Non-hierarchical Learning Research Articles

Reimagining Leadership in Open Education: Networking to Promote Social Justice and Systemic Change

Challenging traditional notions of leadership, and leveraging non-hierarchical learning structures, the Regional Leaders of Open Education Network (RLOE) was created to bring together leaders from a broad diversity of institutions in the U.S. and Canada to build strategic plans for open education that especially support underserved and underrepresented students. All members of the network, including an advisory team, collaborators, student mentors and cohort participants were engaged in a multi-directional learning program over two years (2021-2022) that included a variety of synchronous and asynchronous online engagement opportunities, as well as the opportunity to attend an in-person summit. Analyses of surveys and reports completed by network participants indicated that RLOE was successful in building community and in providing vital networking opportunities that supported them to design and begin to implement open education strategic plans that included initiatives in professional development, forming partnerships, integrating DEI as well as many other goals and accomplishments. Cohort participants indicated statistically significant gains in 1) developing and leveraging their leadership skills to serve marginalized and underrepresented students, 2) understanding how OE practices can empower all students, especially marginalized students, and 3) how OER can be used to specifically support underrepresented and underserved groups. In addition, 90% of cohort participants indicated that the RLOE Network helped them to center principles of diversity, equity and inclusion into their open educational work.

Turning hierarchy on its head: are parallel learning partnerships the solution to creating inclusive cultures in healthcare?

BackgroundIt is important that NHS Trusts create inclusive and compassionate organisational cultures in which black and minority ethnic (BME) staff can progress equitably. Race equality and development initiatives can be...

Socialization, Professional Identity Formation and Training for Uncertainty

Clinical knowledge, group facilitation skills, and cognitive congruence are considered important factors for the successful tutoring of Problem Based Learning sessions. In addition, the theory of Community of Practice has become an important tool to approach social learning and knowledge integration in medical education and organizational studies. More research is needed to link these two strands of research. We look at novice medical students’ experiences and comparative reflections on student-tutors and clinician-tutors as facilitators of PBL sessions in a participatory, randomized cross-over design. Qualitative methodologies were used to probe the experiences of participants. In this study, the main factor for successful PBL sessions for first-year students was the creation of a non-hierarchical learning atmosphere, which starkly differentiated itself from the rigidity of a PBL structure organized around clinician-tutors and their hierarchically-imparted knowledge. In contrast, a more flexible strategy of student tutors and their constructive management of “not-knowing” enabled novice students to take steps on their own — of which they were highly appreciative, stressing how it allowed them to develop earlier autonomy with regard to PBL methodology, manage uncertainty, and create a shared identity as a community of learners.

Team-Based Learning Experiences of Nursing Students in a Health Assessment Subject: A Qualitative Study.

Health assessment as a subject comprises knowledge and practices in which health problems are identified by collecting individual health data. As the subject requires fast learning of voluminous content, it becomes cumbersome. Team-based learning (TBL) has been proposed as an effective teaching and learning strategy in such situations. This study aimed to explore the lived TBL experiences of nursing students from their perspectives in a health assessment subject. This study adopted a qualitative research method. TBL was applied in a health assessment subject at a university in South Korea, as a 2-credit course for 16 weeks. Twelve sophomore nursing students who enrolled in a health assessment subject were the participants. Data were collected through individual in-depth interviews and analyzed using Colaizzi’s method. The results contained twelve themes categorized into five theme clusters: “Getting ready for learning”, “Effective class promoting concentration and immersion”, “Proactive participation in a non-hierarchical learning environment”, “Complementary collaboration”, and “Sense of burden”. The findings suggest that TBL is an effective teaching and learning strategy for the discipline, imparting positive experiences such as class engagement, teamwork, learning outcomes, and improvement of problem-solving skills if students’ role conflicts and continuous learning burden can be addressed.

