Opportune Engagement: how we are constantly learning and when we excel at it

Author(s):

Karen Jean Reinhard-Adler(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments

Format:

Paper

Session Information

20 SES 12, Competencies for Teaching and Learning in Research and Organizations - Exceeding These Processes in an Ethnographic Perspective

Paper/Poster Session

Time:

2016-08-26

09:00-10:30

Room:

NM-G103

Chair:

Christian Quvang

Contribution

What if our definition of quality education and its measurement has blinded us to essential aspects of how we learn and when we excel at learning? Education has focused on quality as a definition and measure of degree of excellence - literally a grade. Striving for educational excellence and equality, we bring a cultural heritage (Lakoff, 1987: Randall, 1940) of viewing learning to be the disciplined transfer of objective knowledge from experts to students. Educational quality leads to the application of uniform curriculum and assessing students equally and objectively via internationally standardized instruments, grades and degrees. However, Merriam Webster’s primary definition of quality has also a different hue: “the peculiar and essential character of a thing” (Webster, 2016). This paper introduces a conceptual lens to view the essential and peculiar aspects of learning: a model emerging from empirical research examining the process of how people learn in a dynamic, technology-rich workplace.

The study began with the question: How do people learn in the context of working in a dynamic, information-rich workplace? The situated perspective (Lave and Wenger, 1991) contends that context affects how and what is learned. I use this framework to focus on the educational component of working: the experience of working produces people who know about working. I take a phenomenological perspective and tap the peculiars of the bodily experience- the workers' felt-sense (Merleau-Ponty, 1963) of learning. The changes in workplaces driving the need for workplace learning -- changes in timing, technology, and the material and social working contexts (Zuboff, 1988)-- are structural changes. I use a systems (Sterman, 1994) framework, which attends to the structure of any system of interrelationships that delimits its potential range of dynamic behavior. From this perspective, the critical question is: Does the nature of the structural changes in the workplace make any difference to the process of workplace learning? In our rush to implement technological changes in workplaces, are we unintentionally delimiting the very learning upon which the potential of the technology depends?

The model that emerged from the research reflects what qualities characterize how people learn; which components and inter-connections create the experience of learning; and how our influencing that underlying structure fosters -- or hinders -- the process.

Method

In an in-depth qualitative ethnographic study at a multinational, multicultural factory in Ireland, I viewed everyday work as a learning experience. I researched workers’ perceptions and actions in the process of learning from information in the context of everyday work. The research provides one empirical case-study (Patton, 1990; Yin, 1994) limited to fourteen workers on one production line at one information-rich factory. The factory is pioneering the use of information technology to learn about work and to compete based on that knowledge. The way these workers' jobs changed typifies how technology can be used to invest work with information. Since the changes are recent, these workers were particularly reflective. Previously they obeyed repetitious instructions for manual radio assembly. With no training for their new job, they were expected to make sense of a wealth of information newly available to them for running the production line. These workers learned by working. I examined the relationships among workers' perceptions and behaviors, and immediate working environment. I used individual, semi-structured interviews to identify the workers' backgrounds, their concepts of learning in the workplace, and their sense of the symbolic information and of the opportunities and constraints involved in creating meaning from the technology while working. To capture aspects of the process about which workers might be unaware or that they might conceal, I used methods of participant observation to document workers' behavior on the job, and to query them about discrepancies between what they told me and what they actually did. Working aside these workers, I also gained limited first-hand experience of their jobs. Further, to understand the work context, I interviewed twelve key people in the factory with whom the workers interact, and supplemented these data with pertinent documents, work histories, product descriptions, etc., that described the workers and their work. Field data were collected intermittently during nine weeks over ten months. I either taped the data or created verbatim transcripts. I analyzed the transcribed field notes and interview transcripts inductively, using techniques to generate grounded theory (Geertz, 1973; Maxwell,1996; Schatzman an Strauss, 1973) that 1) documented salient aspects of the process by which these workers created meaning from information technology, 2) made sense of the aspects from the workers' perspectives, and 3) attended to how material, symbolic, social, dynamic and organizational aspects of the site influenced the learning process.

Expected Outcomes

The Opportune Engagement Model emerging from the data reflects the essential role of diversity in learning: We are surrounded by people who know different things and have different ways of knowing them, by diverse materials, designed objects, symbols, and by a diversity of ways these things all interact over time. This diversity surrounding workers is augmented by aspects being discovered about our multiplicity of the mind. I suggest we view learning as the mind's continual, innate tendency for finding in its (diverse and dynamic) environment distinctions, connections, and patterns within, or across, modes of understanding. Modes of understanding are distinct, multiple ways one's mind has to understand the world. Learning occurs as one's body experiences diverse ways of understanding in an environment richly diverse in those modes. Learning is our flexibility for dealing with rapidly emerging diversity at hand. Our surroundings are constantly emerging in unforeseeable ways and this unpredictable emergence is the force that necessitates learning. Peculiars of the moment, -the immediate emerging circumstances and each person’s unique mix of experience, intelligences, passions and abilities – are the peculiars of learning. Thus, learning must be viewed as intensely personal and imbued with volition. From this perspective, we excel at learning when individuals choose to engage opportunely with diverse resources at hand to find new connections, patterns and distinctions for a purpose. Opportune Engagement is a particular convergence in time of person and context. The model reveals a potential and the questions becomes: What affects Opportune Engagement and how can we redesign education and make organizational structures that foster Opportune Engagement? It illustrates the fundamental roles of access to rich resources, space and time within a culture of respect for diversity of mind and thought. Opportune Engagement is the heart of learning and innovation in our schools, universities and workplaces.

References

References Lakoff, G. (1987). Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning - Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maxwell, J.A. (1996)a. Qualitative Research Design: An interactive Approach. London: Sage Publications, Inc.. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1963). The Structure of Behavior. Boston: Beacon Press. Patton, M. (1990). Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.. Randall, H. (1926, 1940). The Making of the Modern Mind: A Survey of the Intellectual Background of the Present Age. New York: Columbia University Press. Schatzman, l. & Strauss, A. (1973). Field Research: Strategies for a Natural Sociology, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Sterman, J. (1994). Learning in and about Complex Systems. System Dynamics Review, 10 (2/3), Summer/Fall, 291-330. Yin, R.K. (1994). Case study Research: Design and Methods. (2nd edition) Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc.. Webster, (2016) Miriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quality. Zuboff, S. (1988). In the Age of the Smart Machine: the Future of Work and Power. New York: Basic Books.

Author Information

Karen Jean Reinhard-Adler (presenting / submitting)

Learning Centered Research & Consulting, Switzerland

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