Search Results for
"learning"

Context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) is an innovative approach that integrates wireless, mobile, and context-awareness technologies to detect the situation of learners in the real world and provide adaptive support or guidance accordingly. In this paper, a context-aware u-learning environment is developed for guiding inexperienced researchers to practice single-crystal X-ray diffraction operations. Experimental results showed that the benefits of this innovative approach are that it is "systematic", "authentic", and "economical", which implies the potential of applying it to complex science experiments, such as physics, chemistry or biotechnology experiments, for graduate and PhD students in colleges, or research workers in research institutes. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Teaching, learning and Research in Higher Education offers a combination of critical perspectives and practical advice that is ideally suited for individuals interested in enhancing their practice through analysis and critique. The aim is to promote a critical understanding of one's own practices: to foster personal and professional formation through a reflexive engagement with one's environment and circumstances. At a practical level this means to continuously think about how to adjust practice rather than following a formulaic approach derived from any particular educational theory. Teaching, learning and Research in Higher Education argues that academics can find space for their own agency in the midst of institutional policies and practices that serve to frame, as well as delimit and constrain, what counts as good academic work in teaching and research. This text bridges a gap between those books that provide a high-level analysis of contemporary higher education, the more practical texts on how to be a good teacher in higher education, and those texts which aim to improve teaching through better understanding of the learning process. © 2010 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

Purpose - The overall aim of this research is to investigate how aspects of organizational culture enable or constrain the facilitation of learning in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach - A qualitative design was used involving 100 semi-structured interviews conducted with air traffic controllers operating in three centers in Australia. The data were analyzed using a phenomenological approach in an attempt to uncover the lived experience of those interviewed. Findings - The study illustrates how elements of organizational culture evidenced in collectively held values and beliefs mediated the approaches used by on-the-job-training instructors. Three collectively held values and beliefs were identified: Belief in ability; the value of performance in demonstrating ability; and the need to exude confidence. The degree to which instructors espoused these beliefs influences the type of instructional strategy they used. Three predominant strategies of engagement with the trainee were identified: Acting on, working with, and working against the trainee. Practical implications - The evidence here suggests that programs aimed at facilitating skills development for on-the-job-training instructors need to focus on the existing knowledge and beliefs of those personnel and to provide opportunities for challenge and confrontation of those belief systems. Originality/value - The paper contributes to a growing understanding of the socio-cultural influences present in workplace learning and the role of stereotyping and power in enabling or constraining the learning in the workplace. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

This longitudinal case study of a single school examines changes in the educational beliefs of 10 elementary-school teachers who experienced a constructivist-based trans-disciplinary curriculum (CTC). After 3 years of experiencing a CTC, which emerges through theme-oriented and project-based learning, teachers' educational beliefs had changed to demonstrate multiple views rather than pure beliefs. Teachers' beliefs form a mosaic of complementary visions and the process of change in teachers' beliefs reflects the 'overlapping' rather than the 'staircase' metaphor. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.