Discourses on Professional Learning: On the Boundary Between Learning and Working

396 Pages·2014·4.298 MB·English

by  Christian Harteis, Andreas Rausch, Jürgen Seifried (eds.)

Professional and Practice-based Learning
Christian Harteis
Andreas Rausch
Jürgen Seifried E ditors
Discourses on
Professional
Learning
On the Boundary Between Learning and
Working
Professional and Practice-based Learning
Volume 9
For further volumes:
http://www.springer.com/series/8383
Series Editors:
Stephen Billett, Griffi th University, Australia
Christian Harteis, University of Paderborn, Germany
Hans Gruber, University of Regensburg, Germany
Professional and practice-based learning brings together international research on the individual deve-
lopment of professionals and the organisation of professional life and educational experiences. It comple-
ments the Springer journal Vocations and Learning: Studies in vocational and professional education.
Professional learning, and the practice-based processes that often support it, are the subject of increased
interest and attention in the fi elds of educational, psychological, sociological, and business management
research, and also by governments, employer organisations and unions. This professional learning goes
beyond, what is often termed professional education, as it includes learning processes and experiences
outside of educational institutions in both the initial and ongoing learning for the professional practice.
Changes in these workplaces requirements usually manifest themselves in the everyday work tasks,
professional development provisions in educational institution decrease in their salience, and learning
and development during professional activities increase in their salience.
There are a range of scientifi c challenges and important focuses within the fi eld of professional learning.
These include:
- understanding and making explicit the complex and massive knowledge that is required for
professional practice and identifying ways in which this knowledge can best be initially learnt and
developed further throughout professional life.
- a nalytical explications of those processes that support learning at an individual and an organisational
level.
- understanding how learning experiences and educational processes might best be aligned or
integrated to support professional learning.
The series integrates research from different disciplines: education, sociology, psychology, amongst
others. The series is comprehensive in scope as it not only focusses on professional learning of teachers
and those in schools, colleges and universities, but all professional development within organisations.
Christian Harteis • Andreas Rausch
Jürgen Seifried
Editors
Discourses on Professional
Learning
On the Boundary Between
Learning and Working
Editors
Christian Harteis Andreas Rausch
Institute of Educational Science Department of Business Education
University of Paderborn and Educational Management
Paderborn , Germany University of Bamberg
Bamberg , Germany
Jürgen Seifried
Economics and Business Education II
University of Mannheim
Mannheim , Germany
ISSN 2210-5549 ISSN 2210-5557 (electronic)
ISBN 978-94-007-7011-9 ISBN 978-94-007-7012-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7012-6
Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014942931
© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
T his work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection
with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifi cally for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this
publication or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s
location, in its current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer.
Permissions for use may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations
are liable to prosecution under the respective Copyright Law.
T he use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of
publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for
any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein.
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
Series Editors’ Foreword
T he relation between learning and working has changed during the history of work.
Early traditions of occupational preparation such as those for craftswork in medi-
eval times featured restricted access and clear structures of learning opportunities
within the practice of work. Learning was considered as inevitable quality of and
prerequisite to conduct work appropriately, and it was also considered inherent to
working practices – at least when mastery plays a role. This view on the relation
between learning and working dominated for centuries before industrialisation,
when mass production brought about change. A goal for the work organisation
within industrialisation was to structure work in a way that does not necessarily
require specifi c education and learning, but is independent from workers’ capacities
as much as possible. During this phase of economic development, the separation
between planning and executive work activities was established. The relation
between learning and work changed in a way that intentional learning became nec-
essary for just a small group of supervisors, but was not necessary for the mass of
workers, whose role was to merely execute specifi c tasks. This distinction remained
the main perspective until the peak of automatized mass production was reached in
the second half of the twentieth century. In the late twentieth century, business con-
cepts became popular which returned to the appreciation of workers’ individual
capacities. Hence, the relation between learning and working was reconsidered and
these relations are still under review and being reordered. For instance, increasingly
learning in post-school education is coming to include work experiences as part of
this broader reconsideration. Similarly, researchers began to develop interest in
work-related learning processes. This interest was, fi rstly, to address problems in
the educational systems, but later also with specifi c interest on employees’ learning
at their workplaces.
This volume aims at contributing to these reconsiderations. It does so by offering
analyses of the relation between learning and working comprising theoretical and
empirical research from specifi c perspectives and different countries. The fi rst part
of this volume comprises six contributions that analyse conditions of employees’
learning in the context of regular daily work. All focus different aspects of learning
