Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA project): Executive Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations

LLiDA set out to: review the evidence of change in the contexts of learning, including the nature of work,nknowledge, social life and citizenship, communications media and other technologies review current responses to these challenges from the further and higher education sectors, in terms of: a) the kinds of capabilities valued, taught for and assessed (especially as revealed through competence frameworks); b) the ways in which capabilities are supported ('provision') c) the value placed on staff and student 'literacies of the digital' collect original data concerning current practice in literacies provision in UK FE and HE, including 15 institutional audits and over 40 examples of forward thinking practice offer conclusions and recommendations, in terms of the same issues reviewed in

Beyond competence: digital literacies as knowledge practices, and implications for learner development

Our interest in studying digital literacies arises from what we perceive as a failure to develop students' capacities to learn deeply in a technology-rich environment. The trends towards networked communities and digital citizenship, as well as workplace changes including distributed/collaborative work patterns and an (arguably) higher value being placed on 'knowledge' work, all make digital capabilities central to what higher education can offer. While we see efforts being made to support learners’ ICT skills – or at least bring these up to a minimum standard of competence – these are rarely integrated with the development of other capabilities critical to higher learning. E-learning is often celebrated for its potential to extend participation. As we are increasingly saturated in opportunities for acquiring knowledge (Downes 2005, Walton et al. 2007, Anderson 2008), informal networked learning has achieved a new prominence in educational discourse, to the extent that it has almost become the measure by which formal learning is judged. In practice, however, we see digital opportunities being disproportionately taken up, and benefited from, by those with existing educational capital (see for example NIACE 2008). Too often, also, e-learning is used as a shorthand for the management of learning by digital means, rather than the exploration of disciplinary knowledge and knowledge practices in a new digital context. A more competence-based curriculum is becoming the norm, a development which has arguably been accelerated by the standardisation of qualifications in a global (digital) learning market. And yet, we see evidence that effective learners in digital – as in other – contexts have not been motivated by competence-based approaches to learning. We are excited by the current theoretical interest in digital literacies, and yet our motivation remains a pragmatic one: to investigate how learners are developing literacies for learning and meeting their learning goals, at a time when valued knowledge is predominantly communicated in digital forms. We continue to be involved in translating relevant research into effective interventions at curriculum and institutional levels

Unlocking medical leadership’s potential:a multilevel virtuous circle?

Background and aim: Medical leadership (ML) has been introduced in many countries, promising to support healthcare services improvement and help further system reform through effective leadership behaviours. Despite some evidence of its success, such lofty promises remain unfulfilled. Method: Couched in extant international literature, this paper provides a conceptual framework to analyse ML's potential in the context of healthcare's complex, multifaceted setting. Results: We identify four interrelated levels of analysis, or domains, that influence ML's potential to transform healthcare delivery. These are the healthcare ecosystem domain, the professional domain, the organisational domain and the individual doctor domain. We discuss the tensions between the various actors working in and across these domains and argue that greater multilevel and multistakeholder collaborative working in healthcare is necessary to reprofessionalise and transform healthcare ecosystems

Building the foundations of professional expertise: creating a dialectic between work and formal learning

Recent critiques of management and teacher education curricula and teaching pay particular attention to the disconnection between the de-contextualised, formal knowledge and analytical techniques conveyed in university programs and the messy, ill-structured nature of practice. At the same time research into professional expertise suggests that its development requires bringing together different forms of knowledge and the integration of formal and non-formal learning with the development of cognitive flexibility. Such complex learning outcomes are unlikely to be achieved through a 'knowledge transmission' approach to curriculum design. In this article we argue that in many ways current higher education practices create barriers to developing ways of knowing which can underpin the formation of expertise. Using examples from two practice-focused distance learning courses, we explore the role of distance learning in enabling a dialogue between academic and workplace learning and the use of 'practice dialogues' among course participants to enable integration of learning experiences. Finally, we argue that we need to find ways in higher education of enabling students to engage in relevant communities of expertise, rather than drawing them principally into a community of academic discourse which is not well aligned with practice

Progress Along the Pathway for Transforming Regional Health: A Pulse Check on Multi-Sector Partnerships

Multi-sector partnerships play an increasingly significant role in the movement to improve heath, equity, and economic prosperity. These partnerships recognize that many of our most pressing challenges defy sector boundaries, and cannot be effectively addressed by any one institution alone. Progress Along the Pathway to Health System Transformation: A Pulse Check on Multi-Sector Partnerships is the only survey of its kind to ask leaders across the U.S. what their partnerships do, how they finance their work, and how their groups have been developing over time. The 2016 Pulse Check report provides a snapshot of 237 multi-sector partnerships throughout the country as well as rich detail around what contributes to—or gets in the way of—moving their important work forward. The survey revealed two sets of findings that are distinct, but closely related. These include characteristics of the partnerships and their efforts, such as composition, portfolio priorities, and financing; as well as developmental phases and the distinctive patterns of momentum builders and pitfalls that groups experience as they evolve. Further, ReThink Health has found that partnerships often face predictable challenges and can catalyze momentum in particularly powerful ways. The Pulse Check explored these barriers and drivers with a view toward understanding how partnerships may evolve along their journey. Pulse Check findings indicate that certain partnership characteristics do indeed show progressive differences across developmental phases (see graphic below). For instance, when compared to respondents in the Earlier and Middle phases, those in the Later phase tend to have partnerships that are more established, with larger staffs, a larger number active sectors, more expansive action portfolios, and longer-term financial plans

