The present paper uses one of Michael Huberman's lesser known but most important papers to address the critical issue of teachers' attention. How do professionals handle competing demands on their attention in busy, crowded, 'hot action' situations? It argues that finding time to monitor and respond to people and events in a rapidly changing environment requires routines that keep things going with minimal demands on one's attention; and that 'hot action' decision-making is rapid and intuitive rather than deliberative or explicitly evidence based. The present paper focuses on the unrealistic expectations of those who urge teachers to give high levels of attention to individual pupils, whether they be child-centred philosophers, reflectors in action or advocates for matching instruction to psychometrically defined youngsters. These ideologically or politically attractive perspectives on teaching merely disguise the reality of a classroom discourse that strives for instructional compliance. Teachers' knowledge of pupils is constructed by the largely unconscious aggregation of memories of episodes in which they paid or gave attention to a child; and this knowledge is drawn on rapidly and intuitively in class. Such knowledge is inevitably fallible and biased, but no more so than more 'objective' constructions. Its great advantage is its usability. Finally, it argues that common approaches to teacher education develop coping mechanisms for classroom control before student teachers have developed an experience-based understanding of how best to support children's learning or, better still, how best to enable children to support each other's learning.
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This paper first briefly summarizes the findings of a study of the mid-career learning of professionals, technicians and managers in the health, engineering and business sectors funded by ESRC's research programme on The Learning Society. This is followed by a discussion of the findings of a recently completed longitudinal study of the Early Career Learning at Work of newly qualified nurses, graduate engineers and trainee chartered accountants. Finally, it discusses the implications of these projects and other related research for learning in higher education.
This contribution adds the perspective of an independent evaluator to Canter, Kelly and Williams' account of pre-piloting the new surgical curriculum. I have been researching in to professional learning in the workplace for 15 years, reviewed research into postgraduate medical education for the Department of Health and, more recently, evaluated the national colonoscopy training programme administered by the College. My role during the pre-pilot was that of a participant observer and I attended planning and reflection meetings in the Raven department at the College and engaged with a substantial number of participants in the pre-pilot phase. This article summarises my evaluation report on the curriculum website (http://curriculum.jchst.org/).
The problem and the solution.
Learning in the workplace is a major focus for both continuing professional education and human resource development. Yet too often providers and researchers in both areas pay little attention to the learning that actually happens within the work context. In this article, learning in the workplace is analyzed through an examination of the history, assumptions, stakeholders, foci, approaches, and issues in continuing professional education and human resource development. This analysis leads to suggestions for an increased focus on learning.
Background:
This paper explores the conceptual and methodological problems arising from several empirical investigations of professional education and learning in the workplace.
Aims:
1. To clarify the multiple meanings accorded to terms such as ‘non-formal learning’, ‘implicit learning’ and ‘tacit knowledge’, their theoretical assumptions and the range of phenomena to which they refer.
2. To discuss their implications for professional practice.
Method:
A largely theoretical analysis of issues and phenomena arising from empirical investigations.
This paper focuses mainly on theoretical frameworks for understanding and investigating informal learning in the workplace, which have been developed through a series of large‐ and small‐scale projects. The main conclusions are included but readers are referred to other publications for more detailed accounts of individual projects. Two types of framework are discussed. The first group seeks to deconstruct the ‘key concepts’ of informal learning, learning from experience, tacit knowledge, transfer of learning and> intuitive practice to disclose the range of different phenomena that are embraced by these popular terms. The second group comprises frameworks for addressing the three central questions that pervaded the research programme: what is being learned, how is it being learned and what are the factors that influence the level and directions of the learning effort?
This paper first briefly summarizes the findings of a study of the mid-career learning of professionals, technicians and managers in the health, engineering and business sectors funded by ESRC's research programme on The Learning Society. This is followed by a discussion of the findings of a recently completed longitudinal study of the Early Career Learning at Work of newly qualified nurses, graduate engineers and trainee chartered accountants. Finally, it discusses the implications of these projects and other related research for learning in higher education.
Most vocational qualifications have been gazumped by general educational qualifications that have higher selection value,
and their relative esteem is self-perpetuating. The use value of vocational qualifications depends on (1) the appropriateness of, and interconnection between, their work-related and work-based components, and (2) further work-based learning after qualification to ensure that the acquired knowledge and skills can be used in the particular circumstances and conditions of the current workplace. The NVQ experience has confirmed that detailed national specifications cannot match the diversity of workplace learning needs, so a more flexible approach is needed. Qualification policy should be based on evidence of fitness for purpose, rather than political troubleshooting or wishful thinking; and backed by a programme of incisive research.
An analysis of everyday use of the term ‘competence' is followed by a literature review. Some authors treat competence as a socially situated concept—the ability to perform tasks and roles to the expected standard—leaving its precise meaning to be negotiated by stakeholders in a macro-or micro-political context. Others treat competence as individually situated, a personal capability or characteristic. This latter concept is labelled ‘capability' and its vital relationship with socially-defined Competence is analysed. The importance for practice of representations of competence and for professional preparation of models of capability is discussed.
This paper argues that the roles of theory are diverse and the meanings of theories and concepts are shaped by the contexts in which they are acquired and used. Hence situated learning leads to divergent meanings created by people’s divergent work pathways, rather than the convergence assumed in the discourse of ‘communities of practice’. Understanding professional work requires both socio-cultural approaches to knowledge creation and the negotiation of what counts as competence and expertise, and individual or group perspectives on the development of knowledge in action. The holistic, context and case dependent, and often tacit nature of professional work can also be represented as an integrated combination of different types of knowledge, each developed over a lifetime learning trajectory. Such knowledge is acquired partly through processes whose prime intention is learning, but mainly through learning as a by-product of working. Thus the relationship between time, conditions and mode of cognition has major ramifications for professional knowledge and the nature of work. This research into the factors affecting learning and their interactions has led to a triangle of Learning Factors and a triangle of Context Factors that influence those learning factors: the corners of both triangles relate to the nature of the work, relationships at work and individual learners. Attached is a pre-publication version of the final paper.
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