v
vi Series Editors’ Foreword
processes which can be considered as by-product of working practices. The second
part of the book comprises six contributions exploring work processes that
parti cularly are designed for learning purposes. The third part of this volume
discusses methodological issues of investigating work-related learning empirically.
A concluding chapter refl ects opportunities of distinguishing learning and working
analytically and discusses the relation between them as refl ected in the contributions
to this volume.
This volume provides insights into recent research on professional and practice-
based learning by bringing together researchers from diverse theoretical and metho-
dological paradigms that together refl ect the current state of the discourses on
professional learning.
Griffi th , Australia Stephen Billett
Regensburg , Germany Hans Gruber
Paderborn , Germany Christian Harteis
March 2014
Contents
1 Discourses on Professional Learning: On the Boundary
Between Learning and Working ............................................................ 1
Christian Harteis , Andreas Rausch , and Jürgen Seifried
Part I Analytic Perspective 1 – Learning in Work Context
2 Informal Learning in Workplaces: Understanding
Learning Culture as a Challenge for Organizational
and Individual Development .................................................................. 11
Christoph Fischer and Bridget N. O’Connor
3 Agentic Behaviour at Work: Crafting Learning Experiences ............. 25
Michael Goller and Stephen Billett
4 The Practice of Professional Agency and the Emergence
of Collaborative Creativity in Developmental Staff Meetings ............ 45
Panu Forsman , Kaija Collin , and Anneli Eteläpelto
5 Mediating Learning at Work: Personal Mediations
of Social and Brute Facts ........................................................................ 75
Stephen Billett
6 Error Climate and How Individuals Deal with Errors
in the Workplace ..................................................................................... 95
Alexander Baumgartner and Jürgen Seifried
7 Reflection and Reflective Behaviour in Work Teams........................... 113
Thomas Schley and Marianne van Woerkom
vii
viii Contents
Part II Analytic Perspective 2 – Work as Learning Environment
8 Apprenticeship and Vocational Education:
An Institutional Analysis of Workplace Learning
in the German Vocational System .......................................................... 143
Karl-Heinz Gerholz and Taiga Brahm
9 Learning in Response to Workplace Change ........................................ 159
Mark A. Tyler , Sarojni Choy , Raymond S mith , and Darryl Dymock
10 Grasping Learning During Internships: The Case
of Engineering Education ....................................................................... 177
David Gijbels , Christian Harteis , Vincent Donche ,
Piet van den Bossche , Steffi Maes , and Katrin Temmen
11 Employing Agency in Academic Settings: Doctoral
Students Shaping Their Own Experiences ........................................... 189
Michael Goller and Christian Harteis
12 Developing Medical Capacities and Dispositions
Through Practice-Based Experiences ................................................... 211
Jennifer Cleland , Joseph Leaman , and Stephen Billett
13 E-Portfolio: A Practical Tool for Self-Directed, Reflective,
and Collaborative Professional Learning ............................................. 231
Anna Liza Daunert and Linda Price
Part III Methodological Issues
14 The Integration of Work and Learning: Tackling
the Complexity with Structural Equation Modelling .......................... 255
Eva Kyndt and Patrick Onghena
15 Social Network Analyses of Learning at Workplaces .......................... 293
Tuire Palonen and Kai Hakkarainen
16 Learning Through Interactional Participatory Configurations:
Contributions from Video Analysis ....................................................... 317
Laurent Filliettaz
17 Using Diaries in Research on Work and Learning............................... 341
Andreas Rausch
Part IV Conclusion
18 Interdependence on the Boundaries Between
Working and Learning ........................................................................... 369
Stephen Billett
Index ................................................................................................................. 387
Contributors
Alexander Baumgartner Dipl.-Hdl., Dipl.-Bw. (BA) is research assistant at the
Chair of Economics and Business Education II, University of Mannheim, Germany.
His main research interests are: dealing with errors, error climate, and professional
competences of company trainers in VET.
Dr. Stephen Billett i s Professor of Adult and Vocational Education in the School of
Education and Professional Studies at Griffi th University, Brisbane, Australia, and
also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Stephen has worked as a
vocational educator, educational administrator, teacher educator, professional
development practitioner and policy developer within the Australian vocational
education system and as a teacher and researcher at Griffi th University. Since 1992,
he has researched learning through and for work and has published widely in the
fi elds of vocational learning, workplace learning and conceptual accounts of
learning for vocational purposes.
Dr. Taiga Brahm is Assistant Professor for Educational Development at the
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). Her research interests include vocational
education and training, students’ development of attitudes and resilience as well as
education for sustainable development. She is responsible for various research and
development projects in vocational and higher education.
Dr. Sarojni Choy is a Senior Lecturer of adult and vocational education at the
Griffi th University, where her responsibilities include teaching graduate and post-
graduate courses in adult and vocational education, and supervising postgraduate
student research. She is the Higher Degree Research convenor in the School of
Education and Professional Studies at Griffi th University. Her research and writing
activities focus on the foundations of adult learning, workplace learning, employ-
ment-based training, continuing education and training, and workforce capacity
building. She is competent in both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Dr. Choy has extensive experience in adult and vocational education research.
ix