Search results
1 – 10 of over 7000The purpose of this paper is to test peer-learning in small groups as a didactic method with respect to its effectiveness in homogenising initially heterogeneous learning…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test peer-learning in small groups as a didactic method with respect to its effectiveness in homogenising initially heterogeneous learning collectives.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on two sets of data collection (before and after the application of the tested method). The data collection tools were student self-assessment and student observation by a third person.
Findings
Peer-learning and group work foster the establishment of self-confidence and activity among students (in particular among initially less active and less qualified students). Consequently, the teaching and learning atmosphere improves. In the long run, this effect fosters a homogenisation of initially inhomogeneous levels of qualification/competence at a high level.
Research limitations/implications
There was no control group, hence the results are to be understood as tendencies rather than robust scientific findings. Nevertheless, the tendencies are clear and unambiguous.
Practical implications
Peer-learning can be used as a simple didactic method in order to prevent frustration by mental over or underload in strongly heterogeneous learning collectives.
Originality/value
This case study is the first work of its kind to assess the effectiveness of peer-learning with respect to the homogenisation of initially heterogeneous learning collectives.
Details
Keywords
Loubna Echajari and Catherine Thomas
The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is difficult to accomplish because it requires deliberate investments in knowledge transfer and creation. Zollo and Winter (2002) emphasized how knowledge codification can facilitate this process, as long as it is “well-performed”. However, knowledge management scholars have yet to explore what is meant by well-performed codification and how to achieve it.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper addresses this gap and provides a conceptual analysis based on two related but previously disconnected research areas: organizational learning and knowledge management.
Findings
This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, a new understanding of different types of experiences and their effects on learning is proposed. Then the codification process using a critical realist paradigm to overcome the epistemological boundaries of knowledge versus knowing is discussed; in doing so, it is shown that codification can take different forms to be “well-performed”. Finally, appropriate codification strategies based on experience type are identified.
Originality/value
The abstraction-oriented codification outlined in this paper runs counter to the logic of concrete codification that dominates both theory and practice. Thus, going beyond the traditional debate on the degree of codification (i.e. should knowledge be fully codified or just partly codified), this paper introduced a new debate about the appropriate degree of abstraction.
Details
Keywords
Viktoriya Semeshenko, Mirta B. Gordon, Jean-Pierre Nadal and Denis Phan
The purpose of this paper is to operationalize theories of social learning and collective action for campus sustainability practitioners at higher education instititions (IHEs) to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to operationalize theories of social learning and collective action for campus sustainability practitioners at higher education instititions (IHEs) to enhance their work, and to introduce the concept of collective action competence as a practical tool.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents a theoretical argument based on the concepts of learning and collective action for stronger consideration of social learning, action competence and voluntary collective action in campus sustainability initiatives.
Findings
Many important sustainability outcomes depend heavily on voluntary behaviors by groups of campus stakeholders, making voluntary collective action an important, although underused, tool for campus sustainability practitioners. The term “collective action competence” is introduced and defined as the capability of a group of people to direct their behavior toward a common goal based on a collective literacy, a collective competence, and a collective need or goal.
Originality/value
The term “collective action competence” is introduced as a novel unifying concept that articulates a critical capability needed for collective behavior change in social settings such as HEIs. Collective action competence is based on the theories of collective action and of social and free-choice learning and on the concepts of action competence and strategic competence.
Details
Keywords
Chee Siang Ang and Panayiotis Zaphiris
Recently, researchers have begun investigating the learning process that occurs within computer games (learning to play), as opposed to studying games that support explicit…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, researchers have begun investigating the learning process that occurs within computer games (learning to play), as opposed to studying games that support explicit learning for educational purposes (playing to learn). With the increasing popularity of massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), some research has begun to look beyond individual play and is now focusing on social play. By conducting a 30 day virtual participant observation in an MMOG, namely World of Warcraft (WoW) this paper aims to identify and provide a theoretical explanation of the process of learning that takes place in such an open‐ended virtual world.
Design/methodology/approach
Through the lens of activity theory, the paper focuses its analysis on the tool, the goal, the activity of game playing and contradictions.
Findings
It was found that social learning could occur through intrinsic and extrinsic play. Intrinsic play is play oriented toward goal completion while extrinsic play is directed toward reflection and expansion of intrinsic play. WoW is designed with tools that facilitate these types of play, and therefore learning that emerges from them. Furthermore, learning involves not only the process of acquiring knowledge and skills to accomplish certain goals, but also the process of defining the goal, thus shaping the learning process.
Originality/value
The results could be used to inform game design either for social play or for social learning.
Details
Keywords
School climate strikes are opening spaces of appearance, becoming differently active forms of public pedagogy where new and previously unthought collective climate action is…
Abstract
Purpose
School climate strikes are opening spaces of appearance, becoming differently active forms of public pedagogy where new and previously unthought collective climate action is possible. This inquiry contributes to understanding school climate strikes as important forms of climate justice activism by exploring how they work as public pedagogy.
