cultural perspectives on e-learning. With this in mind, this article proceeds from a social theory perspective with a more socio-culturally engaged look at e-learning for workplace learning and pedagogy. In so doing, this article proposes a theoretical framework derived from the social theory of Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), with a focus on his seminal, metaphorical notion of ‘simulation’. Finally, this metaphor is applied as a theoretical framework to discern the socio-cultural significance of the present trajectory of technological environments for workplace learning and their potential for conveying socially and (multi)culturally relevant workplace learning pedagogy.
Volitional issues are important in today’s classrooms where autonomous students are expected to manage school demands on their own. A new kind of challenge has appeared with the advent of free Internet access in the classroom. Motivational conflicts may therefore arise between (1) immediate rewards of electronic chatting, surfing, and games and (2) the long-term rewards of academic achievement. Paradoxes of our educational system are emerging in the technology-rich classroom, for example, the basic need of student autonomy versus dealing with constraints to regulate one’s own behaviour. The main purposes of this article are, first, to discuss volitional issues on a theoretical level. Second, a field study is used to identify how students are using volitional (or self-discipline) strategies in technology-rich laissez-faire classrooms. Third, how schools may design institutional arrangements which can scaffold the student’s use of self-discipline strategies are discussed. The strategies which are enumerated may contribute to school programs that are to build self-discipline. Understanding how to design institutional features to influence students’ choices in directions that improve their academic achievement is one of the major challenges in education.
