How do we decide on Critical Professional Conflicts?

How to discover and define the ongoing professional conflicts in two professional fields? A key factor in effective ‘teaching the conflicts’ is to have genuine and meaningful conflict

Over grenzen: pedagogisch-didactiche aspecten van het opleiden voor beroepsuitoefening:Inleiding bij het themanummer

Inleiding bij een themanummer van P

Communities of practice in the school workplace

Purpose – The first aim of this study is to explore to what extent communities of practice occur in the school workplace. The second aim is to explore the relation between communities of practice and diversity in composition of teacher teams. Design/methodology/approach – Quantitative as well as qualitative data were gathered from seven teacher teams in a school for secondary education. Questionnaires and observation instruments were used to measure and analyze teacher teams’ collaborative activities and diversity in composition. Findings – Data suggest that communities of practice actually occur in the school workplace, but to a moderate extent. Also, communities of practice are related to four of the five diversity attributes that were investigated. Research limitations/implications – The current study is a snapshot measurement of communities of practice. Future research is recommended to focus on the development of communities of practice in the school workplace by including longitudinal measurements. Practical implications – Implications for teachers and administrators include follow-up activities aimed at stimulating and sustaining communities of practice as well as taking diversity considerations in team composition into account. Originality/value – Studies suggest that a community is a promising context for embedding collaboration into the culture of the school. However, empirical research that focuses on communities in the school workplace seems largely absent. This study provides insight in the occurrence of communities of practice from two perspectives: the perception of community members and the observation from outsiders.NWO-PRO

Professionals’ adaptive expertise and adaptive performance in educational and workplace settings.: An overview of reviews

Professionals will increasingly be confronted with new insights and changes. This raises questions as to what kind of expertise professionals need, and how development of this expertise can be influenced within the contexts of both education and work. The terms adaptive expertise and adaptive performance are well-known concepts in the domains of education and Human Resource Development respectively. The literature, however, lacks a conceptual overview. Our research seeks to provide an overview on how adaptive expertise and adaptive performance are conceptualized. In addition we looked for what individual, task and organizational characteristics relate to adaptive expertise. We mined information drawn from existing reviews in an overview of reviews. Nine reviews met the inclusion criteria. Adaptive performance is best referred to as the visible expression of an adaptive expert and this is triggered by ‘change’. The scope of this ‘change’ lies somewhere between change that is ‘new for the learner’ and change that is ‘new for everyone in the whole world’. The extent to and way in which a learner or professional is able to deal with this change depends on the maturity of the learner or professional. We found numerous individual, task and environmental characteristics related to adaptive expertise and adaptive performance. The nature and relation of these characteristics, and their specificity in relation to adaptive expertise and adaptive performance are visualized in a figure, but also provide several suggestions for future research

Workplace Learning in Dual Higher Professional Education

Workplace learning is considered an effective strategy for the development of vocation, career and professional identity. Dual training programs, in which learning at a vocational school and learning at work in a company are combined, are seen as strong carriers for skill formation processes. In this study we explore workplace learning in dual training programs in Dutch higher professional education. To gain an understanding of these learning environments and processes, a qualitative multiple case study was conducted in seven sectors. The findings show substantial differences in learning environments between and within sectors. However, cooperation between school and practice is minimal in all of the cases. Although students develop personal and job-related competencies that are useful for daily work routines, they acquire hardly any profound theoretical knowledge at the workplace. School fails to direct workplace learning. Given the considerable share of workplace learning in dual training programs, and the demands to higher professional education graduates in terms of being able to solve complex problems and develop new knowledge during their career as reflective practitioners, it is important that these shortcomings are resolved. More promising alternatives for workplace learning environments and questions for further research to improve workplace learning in higher professional education are discussed