Morris Robert J., The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Outcome-based education (OBE), criteria-referenced assessment (CRA), and work-integrated education (WIE) are not new ideas, but their iterations in contemporary education are producing some new thinking in terms of the postmodern globalized world. The difficulty arises in those areas where substantive subjects that are not the students’ main subject curriculum are required and taught—the example here being mandatory law for non-law, non-law school majors. How do OBE, CRA, and WIE apply, what are the criteria, and how are they articulated and measured? These questions have not been thoroughly articulated or theorized in the existing literature on education in general or legal education in particular. Calls for “curriculum revision” demand that we develop “all-round students” with “professional competencies” rife with OBE and CRA, yet we have difficulty stating just what those things might involve when it comes to non-law school law. This article suggests some ways in which these tasks might be further deepened. If the academy requires non-law students to study the law of their professions, it stands to reason and is only fair that that study be fully integrated into their experiences of OBE, CRA, and WIE. Otherwise, it seems the institution is merely giving lip service to these criteria and is cheating itself of all these programs might potentially deliver in a true modern education.

Johnson Jennie, Virginia Tech

Wiswell Albert, Virginia Tech

In today’s global marketplace, manufacturers, traders and retailers alike are realizing the economic necessity of maintaining an increased level of ethical practice. This includes adhering to labor laws and international agreements, as well as taking mutual responsibility for maintaining ethical business practices and positive ethical climates in the organization. All too often the media reports of incidences of ethical wrongdoing by community and business leaders bring ethics to the forefront of the public’s attention.

This challenges organizations to look at their role in creating and sustaining ethical behavior within their organizations. Research shows that the work place environment may place a ceiling on individual moral development, rather than encouraging growth to the highest levels. Conversely, the work environments can be a positive venue for developing higher levels of thinking about important issues. We see evidence that meaningful ethics standards and supporting practices are among the most important elements for creating and sustaining an ethical work environment within an organization.

In this session, the presenters will discuss some of the major elements which constitute a comprehensive ethics program for the workplace. These include a discussion of creating ethics infrastructures and codes of ethics. The role of organizational leaders as role models is crucial for this process and must be included in leadership development training. Instituting appropriate and effective ethics audits are crucial for effective processes. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role and importance of training and education for all components of a comprehensive ethics program.

Endrawes Gihane, Australian Catholic University

Today’s education moves towards the epistemological approach or ways of knowing, which focuses on helping learners how to learn. There has been an increasing interest in exploring ways in which learners learn beyond the curriculum, in particular, examining the potential of reflection and experience as a learning tool, which fosters deep and lifelong learning. One dimension of the competent practitioner/professional is the ability to critically reflect on one’s own practice in a way that will improve practice, increase customers’ satisfaction with the service they are receiving and facilitate professional growth. This is particularly true with today’s emphasis on providing cost-effective services. Standards of practice also require professionals to seek knowledge and reflect on practice to maintain contemporary perspective. In this, reflection is related to professional competence. The aim of this paper is to highlight the importance of reflection and reflective inquiry in enhancing learning, and how this strategy is strongly related to learning from experience, problem-solving and decision-making skills, quality improvement and use of research. The paper will also examine the importance of reflection in bridging the gap between theory and practice. It is through reflection, reflective inquiry and self-awareness that professionals will be able to face this discrepancy and bridge the gap between the ideal and the real to improve practice. Because we are living in a world where the only constant is ‘change’, we need to develop reflective inquiry skills, which will enable us to challenge the status quo, the taken for granted, the habitual unquestioned values, beliefs and practices, identify areas that need improvement or change in practice and help in finding ways to address professional problems. This has implications for educators in creating learning opportunities for others that will facilitate deep, meaningful and lifelong learning and foster critical thinking and reflective inquiry rather than the mere acquisition of knowledge. In other words, helping people to learn how to learn.

Fox Robert, The University of Hong Kong

Trinidad Suzanne, Curtin University of Technology

In a time of rapid socio-economic and technological change, universities have added pressures of dealing with a larger 'clientele' of learners from varied backgrounds, with diverse needs, motivations, abilities, learning preferences, time availability and course content requirements; a demand for more client responsive and flexible courses; and the drive to use effectively, information and communication technologies (ICTs) in teaching and learning. Learner-centered education works on the premise that, in an information age, the learner has increased responsibilities for managing his or her own research and learning. This is difficult for an increasing population of students who are mature and studying part-time who have previously learnt by traditional methods.

