I have just submitted an abstract to the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER). This years conference is at the Free University Bolzano in Italy in September. The proposed paper is based on work we have been doing through the European Research programme Employ-ID project.

Abstract

The world of work is undergoing fundamental transformations. Bringing employees into the position of shaping change instead of merely reacting is one of the key challenges lifelong learning as well as learning and development faces.

A neglected, but crucial aspect here is the employees’ professional identity, which is a key factor developing resilience in a world characterized by uncertainty. It empowers individuals, and determines motivation and openness to new developments – and overcomes obstructionism and frustration often associated with change processes.

Towards that end, the focus of professional learning and human resource development needs to target “deeper learning” and to shift away from training skills towards facilitating the transformation of the professional identity of employees, both individually and collectively. Identities are often communicated and developed using stories: stories we tell about our jobs and ourselves, and stories others tell about us. But todays workplaces often do not provide opportunities for exchanging narratives. But they are particularly helping in uncovering experiential and affective components, which are hidden success factors and barriers.

The paper is based on a European Research Framework project, EmployID. The project brings together research partners and partners from Public Employment Services in Europe.

Public Employment Service Employees are facing pressures in their work with austerity providing increased demand of new services with less resources and digitalisation in the delivery of services.

In the context of Public Employment Services (PES), EmployID has investigated how a technology-enhanced learning approach can facilitate identity transformation through a series of interventions in the form of social learning programmes, complemented by labour market information tools as well as reflection, and peer coaching leading to the development of reflective communities. The understanding of reflective communities of practice is based on Wenger (Wenger, 1999), who sees communities of practice as groups of people who share a domain, who work on improving themselves and who share a common practice. The common domain and practice is in our case working in a public employment as a counsellor working to bring together job seekers and employers. Communities of practice are a proven concept to facilitate exchange knowledge and experiences in companies (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002).

The technology assisted interventions have been co-designed together with managers and staff in the different Public Employment Services. They have been accompanied by the extensive programme of evaluation, designed not only as a formative tool for improvement, but to provide data for developing a deeper understanding of the concepts and ideas which underpin the approach and for developing frameworks for analysis of the use of technology for learning within communities of practice.

One focus for such understanding is the idea of places and spaces. “Place and space are both products of social practice, albeit different systems of practice. These new practices, then, transform existing spaces as sites of everyday action (Dourish, 2004). Dourish says: “The technologically mediated world does not stand apart from the physical world within which it is embedded; rather, it provides a new set of ways for that physical world to be understood and appropriated. Technological mediation supports and conditions the emergence of new cultural practices, not by creating a distinct sphere of practice but by opening up new forms of practice within the everyday world, reflecting and conditioning the emergence of new forms of environmental knowing.”

The paper will draw on the extensive evaluation data collected through the EmployId project to examine the ways in which the spaces created by the interventions from the EmployID project have led to new practices, facilitated learning and supported storytelling and professional identity transformation.

Methodology and Sources

The project partners initially worked with Public Employment Services at both European and country level in identifying problems faced along with priorities for development.

This lead to a co-design process with different PES services around a series of interventions including

• Social learning programmes (or MOOCs) providing online courses typically of six weeks duration with 2-3 hours learning per week. The term ‘social’ reflects a pedagogic approach for participants facilitating the learning of others.
• Peer coaching programmes have been developed and delivered both through face to face workshops and online activities
• Reflective communities’ have been developed and launched in Public Employment services in three countries (Bunk & Prilla, 2017)
• Systems and tools have been developed for providing access to Labour Market Information and Intelligence, also in two different countries

All the interventions have been extensively evaluating and analysis of the evaluation results is ongoing (the results are expected by May 2018).

Evaluation methods have included:

• Interviews and focus groups with participants
• Interviews with managers
• Discourse analysis (from the social learning programmes and Reflective Communities)
• Surveys and questionnaires
• Analysis of log data

The ongoing analysis of the data is focusing on not just the success or otherwise of the interventions but what the data can tell us about identity transformation, professional development and the use and appropriation of online spaces for learning and knowledge sharing.

