Expansive Learning Research Articles

Anti-work, TVET and employer engagement

ABSTRACT The paper brings together a range of debates on the left that address TVET’s future in current context. At the heart of these debates rest two issues. The first addresses competing views of capital and the second focuses on the contradiction between the interests of capital and workers. The paper argues that capital is not all of a piece and that decent work that validates human flourishing is not completely unknown. However, as with other forms of waged labour, such work is predicated on capitalist relations and interests and it is important not to overlook waged labour as a site of struggle and contestation. Consequently, when circumstances alter as a result of the development of new technology, itself is a social process, or when the balance of power shifts in favour of capital, such labour may be dispensed with or become so deskilled that it is hardly recognisable. The paper is structured in the following way. The initial sections address the paper’s genesis, a discussion of corporate social responsibility and anti-work that enables an engagement with differing conceptualisations of capital. The subsequent sections, Restrictive and Expansive Learning and Thinking about TVET focus on the contradictory interests of workers and capital. The paper closes with a discussion of TVET and considers responses to current conditions that necessitate an engagement with an earlier tradition of adult and community education.

지역 기반 교사학습공동체 ‘나무학교’의 확장학습 과정 분석

The purpose of this study is to analyze the expansive learning process of Namu School, which is local-based teacher learning community. The activity system of Namu School was analyzed with the framework of Engeström’s(1987) expansive learning theory, which is called the third-generation cultural-historical activity theory(CHAT). We try to explore how the activity system is expanding and what the meaning of expansive learning is. The results of this study are as follows. Namu School created an activity system called Growth Classroom that enables teachers to improve instruction. However, while facing various contradictions that exist in the Growth Classroom activity system, Namu School has transformed its community organization to expand the community and maintain its identity, and has expanded to class festival and small group activities oriented toward changes in local education and school. In the extended learning process of Namu School, first, there were expansive learning cycles based on multi-voicedness, democratic reflection and discussion for better practice. Second, the expansive learning of Namu School was forming a teacher platform that aims to change local schools. In this process, teachers create virtuous circles of teacher growth. Lastly, the expansive learning process of Namu School is meaningful as a bottom-up movement for school innovation that interacts with contexts surrounding the school. This study is able to illuminate the context of the expansive learning process and school innovation that is based on teacher learning community. In addition, it is possible to reveal the possibility of learning by overcoming contradictions and continuing new attempts based on a sense of community.

To learn and let learn? Characteristics of the learning environment in knowledge-intensive medium-sized enterprises

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the characteristics of learning environments and the related human resource (HR) practices in two Hungarian information technology (IT) companies. The aim of the contribution is to provide an empirical in-depth analysis of how learning environments are being created and managed in knowledge-intensive small- and medium-sized enterprises.Design/methodology/approachThis study is based on the analysis of two company case studies. Relying on semi-structured interviews, the following research question was formulated: Are knowledge-intensive organisations necessarily accompanied by an expansive learning environment and HR practices consistent with that?FindingsThe lessons learned from the two case studies indicate that there is no direct link between knowledge-intensive work and an expansive learning environment. The establishment of a specific type of learning environment is rather connected to the types of knowledge being used in the labour process and the management’s perspective on learning and development. It also implies that companies, instead of representing unified models, may combine various elements of an expansive and restrictive learning environment.Originality/valueThe originality of the findings of this study lies in the interpretative linking of learning environments and HR practices in medium-sized IT companies.

Toward a new beginning: exploring the instructional dynamics of expansive learning with workers in a youth supported housing unit

PurposeThis study aims at presenting an analysis of a Change Laboratory conducted with the personnel of a youth supported housing unit for clients with a history or at risk of homelessness. The analysis is centered on how the workers’ expansive learning process was supported ensuring that they would be in the lead of their workplace transformation process.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected in six Change Laboratory sessions facilitated by interventionist-researchers and were analyzed with a specific method of discourse analysis devised for tracing expansive learning at work, the method of analysis of expansive learning actions and deviation from instructional intentions. The purpose of this method of analysis is to present in a detailed and structured manner how workplace expansive learning unfolds.FindingsThe results of the analysis indicate that the contribution of the practitioners participating in this Change Laboratory was such that the undertaken transformation resulting from the expansive learning process was actually owned by them. These results contribute to ongoing discussions on workplace expansive learning, which question the extent to which the Change Laboratory is truly a participatory intervention method in which the participating practitioners’ agency becomes visible without the interventionists necessarily dominating.Originality/valueThis study addresses existing gaps in the literature on workplace expansive learning, by opening up a novel perspective for detailed empirical enquiries that demonstrate the role workers may play in supported expansive learning processes and ensuing transformations of their workplaces.

