Learning in R&D&I work provides to a professional student a possibility to create widely her competence. Student is working in an authentic environment side by side with educated professionals developing their work. Learning together means constructing new knowledge and innovations.
eNNI is the R&D&I project for creation of competence in cooperation between 19 universities of applied sciences (UAS) and 45 working life organizations. Teachers in the project are creating competence of integrating r&d&i to teaching.
eNNI is financed by the Ministry of Education. Students are working in development projects writing their bachelor´s theses.
A working-life based final project requires use of multiple methods. It means also sharing and transferring professional knowledge, expertise and competence. A final project in an authentic working-life context is a process where students, teacher and professionals of working-life are learning together, sharing knowledge, constructing knowledge, innovations and promoting their implementation.
There is an important phase in the beginning of the processes, the phase orientation and preparation to the oncoming work. The teacher is coaching the student to her final project, facilitating her creation of partnership with working-life professionals and counselling the orientation of working-life professionals. The three processes need also to be synchronized so that they have support from each other.
The teacher is guiding student’s process of learning and growth. The teacher and the student interact in dialog and define students learning goals, discuss pedagogical methods and evaluate the results together. The teacher is also providing support and facilitation to student’s cooperation with working-life professionals. The interaction in cooperation with working-life professionals is important for student’s professional growth.
The teacher is counselling the process of development work. The partners in the process are student and working-life professionals. They need counselling during the process. The partners use multiple development and research methods. The counselling is focused on the methods used.
The teacher is facilitating the process of implementation and change. The process of implementation means leaving "the old" and accepting "the new" and taking it to daily use. While creating "the new" the partners in creation must promote the implementation. That requires understanding of the change.
The teacher is also learning while she is guiding, counselling and facilitating the processes of learning and growth, development and implementation. She gains deeper understanding about the working-life, the daily practice and most of all the change in community of practice. By gathering cumulative data about the processes and her own interventions she combines research to development and implementation.
The aim of this paper is to explore the conception of guidance in R&D&I work. There is an effort to combine the theoretical knowledge to experienced teachers tacit knowledge in eNNI.
The research questions are
1. What is guidance in R&D&I projects as teachers work in higher professional education?
2. What is teachers´ experience of guidance as their work in R&D&I project eNNI?
3. What methods or interventions are teachers using in guidance in eNNI?