Conclusions

Our earlier work has led to interim findings regarding learning and identity transformation. We have identified three ways of learning (Kunzman, C. & Schmidt, A. 2017).

Learning as becoming

Stories, as identities themselves, have both a personal and an organisational dimension and could link to ideas about learning through self-understanding; sense-making; personal agency; motivation (determination); resilience; commitment to own learning and professional development; and career adaptability.

The second way ‘learning for identity development’ can be represented as occurring is across four domains: relational development; cognitive development; practical development; and emotional development. Learning may involve development in one or more domains and development in each domain can be achieved in a number of different ways, but development can be represented thematically, although the extent of development under particular themes can vary greatly across contexts and in individual cases.

Thirdly learning in opportunities structures within which individuals in the PES operate.

The key to understanding learning for identity development is to switch between the three representations in order to get a more rounded picture.

Our present ongoing work is focusing on how participants use and develop places and spaces, the opportunities for action that spaces afford and their relation to changing social, cultural and professional practices.

Key References

Blunk, O., & Prilla, M. (2015). Prompting users to facilitate support needs in collaborative reflection. In M. Kravcik, A. Mikroyannidis, V. Pammer, M. Prilla, & T. D. Ullmann (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Awareness and Reflection in Technology Enhanced Learning (AR℡ 2015) in conjunction with the EC℡ 2015 conference (Vol. 1465, pp. 43–57). CEUR-WS. Retrieved from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1465/

Blunk, O. & Prilla, M. “Supporting Communities of Practice in Public Administrations: Factors Influencing Adoption and Readiness.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies, 36–45. C&T ’17. New York, NY, USA

Brown, A. & Bimrose, J. (2015). Identity Development. In Hartung, P. J.; Savickas, M. L.; and Walsh, W. B. (Eds), (2015). APA handbook of career intervention, Volume 2: Applications. APA handbooks in psychology. (pp. 241-254). Washington, DC, US: American Psychological Association.

Cressey, P., Boud, D., & Docherty, P. (2006a). Productive Reflection at Work. In D. Boud, P. Cressey, & P. Docherty (Eds.), Productive reflection at work: Learning for changing organizations (pp. 11–26). New York: Routledge.

Dillenbourg, P., Järvelä, S., & Fischer, F. (2009). The evolution of research on computer-supported collaborative learning. In Technology-enhanced learning (pp. 3–19). Springer.

Dourish, P. (2006) Re-space-ing place: “place” and “space” ten years on, CSCW ’06 Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work, Pages 299-308

Eraut, M. (2004). Informal learning in the workplace. Studies in Continuing Education, 26(2), 247–273.

Hyland, N., Grant, J. M., Craig, A. C., Hudon, M., & Nethery, C. (2012). Exploring Facilitation Stages and Facilitator Actions in an Online/Blended Community of Practice of Elementary Teachers: Reflections on Practice (ROP) Anne Rodrigue Elementary Teachers Federation of Ontario

Kunzman, C. & Schmidt, A. (2017) EmployID: EmployID Deliverables D[2-9].3, 2017

Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge. Harvard Business School Press.

Two weeks ago, I bought a new television. The old one had served well for 15 years but pre-dated the internet integration that we all take for granted these days. I carefully untangled the cables joining the various boxes with their flashing lights and plugged them back in again.

The result – nothing worked.  Long telephone calls to Moviestar – the internet provider -basically elicited the advice to unplug cables and plug them in again – to no avail. After two days a technician finally arrived and quickly diagnosed the problem. The cable connecting the fibre optic cable to the internet router had broken. Five minutes and it was repaired and he left warning us that these cables were very fragile and we should be careful when doing the cleaning.

Having only the previous week congratulated myself on my lack of addiction to mobile devices and social networks, I found myself at a complete loss without the internet. No radio, no music, no television, no email (and my mobile would not pick up the emails as I had not registered for two factor authentication which required a computer with an internet connection!), no web. I ended up sitting in a local café to read the online newspapers and get my emails.