Lessons and Insights From the Implementation of the Cohort Model for a PICU: A Case Study Research.

The subspecialty cohort model allows for creation of smaller diagnosis pools, enabling concentration of expertise and collaboration. Given unknown effects of this model on team dynamics in a PICU, we examined how the cohort-model implementation was perceived by our providers and how this organizational change affected the work environment. Case study research approach consisting of surveys, operational observations, and semistructured interviews. A descriptive survey was derived from an integrated conceptual framework (i.e., teamwork and psychologic safety). Sensitized by the framework and quantitative survey data, we conducted a thematic analysis from field notes and interview data. A quaternary-care, children's hospital with a 31-bed PICU. PICU providers and nurses and subspecialists. Implementation of the subspecialty cohort model. A total of 308 and 269 responses from pre- and postcohort surveys, respectively, were analyzed. Overall, 76% of physicians and 74% of nurses viewed the cohort model favorably. Three themes emerged: community-from disruption to redistribution, transforming identity-expert or generalist, and expansive learning from focused practice. The findings provided insights, informed by a theory of "Community of Practice," as lessons learned and ways to enhance the cohort model. Our transition to a cohort PICU model offers lessons on impacts of PICU model changes on communities and teams. These theory-informed insights and implications can guide others undergoing similar transitions.

DEVELOPING VALUES-BASED INNOVATION COMPETENCES: AN ECOSYSTEMIC APPROACH

This paper explores how competences are developed for values-based innovation. We conduct action research to develop a values-based network–an ecosystemic project; we propose a Values-Based Innovation Competence Model (VBIC). Based on values-based innovation, innovation pedagogy and activity theory, the model presents the process of developing competences based on a system of activities with prerequisites, triggering factors and an expansive learning cycle. We discovered three additional competences that lead to the development of a values network: sensemaking, forecasting, and the meta-competence of orchestration. We also found that competences develop over time, with a hierarchical relationship between them. This model aims to help universities educate their students and organisations to facilitate values-based innovation.

REFLECTION ON A TRAINING SEMINAR ABOUT SCIENCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS IN MUSEUMS OF GENERAL INTEREST

The paper reflects on a 4-month training seminar offered to in-service teachers of primary education in Epirus region which introduced a coalition between science and museum education. It follows an expansive learning cycle and aims to a meaningful improvement of teachers’ practices on science education. The present paper presents the level of participants’ satisfaction with the seminar, the design framework SciEPIMGI (Science Education Program In Museums of General Interest), and the Moodle platform used. It also studies under a cultural-historical perspective, the constraints participants encountered during the seminar and finally, the transferability of the design framework in museums beyond the Archaeological museum of Ioannina, where it was first tested. The above are studied through empirical data collected from a questionnaire with close- and open -ended questions and the qualitative analysis of the participants’ final projects. The results overall show high levels of satisfaction and constraints which are connected with contradictions and conflicts of motives. Participants’ final projects reveal that teachers have designed science education programs for different kinds of museums such as folklore, art, historical, archaeological and a thematic museum of Epirus region.

Common ground is not enough: The situated and dynamic process of collaboration in a multiagency teacher professional development project

This paper uses Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) to examine the boundary zone of teacher professional development within a multi-agency collaborative project. It highlights different goals, histories, and commitments that collided and intermingled to create tensions, contradictions, and opportunities for expansive learning. Although a policy mandate, use of the English Language Arts-Common Core State Standards created a common goal, however, interagency participants acted under strikingly different conceptions of effective teacher professional development. In an era of increased collaboration among agencies, this paper reconceptualizes interagency teacher professional development, serving as both a cautionary tale and a vision for the future.