This research identified and documented the busy work and study lifestyles of 58 part-time students while they undertook two consecutive courses at the University of Hong Kong. The study attempted to understand these dimensions and explore how innovative pedagogical practice might support learning through the use of a learner management system over a two year period. The researchers monitored motivation, participation, and performance of the students and used this data as a basis of evaluating the interventions trialed.

The interventions were conducted within an action research paradigm which is most appropriate for those who recognize the existence of shortcomings in their educational activities and who would like to adopt some initial stance in regard to the problem, formulate a plan, carry out an intervention, evaluate the outcomes and develop further strategies in an iterative fashion. The interventions involved the use of social-constructivist approaches to teaching and learning whilst encouraging students to reflect on, and attempt to improve their own learning within both modules working collaboratively in groups and as individual learners. Four factors and 15 attributes were identified as having potential affect on the attitudes of part-time students’ learning including traveling distance to class, age, qualifications and digital connections.

Ehlers Søren, Danish University of Education

The Lisbon Declaration (2000) represents the end of a unique period of transnational policy formulation in Europe, which started after the Second World War and reached its peak in 2000 when the European Union determined that building a ‘knowledge economy’ should be the main goal of all national education and training systems in the EU member states. After 2000 another unique period of transnational implementation of lifelong learning systems can be observed.

The focus has shifted from national education policies to transnational learning policies. However, since the process of policy implementation only began a few years ago, any examination of this new process must involve empirical studies. This is the background for placing the main emphasis on the policy-formulation process and concentrating on theoretical studies.

The research question is: How were European lifelong learning policies formulated and how are they implemented? The field is adult learning vs. adult education and the two cases in the pilot are the Nordic countries and the EU member states.

In the paper, the study of transnational policy formulation is linked to the work done within the following organisations: the Council of Europe (1946-49), the Common Market (1957-76), the Nordic Council of Ministers (1971-95), UNESCO and the OECD (1972-95), and the European Union (1992-2000).

Lin Yu-Hao, Ming-Dao University

Constructionists assert that knowledge is not only constructed by an individual’s interaction with his/her own world (or experiences) but also co-created by his/her interaction with other individuals within a specific social community. This implies that both cognitive and social processes are involved in teachers’ knowledge development through the process of sharing and reflecting their own experiences and others’ experiences or ideas. Accordingly, this paper attempts to develop its theoretical propositions of (1) how the epistemological paradigm of constructionism relates to the concepts and practices of action learning and (2) how the implementation of action learning brings about teachers’ knowledge sharing and therefore knowledge development by reviewing the literature on the subject of constructionsim, action learning, knowledge sharing and teachers’ professional development. A school-based investigation is conducted and observation as the research method is applied to explore how the process of knowledge sharing and development is carried out through the conduct of self-facilitated action learning by a group of elementary teachers for a concentrated period of time and also to indicate essential issues involving in the sharing and development processes within an elementary school in Taiwan. By reconstructing the social phenomenon of how such the self-facilitated action learning set progresses in the Taiwanese elementary school context, readers may be able to gain insights into the potential benefits of action learning for teachers’ professional development.

Formark Bodil, Mid Sweden University

Westberg Anna, Stockholm Institute of Education

The scout movement is a global movement and the scout uniform one its' most distinguishing characteristics. We argue that the uniform because of its many symbolic, strategic and ideological functions simultaneously also generates educational effects. The uniform has been, and remains, an important tool for the encouragement of a sense of a shared global identity (in spite of considerable national variation). It has also been a significant marketing strategy in the recruitment of new members, financial benefactors and public good will. However, the uniform can also be regarded as one of the movement's most important instruments for the diffusion of scout ideology from adult leaders to children. Because of these intersecting motifs and meanings the individual scout can be said to synchronically be both embodied by, and embody the movement through the act of wearing.

The aim of our paper is to analyse, through the usage of a qualitative method, the uniform's performative and educational functions in regards to the Swedish scout movement. Through a combined historical and pedagogical perspective we wish to explore the seemingly stable discourse which the recurrent and extensive debates about the uniform has been articulated within. A discourse in which the necessity of the uniform for the achievement of intertwined strategic, ideological and educational goals has remained unquestioned. Furthermore, by paying close attention to how adults within the organisation address the youth in issues concerning the uniform we attempt to analytically relate these intertwined functions to each other and illustrate how these are connected to ideas about what it means to be a good scout.