The major point for me is how dependent we are becoming on an internet connection. Thank goodness that I have not been tempted by the internet of things. OK many of these devices run over the mobile and so would still work. Nevertheless, I am not convinced that the lights, heating, fridge, door lock, air con, coffee machine and toaster connected to the internet is a good thing. When I bought a new toaster last year the sales person tried hard to convince me of the benefits of a machine with an internet connection (the internet of things is the way of the future, sir, he said). It might be, but what happens when the optic fibre cable breaks?

A recent report from the Hans-Böckler-Stiftung, Let’s Transform Work! by Kerstin Jürgens, Reiner Hoffmann and Christina Schildmann, says that in 2016, in Germany, “for the first time, there were more young people in the dual vocational training system that held the upper secondary school certificate (Abitur) than those with the lower secondary school leaving certificate (Hauptschulabschluss). At the same time, many young people leave school without any qualifications at all. In 2014, this was true of 47,000 youngsters (Caritas 2016 ), which equates to a share of almost 6 per cent. The share is even higher when it comes to vocational qualifications.”

The report says the dual vocational training system  is valued internationally as an instrument
for preventing youth unemployment through strengthening companies’ innovative capacities and forging close links between the education and training system and the labour market, Thus.ensuring a successful transition from training into the labour market. However, while there are
no formal barriers to entry into the dual system,access for young people without a school certificate
or with only a lower secondary school certificate is difficult.

I’ve not had time yet to read the full report (which is 256 pages long!). But it seems to raise some issues for the growing move towards apprenticeship in countries in south Europe, and the European Commission policy of expanding apprenticeship as a measure against youth unemployment.

Spain, where despite much heralded improvements in the economy youth unemployment is still around 37 per cent, is attempting to develop a new apprenticeship system called FP Dual. This is against a background where employers have no real culture of being involved in vocational training and the traditionally school based vocational education and training system has low prestige as opposed to higher education. Yet, according to Sara Gutiérrez from the education section of the UGT trade union and who is concerned that apprentices will be used as cheap labour (see El Diario de la Education), in sectors such as Hospitality and Chemical Laboratories, graduates are increasingly following a FP Dual programme. In a situation with high graduate unemployment and with mainly large companies offering FP Dual it is not hard to see apprenticeship becoming an increasingly attractive post graduate pathway to the labour market. This could be very good news for the credibility and prestige of FP Dual and increase its attractiveness to employers. Yet it also suggests that the 20 or so per cent of early school leavers and the many young people lacking vocational qualifications are like to be excluded from access to apprenticeships. It is hard to see how this contradiction can be overcome, at least in the short term.

New year, new year’s resolutions (OK a bit belated, but I am just getting going). I have three targets for this year and over the year I will report on my progress.

The first is (rather boringly) to try to do one hours exercise a day. Age and too much good food make it a necessity. So far, my record is patchy. Most days I manage at least half an hours walking and two or three days a week I manage to do an hour. But other days it just does not seem to happen and given I live in Valencia I cannot use the weather as an excuse. I’ve always resisted the Fitbit type devices but I’ve finally been persuaded to try installing am Android pedometer. I am curious whether I will love it or hate it (or, more likely, just forget about it.

Living in Valencia drives me to the second resolution – to learn Spanish. Last year I signed up for a course but gave up after about eight lessons. Basically, the course was following a text book with weekly lessons on Spanish grammar. Not my way of learning. Now I have a new book, called Hacking Spanish, which seems a better way to do things. The difficulty is once more putting aside an hour a day to learn.

Target number three is related to this blog. I have written over 1500 articles on the Wales wide Web spanning more than 10 years. Yet last year I found it harder and harder to commit myself to (electronic) print. There were a few reasons, I think. The main one was that I had a research and writing intensive government contract which I was not allowed to publish without permission. After a long days writing, the idea of blogging about something different was just too much. We also want to relaunch the Pontydysgu web site this year. After ten years the design is looking a little jaded! We have a new design set up and we are beginning to populate the site. More details on this to follow quite soon I hope