Extending, broadening and rethinking existing research on transfer of training

Research on transfer of training has a long history, with thousands of empirical studies since the 1950s investigating whether, and under which conditions, knowledge and skills acquired during training are subsequently used in the work environment (see reviews by Baldwin and Ford, 1988, Blume et al., 2010 and Burke and Hutchins, 2007). The generation of such an abundance of research can be linked to organisations’ fundamental and ongoing concern to ensure that their employees possess the necessary knowledge and skills from their employer to maintain a competitive advantage and thrive economically. Training and development is, however, extremely costly to organisations, which has created the need to determine the effectiveness of training, and the conditions under which transfer of training is optimal. A recent overview of “what really matters” for successful transfer of training (Grossman & Salas, 2011), aimed at a training and development readership, summarized the most influential variables emerging from this vast body of research. Based on the expectation that the list of factors which may contribute to influence transfer could always be extended and that it would be impractical to incorporate every single factor in research designs, the authors recommended a shift in future research towards deeper investigations of the conditions under which selected variables are more or less influential in their relationship with training. This Special Issue contributes to this important research agenda and extends it further through the inclusion of a diverse collection of conceptual contributions and reviews, from several scientific disciplines, a plurality of theoretical perspectives and a range of methodological approaches. Expanding the theoretical grounding underpinning empirical work on transfer of training and scrutinizing existing conceptualizations of the notion of transfer is timely in light of widespread concerns from organisations about minimal return on investment in training, and repeated evidence in the transfer of training literature of an enduring “transfer problem”. The aim of this article is to explore the value of extending, broadening and rethinking existing research on transfer of training. The benefits of extending research on transfer of training is considered first, through examining how the contributions of this Special Issue add to the existing literature on transfer of training, and the implications of the new insights for addressing the “transfer problem”. How transfer of training research could be broadened, thus enriched, through incorporating ideas from recent literature on transfer of learning is considered next. Finally, proposals to rethink transfer as boundary crossing from an activity theory perspective are scrutinized for their potential to better understand the learning that takes place at the boundaries of training and work environments. The article concludes by elaborating on the conceptual value of a refocus on ‘transfer of learning from training’ within a perspective of adaptive learning, and a call for cross-fertilisation with the extensive theory grounded literatures on transfer of learning and boundary crossing

Developing a capacity to make "English for Everyone" worthwhile: Reconsidering outcomes and how to start achieving them

Past decades have seen a growing assumption worldwide that national governments should provide ‘English for Everyone’ (EFE) as a core component of their school curricula. Personal and national benefits expected from such English provision are generally expressed in terms of developing learners’ abilities to communicate in English. Despite enormous financial and human investment, actual outcomes are often disappointing. One reason for this, in many contexts, is policy makers’ wholesale appropriation of ‘native speakerist’ (Holliday, A., 2005. The Struggle to Teach English as an International Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford). EFE curriculum rhetoric and teaching-learning outcomes, without adequate consideration of the demands made on English teachers’ existing professional understandings and practices. A new phase of international activity is urgently required in which national EFE curriculum outcomes are readjusted to more closely ‘fit’ existing contextual realities and priorities, and teacher educator capacity is developed in a manner that will enable most classroom teachers to help most learners feel that their language-learning efforts are worthwhile

A geographical issue: the contribution of Citizenship Education to the building of a European citizenship. The case of the VOICEs Comenius network

Citizenship Education is currently a consolidated issue within several European curricula. It has been integrated in national educational laws in different ways: as cross-curricular education (UK, Italy), as a subject (France, Spain) or as a skill (Ireland). Despite these differences, there is a common agreement on the ethical value of Citizenship Education and on its main aim: to foster students’ sense of local, national and European citizenship. In some ways this goal has been inspired by Morin’s path to a “plural” education and a planetary citizenship (Morin, 2000). Social sciences, and in particular Geography and History, keep the function of giving tools able to show how a dialogue among the different scales is possible. Nevertheless European citizenship is undergoing a constant redefinition due to the European enlargement process, the role of Europe inside national jurisdictions and to the changes in national curricula. This evolution directly affects the guiding function conferred to school in terms of skills, aims and themes; therefore competences and methods adopted by teachers may have to be reconsidered. This essay presents the first results of the updating of the state of the art of this issue that has been carried out by the Citizenship Education Research Group of the VOICEs Comenius network (The Voice of European Teachers). The main aim of this international research group is to face the challenge of building a European citizenship by developing a comparative analysis of teachers’ practices and strategies in different local, regional and national contexts, aiming to contribute, with renewed ideas, to the debate on this promising field of research