Learning in vivo

Preceptorship & preceptorial

During an elaborate literature review about in vivo learning and related concepts—in particular the function of overseeing and facilitating learning through experience in a real-life context—I found several terms, such as mentor and supervisor, including preceptor.

Recently, I was struck by the word precept, meaning "a commandment or direction given as a rule of action or conduct; an injunction as to moral conduct; a procedural directive or rule, as for the performance of some technical operation" and preceptory, meaning "historically the headquarters of any of the various orders of Christian Knights, within a given geographic area, governed by a preceptor, who was answerable to the Grand Master of the respective order." I found this odd and intended to look into the meanings. It slipped out of my mind and slipped back in today.

In contrast to the words precept and preceptory, the meaning of the word preceptor is "an instructor, teacher or tutor; an expert or specialist, such as a physician, who gives practical experience and training to a student, especially of medicine or nursing [Originating from Middle English, from Latin praeceptor, from praecipere, to teach]". Another explanation for preceptor brings the two meanings closer together, namely "A preceptor is a teacher responsible to uphold a certain law or tradition, a precept".

Most interesting, a Princeton University webpage states that the "Preceptorial method, introduced in 1905 under Woodrow Wilson's leadership, is a method of study whereby a small group of students meets in regular conferences with a faculty member. Wilson first described his proposal as a modified form of the Oxford tutorial"—it reminds me of my undergraduate days of group classes to discuss in smaller groups the work dealt with in the main lectures.

In another blog post I shared my literature review findings of August 2008 about perceptorship and on clinical accompaniment. According to Dube (2004) the concept preceptorship originated in the late sixties and early seventies. Dube (2004) asserts that preceptors instil confidence in preceptees and empower them. Barnum (1997, p. 8) states that precepting gives the new entrant a "chance to be the role, to internalise the role … new roles, like new robes, have to be worn a while before they fit comfortably" and concludes that "roles are not taught, but caught". However, Flynn (1997) asserts that a preceptor programme needs to be carefully planned to be effective and Dube (2004) cautions that the effectiveness is reduced if the preceptor: preceptee ratio is increased.

Preceptorship is among others defined as a "[a] period of practical experience and training for a student, especially of medicine or nursing, that is supervised by an expert or specialist in a particular field; [b] a defined period of time in which two people (a nurse with a student nurse or an experienced nurse with a new graduate) work together so that the less experienced person can learn and apply knowledge and skills in the practice setting with the help of the more experienced person; and in graduate education [c] a period of hands-on training under a physician or surgeon skilled in a technique–eg, placement of a stent in a coronary artery, or laparoscopic surgery". Another definition of preceptorship—emphasis added—sounds very similar to a definition of work-integrated learning: "Practical experience in medical and health-related services that occurs as part of an educational program wherein the professionally-trained student works outside the academic environment under the supervision of an established professional in the particular field".

Analysis of experiential narrative instead of portfolios

It has often been said that it is naive to assume that students would actually learn from an in vivo (real-life) setting what they need to—i.e. what has been specified in the curriculum. It is my experience that students do not necessary experience, despite prior arrangements, what they should from a work placement. This is because of various reasons, among others work pressures. Besides the learning environmental factors, the student's own attitude may also restrict the student's learning.

In vivo learning educators/coordinators/work-integrated learning lecturers have tried many ways to bring about the desired learning of students, for example:

• Conducting on-campus orientation prior to placement of students in the in vivo learning setting (going for experiential/work-integrated learning)
• Providing students with work-integrated learning guidelines, detailing the relevant learning outcomes students must achieve and specifying what evidence of learning is required (this is especially important in the case of distance education institutions), for example, what the portfolio of evidence or work-project report should include
• Providing mentors (the work-place learning supervisors) with guidelines detailing what the students should be exposed to, their roles a learning mentors and what evidence of learning is expected from students
• Monitoring the learning and progress of students during in vivo/work-integrated learning
• Facilitate debriefing (or reflection) of students on return from in vivo/work-integrated learning stints away from campus
• Providing students with log books (to capture their experience and have each entry ratified) or with journals to capture their learning
• Require of students to present their portfolios to a panel that would interrogate their mastery of the specified learning outcomes

What about making use of story-telling and narrative analysis?

The in vivo/work-integrated learning guide would include the learning outcomes to be accomplished and suggested in vivo (real-life) settings.

