Session Information
32 SES 06 A, Looking back in Uncertainties: Historical Roots of Organizational Education. 10th anniversary workshop.
Research Workshop
Contribution
Organizational Education is interested in organizational learning in, by, and between organizations (Göhlich et al., 2018). It did not only emerge under conditions of uncertainty (Bennett et al., 2014) but relates in many different ways to this core term. With reference to Dewey's work (1929; 1969), uncertainty becomes a core term for organizational education, as educational organizing does not try to limit and exclude uncertainty but relates to it even in positive ways.
As the special call of organizational Education puts it, uncertainty-affinity may lead to conceptualizing alternative strategies of organizing. Creative approaches to uncertainty involve searching for and posing problems rather than jumping to the comfort of immediate solutions. Looking into historical positions, the special call of organizational Education connects to the works of Mary Parker Follett (1923; 1924). She suggested such an uncertainty-open practice, which in the particular call was discussed as a non-affirmative practice opposing "traditional, transmissive" and "reductive-progressive" (English, 2023) forms of organizational learning. In this approach to uncertainty, listening and relationality might be seen as qualities of a nonaffirmative Organizational Education (Moos, 2023).
Applying such a practice of listening, reflecting, asking, and searching for the 10th anniversary of organizational Education, especially listening into history, relating to the roots, and asking for the relevance of terms, the searching for European connections and methodological implications seems to be the right way to connect past, present and future of an academic association and its research networks, in this case, the research network organizational education.
Honoring the 10th anniversary of organizational Education at the European level, a "Looking Back and Diving Deep" research workshop intends to relate to the historical roots of European organization education research (Göhlich et al., 2018). The Network 32, by this, intends to reflect on its historical roots and the methodological implications of a European and historically grounded organizational education.
As an initializing agent of organizational Education thought, Michael Göhlich was a core academic who established organizational Education in the German educational research setting. In 2014, after a pre-phase of establishing organizational education symposia in ECER, a European research network on organizational Education was accepted within ECER, and Michael Göhlich took the position of convenor at the European level. The 10th anniversary, therefore, is an excellent opportunity for a "look back and dive deep" into the European traditions of organizational education thinking and the emergence and institutionalization of our trans-subdiscipline of organizational Education and ground this collective reflection on the works of Michael Göhlich.
As Michael Göhlich writes in the German Handbook of Organizational Education (Göhlich, 2018, 18), any academic subdiscipline does not emerge overnight but is rooted in history. Any new term, any new academic discourse, and any new academic subdiscipline have early and preliminary phases in the academic history - as a concept, as a discourse, and as an academic subdiscipline. It will always stand "on the shoulders" of concepts, focuses, and arguments, which were already expressed earlier in pedagogy and Education (Göhlich, 2018, 18).
Moreover, Göhlich (2018, 18) continues elaborating in his contribution to the history of organizational Education on the starting point – when to start telling the story of historicization? It even mentions that it would have been possible to begin the search at much earlier starting points, for, in antiquity, the Middle Ages or the Enlightenment. This "prehistory" of organizational Education in the narrower sense is of interest to understand better the emergence of the term' organizational education', which not only develops as in the uniform continuum but (also) can be discussed in phases, stages, steps, and variations (Göhlich, 2018).
Method
Göhlich (2018, 18) suggests deep diving into the history of organizational Education around 1800. He explains that the concept of organization emerged as a specific and, in this sense, comparatively young term. Initially used in the 17th century in a medical and scientific context to refer to the physical and mental state of people, this term traveled into state institutions and economic and political entities. Citing (Pfeifer et al., 1989), this shift connects to the ideas of the French Revolution in the second half of the 18th century. Highlighting core tapes of an organizational education "avant la lettre," he differentiates several tapes, which will be presented and collectively reflected regarding their European as well as historical and methodological relevance for the European organizational education network. By this, the research workshop will focus on the roots and traces of organizational Education. It looks back and dives deep into the development of organizational Education as an academic discourse and educational subdiscipline. The research workshop outlined here describes and analyzes in the alternation of academic inputs and participatory reflection several etaps of the history of Organizational Education. This new subdiscipline was established in a German research context and widened its scope and institutionalization into European and global contexts. The research workshop will develop the topic in alteration and phases: After presenting the prehistory of Organizational Education since 1800, the workshop reveals the historical shifts and streams. In a second etap, the research workshop focuses on the term Organizational Education, which was developed in the 1980s and again the given specific historical conditions. In a third etap, the institutionalization of Organizational Education in the mid-2000s is reflected as a subdiscipline of educational science. This historizing tour of organizational Education connects in a reflexive and participatory way to collectively reflect on European dimensions, traditions, and histories of organizational Education and authors referring to organizing from an educational perspective early on. Referring to all the different etaps to European parallel trends and streams and US traditions and educationalists, the alternation of inputs and collective reflection will allow us to build knowledge collectively.
