Learning in vivo

Reflective practice for collective learning

Raelin (2000: 101) calls "the process of public reflection" reflective practice; it is a community of inquiry and creates a collective identity. He defines reflection as "the practice of periodically stepping back to ponder the meaning to self and others in one's immediate environment about what has transpired. It illuminates what has been experienced by both self and others, providing a basic for future education", he adds.

Raelin (2000: 101-2) emphasises learning dialogues, as element of reflective practice, taking place in the security of trustworthy peers based on the direct experiences of work. Raelin (p. 103) refers to Plato's statement that 'the unexamined life isn't worth living' meaning that others need to be included in the examination of life experiences. It is more than collective naval gazing; it isintorspection midst of practice and in the presence of others.

"Reflective practitioners 'reinvest' in learning by participating in continuing education" and "engage in problem posing as much as problem solving, continually expand[ing] their solution database rather than select the first solution that works, view inconsistencies as opportunities rather than inconveniences, and enjoy reflecting back on their decision making rather than sealing off debate" (Raelin 2000: 105). Four explicit reflective practices that can be used each on its own or combined are presented by Raelin (2000: 115-145):

1. Learning teams

Work-based learning often involves action learning in teams. Co-workers undertake projects together, discuss dilemmas of work actions, as well as "the application or misapplication of concepts and theories to these actions" (p. 115). The learning device is to pose questions to one another.

2. Journaling

But "the journal is arguably the most endemic technique we have to enhance our self-reflection" admits Raelin (p. 124). Yet, he continues, although it is "often used as an introspective tool for personal growth, it can also serve as an aid to bring together the inner and outer parts of our lives. It offers a lens to view experience—be it before, during, or after the event under scrutiny—and it even allows further reflection on the journal entries themselves." The journal is a potent vehicle to collect private data for public learning dialogues and may include any one or more of the following:

• Logs or reports of specific factual experiences.
• Lists of observations or ideas.
• Portraits or descriptions of people or situations.
• Memoirs of personal experiences.
• Catalogues of feelings/perceptions in situations or about people.
• Intimate accounts including personal sentiments, confessions and notes.
• Dialogues recordings.
• Conceptual understandings.
• Commentary of applications of concepts.
• Social histories (stories) of issues unfolding.
• Maps of consciousness to capture the state of mind.
• Guided imagery, meditated frames of reference and/or dreams.
• Altered points of view in different contexts or timeframes.
• Contradictions or dilemmas experiences or observed.
• Inconsistencies noticed
• Surprises experiences.

3. Developmental planning

Developmental planning often linked to career development. It involves the individual interests, needs and expectations, as well as the organisational objectives and resource requirements. It is often an element of the overall organisational performance management strategy.

4. Developmental relationships

Examples of developmental relationships include coaching and mentoring.

Raelin, J.A. 2000. Work-based learning—the new frontier of management development. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Simply asking not necessary reliable

Most of my blog posts from 27 December 2009 to 4 January 2010 are about learning from life stories and narratives. Before I go any further, I feel it is necessary to convey the cautionary remarks of Raymond Lee (2000: 1). He cites Allan Kellehear (1993), who wrote "we ask people about themselves, and they tell us … the assumption is that important 'truths' about people are best gained through talk—a sometimes direct, sometimes subtle, interrogation of experience, attitude and belief". Lee states that the problem with what we gain by simply asking is that it is often influenced by the dynamics surrounding the interaction between the researcher and the researched—the act of eliciting data in itself may affect the truthfulness of the data. Lee then continues to explain what unobtrusive methods/measure mean, namely "data gathered by means that do not involve direct elicitation of information from research subjects". He encourages researchers to be attentive to physical traces (or the cliché 'foot print')—the evidence that people leave behind.

I believe it is important to collect data in different kinds of ways; it is a form of triangulation, i.e. data triangulation to contrast the data and validate the data if it yields similar findings (Groenewald 2003:10). Janesick (2000) promotes the concept crystallisation as a far better lens than triangulation, through which to view especially qualitative research design. The image of a crystal, rather than a land surveyor with a triangle, is put forward. Crystallisation represents a conceptual move from geometry to physics. A crystal combines symmetry and substance with an infinite variety of shapes, transmutations, multi-dimentionsionalities and angles. Crystals grow, change and what is seen when viewed depends on how it is viewed and how we hold it up to the light or not. The notion of crystallisation encourages an eclectic approach to the research design, the synthesis of multiple paradigms and methodology.

