Introduction
New practice has meant new learning and developmental shifts in higher education to establish best practice and strategic curriculum design to train practitioners. New roles that have been prepared are:
- Facilitating learning in different kinds of learning environments. Formal training has given way to accept learning while in practice. Control is not regulated externally, but turns to self-regulation and problem control to inspire self-development.
- Training and supporting (other) line managers in their role of coach and steward. As line managers are responsible for training, a responsible attitude would be to ensure that they have the required support to understand the full function and purpose of the program as it relates to corporate strategy.
- Integrating learning in new technology and the electronic high way: e-learning. The ubiquitous use of technology has meant that access to e-learning has been integrated into working practice.
- Facilitating team learning. Collective learning is a vital aspect of networked practice, but specialists trained in stimulating relevant communication are few.
- Facilitating organisational learning. As creating the stimuli and design for organisational learning is a recent requirement, locating and providing adequate support is a necessity.
- Teaching how to learn at the individual, team and organisational levels. Training sectors of the organisation inevitably leads to change as performance and roles change. Abilities are developed and indicate that the learning strategy take into consideration the need to redesign the program to suit applicable needs.
- Guarding and nurturing the alignment of the three kinds of learning. Learning will necessarily entail tranformation and new roles will develop.
- Focusing on long term development of all members of the organisation. Both short term and long term development are critical to maintaining sustainability.
The new model is seen to sustain the individual, group, and community in transforming the organisation into a learning enterprise. Individuals who self-regulate and integrate work with learning are more likely to increase their value. Simons, Germans and Ruijters state that the following are procedures that have worked well:
- Regular integrative reflections. Group learning formulates the discourse required for sense-making without the presence of a leader. Exchange makes new sense of old information. Situation activity permits individuals to put into practice what they have learned immediately.
- Collective reporting. Documented evidence (e.g. minutes of meetings) has several benefits: 1) archived artefacts contribute to generation-loop learning; 2) details and project information prevent false associative memory recall; and 3) report writing improves.
- Obligatory intervision groups. Groups of no more than three meet monthly to host domain specific question and answer both on a professional and personal front.
- E-mail and internet communication between sessions. Various forms of communication are supported to facilitate and aid learning between sessions.
- Active didactical procedures. Although lecturing is a widespread method of dispersing information, it functions as only half the program as more active forms of participation are favoured (e.g. simulation, performing before members of external groups).
Although a significant amount of learning was acquired by group members, the study found that individuals were unable to transform the organisation, and suffered dissatisfaction from their inability to effect change. This led to several members leaving to start their own ventures, or cooperating with other members to create new approaches.
Simons, Germans and Ruijters were not satisfied with the results of their study and devised a new strategy for implementation. Training programs are reserved for members of a Forum for organisational learning, indicating that potential individual members are sponsored by empathic organisations.
Learning in learning organisations
Workplace learning and organisational learning are intertwined and are inseparable. Without the scope and framework of organisational structure in which to implement learning, development and growth are unharnessed resources. Furthermore, the interests of individual, group and community are enhanced through community bonding, thus building a learning organisation.
Learning organisations are nimble in that individual members who control are able to adapt to environmental demand and learn new techniques as individuals and as a collective. It is expected that organisational activities embed learning systems that benefit the entire organism.
Organisational learning
The learning organisation is a metaphor for organisations that change and transform organisational behaviour through learning activities. Traditional methods of organisational learning have been identified as having five contributory factors:
- acquisition of knowledge/information;
- sharing of knowledge/information;
- constructing meaning;
- organisational memory; and
- retrieval of information.
Since then, new information has emerged on the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Specific focus has been paid to non-formal learning, and tacit learning. In exchanging experience and by sharing mental models, individuals create new collective knowledge.
Team learning
Collective learning results in changes to culture. The process and outcome of team learning can be either implicit or explicit. Goals may change and drive direction in different paths. Learning provides an element of supportive structure for the group as opportunities to learn are created and stimulation from other members to implement and exchange knowledge. Constructive feedback is seen as rewarding and beneficial for both individual and collective. As individuals develop and learn from each other, they are more able to adopt and adapt to colleague mentality.
To support this framework, organisations are asked to turn to Wenger's model on communities of practice. Simons, Germans and Ruijters propose that there is a distinction between communities of practice, communities that learn around a common shared purpose, and communities of learning, with no common practice but have a shared interest in learning.
Individual learning
Where individuals learn is significant to learning ability. Off-premise learning is gaining in popularity, and training programs have been designed specifically for such eventualities. Control of learning is shifting from the trainer to individual who self-regulates goal, task and performance. When working to alleviate problems, learning occurs potentially without conscious awareness (see July for Dijksterhuis & Aarts) and the individual is unaware that learning has taken place, or more importantly, what learning can be gained from the experience.
Forum for organisational learning
In this working model, the forum was established to take in master apprentices. They, in turn, bring two or three more colleagues who represent a community of practice, whereas those involved in the masters programs form a community of learning. A coach is assigned to help develop and implement prospective change. Line managers from the organisation responsible for in-house training and development are asked to attend ad-hoc. Involving organisations in pedagogy represents a level of commitment to all three entities (e.g. individual, group, collective). In addition, participating organisations are presented with an opportunity to create new and lasting networks.
The sequence to an inquiry learning model is as follows:
- make tacit knowledge of existing practice explicit, and integrate multi-level perspectives for an holistic and comprehensive image of the organisation;
- build a working model from tacit knowledge and action research; single-loop learning will alter goals;
- metatheory is applied to verify learning and inquiry;
- making the decision to choose goals based on information in step 3;
- designing and implementing the change strategy.
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