Expected Outcomes
The research workshop will show that organizational Education has been a long-standing topic in Education, and it has to develop its "proprium" in its own right. It already becomes apparent when taking a closer look into Göhlich's (2018, 19) description of Humboldt's notion of organization: Apart from the academic staff (here: professors), according to Humboldt, "... what matters most are few and simple, but more profoundly intervening organizational laws ..." (ibid., p. 231) as well as aids, whereby he warns against "considering the accumulation of dead collections as the main thing, rather it should not be forgotten that they even easily contribute to dulling the mind..." (ibid., p. 231). As Göhlich (2018, 19), Humboldt's reflections point ahead to today's organizational Education; it is a view on organizational dynamics, the necessity of organizational laws providing for freedom, and the necessity of keeping organizational tools fluid point far ahead. The research workshop will discuss the processes, uncertainties, and organizing stability in the process, which we still need to reflect on collectively today – which will happen within the 10th-anniversary research workshop of the network organizational education.
References
Bennett, N.; Lemoine, G. James (2014): What VUCA Means for You. Harvard Business Review. Nr. 92, 1/2 Boreham, N./ Reeves, J. (2008): Diagnosing and supporting organizational learning culture in Scottish schools. In: Zeitschrift für Pädagogik. 54, S. 637-649. Boreham, N./Morgan, C. (2004): A socio-cultural analysis of organizational learning. In: Oxford Review of Education. 30, pp. 307-325 Dewey, J. (1929). The Quest for Certainty. A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (Gifford Lectures 1929) New York. Putnam. Dewey, J. (1901). The Educational Situation. In: Dewey. The Middle Works. Band 1. Dewey, J. (1969). The ethics of democracy. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The early works, 1882-1898. Volume 1. 1882-1888 (pp. 227–249). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. (Original work published 1888). English, A. (2023). Dewey, Existential Uncertainty and Non-affirmative Democratic Education. In: M. Uljens (ed.), Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung, Educational Governance Research 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30551-1_6 Elkjaer, B. (2018). Pragmatist Foundations for Organizational Education. In: Göhlich et al (ed.): Handbuch Organisationspädagogik. Wiesbaden. Springer. pp. 151-162 Elkjaer, B. (2022). Taking stock of "Organizational Learning": Looking back and moving forward. Management Learning, 53(3), 582–604. https://doi.org/10.1177/13505076211049599 Fenwick, T. (2007). Organizational learning in the knots. In: Journal of Education Administration. Vol. 45. No. 2, pp. 138-153. Follett, M. P. (1924/2013). Creative experience. Longmans, Green, and Company. Follett, M. P. (1925/2013). The Giving of Orders, in Metcalf, H. C., & Urwick, L. (2004). Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett. Routledge, pp. 50-70. Göhlich, M. et al. (2016). Research Memorandum Organizational Education. Studia Paedagogica, 23(2), 205–215. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330957539_Research_Memorandum_Organizational_Education Göhlich, Michael (2018) Geschichte der Organisationspädagogik. In: Göhlich, M.; Schröer, A. & Weber, S. (ed.) Handbuch Organisationspädagogik. Springer VS. Wiesbaden. P. 17-28 Göhlich, Michael (2001): System, Handeln, Lernen unterstützen. Eine Theorie der Praxis pädagogischer Institutionen. Weinheim. Marsick/Watkins 1994: The learning organization: An integrative vision for HRD. In: Human Resource Development Quarterly. Marsick/Watkins 2003: Demonstrating the Value of an Organization's Learning Culture. In: Advances in Developing Human Resources. Pfeifer, Wolfgang et al. (1989): Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen. Berlin. S. 1208). Moos, L. (2023). Operating in an Outcomes-Based and a Democratic Bildung Discourse. In: M. Uljens (ed.), Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung, Educational Governance Research 20, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30551-1_6 Weick, K. E., & Sutcliffe, K. M. (2001). Managing the unexpected: Assuring high performance in an age of complexity. Jossey-Bass.
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