Students as Investigators, Teachers as Researchers: Documenting a Critical History Pedagogy and its Impact on Diverse Learners in a Tenth-Grade World History Classroom

This study documents a teacher's efforts to scaffold and support his students' investigations of modern world history and their interactions with the critical history pedagogy he implements in a diverse tenth-grade classroom. Using teacher research methods to generate descriptive quantitative and qualitative data, the study explores the role of the teacher, the students, and local contextual factors in the teaching and learning process. In particular, the teacher-researcher details his attempts to mediate the influences of curriculum and assessment measures in a high stakes accountability context, while equipping his students with powerful disciplinary tools aimed at deepening their understanding of the past and developing in them a capacity to shape those meanings. The data suggest that the teacher-researcher faced considerable challenges in implementing an inquiry-based approach to learning about the past. The breadth of the Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL's) meant that in-depth learning centered on the analysis of conflicting sources and the interpretation of competing perspectives necessarily contended with coverage demands associated with SOL test preparation. These external constraints became background concerns when the teacher-researcher focused more on the internal knowledge-based constraints that were impeding student learning. In addition to the cultural, linguistic, and academic diversity of the learners in his classroom, the teacher was challenged by his students' lack of experience analyzing historical sources, exploring multiple perspectives, and writing evidence-based arguments. Study findings indicate that two main factors contributed to the growth of historical thinking and writing among study participants. First, the history domain's cognitive practices were progressively introduced and learning supports were designed to meet the range of aptitudes and skill levels present in this diverse public school setting. Although some students experienced more in the way of skill development than conceptual growth, evidence demonstrates that a range of students experienced progression. Second, the teacher-researcher learned to utilize traditional classroom structures in the context of open-ended inquiries and directed these practices toward more meaningful encounters with historical knowledge. Although elements of his instructional pedagogy seemed to align with more conventional practices, a disciplinary thread was woven throughout the fabric of the world history course

Staring down the lion: Uncertainty avoidance and operational risk culture in a tourism organisation

The academic literature is not clear about how uncertainty influences operational risk decision-making. This study, therefore, investigated operational risk-based decision-making in the face of uncertainty in a large African safari tourism organisation by exploring individual and perceived team member approaches to uncertainty. Convenience sampling was used to identify 15 managers across three African countries in three domains of work: safari camp; regional office; and head office. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in which vignettes were incorporated, to which participants responded with their own reactions and decisions to the situations described, as well as with ways they thought other managers would react to these specific operational contexts. The data were transcribed and qualitatively analysed through thematic coding processes. The findings indicated that approaches to uncertainty were influenced by factors including situational context, the availability and communication of information, the level of operational experience, and participants’ roles. Contextual factors alongside diverse individual emotional and cognitive influences were shown to require prudent consideration by safari tourism operators in understanding employee behavioural reactions to uncertain situations. A preliminary model drawn from the findings suggests that, in practice, decision-making in the face of uncertainty is more complex than existing theoretical studies propose. Specifically, the diverse responses anticipated by staff in response to the vignettes could guide safari tourism management towards better handling of risk under uncertainty in remote locations

Cultural politics in critical action learning : A Bourdieusian analysis of a management development program in Tanzania

Critical action learning (CAL) is a collaborative approach to management learning that uses sets of managers and a cyclical process of action and reflection on real-life managerial problems to create learning that has the potential to transform managerial practice. What distinguishes CAL from conventional approaches to action learning is its explicit focus on critical reflection and the exploration of the political and emotional dynamics that are mobilised in the sets as a source for learning. Studies have shown that the broader local context in which CAL participants are embedded has the potential to mobilise political dynamics in the sets that promote or constrain learning from critical reflection. In this research, I investigate the impact of participants’ local cultural context on CAL in an organisational program in Tanzania. To date this is a neglected phenomenon in academic research, where studies exploring such dynamics have been almost exclusively conducted in Western settings. I argue that to understand the potential and limitations of CAL in non-Western contexts, it is important to gain insight into the cultural politics that are mobilised in the participants’ experience with a CAL design and the ways in which they constrain or promote learning. The research has originated from my own professional experience as a Learning and Development Consultant working across the globe, and I use my own work as a vehicle for the study. Using an ethnographic approach, I examine the introduction of a CALbased leadership development program (LDP) for middle managers in a microfinance institution (MFI) in Tanzania, in which I had a leading role in designing and facilitating. To explore the cultural dynamics in the LDP in some depth and a systematic manner, I draw on a Bourdieu’s theory of practice (1992) to analyse the assumptions about learning and managing that underpin the LDP (field), the participants’ local culture (habitus), and the participants’ tendencies to act in the CAL sets (practice). The analysis surfaced three cultural dynamics that have limited learning. These were rooted in the participants’ experience of the CAL design as threat to their positioning in both the organisation and their communities and manifested themselves in their strategies to protect the recognition of their managerial authority, the harmony in their peer relationships, and their financial income. These strategies significantly limited critical reflection in the LDP and were sustained by my own facilitation practice. This study contributes to knowledge in several ways: First, it surfaces how in Tanzanian organisations, set members meet as ‘experts and apprentices with commonalities’ rather than as ‘comrades-in-adversity’ (Revans, 1982b) or ‘adversaries with commonality’ (Vince, 2004). Second, it highlights the value of a socioeconomic lens to make sense of CAL practices in Tanzanian organisations, which so far has been unexplored. Third, it sheds light on an underdeveloped area of Bourdieu’s (1992) concept of illusio by surfacing the embeddedness of a field illusio in a hierarchical system of several illusio, which shapes how it is enacted. Fourth, it deepens our understanding of the emotional and political dynamics of CAL facilitation, by foregrounding how diverse roles and positionings have shaped my facilitation practice