Embracing Diversity in Organisations by Promoting Identity

Recognising diversity in organisations through enabling the promotion of individual identity is key to successful participation and learning. This paper will discuss ethnographic data from a UK debt recovery organisation that explored the lives of the debt collectors. Making use of sociocultural theory, the organisation was constructed as a community of practice. In seeking to understand the mechanisms of learning, it emerged that relationships that were centred on learning and knowledge sharing were key to employees understanding the practices of the organisation. The tacit, nuanced nature of knowledge in this organisation relied on functioning learning relationships and an environment that encouraged the promotion of individual identity to enable successful participation. Employees assumed the roles of more learned other and apprentice, supporting Vygotskian (1978) notions of learning through relationship. The implications of this for organisations are that a blueprint for learning within organisation cannot be created and, instead, businesses should value the diversity of individual identity

Exploring practice and participation in transition to postgraduate social science study

This project aims to understand the processes of inclusion and transition into postgraduate education. Whilst there has been a research focus on transitions in schools and transitions to undergraduate study, postgraduate study has largely been ignored. This project includes the voices of both staff and students in generating data that has enabled the formulation of practical recommendations to HEIs surrounding the design of postgraduate learning environments and, importantly, recommendations for students and staff for managing learning and ensuring inclusion

‘If you don’t understand this don’t worry, for the rest of you I will go on’: Deconstructing children’s opportunity to participate in the classroom community of practice

Learning is a fundamental concern within Western societies as demonstrated through the development of schooling systems and National Curriculums, both of which strive to take charge of and advance children’s learning

Learner Identity and Transition; an Ethnographic Exploration of Undergraduate Trajectories

This paper considers ethnographic data collected during undergraduate students’ transition to Higher Education (H.E.) Drawing on Lave and Wenger’s (1991) Communities of Practice theory the research focuses on the psychological process of identity as a trajectory, considering how reconciliation and negotiation of identities across and between communities influences transition. We aimed to explore the academic practices which construct the transition experience, to analyse those practices in terms of student identity and participation and to explore some of the psychological mechanisms which underpin transition to H.E. The data sources included observations, informal social interactions, one to one interviews and document analysis. Data collection took place over the first term of an undergraduate course. A theoretical thematic analysis was undertaken investigating the ways in which identity shaped participation, the practices that influenced participation and how participation subsequently influenced learner identity. We argue that the reconciliation of past, present and future identities is psychologically challenging for students during educational transition and this influences individual trajectories. Some practices assumed an already autonomous learner rather than enabling development of autonomy. Inability to participate in valued (and often implicit) academic practice was seen to negatively influence learner identities, delaying full participation. The focus for transition research could therefore consider enabling systems and practices which acknowledge differences and fully support successful changes in learner identity

Talking about Taekwon-Do

An ethnographic study exploring children’s experiences of participating in International Taekwon-Do Federation (ITF) Taekwon-Do, in a North of England Taekwon-Do school

Dispensing with labels: Enabling children and professionals to share a community of practice

This paper investigates, through critical review, the label of emotional and behavioural difficulties and its utility in child and professional relationships. Considerable human energy and resources have been focused on ameliorating the individual and social implications of behaviour difficulties. However, the effort expended has often been levelled at individual (and policy) interventions, thereby neglecting the relationship element. We propose a reconceptualisation of the label (and thereby stigma) through envisioning learning as doing/participation. The communities of practice literature challenges the notion that learning is a time-limited activity, dependent on individual cognition. Instead learning is synonymous with being, and is a continuous and embedded process. Hence, learning and identity are inextricably linked and located in the various practice settings inhabited by children and professionals. The relationships emerge from and are shaped by the attendant practices which surround the term ‘difficulties’: children with ‘difficulties’ need ‘special’ attention to ‘improve’ their cognitions. In this paper we explore, using the community of practice literature, how learning and inclusion are processes of participation and suggest practices which would serve to liberate the child and the professional from the ‘difficult’ relationship/identity/label

Entering Postgraduate Study: A Qualitative Study of a Neglected Transition

In this paper we demonstrate that whilst attention has been given to other educational transitions, the postgraduate experience has been largely ignored. We suggest this may be due to assumptions of expertise in that group. Here we consider literature together with data from a one year, multi-methods study into postgraduate transition. The literature and data suggest that postgraduate students lead complex lives and require targeted support to enable their study. The participants here did not position themselves as expert, confident learners but instead suffered a range of doubts surrounding their study skills and ability to manage the different aspects of their lives. University practices did not always support their struggles. We use communities of practice theory to understand the participatory transition trajectories. We end by acknowledging that this research represents a small percentage of postgraduate students in the particular context of the UK and call for further research in different contexts to develop our understanding of postgraduate transition

Transition from primary to secondary school: a case study from the United Kingdom

This chapter presents ethnographic research from a project which followed children in a UK primary school in their final year (referred to as year six, children are 10 and 11 years old) in primary school to their first year in secondary school (referred to as year seven, children are 11 and 12 years old). In the UK children might make as few as two transitions between schools (from primary to secondary) or as many as four (from infant to junior to secondary to post 16 colleges). The transition focussed on here is one which nearly all children in the UK make and as such the data and analysis apply to a large number of children in the UK. The chapter will present data which provide insight into the practices of the primary and secondary schools and enable a reflection on the experiences of the children in managing their transition. I do not claim that the practices in the schools, or the experiences of the children, are the same for all schools in the UK, rather I use the data to illustrate important aspects of transition from both the personal (the children) perspective and the policy (school and government) perspective. Such perspectives will, I hope, be interesting to a wider international audience because the issues raised are applicable to educational transitions over time and over place and contribute to a meta understanding of transition. The main argument of the chapter, which emerges from the research, is that explanations of the mechanisms of transition are distributed across social meanings but that transition is experienced at an individual level. Further, those social meanings construct learning in the new transition environment, the quotidian practices of the secondary school are not neutral to the new students, they are value laden and serve to include and exclude and so demand attention. This, it is argued, is an ontological truth surrounding transition