Yang Min, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

This paper offers a critique of Chinese philosophy of online distance learning as a means of building a lifelong learning society. Literature about lifelong learning and its implications for online distance learning is reviewed. Documents of educational departments and universities, news and symposium reports and research papers are examined to explore the characteristics of the Chinese philosophy of online distance learning as reflected in the prevailing understanding and debates in the field. To examine the materials in question, phenomenological analysis, deconstructive discourse analysis and internal criticism are employed, which are guided by a phenomenological qualitative methodology. The critique reveals that the notion of lifelong learning is oftentimes obscured in meaning and even misused in the prevailing understanding of and debates about Chinese online distance learning. Furthermore, it shows that the Chinese philosophy of online distance learning paradoxically combines a sense of over-enthusiasm with a sense of under-estimation associated with the potential of online distance learning in promoting lifelong learning. Also identified through the critique is the emerging development of Chinese online distance learning towards its ‘in-depth development’. That is, the development based on an increasing awareness of the necessity to enhance the quality of online distance learning through the integration of educational theories with information and communication technologies (ICT). Such development can be regarded as the emergence of a new Chinese philosophy, which can be pursued as a starting point for effectively promoting lifelong learning through online distance learning making wise use of ICT. The paper concludes with a call for a new vision on ICT for learning as a necessary condition for successful incorporation of Chinese online distance learning with and into lifelong learning.

Tan Po Li, Queensland Uiversity of Technology

The significant link between learning and knowledge economy is so crucial that the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD, 2001) has reconceptualized the term knowledge-economy to call it ‘learning economy’. Ultimately, one of the main challenges of human resource development in the 21st century is to evaluate the significant learning attributes of the adult learners (Kearns, 1999; Lambert2001).

Literature on Students Approaches to Learning (Marton & Saljo, 1976), Biggs’ 3 P Model (Biggs, 1987a) and Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) (Biggs, 1987b) were used to conceptualise the study. However, studies have reported the weakness of the SPQ for cross cultural studies (Kember, Wong, & Leung, 1999). Thus, this study acknowledges the importance of cultural issues in the study of learning approaches. The adapted version of SPQ, i.e. R-SPQ-2FM (Revised-Study Process Questionnaire-2 Factors Malaysia) which considered both etic and emic characteristics were administered on 532 Malay and 326 Chinese adult learners. To ensure rigor in the study, seven moderating variables (e.g. Age, Work Experience) were included for a more comprehensive understanding. Results show that even in analysis within a country, there are interesting cross-cultural insights between Malay and Chinese adult learners, particularly in the Understanding and Memorising Approach and Career/Achieve Motives constructs.

Sunthonkanokpong Wisuit, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi

Jitgarun Kalayanee, King Mongkut's University of Technology Thonburi

Purpose of this research was to study the impact of competence development in organizations: A case study of electronics field in Bangkok metropolitan and suburban areas. Sampling group chosen for this study were 32 electronics industrial companies. Instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed by using percentage, mean ( ), and standard deviation (S.D.). Results of this study were as follows: (1) The impact of operation by using instruments for competence management towards organizations was at rather high as in improvement of quality management, efficiency, customer orientation, and corporate governance as well as raising the level of customer satisfaction, decrease in the number of customer complaints, disturbances and malfunctioning was at a considerable extent, (2) The impact of operation by using instruments for competence management towards human resource management was at rather high as in: improving career management, performance of employees, and assessment structure as well as increasing employee satisfaction, and alignment of personnel instruments, and (3) The impact of operation by using instruments for competence management towards human resource training and development was at rather high as in: defining assessment criteria for result measurements, improving employees’ willingness to learn, improvement of the added value of training and development, improving advice on participation in training and learning culture in the organization as well as better alignment of training and development with organization strategy, optimizing the learning potential of the work place, improved basis for training and learning programs, and stimulating the learning and development of employees.

Liou Yi-Lin, National Taiwan University

Yueh Hsiu-Ping, National Taiwan University

Knowledge economy, global trade and the development of technologies have brought various impacts to all kinds of industries. When Taiwan became the member of WTO in 2000, the agriculture industry was facing lots of sudden impacts and therefore had to rethink and reform the training policies in many aspects. In order to develop more competent farmers and agricultural extension agents, the government has invested great amount of political and financial efforts on agricultural human resources development. Since information literacy has been viewed as one of the most critical proficiencies in developing agricultural human resources, the Council of Agriculture of Executive Yuan in Taiwan initiated series of programs regarding farming management from the information system development to the personnel training. In order to make more effective training plan, it’s important to understand farmers’ needs and proficiencies more profoundly. This study, therefore, attempts to explore farmers’ needs by clearly analyzing the relationships among their computer literacy, self-efficacy, tasks, performance and motivation.

