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Workplace Learning (workplace + learning)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	61%
Medical Sciences	23%
Education	14%

Selected Abstracts

Going beyond competencies: An exploratory study in defining exemplary workplace learning and performance practitioners

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2009
Terri Freeman Smith
This study was an exploratory investigation used to identify exemplary performance in four of the areas of expertise (AOEs) as described in the American Society for Training and Development's Mapping the Future: New Workplace Learning and Performance Competencies (2004). Qualitative data were collected from the following four AOEs: (1) delivering training, (2) designing learning, (3) improving human performance, and (4) measuring and evaluating. Research suggests that an exemplary performer could have productivity differences 12 times greater than performers at the bottom of the performance scale and 85% greater than an average performer (Hunter, Schmidt, & Judiesch, 1990). Critical incidents were collected from behavioral event interviews of 23 exemplary performers and 9 typical performers. An analysis of the findings suggests that an exemplary performer may hold at least four key behaviors: taking calculated risks, entrepreneurial and visionary planning, documented business performance to support and influence change, and political prudence and leadership savvy. [source]

Workplace learning and the employment relationship in the public sector

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 2 2003
Helen Rainbird
Training that is relevant to employers is not necessarily enriching for employees, especially those on the lower salary scales. The authors argue that the analysis of training and development needs to be understood in the context of the employment relationship. Drawing on reasearch evidence from six case studies in the public sector, the article examines the impact of changes in work organisation on workplace learning, managers' and employees' own strategies towards it and the limitations of tools such as appraisal. Since employees' existing qualifications are poorly utilised and their development needs often frustrated, issues concerning job design, occupational progression routes and employee entitlements need to be addressed. [source]

Creating supportive clinical learning environments: an intervention study

JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 1-2 2010
Amanda Henderson
Aim., To assess the impact of an intervention aimed to build capacity of registered nurses to enhance the clinical learning environment for undergraduate nursing students. Workplace learning is vital for the development of skills, attributes and knowledge of student nurses. Registered nurses need to be appropriately prepared to maximise student learning during clinical placement. Background., The quality of student learning during clinical practicum is largely dependent on interactions with ward staff. Design., A quasi-experimental design. Method., Measurement of students' perceptions of the psycho social learning environment during and outside of the intervention period was used to evaluate the capacity building intervention. The capacity building intervention consisted of interactive education in clinical areas over a six-week period for registered nurses in two acute surgical wards. Results., First, second and third year students (n = 62) who undertook their clinical practicum in the two surgical wards, before, during and six months after the capacity building intervention assessed the psycho-social learning environment at the time of their clinical practicum. Findings showed that students who undertook their clinical practicum during the intervention period rated the psycho-social clinical learning environment significantly higher than students who undertook their practicum at times outside of the intervention period. Conclusions., An experienced researcher/educator conducting capacity building sessions can effectively assist and support registered nurses to engage with students. Relevance to clinical practice., Capacity building sessions can improve practice, however, structures and processes that ensure continuation of practice change need to be embedded for improvements to be sustained. [source]

Workplace learning as a cultural technology

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT & CONTINUING EDUCATION, Issue 92 2001
Nicky Solomon
This chapter explores some of the challenges and complexities presented by the new discourses on work and workplace learning, particularly those that serve as foreground to questions of culture. [source]

Workplace learning and the employment relationship in the public sector

Company-based education programmes: what's the pay-off for employers?

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 4 2001
Graeme Martin
This article addresses the question of whether company-based programmes of education repay employer investment in terms of learning transfer to the workplace. Building on earlier work by the authors, we use an in-depth longitudinal case study of a long-standing programme of continuous education sponsored by the US-based NCR corporation in Scotland. As educators, we expected to find that the programme would have been associated with positive outcomes, based on the belief that 'embrained' or formal, abstract knowledge can be transferred to the workplace. We were aware, however, that research in this area has not been promising in demonstrating learning transfer, in part because such a process is mediated by the quality of the transfer climate. Drawing on survey data and in-depth interviewing of a sample cohort, we found that the programme of company-based education had significant implications for learning transfer. Surprisingly, however, transfer climate had little influence on the willingness of employees to use their knowledge to make improvements or generate innovations at work. Finally, we found that these data supported situated learning theory, stressing the importance of tacit knowledge, informal learning, the communal nature of workplace learning and the difficulties in evaluating learning transfer. We believe that these results have important implications for the literature on the evaluation of HRD interventions, for human resource development (HRD) specialists interested in developing programmes of so-called lifelong learning and for practitioners working in the area of organisational learning and learning organisations. [source]

