Search Results for
"learning"

An appropriate human resource policy infrastructure to support workplace learning has been advocated both within the literature on workplace learning and in official British Government guidance for healthcare organizations. Yet minimal empirical evidence exists to support the view that HR policies are able to promote greater use of workplace learning methods within organizations. This proposition was tested through collecting both quantitative and qualitative data from staff in British hospices. The findings demonstrated the limited effects of HR policies in this respect and five key factors were identified that appeared to influence HR policy implementation in this instance. These findings have wider significance for our understanding of the complex interrelationships that potentially exist between HR policies, their outcomes and the mediating factors associated with policy implementation. © 2006 Taylor & Francis.

Current policies to expand and "flexibilise" labour markets are encapsulated in the drive to ensure "employability". To achieve this "employability", workers and the unemployed are encouraged to participate in "life-long learning". In this context, the traditional understanding of education as instructional pedagogy is increasingly replaced by learner-centred approaches which allow more autonomy and individuality within the actual learning process and demand greater personal (learner) responsibility for progress and success. Such self-dependent learning might seem to provide a promising alternative to traditional schooling - which often proves contradictory in producing a rather passive attitude among the learners by undermining motivation. But the challenges of those "new" forms of learning have turned out to be contradictory as well. This article seeks to clarify how to take account of these contradictions. Theoretically, it proceeds on the basis of a discussion of Klaus HOLZKAMP's "subject science of learning" and Yrjö ENGESTRÖM's activity theory. Both approaches are centred around an idea of "expansive learning", and each stresses the interrelation between individual learning processes and external development as a route towards extending action possibilities and one's power to act. But they differ significantly on the matter of contradictions. For HOLZKAMP contradictions are considered an obstruction or hindrance for learning, while for ENGESTRÖM they are a starting point for problem solving and development. In the blank spaces within and between these theories, however, a slightly different approach to expansive learning is developed. Two case studies, that were part of a larger enquiry on a vocational training program for IT-specialists (LANGEMEYER 2005a), are used to enhance the comprehension of contradictions in relation to learning, and to exemplify an analysis of the current changes in education processes. © 2005 FQS.

For too long, theories and practices of learning have been dominated by the requirements of formal learning. Quite simply this book seeks to persuade readers through philosophical argument and empirically grounded examples that the balance should be shifted back towards the informal. These arguments and examples are taken from informal learning in very diverse situations, such as in leisure activities, as a preparation for and as part of work, and as a means of surviving undesirable circumstances like dead-end jobs and incarceration. Informal learning can be fruitfully thought of as developing the capacity to make context sensitive judgments during ongoing practical involvements of a variety of kinds. Such involvements are necessarily indeterminate and opportunistic. Hence there is a major challenge to policy makers in shifting the balance towards informal learning without destroying the very things that are desirable about informal learning and indeed learning in general. The book has implications therefore for formal learning too and the way that teaching might proceed within formally constituted educational institutions such as schools and colleges. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.

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Emotional-motivational factors, which, for a long time, have been neglected, seem to be indispensable to successful learning processes in the domaines of engineering, economy, and society. The importance of emotions, in particular, has not been discussed sufficiently, findings of brain research have not been considered adequately. Emotional processes play a fundamental role in the controlling of cognitive processes of action-regulation. In order to take into account the inseparability of emotional and motivational processes, the authors draw on the construct of emotional states. They discuss the significance of this construct regarding processes of teaching and learning in institutions of vocational education.

The current emphasis that organisations are placing upon knowledge and the corresponding attention that workplace epistemological values are receiving within the educational community has resulted in an interesting convergence of discourses - school-based and work-based. Even as work-places are tending toward abstraction over practice - based knowing, schools are being nudged into doing the reverse. The result of this ferment is that traditional barriers between these kinds of knowledge are being removed. As can be seen from workplace examples, it is possible for liberal learning to be in the service of instrumental ends. So too schools may come to see more clearly the value of situatedness and team-work in the transaction of liberal learning. More generally, we see also new possibilities for retreat from received views about the worth of practical knowledge. © The Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain 2005.

BACKGROUND: Work-based learning occupies a central role in the training and ongoing development of the medical workforce. With this arises the need to understand the processes involved, particularly those relating to informal learning. Approaches to informal learning in postgraduate medical education have tended to consider the mind as an independent processor of information. METHOD: In this paper, such cognitive approaches are critiqued and an alternative socio-cultural view on informal learning described. Recent and imminent changes in postgraduate medical education are identified, namely the reduction in patient experience, the fragmentation of teaching, and the development of competency frameworks and structured curricula. It is argued that although the latter may be useful in the construction of formal learning programmes, they will do little to enhance the progression of the individual from newcomer to old-timer or the cultural assimilation of the learner into a profession. DISCUSSION: Strategies for enhancing informal learning in the workplace are recommended in which increased attention is paid to the development of the medical apprentice within a community of social practice. These include the establishment of strong goals, the use of improvised learning practices, attention to levels of individual engagement and workplace affordances, immersion in professional discourse and behaviours, support in relation to the development of a professional identity and the provision of opportunities to transform social practice. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005.

Project-based learning is generally regarded as a comprehensive approach to classroom teaching and learning in which students are actively involved in investigation of authentic original problems from their daily lives. The objective of this paper is to provide a general overview of the use of group project as well as to relate this methodology with the general discourse of education. There is a question in group project learning. Why and how do group projects help students learning? This paper provides information on implementing group project.

Purpose - To explore potential mismatches between stakeholders' perceptions and expectations of key and technical skills needed for an advanced modern apprentice within the UK. Design/methodology/approach - Using data collected from the automotive sector, the template process is used to establish lecturer, student and employee stakeholder group's expectations of a person taking up employment alongside an advanced modern apprenticeship or as an advanced modern apprentice. Perceptions of the extent to which expectations are met and their relative importance are assessed. Findings - All stakeholders acknowledge that a skills gap exists across key and technical skills. However, whilst students focus on technical skills, lecturers and employees place greatest emphasis on key skills and their ability to transfer them. Research limitations/implications - Although this research is based on the UK automotive sector, the findings emphasise the importance of key skills and understanding as part of students' learning. Research is needed to establish why students appear to undervalue these and establish whether similar patterns exist in other sectors. Practical implications - The voluntarist approach to UK vocational education and training has, when combined with the need for further education colleges to be economically viable, resulted in courses that appear attractive but do not always meet the automotive sector's needs. Research is needed to establish whether this is occurring across other sectors. Originality/value - This template process offers a new technique to explore stakeholders' perceptions and expectations. The findings provide new insights into the mismatches between expectations of the stakeholders in vocational education and training. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.