Promoting Workplace Guidance and Workplace–School Collaboration in Vocational Training: A Mixed-Methods Pilot Study

The aim of this mixed-method pilot study was to expand the understanding of potential methods to support collaboration between vocational schools and workplaces and to enhance workplace guidance processes. Specifically, we evaluated whether a Cultural-historical Activity theory-based intervention program could have beneficial effects on school–workplace collaboration and on the individual-level competencies of the teachers and workplace personnel. Our results indicate that the change workshop provides a potential mechanism for enhancing personal competencies such as self-efficacy and for promoting collaboration between schools and workplaces, especially in terms of defining objectives for workplace learning. Our study also highlighted how the change workshop method has the potential to trigger expansive learning, in which school personnel and workplace trainers, through learning actions, can change and create new ways of working together. This study highlights the importance of providing workplaces and educational institutions with opportunities to share experiences and learn how to promote workplace-situated learning together.

Tracing expansive learning in computer-supported collaborative teaching

The theory of expansive learning is used in many studies to explore change in inter-organizational and non-traditional settings. However, long-term, fundamental expansive learning is challenging to study due to the amount of data and the duration of object formation over several years. Researchers call for methods for systematic analysis of expansive learning. This paper presents an approach to systematically trace expansive learning in teaching practice. The approach was developed during a three-year school development project in an elementary school context. The participatory project engaged 66 teachers and 32 researchers from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark aiming to develop innovative computer-supported collaborative teaching for a virtual Nordic classroom. The project was arranged in small inter-organizational teams that iteratively created, implemented, and evaluated novel ways of conducting computer-supported collaborative teaching. The project was immensely challenging with conflicts of interests and systemic contradictions between the inter-organizational collaborating teams, but when resolved cultivated the change in practice. To trace the formation of the teaching practice, we used an integrated approach combining the theory of expansive learning with a teaching practice framework, TPACK in situ, which helped us handle complexity and systematize the object formation, as well as examine the type of learning the teachers acquired.

Visual forms of mediating artefacts: A research-intervention in engineering education

This paper describes a research-intervention to change technology-enhanced learning (TEL), in a setting of engineering education. It examines how participants used visual forms of mediating artefacts, that is, the means by which the group came together, examined and changed their own TEL activity. Engineering education, an arena that is highly dependent on visualisation and the promotion of visual literacy, largely constrains visual representations to instrumentalist and work-related applications, for the mental rehearsal of engineering solutions. This paper instead describes an activity theoretical perspective, where visual representations of social activity became mediating artefacts, sitting between a collective subject (of learners, lecturers and managers in engineering education) and the object of their activity (to change their TEL activity). In the study described, participants identified, curated and engaged with visual forms of mediating artefacts: stimulating their need and potential for change; assisting their questioning of social conditions and knowledge; and mitigating the reversal and regression of their endeavours. The research-intervention used the Change Laboratory methodology, engaging them in collaborative and agentic double-stimulation tasks through a process of expansive learning. The core claim is that visual forms of mediating artefacts played a crucial role in the group’s qualitatively meaningful change to TEL, and in engendering their transformative agency.Keywords: Visualisation; TEL; engineering; Change Laboratory; transformative agency; expansive learningPart of the Special Issue Visual literacies and visual technologies for teaching, learning and inclusion <https://doi.org/10.21428/8c225f6e.bf2afe2e>

Mapping Inequity: The Campus Foodscape as Pedagogy and Practice

Universities and colleges are fertile foodscapes for action-based education. They are physical and socio-cultural sites where pressing food systems problems play out at micro to macro scales. Structural inequities based on race, class, gender and gender identity, sexual orientation, dis/ability, and other forms of marginalization affect both access to food and to agri-food learning opportunities. In this article, we propose that students can learn through their everyday experiences of engaging with their physical and socio-cultural environment, namely the campus food system, by conducting foodscape mapping. Since 2015, the University of California Berkeley Food Institute has supported the Foodscape Mapping Project, in which students, staff, and faculty generate food systems knowledge while developing practical interventions to advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI). We investigate how campus foodscape mapping might generate substantive learning about JEDI in food systems education; the kinds of learning that take place through foodscape mapping; and the educational practices and institutional structures that can support learning through foodscape mapping. We identify at least eight forms and processes of expansive learning that emerged through mapping work, using students' own insights into what they were learning. Finally, we reflect on our learning experiences in running the project, and develop broader design elements that other campuses can apply.

