Exploring a constructivist redesign of youth work training: transformative-oriented learning and trainer development

Abstract

Two small-scale studies were conducted to investigate the viability of a constructivist learning design for a 25-hour child and youth care training program. The first study investigated transformative learning conditions, belief change processes, and practice change. The second study explored a trainer’s development of transformative learning instructional practices. Results of study 1 indicated the training program fostered transformative learning conditions, practitioner reflection on practices, and changes in practice. The process of belief change differed by participants, with evidence of both transformative-oriented and nontransformative learning. Study 2 found the trainer’s change from a transmission to a transformative approach to teaching required shifting beliefs about types of effective teaching, greater attunement to practitioner points of view and the process of learning, and appreciation of practitioner initial resistance to training. The findings provide preliminary evidence for the viability and effectiveness of a constructivist approach to training and the process of trainer development for fostering transformative-oriented learning.     

Fiscal Policy Learning from Crisis: Comparative Analysis of the Baltic Countries

The experience of a major crisis is often expected to lead to policy learning but the empirical evidence about this is limited. The goal of the paper is to explore comparatively whether the crisis of 2008–2010 has led to fiscal policy learning by civil servants in the three Baltic countries. Despite some differences in the crisis experience, the finance ministry officials in all three countries have identified the same lesson from the crisis: fiscal policy should be counter-cyclical and help to stabilize the economy. The paper also discusses how various factors have influenced policy learning, including the acknowledgment of failure, blame shifting, and analytical tractability.     

From Active Learning to Taking Action: Incorporating Political Context Into Project-Based,Interdisciplinary, International Service Learning Courses

Educational approaches that enable students to actively and directly participate in “real-world” projects are increasingly recognized as valuable pedagogical tools and, as such, being incorporated into university curriculums worldwide. Though not traditionally associated with political science courses, project-based international service learning presents a tremendous opportunity to bring classroom concepts and theories to life, provide an active approach to addressing international challenges, and assist students in the development of the hands-on, problem-solving, team-based, critical-thinking skills that are increasingly important to employers across all sectors. This article seeks to encourage political science faculty to incorporate international service learning—and/or project-based approaches—into their educational offerings. Through examination of the course Global Synthesis in Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies at California Polytechnic State University, we have identified multiple factors that can help promote successful execution of project-based international service learning as a pedagogical tool, and provide additional suggestions for faculty interested in adopting specific aspects of these educational approaches, and/or in doing so closer to home.     

Data Analysis and Data Visualization as Active Learning in Political Science

While data analysis and the related skills of data management and data visualization are important skills for undergraduates in the field of political science, the process of learning these skills can also be used to develop critical thinking, encourage active and collaborative learning, and to apply knowledge gained in the classroom. Drawing on our experiences using data work in upper-level courses in International Relations and American Politics, we discuss how data work and quantitative analysis can be incorporated into subject-based (i.e., nonmethods specific) courses, and how it can also enhance critical reasoning skills. An evaluation of this approach using direct and indirect assessment is included.     

Ideology,Learning, and Policy Diffusion: Experimental Evidence

We introduce experimental research design to the study of policy diffusion in order to better understand how political ideology affects policymakers’ willingness to learn from one another's experiences. Our two experiments–embedded in national surveys of U.S. municipal officials–expose local policymakers to vignettes describing the zoning and home foreclosure policies of other cities, offering opportunities to learn more. We find that: (1) policymakers who are ideologically predisposed against the described policy are relatively unwilling to learn from others, but (2) such ideological biases can be overcome with an emphasis on the policy's success or on its adoption by co‐partisans in other communities. We also find a similar partisan‐based bias among traditional ideological supporters, who are less willing to learn from those in the opposing party. The experimental approach offered here provides numerous new opportunities for scholars of policy diffusion.     

Semiotising the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education

This article presents a semiotic analysis of the student perception of learning outcomes in British higher education. It centres on three annotated images in Frank Furedi’s article “The Unhappiness Principles”, published in Times Higher Education in 2012. Drawing upon Peircean semiosis and iconicity, it provides a rhetoric-infused interpretation of the word–image complementarity exhibited in student participants’ written commentaries on the three images. This leads to a dialectical view of formative and summative assessment, in which process and product create each other through the same continuum of learning and teaching. In highlighting intellectualism as central to the ethnography of university life, this article argues that learner autonomy and the potential for transformation is deemed essential to the student experience in higher education.     

Modelling Online Innovation Among IR and Politics Lecturers

This article discusses the use of collaborative online technology in the teaching of international relations and politics. Using a case study from Australia, it finds low levels of online innovation in these discipline areas that correlate with broader examinations of technology use in higher education teaching. Themes of time poverty, technical competence, and lack of career reward are frequently cited as barriers to trying new approaches. The data indicate that at present the most common outcome of any aspiration for IR/politics staff considering innovation is that the effort required to incorporate collaborative online learning is not repaid. These findings are meaningful, since the current lack of innovation and the perceptions of staff regarding support for such approaches are at odds with the marketplace pressures staff and their institutions are under. Based upon the data collected and the wider literature on technology adoption, this article proposes a “Technology-Assisted Teaching Adoption Model” (TATAM) that attempts to encapsulate the innovation judgements made by academic staff and the steadily diminishing incentives they feel towards changing their online teaching methods.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.     

Does Reacting to the Past Increase Student Engagement? An Empirical Evaluation of the Use of Historical Simulations in Teaching Political Theory

Within the teaching of political theory, an assumption is emerging that Reacting to the Past simulations are an effective tool because they encourage greater student engagement with ideas and history. While previous studies have assessed the advantages of simulations in other political science subfields or offered anecdotal evidence of their effectiveness in political theory courses, less attention has been paid to the empirical assessment of simulations in political theory. This study uses data — in the form of presimulation and postsimulation surveys, as well as focus groups — collected from two political theory courses in order to gauge levels of student engagement inside and outside of the classroom. We ask if students’ levels of engagement increase during the simulation in their political theory courses. We also explore the mechanisms involved in driving higher levels of student engagement during the simulation. We conclude by arguing that it is the liminal nature of the Reacting to the Past simulations that most likely explains increased levels of student engagement.     

“三型”马克思主义执政党:开拓党的建设新境界

党的十八大报告中首次提出"建设学习型、服务型、创新型的马克思主义执政党",而且将这个党的建设总目标写入了新修改的党章。从党的建设总目标的历史探索轨迹和党的建设总布局的形成发展轨迹看,从对执政党建设的理论意义和现实意义看,要把中国共产党建设成为学习型、服务型、创新型的马克思主义执政党确实是一项全新的重大课题。"学习型、服务型、创新型"既是一个系统的价值整体,同时,在这个系统中,又必须凸显全心全意为人民服务的根本宗旨,紧紧围绕改进服务方式、提高服务质量来加强学习、开拓创新,惟其如此,才能真正体现马克思主义执政党作为实现、维护和发展人民群众利益的工具的本质。