Hybrid Hierarchical Learning for Adaptive Persuasion in Human-Robot Interaction

Adaptive learning is critical to helping robots personalize their interactions with people, particularly when considering skills needed by socially assistive robots, such as persuasion. In this letter, we propose a novel, hybrid hierarchical learning architecture for use in social human-robot interaction (HRI) to adapt robot persuasive behaviors to both the static (e.g., need for cognition) and dynamic (e.g., affect) considerations of a user. A learning hierarchy is introduced that uses a contextual bandit approach in the top level to optimize for a static cognition bias and <i>Q</i>-Learning in the lower level to optimize selection of a robot persuasive strategy to deploy that aligns with a user&#x0027;s affect. We compare the performance of our system with a non-hierarchical learning method in simulated experiments for the task of persuading people to do daily exercises. The results show that our hybrid hierarchical architecture outperforms a non-hierarchical benchmark in learning speed and robustness to both longitudinal user change and noisy observations. Our architecture is the first to: 1) persuasively adapt to different users during social HRI considering both static and dynamic user change, and 2) use user state decomposition in persuasive HRI.

Chapter 6: “I Have Gotten Braver”: Growing and Sustaining Critical Mathematics Pedagogies through a Teacher Community of Praxis

Background Mathematics education is not often identified as the locus of radical social change work, with these topics assumed instead as fodder for social studies or language arts lessons. As such, teachers of mathematics can struggle to find avenues for their commitments to social and educational justice in their mathematics teaching spaces. Purpose This study examined the practice and experiences of 10 math educators participating in a voluntary teacher learning community focused on critical pedagogies and math. The purpose was to identify the core learnings and challenges made possible through this learning community. Setting and Participants The Critical Mathematics Teacher Collaborative (CMTC) consists primarily of preservice and early career K–12 teachers, all of whom teach math and seek to develop their own math teaching practices through frameworks of critical pedagogy and social justice. An informal, nonhierarchical learning community, CMTC uses a cycle of critical reflection and action: We read and discuss theory to inform visions for critical mathematics teaching, and we workshop participant-designed lesson plans to support moving from vision to action. Research Design The study was collaboratively designed among members of the group as a self-study. Bidirectional interviews were conducted among 10 participants, transcribed, and analyzed. Conclusions Four core insights were identified. Participating teachers (1) desired to be able to engage in critical work in mathematics teaching spaces, (2) were nurtured by accountability to a community that supports putting ideals into practice and continuing to examine these ideals, (3) benefitted from praxis—having a space to connect theory to the practices of daily classroom teaching, and (4) provided allyship to each other in the face of challenges to teaching for social justice, shaping not only their mathematics teaching but also teaching in spaces beyond mathematics. Examples of critical mathematics pedagogies in action in the classrooms of participating teachers are included, as well as appendices with readings and a sample agenda for use by teachers wishing to model a learning community of their own after this one.

Prioritizing people and rapid learning in times of crisis: A virtual learning initiative to support health workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Western Cape province was the early epicentre of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in South Africa and on the African continent. In this short article we report on an initiative set up within the provincial Department of Health early in the pandemic to facilitate collective learning and support for health workers and managers across the health system, emphasising the importance of leadership, systems resilience, nonhierarchical learning and connectedness. These strategies included regular and systematic engagement with organised labour, different ways of gauging and responding to staff morale, and daily ‘huddles’ for raid learning and responsive action. We propose three transformational actions that could deliver health systems that protect staff during good times and in times of system shocks. (a) Continuously invest in building the foundations of system resilience in good times, to draw on in an acute crisis situation. (b) Provide consistent leadership for an explicit commitment to supporting health workers through decisive action across the system. (c) Optimise available resources and partners, act on improvement ideas and obstacles. Build trusting relationships amongst and across actors.

Neural surprise in somatosensory Bayesian learning.

Tracking statistical regularities of the environment is important for shaping human behavior and perception. Evidence suggests that the brain learns environmental dependencies using Bayesian principles. However, much remains unknown about the employed algorithms, for somesthesis in particular. Here, we describe the cortical dynamics of the somatosensory learning system to investigate both the form of the generative model as well as its neural surprise signatures. Specifically, we recorded EEG data from 40 participants subjected to a somatosensory roving-stimulus paradigm and performed single-trial modeling across peri-stimulus time in both sensor and source space. Our Bayesian model selection procedure indicates that evoked potentials are best described by a non-hierarchical learning model that tracks transitions between observations using leaky integration. From around 70ms post-stimulus onset, secondary somatosensory cortices are found to represent confidence-corrected surprise as a measure of model inadequacy. Indications of Bayesian surprise encoding, reflecting model updating, are found in primary somatosensory cortex from around 140ms. This dissociation is compatible with the idea that early surprise signals may control subsequent model update rates. In sum, our findings support the hypothesis that early somatosensory processing reflects Bayesian perceptual learning and contribute to an understanding of its underlying mechanisms.