Transformational Processes in the Activity System and in the Educator/Designer through Design Procedure under CHAT

This study analyses the role of design procedures under Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in the system of the activity and in the educator/designer’s professional and personal skills. Our effort has come as metacognitive outcome of a research that took place at a Contemporary Art Museum and in a classroom for students (11 years old). The purpose of the initial research was to highlight how an educational program under CHAT in a Contemporary Art Museum with the Life Cycle of Materials, as its Object, could affect students’ sustainable literacy, motives and relationships. As a metacognitive process the educator/researcher, who was simultaneously the designer, also studied the transformational processes of all Subjects of the activity system as well as her professional and personal transformations as an internal study for self-literacy. This paper describes trajectories of strategies, interactions, and expansions to the activity system, and puts forward for discussion the use of theoretical tools and epistemological principles of expansive learning for metacognitive analysis. Practical engagements with the theoretical framework of CHAT, came out as an important factor in the development of transformative agency and self-literacy at a professional level.

The hybridisation of adolescents’ worlds as a source of developmental tensions: a study of discursive manifestations of contradictions

ABSTRACT The article explores developmental tensions in Finnish adolescents’ accounts of their different worlds. By understanding tensions experienced by students, educators can develop their pedagogical practices to address those tensions. Building on cultural-historical activity theory, we analysed 12 interviews of 8th graders, focusing on their experiences in six worlds: family, school, peers, digital, civic, and future activity. The adolescents experienced their worlds as mutually penetrating hybridised configurations. Hybridisation is a source of tensions. Using the method of analysing discursive manifestations of contradictions, we identified tensions ranging from dilemmas to conflicts, critical conflicts and double binds. These represented all the six worlds, with school being the host of the largest number of tensions. The school emerged as a site of conflicts, civic involvement as a source of hesitation and doubt, and future as a source of some degree of desperation. About half of the manifestations were hybrid, involving more than one world. The world of school was most highly hybridised, and the most hybridised was the relationship between school and peer activity. For these adolescents, the challenge is not just moving from one world to another; dwelling in one single setting such as the school means facing tensions generated by hybridisation. Tensions stemming from the intrusion into the school of other worlds cannot be suppressed but should be turned into drivers of expansive learning and development. Our findings are an invitation for the school to become involved in collaborative efforts to address the sources of tensions and transform the practices of schooling accordingly.

PNAE (National School Feeding Program) and Its Events of Expansive Learnings at Municipal Level

The National School Feeding Program (PNAE for its acronym in Portuguese) is one of the largest food policies in the world, partially covering the daily needs of 44 billion students per year. In 2009, Law No. 11,947 established that at least 30% of the total financial transfer of PNAE was used in the purchase of foodstuff directly from family farming in the left-wing government of Lula. In practice, the rules allow public policy managers to choose between bidding or public call, provision by large agribusiness companies or by family farmers, and this is practiced in idiosyncratic ways by 5568 Brazilian municipalities. Each municipality organizes its own system. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyze how the evolution of Law No. 11,947 promotes expansive learning in the Brazilian National School Feeding Program (NSFP-PNAE), located in the Western Amazon. As a theoretical framework, the Cultural–Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and the Theory of Expansive Learning (TEL) were used. Qualitative research in an abductive reasoning was carried out, using a single and incorporated case study as its strategy. The study included 21 interviews, later analyzed by Content Analysis. The main contribution is the advance in solutions for societal needs, in terms of continuous collective collaboration, creating expansive learning, transformative or not, in both sides of productive systems and consumption, integrating family farmers and students by a healthy nutrition and feeding in the same system since 2009.

Aspects of Expansive Learning in the Context of Healthy Ageing-A Formative Intervention between Dental Care and Municipal Healthcare.

There are great risks of diseases in the ageing population, and oral diseases are no exception. Poor oral health has profound negative impacts on the quality of life. It is therefore crucial to include the oral health perspective in the care for older adults. To meet the challenges associated with oral health in the ageing population, a formative intervention was launched. The intervention, called the TAIK project (=“Dental hygienist in a municipality organization”, in Swedish: Tandhygienist i kommunal verksamhet), meant that six dental hygienists served non-clinically as oral health consultants in five Swedish municipal organizations. The intervention formed an infrastructure and platform for work that benefits the ageing population and created a new basis for decisions regarding oral health in homecare. The aim of this paper is to explore how aspects of collaboration in an interprofessional and interorganizational intervention may lead to expansive learning. Expansive learning forms the theoretical framework of this study. The dental hygienists and the local head nurses were interviewed individually in-depth. Reflection documents from the dental hygienists were also part of the analyzed data. The conclusion is that the formative intervention was reliant of change which created a foundation for reciprocal understanding that led to expansive learning between dental care and municipal healthcare, with resilience and empowerment as crucial factors.

