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Project work as a promoter of learning and working life know-how in polytechnic education
'Being and Becoming a Researcher'
Pirkko Vesterinen
M. Ed. Sc. Senior Lecturer
Jyväskylä Polytechnic
School of Health and Social Care
P.O. Box 207
FIN- 40101 JYVÄSKYLÄ
E-mail:
Fax: +358 14 4446965
Tel: +358 14 4446963
Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, Edinburgh, 20–23 September 2000
ABSTRACT
One of the most widely applied pedagogical innovation in polytechnics in Finland has been project work which offers students meaningful forms of learning in collaboration with other students, teachers and representatives of working life. The Department of Health and Social Care at the Jyväskylä Polytechnic launched a development project in 1998. The actors of the project are teachers and students and local social and health services personnel. The clients are the staff of twelve enterprises. The purpose of the study is to examine what kind of knowledge and skills does the project produce? How do students’ working life skills develop during the project? The aim is to identify critical incidents of the project work for further development of the project learning method in polytechnic. One aim is to analyse, define and conceptualise new kind of pedagogy, pedagogy for work-based learning. Data for the study consist of students’ learning journals, student interviews, and questionnaires for students. The analysis of the data will be carried out using both data driven and theory-driven qualitative classifications and content analysis.
INTRODUCTION
Polytechnic education represents a new form of higher education in Finland. Polytechnics are supposed to establish close relationships with working life and to participate in regional and local development programs. Special emphasis in polytechnics has been placed on developing new teaching methods and on co-operation with the surrounding community. One of the most widely applied pedagogical innovation in polytechnics has been project work which offers students meaningful forms of learning in collaboration with other students, teachers and representatives of working life (e.g.. Askeland, 1997; Blumenfeld et al., 1991; see also Poell, Van der Krogt, & Warmerdam, 1998). What is project -based learning in polytechnic? That is the main question, this study will answer.
The Department of Health and Social Care at the Jyväskylä Polytechnic launched a development project, SYTKE (Syty kehittymään ja kehittämään = Become inspired to develop yourself and others) , in 1998. The aim of the project is to promote employees’ functional abilities in SME (small and medium-sizedenterprises) in changing circumstances of working life by supporting work organisations in their development into self-directed learning organisations. The actors of the project are students and teachers of the Jyväskylä polytechnic and local social and health services personnel. The clients are the staff of twelve enterprises.
The purpose of the study is to examine what and how students learn in the project: What kind of knowledge and skills does the project produce? How do students’ working life skills develop during the project? How does learning differ from other types of learning and from traditional practice periods? The aim is to identify critical incidents of the project work for further development of the project learning method in polytechnic. Furthermore, one aim is to analyse, define and conceptualise new kind of pedagogy, pedagogy for work-based learning.
Data for the study consist of students’ learning journals throughout the project, student interviews, and questionnaires for students. The analysis of the data will be carried out using both data driven and theory-driven qualitative classifications and content analysis. This aspect of the study concentrated on the question of how the students themselves described their learning experiences and perceptions and evaluated their learning outcomes. The students' subjective learning experiences and perceptions of learning were examined by means of a phenomenographic analysis of their learning journals, interviews and questionnaires open questions.
Concepts: project, project -based learning, problem - based learning (PBL), collaborative learning, experimental learning, work -based learning, tutoring of project -based learning.
CHANGES IN SOCIETY THE CHALLENGE TO PHOLYTECHNICS
The conditions of knowledge production are challenged by the changes in society. In the post industrial society new industrial production structures and practices have made enterprises more heavily dependent on the new information technologies and new kinds of expertise (Dill & Sporn, 1995; Reich, 1991; Tynjälä, Nuutinen, Eteläpelto, Kirjonen, & Remes, 1997). Furthermore, it has been suggested that a new form of knowledge production is emerging along the traditional, familiar one. As Gibbons (Gibbons et al., 1994) and others have suggested, the parameters for the new production of knowledge are set in the context of application, and the nature of research changes into transdisciplinary problem solving that aims at useful outcomes. It even seems that the traditional dichotomies between basic and applied research, or between theory and practice are no longer adequate. Essentially, they are no longer adequate because the dynamics of knowledge production are different.
In Finland established new polytechnics system during the 1990's. From the very beginning, one of the main objectives for polytechnics has been raising the standard of education to a level corresponding the needs of working life, catering especially for regional and local needs. In other words, polytechnics are supposed to develop vocational know-how and competitiveness regionally by combining the needs of working life, vocational training, and theoretical and practical knowledge. Special emphasis has been placed on developing new forms and methods of teaching, practical training, diploma works and co-operation with industries.
POLYTECHNIC AND PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE
Professional expertise is constructed mainly in two environments: while the prerequisites for expertise are created in educational contexts, deep professional expertise develops only in authentic working life. It is considered very important that the gap between educational environments and working life should be narrowed by different pedagogical innovations and by promoting co-operation between educational institutes and work places.
