Category: Research report

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Literacy mediation in neighbourhood houses

Author: Sally Thompson

Edition: Volume 55, Number 3, November 2015

Summary:  Interactions between staff in Neighbourhood Houses, and the socially and educationally disadvantaged community members who visit Neighbourhood Houses, have been viewed through many lenses, including community development, social support, caring and compassion. This paper looks at Neighbourhood Houses as sites of pedagogical practice. More specifically, it explores the role of Neighbourhood House administrative staff as literacy mediators — as people who assist others with reading and writing.

Literacy mediation has gained attention as part of a focus amongst New Literacy Studies researchers on the social uses of literacy. In this case study of four staff members working across two neighbourhood houses, I identify that literacy mediation in the neighbourhood houses
is common, complex and growing in demand.

A further area of focus of the paper is the invisibility of the literacy mediation in Neighbourhood Houses — to funding bodies, committees of management and even to other staff. It also identifies the role of emotional labour in both facilitating mediation but also as a contributing factor to the lack of recognition of informal literacy work in Neighbourhood Houses.

Keywords: adult literacy, literacy mediation, neighbourhood houses,
informal learning

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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The meaning of learning on the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage

Author: Kyung-Mi Im, Howon University, Korea; JuSung Jun, Soongsil University, Korea

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experience of travellers on the Camino de Santiago in order to find out the pattern of their travel lived experience and the meaning of learning experience. For this purpose, eight Korean travellers were selected for the study; the study was performed using the hermeneutic phenomenological method. The findings are as follows: First, the pattern of lived experience -’the four Existentials, lived time, space, body and human relation’- on the Camino de Santiago was summarized into ‘slow and composure’, ‘meditation and spirituality’, ‘companionship’, and ‘the dance of self-mortification through physical pain’ in the four existential aspects of time, space, relationship, and body. Second, the lived experience of participants had profound meaning as a learning experience in terms of biographical learning, the theory of autopoiesis,
and spiritual learning.

Keywords: Learning experience, Lived experience, Four Existentials, The Camino de Santiago

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Motivating and enabling adult learners to develop research skills

Author: Grace McCarthy, University of Wollongong

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  Adult learners undertaking a coursework masters are understandably nervous about undertaking research projects. However if done well, such projects represent a way to encourage the quantity and quality of practitioner research, which is important in all management disciplines, not only the emerging discipline of coaching. This paper offers an alternative to the individual master-apprentice model to which many research students are still exposed. Addressing the motivational needs identified in self-determination theory (autonomy, competence and relatedness) as well as self-efficacy and incorporating good practices in feedback, it outlines a way to make the process of learning how to do research more engaging than sitting listening to lectures. The paper reports the findings of a survey of the participants in the 2012 cohort who were asked if their competence and confidence in undertaking a research project had changed before and after undertaking the class, and if so, to list what they, their peers or staff had done to contribute to this change. The paper concludes that the approach offers a useful way to help adult learners develop research skills.

Keywords: coaching, research skills, adult learning, self-determination theory.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Work-based researchers and Communities of Practice: Conceptual and gestational dilemmas

Author: Andrew Sense, University of Wollongong

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  Drawing on a presumption that a Community of Practice (COP) can add significant value to the situated learning development of adults in any context, this paper exposes and analyses the challenges faced in facilitating the development of a COP involving part-time work-based researchers. Using an empirical case example involving a collaborative research network of five industry organisations and a university, the specific purpose (and outcomes) of this paper are to (a) conceptualise
a researcher COP involving part-time work-based PhD and Masters of Philosophy candidates (b) examine the pragmatic dilemmas these part-time researchers face in seeking to develop such a supportive social learning construct in respect to their research activities (c) tentatively indicate some challenges that higher education institutions and industry organisations confront in facilitating and nurturing such learning structures which span industry and academia contexts. Through its analysis, this paper draws attention towards the complex issues involved in developing a functioning rather than the often idealised COP in the part-time work-based researcher space.

Keywords: Work-based researchers; Communities of Practice; Social learning.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Developing and using green skills for the transition to a low carbon economy

Author: Mike Brown, LaTrobe University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 2, July 2015

Summary:  One of the strategies being advocated in response to climate change is the need to transition to a low carbon economy. Current projections show that within this transition, new jobs will be created, some eliminated and most others subjected to change. This article reports findings from interviews with a selection of twenty participants who are involved in the formation and/or deployment of green skills. The participants were asked about their perceptions of (1) how jobs are changing in the transition to a green economy (2) how are adult learners developing and using green skills, and (3) what are some of the main drivers and blockers to the development and use of green skills. The data are presented as vignettes from various positions of supply and demand within the emerging green economy. The findings of this study report that the organisations and the training providers are motivated to develop and/or deploy green jobs and green skills for a range of different reasons. These include the making of a favourable business case, environmental beliefs about conserving the finite resources of the planet and, for health and wellbeing reasons. Some blockers that have been identified are the initial capital outlay for any changes, and the need to address some inconsistencies that arise over time in the financial arrangements when trying to work out the business case. This has led the designers and contractors working in renewable energy to call for a level playing field with those who provide and utilise finite resources and non-renewable energy. Overall transition to a low carbon and green economy is shown to be supported and occurring with some limited success. However there is a need for further larger scale research into this area of skill formation and deployment.