The influences of inter music therapy on music therapists who experience it

ABSTRACT Introduction To date, there is sparse literature addressing analytical music therapists’ experiences in analytical music therapy (AMT) training. Method This study incorporated transcendental phenomenological research methodology to explore the lived experiences of six analytical music therapists who underwent inter music therapy (IMT) with Benedikte Scheiby. The main research questions driving this study were as follows: (a) What is the IMT experience like for an AMT trainee? (b) How does IMT shape the clinical practice of music therapists who have experienced it? Data were collected through interviews. Data analysis was systematic and carried out in two multi-step phases. Results This study revealed that IMT is intense, challenging, and transformative, and shaped music therapists’ clinical skills in several ways. The following themes emerged: (a) Celebrating skill development through experiencing challenging situations, (b) the experiential process as a path towards therapist self-awareness, (c) the value of music in the therapeutic process, (d) the non-hierarchical learning environment, (e) trust, and (f) the importance of recordings and log writing to integrate learning. Discussion The impacts upon music therapists’ clinical skills were vast and rich, suggesting that learning through self-experience is deeply meaningful. This, coupled with the significance of the trainer’s physical presence throughout the process, led to the following recommendations to music therapy training programs: programs should incorporate authentic self-experiences with music; the field should create competencies for music therapy supervisors, and provide training to supervisors; and professors/supervisors should increase opportunities for students/supervisees to have live observation of their clinical work to enhance their supervision experience.

‘My parents never read my papers, but they watched my film': documentary filmmaking as feminist pedagogy

ABSTRACT Feminist classrooms employ a variety of teaching strategies that empower students and inspire equity and justice. In this paper, we argue that integrating student-made documentary filmmaking into the college classroom is a powerful and effective form of feminist teaching. Specifically, feminist pedagogy views students as knowledge creators and demands collaborative, non-hierarchical learning experiences. These outcomes suggest that documentary filmmaking is a compelling and effective way to engage students in our increasingly visual and video-based culture. Based on our experiences teaching sociology at a women's college in the U.S., we illustrate the impact that documentary filmmaking has for student learning, empowerment, and justice work. We also develop and strengthen students’ technical, multi-media skills, arguing this outcome expands feminist pedagogy to meet contemporary culture.

Teaching Baxi and learning from him: the symbiotic relationship between learning and teaching

Reflective teaching devises methodology for transacting the learning process. The creation of this methodology is largely an unspoken enterprise in India. This piece breaks that silence in tribute to Upendra Baxi, one of the most charismatic law teachers in the country. The purpose of sharing Baxi’s methodology of learning and teaching is to show how non-hierarchical learning happens and why such learning is sine qua non to mentoring students and nurturing scholarship. Good teaching practices can be replicated only if they are documented and disseminated. Such documentation can enable the institutionalisation of robust learning methods. Institutional incorporation will bring home the symbiotic relationship between learning and teaching, as well as teaching and research. This piece on Baxian teaching practices, and the lessons they impart, is an effort in that direction.

The Cost of Structure Learning.

Human learning is highly efficient and flexible. A key contributor to this learning flexibility is our ability to generalize new information across contexts that we know require the same behavior and to transfer rules to new contexts we encounter. To do this, we structure the information we learn and represent it hierarchically as abstract, context-dependent rules that constrain lower-level stimulus-action-outcome contingencies. Previous research showed that humans create such structure even when it is not needed, presumably because it usually affords long-term generalization benefits. However, computational models predict that creating structure is costly, with slower learning and slower RTs. We tested this prediction in a new behavioral experiment. Participants learned to select correct actions for four visual patterns, in a setting that either afforded (but did not promote) structure learning or enforced nonhierarchical learning, while controlling for the difficulty of the learning problem. Results replicated our previous finding that healthy young adults create structure even when unneeded and that this structure affords later generalization. Furthermore, they supported our prediction that structure learning incurred a major learning cost and that this cost was specifically tied to the effort in selecting abstract rules, leading to more errors when applying those rules. These findings confirm our theory that humans pay a high short-term cost in learning structure to enable longer-term benefits in learning flexibility.