The traditional curriculum in the polytechnics, especially in the schools of health and social care, is based on the division between theory and practice. It is assumed that at first students
have to acquire theoretical knowledge and later they would apply the knowledge in practice. Nowadays, the development of expertise is seen in a different way: learning knowledge and using knowledge are not separate processes but the same process, learning is situated and typically takes place as the learner is participating in authentic practices (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Eraut, 1994; Eraut, Alderton, Cole, & Senker, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Resnick, 1987). It is also universally acknowledged that formal education occupies only a small proportion of the learning continuum and that most learning experiences actually take place outside the educational institution (Candy & Crebert, 1991).
In order to meet the challenges posed by the changing views of learning and expertise educators have developed different pedagogical solutions including, for example, problem-based learning (PBL), team work training, project -based learning, service learning, work related diploma work or master’s thesis, applications of the apprenticeship, and many other forms of work-based learning (WBL). Although these different approaches are based on different theoretical frameworks, common to them is the idea of giving students practice in skills needed in real life, integrating theory and practice and enhancing the interaction between education and working life. The purpose of the current research is to examine these approaches to integrating education and work from following perspectives: 1) from the viewpoint of students learning in the project and educating oneself expert and 2) from the viewpoint of polytechnic: what is project -based learning and teaching .
LEARNING IN EDUCATION AND AT WORK
Nowadays it is widely acknowledged that learning is a phenomenon that is situated in its contexts and the surrounding culture (e.g. Brown et al., 1989; Darrah, 1995; Resnick, 1987). Therefore, learning at a workplace environment is very different from that in school . One of the main differences between learning in education and learning at work is that the former is based on formal, intentionally planned educational activities while the latter is mostly informal in nature (Marsick & Watkins, 1990). Resnick (1987) was one of the first scholars to analyse how school learning differs from other types of learning. According to her analysis 1) school practices are mostly based on individual activities while much activity outside school is socially shared, 2) school work emphasises pure mental activities but in real life people use different kinds of tools, 3) characteristic of school learning is symbol manipulation while characteristic of other learning is contextualised reasoning, 4) school learning aims towards generalised skills and principles but learning outside school develops situation-specific competencies. Informal workplace learning is unplanned and implicit, often collaborative and highly contextualised, and learning outcomes unpredictable, whereas on-the-job training is formal, planned, largely explicit, focused on individual learning, and outcomes are often predictable (Hager, 1998).
It is very likely that increasing co-operation between education and work and new forms of work-based learning will change the nature of learning in both contexts and may create entirely new kinds of learning opportunities (see, Candy & Crebert 1991). At the moment when we are facing these diverse changes in the interface of education and working life we need both conceptualised and contextualised, critical and accessible research-based knowledge about the learning processes and learning environments in this interface (Boud et al., 1998). When different forms of education-working life co-operation and work-based learning are examined it is important to understand the very basic nature of learning at work. What is workplace learning? How learning at work takes place? What are the constraints and prerequisites of learning at work? How to educate oneself to expertise ? Therefore, the present study will focus one form of the work-based learning.: project -based learning .
Student learning at work places involves many partners: students, teachers, workplace tutors, mentors, employers and employees working with students. It is assumed that the different partners in the co-operation between education and workplace may have different perceptions of what workplace learning or work-based learning is all about. For example, Candy & Mathews (1998) have explored the variety of perceptions of workplace learning and identified five different views: 1) the workplace as a site for formally accredited learning, 2) the workplace as a site for complex technical interactions and problem-solving, 3) the workplace as a site for sharing and creating knowledge, 4) the workplace as a part of the knowledge society and 5) the workplace as an organic entity, capable of learning and adaptation in its own right. Also the goals of WBL may vary. Hager (1998) distinguishes two main types of fundamental goals of different approaches to workplace learning: 1) the goal of personal growth and development and 2) the goal of developing human capital needed for a flourishing economy. Hager maintains that these different goals and perceptions of WBL are often in conflict. Therefore, it is important to analyse the various forms of education-working life interactions from the viewpoint of all parties or stakeholders, including students, teachers, tutors, employers and people working in enterprises providing work experiences for students.
LEARNING THEORIES AND THE EDUCATION-WORK RELATIONSHIP
The interaction between education and work and intensifying students’ participation in real life practices can be argued for on the basis of various learning theories. For example, sociocultural and situated learning theories have emphasised that learning takes place through participating in authentic practices and in social interaction (e.g. Brown et al., 1989; Darrah, 1995; Rogoff, 1991; Lave & Wenger, 1991), activity theory and developmental work research integrate learning and the development of work (Engeström, 1995), Dewey’s classical notion of learning-by-doing highlights the significance of concrete experiences and reflecting on them as do theories of experiential learning (e.g. Kolb, 1984). Further, the notion of the reflective practitioner (Schön, 1987) and theories of informal and incidental learning (Marsick & Watkins, 1990) support the idea of learning actually taking place through work. The constructivist view of learning and cognitive research on expertise also provide important arguments for integrating education and work by emphasising the importance of the active role of the student and the integration of theoretical, practical and self-regulative knowledge ( Mäkinen et al., 1999; Tynjälä, 1999; Tynjälä et al., 1997).