Rethinking UK small employers' skills policies and the role of workplace learning

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2008
John Kitching
Small business employers in the UK are widely perceived as adopting a reactive, ad hoc approach to employee skill formation. Employer reliance on workplace learning is often treated, explicitly or implicitly, as evidence of such an approach. Small employers' approaches to skill creation are investigated using data from two employer samples. Three main conclusions challenging these arguments are presented. First, small employers' skills policies are highly diverse: strategic, tactical and restrictive policies are distinguished. Second, employers perceive particular benefits in enabling workplace learning; simplistic views that a reliance on workplace learning necessarily constitutes an inferior last resort for those employers unable to provide access to external training are rejected. Third, enabling workplace learning is important to strategic employers, as well as to those attaching a lower value to skills. For some employers, the workplace is the primary source of new knowledge and skills because they are unavailable elsewhere. The prevalence, diversity and significance of workplace learning in small businesses require a reappraisal of UK small employers' skills policies. The implications for research, practice and policy are discussed. [source]

Rethinking the concept of community of practice in relation to schoolteachers' workplace learning

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2004
Heather Hodkinson
This paper explores two different ways of understanding communities of practice in relation to workplace learning. This is based upon a case study of secondary school teachers working and learning in four subject departments in two English schools. In spite of institutional similarities, the cultures and working practices of the departments were different, and influenced the learning of the workers significantly. In such contexts, a tight conceptualisation of community of practice can form a valuable intermediate scale of analysis, between the individual learner and wider organisational influences on learning. However, communities of practice can also have a valuable meaning in relation to the wider influences and in situations where close-knit groupings do not exist. [source]

Clinical Learning Environment Inventory: factor analysis

JOURNAL OF ADVANCED NURSING, Issue 6 2010
Jennifer M. Newton
newton j.m., jolly b.c., ockerby c.m. & cross w.m. (2010) Clinical Learning Environment Inventory: factor analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing,66(6), 1371,1381. Abstract Title.,Clinical Learning Environment Inventory: factor analysis. Aim., This paper is a report of the psychometric testing of the Clinical Learning Environment Inventory. Background., The clinical learning environment is a complex socio-cultural entity that offers a variety of opportunities to engage or disengage in learning. The Clinical Learning Environment Inventory is a self-report instrument consisting of 42 items classified into six scales: personalization, student involvement, task orientation, innovation, satisfaction and individualization. It was developed to examine undergraduate nursing students' perceptions of the learning environment whilst on placement in clinical settings. Method., As a component of a longitudinal project, Bachelor of Nursing students (n = 659) from two campuses of a university in Australia, completed the Clinical Learning Environment Inventory from 2006 to 2008. Principal components analysis using varimax rotation was conducted to explore the factor structure of the inventory. Results., Data for 513 students (77%) were eligible for inclusion. Constraining data to a 6-factor solution explained 51% of the variance. The factors identified were: student-centredness, affordances and engagement, individualization, fostering workplace learning, valuing nurses' work, and innovative and adaptive workplace culture. These factors were reviewed against recent theoretical developments in the literature. Conclusion., The study offers an empirically based and theoretically informed extension of the original Clinical Learning Environment Inventory, which had previously relied on ad hoc clustering of items and the use of internal reliability of its sub-scales. Further research is required to establish the consistency of these new factors. [source]

Competence transfer from old timers to newcomers analysed with the help of the holistic concept of man

KNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT: THE JOURNAL OF CORPORATE TRANSFORMATION, Issue 1 2006
Kaj U. Koskinen
This conceptual article addresses the question of how the competencies of old timers are transferred to newcomers in the context of a technology company. First, an individual's personal competence which is divided into knowledge based competencies and socially based competencies is illustrated. A special focus is on how the competence alters in the course of the individual's working life. Second, our conceptual tool the ,Holistic Concept of Man', which defines the human individual to consist of three deeply intertwined modes of existence (i.e. consciousness, situationality and corporeality), is described. Third, because in the literature the communicability and motivation are often identified as factors that facilitate or hinder competence transfer, these factors are analysed by the tool mentioned. However, because the competence is, in fact, transferred from the worldview of an old timer to the worldview of a newcomer, this concept is described before the analysis. Also the notion of communicability is divided further and handled in three different sub-sections dealing with: straight interaction between an old timer and a newcomer, action learning, and workplace learning. The paper ends with the conclusion that when studying and analysing competence transfer in practice, three individual dimensions (i.e. consciousness, situationality and corporeality) should be understood and taken into consideration. It is also concluded that old timers' and newcomers' different worldviews and different situationalities are the central reasons for difficulties in the competence transferring process between these parties. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Workplace learning as a cultural technology

The impact of managed care on nurses' workplace learning and teaching,

NURSING INQUIRY, Issue 2 2000
Jerry P. White
The impact of managed care on nurses' workplace learning and teaching This paper examines the impact of managed care on the informal learning process for nurses in a major US-based health organisation. Through the analysis of focus group data we report the nurses' view of the effect recent changes have had on the nurse/patient/care relationship. Managed care, our research indicates, has transformed the learning milieus for nurses with two effects. First, nurses have seen their need for informal learning increase while the time and context for that learning has diminished. Second, the process of teaching patients and families has also been adversely affected even as managed care creates the need for more patient education. We report the analysis of the data collected at group interviews involving nurses working in both hospital and community settings of a leading US-based HMO. All interviews took place during September of 1997 at various sites in California. This study is part of a larger Social Science Research Council of Canada funded investigation into managed care in the US and Canada. [source]

An investigation of knowledge-building activities in an online community of practice at Subaru of America

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2009
Susan M. Land
Current approaches to workplace learning emphasize designing communities of practice that are intended to support both formal and informal knowledge acquisition. This article presents the design and research of a knowledge-based community of practice for Subaru, based on principles outlined by Scardamalia (2002) and Zhang, Scardamalia, Lamon, Messina, and Reeve (2007). The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which participants' interactions in the online community showed evidence of individual and collective knowledge building. We found evidence of knowledge building within online discussions in these areas: interactions around improvement of ideas, connection to workplace knowledge and practices, and building on or adopting the ideas of others. We also found significant gains in scores on an assessment of workplace customer service after participation in the online community of practice. [source]

Going beyond competencies: An exploratory study in defining exemplary workplace learning and performance practitioners

Valuing the Gilbert Model

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2006
An Exploratory Study
Leaders such as Thomas Gilbert, Geary Rummier, and Edward Deming have argued that the greatest leverage for solving performance problems lies with solutions targeted at system or environmental factors (those under the control of management) versus individual performer factors. A 12-item research instrument titled Achieving Productive Performance (APP) was developed based on the six variables that make up Gilbert's human performance model. MBA candidates whoworkfull-time primarily in middle management positions were asked to make value judgments on strategies for producing productive performance (where value for the performance exceeds the costs), Results support the concept of leverage espoused by Gilbert, Rummier, and Deming. Implications for workplace learning and performance professionals are discussed. [source]

Supporting medical students' workplace learning: experience-based learning (ExBL)

THE CLINICAL TEACHER, Issue 3 2009
Tim Dornan
First page of article [source]

Strategies for accommodating individuals' styles and preferences in flexible learning programmes

BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 4 2004
Eugene Sadler-Smith
Abstract There has been a considerable growth in the use of flexible methods of delivery for workplace learning and development. However, in designing programmes of flexible learning there is often the assumption that learners will exhibit uniformity in the ways in which they process and organise information (cognitive style), in their predispositions towards particular learning formats and media (instructional preferences) and the conscious actions they employ to deal with the demands of specific learning situations (learning strategies). In adopting such a stance one runs the risk of ignoring important aspects of individual differences in styles, preferences and strategies. Our purpose in this paper will be to: (i) consider some aspects of individual difference that are pertinent to the delivery of flexible learning in the workplace; (ii) identify some of the challenges that extant differences in styles and preferences between individuals, may, raise, for, instructional, designers, and, learning, facilitators;, (iii), suggest, ways, in, which, models, of, flexible, learning, design, and, delivery may acknowledge and accommodate individual differences in styles and preferences through the use of an appropriate range of instructional design, learning and support strategies. [source]