Twenty three farmers enrolled in the “Farming Management Information System, FMIS” training program were selected in this study. They received a two days training and were asked to fill out the questionnaires and take the tests during the process. The results showed that farmers’ computer self-efficacy has significant impact on their perception of task difficulty, but not directly relates to their job performance. Training is proved to be able to improve farmers’ computer self-efficacy and also motivate the active use of the FMIS system. This study also proposed practical suggestions to the trainers of all fields that providing encouragement, feedbacks and various chances of practices will facilitate trainee’s conceptual and skilled understanding by improving their self-efficacy.

Yeung Audrey Y.B. Lim, The City University of Hong Kong

Practice learning is one of the ‘twin pillars of professional education’ (Evans, 1987; Walker et al, 1995). Its importance has been well established in the history of social work education, as learning to be a professional necessarily involves engaging in professional practice (Eraut, 1994).

The fieldwork practicum is an integral part of the Associate of Social Science in Social Work in a university in Hong Kong. In view of the rapid changes of social work practice in the past couple of decades, it appears that the practicum which was designed in the mid-eighties might need to be reviewed so as to enhance the students’ learning to be professional social workers in the new millennium.

Eraut (1995) alerts educators to the idea that attempts to evaluate professional education are ‘liable to be crude and misdirected’ if much knowledge about the learning experience of the students is not known. However, there is little research evidence which concentrates upon the experiences of social work students. In order to better facilitate a review of the practicum, the researcher has conducted a study to explore the learning experience of social work students in fieldwork placements. The study focuses on exploring the salient features of the learning experience of the subjects in their first fieldwork placements as well as the ways they learn social work practice.

In this study, qualitative case study has been employed as the primary research strategy. Data from the 10 subjects’ written narratives and interviews were thematically and phenomenologically analysed. Findings have not only added to the general knowledge of students’ learning experiences in placements but also thrown some light on a review of the fieldwork practicum.

Ng Roxana, University of Toronto

Man Guida, York University

Shan Hongxia, University of Toronto

Liu Willa, University of Toronto

Tam Sandra, University of Toronto

Many professional Chinese immigrants find that they are unable to obtain work commensurate with their qualifications and expertise when they immigrate to Canada. The reasons cited include structural and cultural barriers in the Canadian labour market. There are at least two gaps in this burgeoning literature: gender differences and the immigrants’ labour force experiences from their own perspectives.

The proposed paper fills this lacuna by describing how professional Chinese immigrant women in Toronto learn to fit themselves into a gender and racially segregated labour market. Based on a small-scale in-depth study on formal and informal learning amongst these women during 2005 and 2006, the paper will describe the women’s expectations prior to immigration, and how they learned to navigate the labour market once they arrived.

Theoretically and analytically, the paper is informed by the literature on adult learning, with special reference to informal and life-long learning, and an analytical framework called ‘institutional ethnography’ developed by feminist sociologist Dorothy E. Smith of Canada. It highlights the learning, in multiple sites, that enabled women to find a foothold in the labour market: through the media and family and friendship networks; in community settings; English classes and job training programs; and on the job. Rather than seeing learning as an individual act, the authors locate it in the social context of society by pinpointing the community and institutional nexus that facilitate and/or constrain women’s learning. This analytic strategy enables us to describe, concretely rather than theoretically, how migration and globalization transform people’s lives in observable ways. As such, the paper contributes to the emergent scholarship in transnational analysis and life-long learning by analyzing gender specific learning processes in migration.

Wiswell Albert, Virginia Tech

Johnson Jennie, Virginia Tech

Structural or descriptive models of decision making describe the observable relationship among the inputs and outputs of decision behavior. Conversely, normative or prescriptive process models are related to the dynamic aspects of decision making, providing the heuristics that individuals use in dealing with a situation or problem.

Descriptive models focus on the what of the decision behavior, and descriptive models focus on the how. Prescriptive models have been proposed to guide behavior both in well-defined and ill-defined decision problems. The majority of organizational leaders do not understand the variables that influence ethical decision making in the workplace. Globalization has added complexity to the ethical decision making process because of the relative emphasis on different underlying principles.

