Learning from experience in the context of work: A seven-year study of Proactive Review as an educational design for learning from experience in a global, high-tech company classified as big business

Ditte Kolbæk

    Research output: PhD thesis

    397 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    ENGLISH SUMMARY

    My aim for this PhD study is to provide a deeper understanding of how to initiate and maintain learning from experience in the context of work.
    The development from an industrial-based economy to an information-based economy has increased the demand for employees to learn continuously, especially in fast-moving industries like high tech. This PhD study is placed in the research fields of organizational learning and organizational knowledge and explores organizational learning from a learning perspective. It looks into the development of an educational design for learning from experience in the context of work. The educational design is called Proactive Review (PR) and includes two opposite directions simultaneously, proactive, which entails looking ahead and review, which entails reflecting on the past. The subjects for learning in a PR may be any group of employees that have solved a task together and their manager.

    Originally, the development of PR was not a research project but a task for me to solve in my role as Manager of Organizational Learning, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in a global IT company listed in the top 30 global companies by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in 2013. The development of PR began as a pilot project in 2005 and finished in 2012 when I left the company. Shortly after, I began my PhD studies in which I intended to explore and explain the theoretical background for PR and to learn from my experience at the IT company in the light of the theories and methodologies I studied at university.

    The theoretical concepts in this PhD study include John Dewey’s ‘reflective thought and action’ illustrated as a spiral in Miettinen, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s spiral ‘SECI model’ and Engeström’s spiral model of ‘expansive learning’. The PhD thesis discusses these spirals, what starts or stops them, how to continue the move along the spiral and whether the move goes up or down. The spirals are placed in context, and this context is discussed in the thesis.

    Even though design-based research (DBR) is developed for studying classroom training, I have utilized it as a core methodology, as I study organizational learning from a learning perspective. The guidelines for DBR is discussed and slightly changed, and a new DBR flow is suggested. The PhD thesis is mainly based on qualitative methods which will be presented and discussed. My mixed role as researcher, developer, PRs trainer and former Manager of Organizational Learning at a global IT company will be described and discussed.

    The exploration of PR in the global IT company includes six iterations of the development of the educational design described in three articles, a chapter in a book and a paper for the 2014 Organizational Learning, Knowledge and Capabilities conference. These ‘articles’ are presented one by one, along with my reflections on the article. My reflections follow the new DBR flow.

    My contributions to the research fields of organizational learning and organizational knowledge are new theories on learning in the context of work, for example, a new learning spiral that includes three ontological dimensions for learning. New perspectives on the DBR methodology, including a sequence of nine elements for thorough exploration, are proposed, as well as new practices for practitioners in the field, more specifically an educational design of seven questions called PR, four roles involved in PR and suggestions for organizational requirements and codes of conduct that support learning from experience in the context of work
    Translated title of the contributionLær af erfaringer på arbejdspladsen: Et syvårs studium af et didaktisk design kaldt Proactive Review til at lære af erfaringer i en global high-teck virksomhed, kategoriseret som big business
    Original languageEnglish
    Supervisors
    • Andreasen, Lars Birch, Principal supervisor
    • Lundh Snis, Ulrika, Co-supervisor, External person
    Publisher
    Electronic ISBNs978-87-7112-201-5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014

    Bibliographical note

    Lars Birch Andreasen, Hovedvejleder
    Ulrika Lundh-Snis, Bivejleder

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