Self-repair in EFL learners’ speech in two contrasting institutional school settings in China: An activity theory informed analysis

This article uses activity theory to consider how L2 learners' self-repair behaviour takes shape in their situated learning contexts. It compares and investigates EFL learners from two secondary schools in China that differed in their L2 pedagogical systems and overall educational cultures: a mainstream public school and a private school that provides an international curriculum. Data from classroom interactions, lesson observations and interviews with teachers and students were triangulated. Analysis of data reveals that tension or affordance could arise out of the interaction within or between different constituents of an activity system of a school setting. This exerts further mediating influences on L2 learners' self-repair behaviour, including the frequencies, underlying problems, strategies used and changes incurred. This paper concludes by suggesting that EFL practitioners should be more mindful of students’ self-repair features in order to reflect on possible sources of tension that can stem from different elements of an activity system, to consider potential forms of conflict resolution, and to create an environment that is conducive for the creation of affordances for learning. Further research using activity theoretical reconceptualization and the concept of expansive learning is called for.

Curriculum deliberation and expansive learning through lesson study – Teaching Inference skills through an Aesop’s fable

ABSTRACT Drawing on discourse analysis and interview data, this case study uncovers how a lesson study team, supported by a curriculum specialist and an experienced teacher, anchored anticipating of student learning in sound curriculum deliberation, which enabled novice teachers to teach effectively inferencing skills, a highly demanding domain, through an Aesop’s fable. The team entered expansive learning when their dissonance arising from RL1 contradictions drove them to question their beliefs and make improvement decisions through rigorous justification on grounds of their values and utility. The team actively rehearsed the planned episodes and expanded the deliberation discourse into multimodal forms of actionable teacher support with strategies, metaphors, story maps and concrete props. The curriculum deliberation instilled in them the passion for making well-grounded judgements for student learning and brought them expansive learning to cross the boundary of curriculum making. Besides direct implications for early literacy education, the study suggests that lesson study start with curriculum deliberation as a principled framework to anchor and mediate teacher discourse and support teacher boundary crossing and identity making. More research is needed to build curriculum deliberation into teachable thinking strategies for teachers and develop their research capacity and an inquiry stance through mutual learning in research-practice partnerships to address the persistent problems of practice and make lesson study sustainable.

Learning to become entrepreneurial through a change laboratory methodology

Following Clark’s early work, the concept of the entrepreneurial university has been circulating for a number of years. Being entrepreneurial entails that staff develop the sort of open-ended, problem-solving, and innovative solution-generating thinking underlying the concept. This manner of thinking may be important as an orientation to working life both inside and outside the university, not only in the commercial sense, but also in dealing with societal issues. Although there are guides as to what areas a university should develop to become entrepreneurial, there is little guidance as to how staff may explore and develop their own entrepreneurial thinking. This article suggests that the problem and solution generating approach of the change laboratory, underpinned by the theory of expansive learning (and transformative agency), may provide such guidance. Furthermore, forwarding this approach may support the critical developmental and transformative role that universities can play in society and so serve to balance out the more commercial thrusts often proposed by managing bodies

Inclusive knowledge production at an elementary school through family-school-university partnerships: A formative intervention study

Students from racially minoritized backgrounds have been disproportionately subject to exclusionary school discipline in the United States. Utilizing cultural-historical activity theory and the formative intervention methodology, we conducted a yearlong formative intervention, Learning Lab , in an elementary school with significant racial disproportionality in school discipline. Teachers, family members, administrators, support staff, and community members with diverse and often opposing histories and goals worked together to critically examine their existing behavioral support system and racial disparities in practices, assumptions, processes, and outcomes from multiple perspectives. We utilized the method of expansive learning actions to analyze qualitative data from ten subsequent sessions. Our findings showed that local stakeholders successfully formed and sustained a diverse working group that represented families, educators, researchers, and community members. Learning Lab members worked collaboratively to question their existing school practices and to examine the root causes of racial disproportionality through historical and empirical analyses. We discuss both possibilities and challenges regarding inclusive knowledge production and the systemic transformation process at local schools.