What a Generalist Tutor Can Do: A Short Lesson from a Tutoring Session

In parallel to the unique history of writing instruction, Canadian writing specialists have drawn on different theories and principles from the U.S. literature in building their writing studies scholarship (Giltrow, 2016; Graves, 1993; Graves &amp; Graves, 2006; Paré, 2017; Smith, 2006). This is evident in the “Statement on Writing Centres and Staffing” published by the Canadian Journal for Studies of Discourse and Writing (Graves, 2016). As a doctoral student researching U.S.-based writing centres from day one of graduate school, one striking cross-border difference I find was the statement’s clear recommendation that writing centres are fundamentally teaching units in which students learn to write in their disciplines. In American writing centre theory, peer tutoring is the basis of writing centre philosophy, with some claiming that the tutor’s unfamiliarity of the tutee’s discipline enhances the non-hierarchical learning environment (Bruffee, 1995; North, 1984; Pemberton, 1995).

Remembering Reflection in pre-Service Teachers' Professional Experience

In an Australian education policy environment where professional standards are determining the parameters of effective teaching and learning, it is important that we revisit ways to ensure reflection and collegial engagement are embedded in pre-service teachers’ professional experience. This article reports on a university program initiative that used a non-clinical model of professional experience to centralise opportunities for pre-service teachers to engage in reflection and research of their practice in a collaborative and largely non-hierarchical learning and teaching environment. Ultimately the results of their experience indicated that pre-service teachers were able to theorise about their practice in ways that cognitively and affectively resonated with them and allowed them to gain insights into the complexities of the teaching and learning process and of themselves as teachers

Learning cell biology with close-up views or connecting lines: Evidence for the structure mapping effect

Different visualization strategies for structuring non-hierarchical learning tasks in hypermedia are used until now. Do these strategies differ in learning effectiveness? In the present study, a hypermedia learning environment about cell biology was investigated. The graphical properties of a content module were created in two different ways, either depicting close-up views of the cell organelles or with connecting lines between the cell organelles and their respective technical terms within the graphic of the whole cell. Students' post test performance indicate that connecting lines fostered auditory recall, that is remembering and understanding of narrative information, more efficiently than close-up views. In the case of visual recall, that is identification of electron microscopic pictures depicting cell structures, there was no difference in performance between these two visualization techniques. Transfer performance depended on an interaction between visualization technique and students' spatial ability: Only students with high spatial ability benefited from the connecting lines variant. With respect to auditory recall and transfer performance, the present study supports the structure mapping effect as proposed by the integrated model of text and picture comprehension. Especially students with low spatial ability seem to be prone to an illusion of knowing.

Not Critical Enough? Black Women Raise Challenges for Critical Management Learning

The aspirations of critical management learning are individual and societal transformation, with hopes for non-hierarchical learning communities. This article reflects on the experiences of running a critical management development programme with managers from diverse backgrounds, presenting six case studies of black women, whose experiences raise challenges for the liberatory intentions of critical management learning. Some found the programme positive, but others found it disempowering. In seeking to understand these experiences, and the differences between them, feminist pedagogy provides insights into gendered power relations which critical education neglects. However, for a business school context, with a widely diverse student group, it is argued that deeper insights are offered within anti-racist pedagogy and the concept of habitus.

A general framework for using latent class analysis to test hierarchical and nonhierarchical learning models

Several articles in the past fifteen years have suggested various models for analyzing dichotomous test or questionnaire items which were constructed to reflect an assumed underlying structure. This paper shows that many models are special cases of latent class analysis. A currently available computer program for latent class analysis allows parameter estimates and goodness-of-fit tests not only for the models suggested by previous authors, but also for many models which they could not test with the more specialized computer programs they developed. Several examples are given of the variety of models which may be generated and tested. In addition, a general framework for conceptualizing all such models is given. This framework should be useful for generating models and for comparing various models.