The guide would further include (a) examples of daily journaling and/or recording of experiences, observations and realisations; (b) some indicators about story telling; and (c) a narrative analysis model—such as Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber (1998)—with basic explanations.

The instruction would be simple:

1. when the student is of opinion that she/he has mastered the specified learning outcomes she/he must write or tell the story about the learning experiences. If told, the student must transcribe the audio recording to text and edit it for readability
2. to do an analysis of her/his own narrative/experience-story (making use of the model in the guide)
3. illustrate/explain/qualify by linking up the analysis of the narrative with the specified learning outcomes to substantiate why she/he is of opinion the outcomes were mastered/accomplished

What do blog readers think? Could such an approach work? If readers think not, why? What are the potential pitfalls?

Feedback from a friend:

"Hi, Thomas.

Taking a rather oblique look at the problem, I'd ask, "What is it about the situation that mitigates against the desired outcome?"  Assuming the student has been given all the essential input (as you've listed) he knows what is wanted of him.   OK.  He's probably in a real-life workplace for the first time; it's and entirely new and perhaps stressful experience.  He's encountering the sort of people, rules, procedures and environment he's never experienced before.  Pressures will be on him to perform a job.   He may be earning a salary for the first time - which will be a distraction.  It will be during what is normally a holiday period, and his friends may be on the beach, or whatever. -- Just some ideas, based on observation of "Vac Students" in the Chemical industry."

Narrative Analysis Model

Narratives and life story research stand in contrast to the sterile positivistic research paradigm. It is often criticised as a form of art rather than research, because it requires talent, intuition and field/clinical experience—it cannot be taught as clear methods and systems.

Narrative, may be defined as a discourse as a means to 'represent a connected succession of happenings' (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach & Zilber 1998:2)

Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach and Zilber (1998:12) give two main independent dimensions (as well as middle points along both) for reading, interpreting and analysing life stories:

1. Holistic versus categorical approaches—note the contrasting units of analysis: the story as a whole versus an utterance or sections abstracted from.
2. Content versus form—the traditional dichotomy concerning literary reading of texts: the explicit account, e.g. what happened, why and who participated from the standpoint of the teller/narrator; versus the implicit content, e.g. the meaning of the story or parts thereof, what are the traits or motives of individuals or what a image the narrator uses symbolises? Other reading ignore the content and consider the form, e.g. the structure of the plot, sequence of events, the story's complexity and coherence, feelings possibly evoked by the story, the style and metaphors or words (such as passive or active voice) used. Exploration of the form is often done to explore deeper layers of a story below the obvious content.

They (1998:13) suggest that the two dimensions intersect to form a matrix of four cells—representing four modes, which are not always as clear in the reality of analysis and interpretation:

HOLISTIC-CONTENT Focus on the content of the complete life story	HOLISTIC-FORM Looking at the structure/plot of the complete life story—how the story develops
CATEGORICAL-CONTENT A content-analysis of the topics, utterances extracted, classified and grouped	CATEGORICAL-FORM Focus on the discrete stylistic or linguistic characteristics of aspects of the story

Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach, R. & Zilber, T. 1998. Narrative research—reading, analysis and interpretation. (Applied Social Research Methods Series Vol 47). Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Life-story research

The goal of the researcher is to make meaning from the narrative—what does the person's story mean. This emphasises the basic and important difference between qualitative and quantitative research—the design of the latter is such that the role of personal interpretation is limited and enquiry seeks to determine the relationships between a small number of variables. The design of qualitative studies is more open-ended, seeks broader and unanticipated patterns, is subjective (Atkinson 1998:64).

Introduction

All humans have stories, some many about the rich life they lived or are living. Everything happens in story form. We are often struck by how another person's story moves us—how it connects to something we are familiar with—the story's 'orenda'. Truly hearing and comprehending a life story can be transforming

Life story research is not about generalisations, but about the uniqueness of specific personal worlds or first-person narratives. The role of an individual's life, within a specific context, is best comprehended by means of story, which makes life explicit. A life story or slice-of-life serves as vehicle to gather central elements, events, beliefs of a person, to integrate them and to derive meaning. To tell the story requires reflection on experiences and events. The teller must give words to feelings, thoughts and sensory data.

The life story interview is a means to an end, namely to facilitate the story telling and to record it. The interview is an art that must allow for flexibility—it is impossible to foresee how the story would unfold. As research methodology it has its own standards of validity and reliability, namely internal consistency, corroboration and persuasion (pp. 58-62). The researcher must suspend all judgement. When people share their stories they are revealing their own inner lives.