Motivational reasons for WBL have also been presented (e.g. Stasz & Stern, 1998) although research on WBL has not focussed much on motivational aspects or relied on motivational theories. A recent study on workplace learning (Poikela, 1999) identified four different types of how experts in an organisation oriented towards their work and the development of their expertise: 1) situationally orientated learning which means that problems are handled as they are met, without making preparations before; 2) action oriented learning which is based on analysing earlier experiences and ways of problem solving; 3) developmental learning orientation involving theoretical modelling of action and creating practical experiential knowledge; and 4) goal oriented learning related to the management of action in the framework of values, visions and goals set. In the same vein, studies on student learning have also identified different approaches to learning and studying such as the surface and the deep approach (e.g. Biggs, 1987; Biggs, 1991; Entwistle, 1988; Marton & Säljö, 1976), and more general study orientations such as personally interested orientation, certificate orientation, vocational orientation and ambivalent orientation (Helle & Tynjälä, 2000; Vermunt, 1998), or learning styles such as undirected, reproduction-directed, meaning-directed and application directed style (Vermunt, 1996, 1998). As to the pedagogical interaction between higher education and working life, we may ask whether different forms of work-based learning affect students’ study orientations. For example, does a work-based project or work related diploma work motivate a surface oriented student to adopt a more meaning oriented or vocationally orientated approach to his or her studies?
Research on learning and the development of expertise has followed two major pathways which Sfard (1998) has labelled as the acquisition metaphor and the participation metaphor. The former analyses learning as knowledge acquisition while the latter emphasises that learning is a process of becoming a member of a certain community and becoming able to communicate and participate within this community. The acquisition metaphor provides us with an understanding of individuals’ cognitive knowledge construction while the participation metaphor involves a cultural view into the research on learning. These different paradigms may be seen as complementary views which both are needed in order to understand the nature of learning in general and work-based learning in particular. Thus, in the present study I am mostly following Billett’s (1996;1998) idea of integrating the cognitive constructivist and sociocultural perspectives or the acquisition and the participation metaphors. I will take an approach which examines learning and the development of expertise as a knowledge construction process taking place in reciprocal interaction between individuals and their sociocultural environment. I consider the union of cognitive and social constructivism, contextual and sociocultural approaches as a promising framework for developing expertise in the interface of education and work. Pivotal in the learning process is the social interaction taking place in different forms, for example, between learners and teachers, between learners and workplace tutors, between teachers and employers, and between learners and other learners. Therefore, I will pay special attention to the ways in which knowledge and shared understanding is constructed in these various social relationships .
LEARNING PROCESSES IN CONSTRUCTING EXPERTISE –
INTEGRATION OF THEORY AND PRACTICE
Expert knowledge consists of different elements, usually divided into three main components: 1) formal, theoretical knowledge, 2) informal, often tacit, practical knowledge and 3) self-regulative knowledge (e.g Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Eraut, 1994; Eteläpelto & Light, 1999). Traditionally, different components of expert knowledge have been studied separately in the research of learning and expertise. While educational studies of school learning have focused on the acquisition of formal knowledge, the development of practical knowledge has been examined in working-life contexts. Self-regulative knowledge has received attention both from educational and working-life researchers, although theorists of adult education have discussed it in terms of reflective thinking and theorists of student learning in terms of metacognitive skills. In recent years, attention has begun to be paid to the importance of the integration of the different components of expert knowledge in learning and in the development of professional expertise (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993; Bromme & Tillema, 1995; Desforges, 1995; Leinhardt, McCarthy Young, & Merriman, 1995). Becoming a professional is not a process of substituting theory by experience but a process of fusing theory and experience (Bromme & Tillema, 1995). Accordingly, from the educational viewpoint the central question is how this integration takes place. Boshuizen et al., (1995) have shown that in the course of the development of expertise the detailed theoretical concepts acquired by students will be replaced by more general type of concepts that more or less summarise the detailed ones. This process of knowledge encapsulation is a result of repeated knowledge application in the context of practical experience. Leinhardt and colleagues (1995) argue that true integration of theoretical and practical knowledge is best fostered when university students transform abstract theories and formal knowledge for use in practical situations and, correspondingly, when they employ their practical knowledge to construct principles and conceptual models. Thus, theorising practice and particularising theory are suggested as the keys to the development of expert knowledge. Experiential learning theorists refer to this same process in terms of reflection: learning takes place through a cycle of experiences, reflection, conceptualisation and experimenting (Kolb, 1984). According to Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993), converting formal knowledge into an expert's informal knowledge and skills is pivotal in the development of expertise. This takes place when formal knowledge is used for problem-solving. Thus, problem-solving is considered a mediating tool for integration of different components of expert knowledge.