In this session, the presenters will discuss the interactionist model of ethical decision making which includes various individual, organizational and issue-specific factors. In this general descriptive model, principles are viewed as cultural factors of individuals as well as organizations. This model serves to increase understanding of the effect of various factors on the decision. Prescriptive models, on the other hand, are designed to aid in improving the decision making process with individuals or groups in relatively complex settings like the workplace. In these models, principles must be identified and applied to assist in reaching satisfactory decisions as well as understanding differences in perspectives. Implications for workplace ethics training and education are addressed for these concepts.

Teng Yuzhu Judy, The College of Saint Rose, Albany

As an educational delivery medium, computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been widely accepted. Among various technological modes of instruction, online/web-based instruction is emerging as an increasingly important component in education, especially in higher education, and in training in business and industry. The growing demand for continuing education, the convenience of taking courses anytime, anywhere (Lewis, Snow, Farris, Levin, & Greene, 1999) and the potential of the medium to promote international and national collaborative learning and teamwork (Gunawardena, 1998) have all contributed to the popularity of online instruction.

Online/web-based learning has been defined as anywhere, anytime computer-mediated instruction (Harasim, 1990). Online learning allows learners to interact with each other without having to meet face-to-face or at the same time. It takes several different forms, such as e-mail, computer conferencing, and online databases (Gunawardena, 1998; Jung, Choi, Lim, & Leem, 2002). It combines self-study with substantial and rapid interactivity with others.

Research studies have found that online discussion plays an important role in online learning environments. This study examines the relationships between students’ perceived social presence and their perceived learning, their perceived interaction and their satisfaction in online classes. Furthermore, this study explores the relationship between students’ perceived social presence and online course design, especially the design of online discussions of a course. Both quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed to investigate the relationships. The current study is especially important to the literature on online learning environment and for the adult learning field. It is believed that the research will provide valuable perspectives to researchers, designers, and students who are involved in online learning or in the field of adult and professional education.

Kim Tae-Jun, Korean Educational Development Institute

In Korea, recent change of labor market and rise of knowledge based society have driven the needs of lifelong learning, which emphasizes various studies on the adult learning as much as those on childhood and adolescence. One of the most interesting topics in adult learning became how adults create and construct their knowledge in a reason that a national competition including individual capability belongs to the innovation processes of adult learning. Therefore, it is a time to pay attention to the innovation processes of adult learning in terms of their learning and development.

Regarding the innovation process of adult learning, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published an analysis report that the innovation processes of adult learning in learning cities and regions have advanced a regional reform and growth through the knowledge creation of adult learners (OECD, 2001). This report also specified the learning cities and regions played a key role in facilitating the innovation processes of adult learning and leading to achieve the final goal of lifelong learning.

The building of learning cities and regions is a community development strategy, which improves local residents’intellectual capacity and provides many chances for them to participate in learning programs. In the result, they are able to preparing the workforce for new and better jobs and adapt themselves into regional labor markets successfully. The knowledge they generated and constructed by involving in community practices in the learning cities and regions has been regarded as a competitive power of economy in conjunction with national human resources development (NHRD).

In a broad sense, the innovation processes of adult learning in the learning cities and regions promote the unification of community by means of learning activities and, in a narrow sense, it help them acquire essential knowledge, skills, and attitudes. In consequence, developed countries have been nurturing the innovation processes of adult learning by designating principal learning cities and regions.

The prerequisite conditions of innovation processes of adult learning consist of environment, human and social capital, learning processes, and outcomes. The environmental components are legal, politics, and intuitional issues surrounding the innovation processes of adult learning. It turns to the foundation of human and social capitals, which belong to residents, knowledge, skill, qualification, health, motivation, political efficacy, trust, civic participation, social cohesiveness, and etc. The human and social capitals of the cities and regions relate to individual learning, organizational learning, occupational life, family life, and civic life. Finally, human and social capitals of the cities and regions lead to the regional development, community development, and competitive power of regions and nations.

However, there have been few studies investigating the relations among these components listed above. The purpose of the research is to examine the effects of innovation processes of adult learning in learning cities and regions on human capitals (e.g. self-concept, motivation, health and etc.), social capitals (e.g. trust, social network, and etc.), and economic development (e.g. regional development and community development etc.)in Korea.