Pre-interview preparation

Decisions need to be taken who need to be interviewed—typically those people with the relevant lived experiences.

Next they should be approached, the goal explained and they should be granted the option to share their stories or not. If in agreement, the person/s should be asked to prepare be reflecting on their personal memories. Perhaps individuals may have some hard copy or digital material (photos, etc.) to support and enrich their stories.

Then the appointment should be diarised—Atkinson recommends two to three hours, often more spread over a period, depending on the breath of the story.

The necessary functioning audio recorder and sufficient tapes must be acquired and the interviewer must familiarise her/himself with the equipment.

The right relaxed and comfortable setting for the interview is important—a space where the interviewee can tell her/his story uninterrupted.

Doing the interview

Start by recapping the purpose: to listen to and record her/his lived experiences with regard to …. Obtain informed consent about recording the story.

Ask the interviewee to start where she/he would like to begin the telling. Listen carefully and ask open-ended questions when not clear, for example 'I do not understand, please explain' or 'what did an event mean to you?' or 'how did you feel about …?' (Atkinson 1998:43-53 for example questions).

The interview is not a conversation. The interviewer is merely a facilitator or guide for the journey down memory lane. The interviewee should do most of the talking.

If the narrating wanders away from the tutorials, bring her/him back politely.

Be prepared, emotions might emerge. Be sensitive and do not try to fill pauses—it is better to wait than to interrupt silences. Respect boundaries—if a narrator does not want to share certain experiences let it be.

Be grateful for the time and the story shared—always remember the story teller owns the story. Restate what will happen with the recording. Emphasise the narrator's right to remain anonymous and/or exclusion of parts of the story. Explain that the story shared would be transcribed and returned for correction, changes, editions and/or verification.

Mark the recorded tape/s (primary 'document') clearly in order to know which is which and what the sequence is.

Transcribing

The recorded dialogue is far from useful. It needs to be carefully transformed into a readable narrative (the secondary document) that is true to the narrator's words.

Transcription can be very time consuming. Listen bit by bit, play and replay, until you are sure of the words spoken. A verbatim transcription is not necessary, editing for clarity and fluency is good, but should not change the essence of the narrative. False starts and fillers (like um's, uh's, etc) may be excluded. Any additional words should be in a different font and 'stage directions' added in brackets, e.g. the narrators sigh, laughter, tongue click, etc.

Once the transcription is done, do a quality check by re-listening to the recording while reading the transcription. Then sent the transcription to the interviewee to look over and edit as she/he see fit. This is the narrator/interviewer's privilege, because it is her/his story. If the narrator/interviewer makes corrections, delete and/or add, make amplifications or any other changes; then the narrator/interviewer's edited version become the primary document and the recording the rough draft.

Interpreting

One of the potential aspects of interpretation of a series of several life stories is to pick up from individual unique stories possible universal stories—known as personal mythmaking.

The researcher or group of researchers, need to share all our transcriptions with each other. Everybody involved in the project must read all the stories with the aim of finding meaning and in particular shared meaning—where stories intersect or are parallel and reinforce each other.

It is important to keep in mind that stories are themselves already interpretations. As research team we need to find the meaning/s.

Conclusion

Theory directs quantitative research—there is always a hypothesis being tested. In qualitative research the opposite is true, especially in the case of life stories. As a team of researchers we need to suspend theoretical assumptions until after the interpretation phase. At this point we would probably need to do a literature review to ascertain what theory and/or frame of reference already exists in the body of knowledge.

Ultimately, the researcher/s reverse the process with the view of publication:

• Undertake a synthesis of relevant literature
• Explain the research method
• Present the results with regard to interpretation of the various stories
• Explain the findings
• Draw conclusions and make recommends regarding further research
• Add the references

The proposed document as bulleted above may then be edited and submitted for publication. The researcher/s may even extract a paper to present at a conference.

Atkinson, R. (Robert) 1998. The life story interview. [Qualitative research methods Series No 44] Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Life stories for learning

A life-story is in essence the expression of a person's self-understanding—"there is no stronger, clearer statement of how the person sees and understands his or her own life than his or her narrative of it" (Atkinson 1998:65)—it promotes personal insight. From the personal, subjective and experiential emerge meaning. Life stories convey the wisdom of lived experiences.