Keywords: Skills for sustainability, green skills, low carbon economy, green jobs, education for sustainability

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Connecting in rhizomic spaces: Peer-assisted learning (PAL) and e-learning in teacher education

Authors: Jane Bone and Susan Edwards, Australian Catholic University

Edition: Volume 55, Number 1, April 2015

Summary:  A PAL (Peer-Assisted Learning) project supported research that focused on e-learning and Web 2.0 technologies as part of a pedagogical approach in the context of a tertiary institution. This project responded to a call for a rejuvenation of conventional approaches to pedagogy while teaching an early childhood unit in a large Australian university. In the project a variety of methods, qualitative (interviews and focus groups) and quantitative (on-line survey), were used in order to explore the possibilities involved in learning together in innovative ways. The PAL project is connected here to a ‘rhizome’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). A rhizome is a form of network; it is multiple; and, it is capable of producing surprises. This is reflected in the findings that support the use of technology to create an effective collaborative space and also show that there are advantages to destabilising conventional student/lecturer positions. Finally, this narrative account contributes to a growing literature that connects Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) philosophical ideas to education.

Keywords: Peer-assisted learning, early childhood, assessment, Web 2.0 technologies, Deleuze, rhizome

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 55_1. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Policy and barriers related to implementing adult e-learning in Taiwan

Authors: Hsiu-Ying Chung, Gwo-Guang Lee and Shih-Hwa Liu, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology

Edition: Volume 54, Number 3, November 2014

Summary:  The work quality of public servants direct affects a country’s administrative performance, and the Taiwan government has recently invested a considerable amount of funds in constructing e-government learning platforms and developing digital courses to provide all public servants with sufficient on-the-job training and enhance the quality of human resources. Therefore, the circumstances under which public servants use e-government learning platforms warrant investigation. In this study, questionnaires were used to collect data for quantitative research, and a theoretical model was created to clarify the impact of ‘Barrier Factors’ and ‘Policy Factors’ on e-government learning. These factors have been examined inadequately in previous research on the theory of e-learning behaviour. The results presented here show that Barrier Factors and Policy Factors strongly influence the willingness of public servants to use e-learning systems, and these factors explain more than 80% of the variance in users’ behavioural intention. These results revealed the characteristics of the research participants, and the findings can be used as a reference in future studies and by management agencies responsible for providing e-government learning. Furthermore, these results might facilitate further research on and the practice of adult e-learning.

Keywords: e-learning, adult learning, barrier factors, public servants, behavioural intention, structural equation modelling (SEM)

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 54_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Educational biographies in Germany: From secondary school general education to lifelong learning?

Author: Harry Friebel, University of Hamburg

Summary:  This article addresses the change in the transitional process from secondary school general education to gainful employment within the framework of societal modernisation processes in Germany.
We analyse the relationship between the options for and restrictions upon individual educational mobility under the conditions imposed by the various socially institutionalised educational segments, which comprise a structure of opportunity.
The database for our study consists in the longitudinal findings of the “Hamburg Biography and Life Course Panel” (HBLP) from 1980 to 2007, which examined the processes of vocational education mobility for a sample of the Hamburg graduating class of 1979.
How do these people manage their educational strategies? What do they experience in terms of vocational education and continuing education within the institutional structure of opportunity? Do the career paths differ after gender?

Keywords: Vocational training, Educational Biography, Vocational training mobility, Continuing education, Vocational education policy, Germany

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 54_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Identifying tertiary bridging students at risk of failure in the first semester of undergraduate study

Authors: Robert Whannell and Patricia Whannell, University of New England

Summary:  This study presents the findings of the second phase of a project examining the attrition and progression of two cohorts of students in a tertiary bridging program at a regional university in Australia. The first phase of the study (Whannell, 2013) based on data collected up to week 5 of the bridging program identified age, academic achievement on the initial assessment tasks, the level of peer support and the number of absences from scheduled classes as being the factors which predicted attrition from the bridging program. This phase of the study examined a sample of 92 students who subsequently completed a custom questionnaire in week 12 of the tertiary bridging program and then continued into the first semester of undergraduate study. Participants at risk of failure in the first semester of undergraduate study were characterised by being younger in age, demonstrating a high incidence of absence from scheduled classes and low levels of academic achievement in the final assessment tasks in the bridging program and reporting lower quality relationships with academic staff. The need to initiate interventions to target at-risk students prior to commencement of their undergraduate study is discussed.

Keywords: tertiary bridging program, attrition, educational transition.

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 54_2. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.

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Exploring how short-term overseas study programs impact students’ personal growth

Authors: Jean-Pierre Fenech, Monash University; Sylvana Fenech, RMIT University; Jacqueline Birt, University of Queensland

Edition: Volume 53, Number 3, November 2013

Summary:  This paper is an exploratory study of the impact of short-term overseas study programs on participants’ personal growth in business school environments. We interviewed students participating in such a program organised by an Australian university. Guided by the literature, we used three factors — pre-academic work, a three-week sojourn, and the participants themselves — in order to understand the association between the program and the participants’ personal growth. We noted several idiosyncrasies amongst the participants that affected their level of personal growth, including language ability, age, gender, extent of previous travel and ethnic background. Overall, all students experienced different levels of growth as a result of the program.

Keywords: study abroad, short-term programs, personal development,

 

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This article is part of AJAL, Volume 53_3. The entire volume is available in .pdf for purchase here.