Design/methodology/approach
The inquiry process involved poetic inquiry to produce an affective poetic witness statement to an event of school climate strikes, and then a performative enactment of diffractive reading using the poem created. The diffractive reading is used to conceptualise school climate strikes as public pedagogy and move towards an understanding of how school climate strikes work as public pedagogy. Diffused throughout is the question of where the more-than-human fits in public pedagogy and youth climate justice activism.
Findings
School climate strikes are dynamic and differently acting (diffracting) public pedagogies that work by open spaces of appearance that enable capacities for collective action in heterogeneous political spaces. Consideration of entanglements and intra-actions between learner, place, knowledge and climate change are productive in understanding how phenomena work as public pedagogy.
Originality/value
This inquiry extends on important considerations in both climate change education and public pedagogy scholarship. It diffuses consideration of the more-than-human throughout the inquiry and enacts a move beyond the humanist limits of existing public pedagogy scholarship by introducing climate intra-action, heterogeneous political spaces and non-conforming learning to an understanding of activist public pedagogies and the educative agent.
Details
Keywords
Cécile Godé and Pierre Barbaroux
This article aims to examine the nature and logics of organizational learning considered as a process by which organizations capitalize on the variety of experiences accumulated…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to examine the nature and logics of organizational learning considered as a process by which organizations capitalize on the variety of experiences accumulated by their members.
Design/methodology/approach
Complementing the current literature on experiential learning, the authors build on a case study to investigate how organizations benefit from action learning and seek to identify the properties of the architecture supporting it. The case study focuses on how French Air Force fighter and airlift aircrews carry out debriefing sessions in their daily activities.
Findings
Within this framework, it can be observed that learning in debriefing sessions ultimately depends on the capacity of the learning agents to integrate individual and collective functions (namely, individual progression and collective performance).
Originality/value
Building on the foregoing, the paper elaborates on a conceptual model of the debriefing procedure made up of three components: a learning mode, a learning structure and a learning culture. It follows that the organization is likely to capitalize on individual experiences to improve knowledge and action if it is capable of providing its members with a flexible learning architecture enabling individuals to combine distinctive learning modes along with heterogeneous structures and cultural values.
Details
Keywords
Building on knowledge-based view and demographic diversity theory, the purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualize knowledge heterogeneity (KH) (i.e. diversity in individual or…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on knowledge-based view and demographic diversity theory, the purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualize knowledge heterogeneity (KH) (i.e. diversity in individual or organizational knowledge) and to explore a broader set of relationships between KH and the multidimensional (i.e. dynamics and ambidexterity) innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
Case studies of organizational KH and innovation ambidexterity were conducted in four representative companies with variated characteristics. Similarities in the heterogeneity-innovation relationships were identified across four very different types of companies, providing a good exploratory base for future large-scale empirical studies.
Findings
Grounding on locus-of-knowing and timing-of-knowing dimensions, this paper utilizes an inductive approach that analyzes qualitative materials to construct the essential meanings of intraorganizational KH, and to explore the influences KH brings onto the ambidextrous innovation. A four-category typology of KH is emerged. Overall, KH is categorized into four distinctive but inter-related forms: individual professional backgrounds, collective profession backgrounds, individual evolving knowledge portfolio, and collective evolving knowledge portfolio.
Research limitations/implications
Building on such typology, this paper discusses propositions for the differentiated influences of different forms of KH on dynamic and ambidextrous innovations.
Originality/value
Whereas individual knowledge benefits independent creativity, complex collective knowledge is more critical for organizational innovation. While research has placed more emphasis on the effects of knowledge accumulation or flow, it neglects the knowledge profile and structure for innovation. The present study explores the effect of heterogeneous knowledge structure on dynamic and ambidextrous innovation.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to compare theoretical conceptions that reclaim and re‐think material practice – “the thing” in the social and personal mix – specifically in terms of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to compare theoretical conceptions that reclaim and re‐think material practice – “the thing” in the social and personal mix – specifically in terms of work activity and what is construed to be learning in that activity.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is theory‐based. Three perspectives have been selected for discussion: cultural‐historical activity theory (CHAT), actor‐network theory (ANT), and complexity theory. A comparative approach is used to examine these three conceptual framings in the context of their uptake in learning research to explore their diverse contributions and limitations on questions of agency, power, difference, and the presence of the “thing”.
Findings
The three perspectives bear some similarities in their conceptualization of knowledge and capabilities as emerging – simultaneously with identities, policies, practices and environment – in webs of interconnections between heterogeneous things, human and nonhuman. Yet each illuminates very different facets of the sociomaterial in work‐learning that can afford important understandings: about how subjectivities are produced in work, how knowledge circulates and sediments into formations of power, and how practices are configured and re‐configured. Each also signals, in different ways, what generative possibilities may exist for counter‐configurations and alternative identities in spaces and places of work.
Originality/value
While some dialogue has occurred among ANT and CHAT, this has not been developed to compare more broadly the metaphysics and approaches of these perspectives, along with complexity theory which is receiving growing attention in organizational research contexts. The paper purports to introduce the nature of these debates to work‐learning researchers and point to their implications for opening useful questions and methods for inquiry in workplace learning.
Details