Atkinson, R. (Robert) 1998. The life story interview. [Qualitative research methods Series No 44] Thousand Oaks: SAGE

 

Community engagement — official voice

The South African Higher Education Community Engagement Forum (SAHECEF) has been launched between 1 and 3 November 2009; as the official voice of community engagement (CE) in the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in South Africa. "Constitutionally, the forum is committed to promoting, supporting, monitoring, coordinating and consolidating community engagement within the country's higher education institutions. This includes furthering community engagement to ensure the efforts are economically and socially sustainable". Prof Naftali Mollel of the University of Limpopo advocated that CE should be managed by senior managers who should train and equip younger generations with the relevant skills for the CE. These senior managers should also ensure that CE is place at the highest level. And also to have such managers running the CE divisions in HEIs indicate that HEIs take CE seriously.

In addition to teaching and learning, research and development as well as community engagement are generally regarded as integral parts of the mission of higher education. HEIs are urged to "demonstrate social responsibility and their commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for community service programmes".

Stellenbosch University's Vice-Rector: Community Interaction and Staff, Prof Julian Smith, was honoured at the formal launch for the leading role he played in the establishment and dedicate the award received to his "colleagues in Management, who have accepted and promoted Community Interaction (CI) as a complete academic function; to the Division for Community Interaction, who meticulously gave shape to the institutional policy; to the Deans and academics in general, who enthusiastically accepted the emphasis of the academic foundation of CI; and to the successive student leaders in the Student Council who adapted their priorities and activities to that of the CI-policy."

I asked the vice president of the Sourthen African Society for Cooperative Education (SASCE) the following:

• What is the position of SASCE about the launch of SAHECEF? Are there plans to collaborate regarding service learning as form of work-integrated learning (WiL)?
• I further remarked that I noted that Prof Roy du Preez (President of SASCE) concurred with the KZN Premier by pointing out that community engagement (CE) should be part of daily university life.

I received the following reply:

Dear Thomas
Thanks for the enquiry. SASCE has taken note of the establishment of SAHECEF with interest and we will align ourselves with representation from within our ranks. We see no conflict or threat as CE in its scope is broad and varied but at heart it is founded on social responsibility and community upliftment.
 
As SASCE our representation firstly targets a wider stakeholder forum and is not limited to HE but all providers(HE, FET & Private) and stakeholders in commerce, industry and community. We are primarily focussed on co-operative education as a partnership that through the partnership is to provide learners enhanced learning experiences by integrating theory with practise in the world of work. As SASCE we have positioned ourselves to strengthen the partnership with industry into our structures so that "voice" of industry has a platform that directly links with the curriculum mandate of providers.
Thanks for the interest.
Brian

Peer teaching

Live broadcasting and an expert panel appear to be worth considering for numerous communities of practice for peer teaching and learning from peers.

Sitting on the patio (18 Nov 2009) of our timeshare unit, at Ballito, KwaZulu-Natal, Martie excitedly shared an item (one of many as we relax together) from page 15 of the Longevity of August 2008: “live [medical] procedures … broadcasted interactively to large audiences around the world, is gaining momentum” state BEAM ME UP, IN THE NEWS column.

The news item elaborated on this form of peer teaching, informing readers about Dr Farrel Hellig, a South African cardiologist that conducted surgery at Sunninghill Hospital, in Johannesburg, transmitted live to the European Cardiology Congress, held in Barcelona, Spain. A panel in voice contact afforded delegates in attendance, some 1000 top cardiologists from the world, the opportunity to raise questions while Dr Hellig performed four surgical procedures. Such technological initiatives bring together a cardiology community as a whole in sharing knowledge in a real-life (in vivo) setting.

Professional bodies may use such live broadcastings for continued professional development.

Conference organisers may schedule such events as part of the programme.

Organisations may schedule such training or developmental opportunities, if the necessary technological infrastructure is accessible.

I worked for a group of companies that quarterly held in-house conferences to share technical and safety improvements, initiatives or accomplishments. Instead of gathering (which has particular value) this kind of peer teaching could have been used most effectively.

Experiential gifting

“a hot new trend” according to ideas, November 2009 (p. 64), to “give someone an experience as a gift”:

· think TLC (tender loving care or pampering): a manicure, pedicure, massage, spa treatment

· think makeover: hairstyling, colouring and cut, make-up workshop

· think learning: hobby or craft workshop

· there are so many possibilities

Such a gift could make a lasting impression; bring about a significant change; open new horizons or opportunities …

http://www.ideasmag.co.za