Organizational Change in Continuing Education: A case study of action research as a pedagogical strategy within continuing education

When organizations choose to spend resources on educating their employees in subject specific areas it is well known that it can be quite challenging to anchor and use the knowledge acquired through education in the organizational context (Tannenbaum and Yukl; 1992; Willert et al., 2011). This is known as the problem of transfer of training (Baldwin & Ford, 1988; Burke & Hutchins, 2007). However, most research within the field of transfer of training has been focusing on transfer after the training has come to an end (Van Merriënboer, 2002, Stegeager et al. 2013). In this article, we are especially interested in the process of transfer that occurs during training, and how educational settings can be constructed so that the students become active learners, combining knowledge, skills and inspiration from their training with the practice and organizational challenges they face as managers in their daily practice. Thus, the aim of this paper is to identify the pros and cons of implementing action research as a pedagogical strategy in order to converge theory and practice in university-based Continuing Education. This study is a case study involving students from the Master’s program of Vulnerable Children and Youth at Aalborg University.