References

Groenewald, T. 2003. The contribution of co-operative education in growing talent. DPhil dissertation, University of Johannesburg. Electronically accessed on 6 January 2009 from: http://hdl.handle.net/10210/106

Janesick, V. J. (2000). The choreography of qualitative research design. In Denzin, N.K. & Lincoln, Y.S. (eds.) (2000). Handbook of qualitative research. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

Kellehear, A. 1993. The unobtrusive researcher: a guide to methods. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin.

Lee, R.M. 2000. Unobtrusive methods in social research. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Checklist for social research

Robert K. Merton's contributions to sociological research spanned more than five decades. O'Rand (1998: 55-56) presents a chronological (according to publication date) checklist for social research.

Download Merton table

O'Rand, A.M. 1998. The craft of life course studies (pp. 52-74). In Giele, J.Z. & Elder (Jr.), G.H. (Eds.) 1998. Methods of life course research—qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Life experiences of cohorts

Matilda Riley (1998: 30), at a ripe age of 87—died at age 93 on 14 November 2004, two years after her husband Jack—identifies an important principle, namely "Because society changes, members of different cohorts (born a different times) grow older in different ways (the 'cohort principle')". She cites a 1972 statement (p. 32), namely that "Over the life course, individuals enter roles but relinquish others, acquire certain capacities and motivations but loose others".

Riley (1998: 39) uses an escalator as metaphor for aging—"as people age, they move diagonally upward with age and across time (in this figure of speech they move through different societal scenery)". However, unlike the static floors that are connected by escalator, societal structures are continually changing. Riley (1998: 43) also emphasises that life courses do not only relate to society at large, but also to smaller groups within.

Riley, M.W. 1998. A life course approach—autobiographical notes (pp. 28-51). In Giele, J.Z. & Elder (Jr.), G.H. (Eds.) 1998. Methods of life course research—qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Life course inquiry mode

Giele and Elder (1998: 22) define life course as "sequence of socially defined events and roles that the individual enacts over time".

Human agency is one of the primary interests of life course scholars and their methodological challenge (p. 20) is the observation of ways in which the individual's detailed transactions with other and with context both steered the individual's life course. Before life course inquiry, social scientists observed human behaviour either (a) as "a snapshot of 'social relations' or structural approach" of impact of social surroundings, or (b) "a movie-like 'temporal' or dynamic approach" tracing live stories over time (p. 6).

The principal elements (p. 15) of life course and the sociology of aging include:

• The chronological age of an individual since birth
• The relevant historical period that characterised the society at large
• A cohort of persons—an aggregate of persons of similar age

The particular age and the historical events of a given cohort individuals typify a generation, not necessary as believed before, the embodiment of age norms of a particular age group (p. 23).

Giele, J.Z. & Elder (Jr.), G.H. (Eds.) 1998. Methods of life course research—qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Life-experience Research

I realised this morning that my interest in the wider scope of learning in vivo (learning from real-life experiences), combined with my interest in qualitative research, led to a focus on Life-story Interviewing, Narrative Research and Life Course Research.

In the forward of a publication on methods of life course research (Giele & Elder 1998) Anne Colby states about crafting life course studies that any point in a person's lifespan must be viewed and the consequence of both past experiences and future expectations. The researcher, she indicates, must both specify the research problem and understand how to organise the data, by using key concepts such as events, timing, impact of the period, and the distinctive experience of the particular cohorts.

Giele and Elder (1998), in their preface, states that the publication focuses on how one does life course research—the art and method of appropriate research design: how to collect life history data; the search for meaningful patterns; analyses of longitudinal data in qualitative form; conceptualisation of age, period and cohort; locating of research participants (respondents) to undertake follow-up surveys; the organising of life events' data; and the recording of data on a retrospective or prospective calendar.

In the introduction, the life course mode of enquiry, to part one of the publication, Giele and Elder (1998: 2-4) suggest a number of general principles:

• Bidirectional focus on social change—the the life events as well as the transitional rates of an individual or group
• Location—of time and place includes history, social structure and culture (p. 9)
• Linked lives—the interaction of individuals with societal institutions and social groups (p. 9)
• Human agency—embodied in the active pursuit of personal goals and the sense of self (p.10)
• Timing—the chronology of events of an individual's life that combines simultaneously that of personal, group and historical markers (p. 10)
• Transitional rate—is a comparative technique for assessment of change in individuals or groups at two different times
• Sociology of age—age, structure (constituent) and the dynamics of ageing as explications of differences in consciousness and status, bringing about social change
• Paradigm shift—a replacement of older deterministic and stage concepts of human development through many technical and theoretical steps

Giele, J.Z. & Elder (Jr.), G.H. (Eds.) 1998. Methods of life course research—qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks: SAGE