Learning Across Sites

How are learning activities organised? How are tools and infrastructures used? What competences are needed to participate in specialised activities? What counts as knowledge in multiple and diverse settings? Where can parallels be drawn between workplaces? This book addresses these questions.

The ever evolving, technology-intensive nature of the twenty-first century workplace has caused an acceleration in the division of labour, whereby work practices are becoming highly specialised and learning and the communication of knowledge is in a constant state of flux. This poses a challenge for education and learning: as knowledge and expertise increasingly evolve, how can individuals be prepared through education to participate in specific industries and organisations, both as newcomers and throughout their careers? Learning Across Sites brings together a diverse range of contributions from leading international researchers to examine the impacts and roles which evolving digital technologies have on our navigation of education and professional work environments. Viewing learning as a socially organised activity, the contributors explore the evolution of learning technologies and knowledge acquisition in networked societies through empirical research in a range of industries and workplaces. The areas of study include public administration, engineering, production, and healthcare and the contributions address the following questions: How are learning activities organised? How are tools and infrastructures used? What competences are needed to participate in specialised activities? What counts as knowledge in multiple and diverse settings? Where can parallels be drawn between workplaces? Addressing an emerging problem of adaptation in contemporary education, this book is essential reading for all those undertaking postgraduate study and research in the fields of educational psychology, informatics and applied information technology.

Universities everywhere are witnessing growing numbers of students in cross-border, international, and transnational spaces. This trend has resulted in many educators revising their curricula, pedagogical approaches, and assumptions about what it means to provide a university education in the 21st century. This edited collection contributes to a growing body of research in international and transnational education by looking back and looking forward at globalisation’s impact on higher education. The authors in this volume provide a solid base of theoretical knowledge and practical applications to readers in similar situations. With growing numbers of students and teachers moving – physically and virtually – across international borders, their expertise is needed. The collection contains authors from Germany, Ghana, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and the United States of America, and from varied disciplines such as education, English language teaching, higher education administration, indigenous studies, literature, mathematics, rhetoric and composition, and writing centre studies.

Developments within the “knowledge society,” especially those resulting from technological innovation, have intensified an interest in the relationship between different contexts and multiple sites of learning across what is often termed as formal, non-formal and informal learning environments. The aim of this book is to trace learning and experience across multiple sites and contexts as a means to generate new knowledge about the borders and edges of different practices and the boundary crossings these entail in the learning lives of young people in times of dynamic societal, environmental, economic, and technological change. The empirical research discussed in this book has grown out of a Nordic network of researchers. The research initiatives in the Nordic countries tend to avoid the more spectacular debates over the future of the educational institutions that tend to dominate and obscure discussions on education in the knowledge society, and which look to models of informal learning, whether in the “learning communities” of workplaces and families or in the new socio-technical spaces of the Internet, as a source of alternative educational strategies. Rather, Nordic researchers more modestly ask whether it is possible to envisage new models of teaching and learning which take seriously both the responsibility to social justice and social wellbeing, which, at least rhetorically, underpinned a commitment to mass education of the 20th century, as well as to the radical challenges to traditional educational models offered by the new socio-technical spaces and practices of the 21st century.

How can apps be used to foster learning with literacy across the curriculum? This book offers both a theoretical framework for considering app affordances and practical ways to use apps to build students’ disciplinary literacies and to foster a wide range of literacy practices. Using Apps for Learning Across the Curriculum presents a wide range of different apps and also assesses their value features methods for and apps related to planning instruction and assessing student learning identifies favorite apps whose affordances are most likely to foster certain disciplinary literacies includes resources and apps for professional development provides examples of student learning in the classroom A website (www.usingipads.pbworks.com) with resources for teaching and further reading for each chapter, a link to a blog for continuing conversations about topics in the book (appsforlearningliteracies.com), and more enhance the usefulness of the book.

Following the acclaim for Learning Outside the Classroom in 2012, this latest book more deeply explains how well constructed outdoor learning experiences can benefit children and young people’s academic development and health and wellbeing. Outdoor Learning Across the Curriculum outlines the theory and practice to enable preservice and experienced primary and secondary school teachers to systematically incorporate meaningful outdoor learning opportunities into their daily teaching activities, in a range of environments and with diverse groups of students. Six of the chapters are substantially re-worked versions of the 2012 book, two are completely re-imagined, and four are entirely new. Topics for developing learning and teaching outdoors include: Inclusive educational design Learning for sustainability Community-based learning The role of student curiosity and wonder Evidencing learning Developing a whole school approach Place-responsive education Integrating digital technology With practical and engaging chapters containing aims, case studies, and guidelines for practice, this timely book provides teachers the tools with which they can integrate outdoor learning into their daily timetable. It will also be a valuable resource to other professions which use the outdoors for educational purposes.

Developments within the "knowledge society," especially those resulting from technological innovation, have intensified an interest in the relationship between different contexts and multiple sites of learning across what is often termed as formal, non-formal and informal learning environments. The aim of this book is to trace learning and experience across multiple sites and contexts as a means to generate new knowledge about the borders and edges of different practices and the boundary crossings these entail in the learning lives of young people in times of dynamic societal, environmental, economic, and technological change. The empirical research discussed in this book has grown out of a Nordic network of researchers. The research initiatives in the Nordic countries tend to avoid the more spectacular debates over the future of the educational institutions that tend to dominate and obscure discussions on education in the knowledge society, and which look to models of informal learning, whether in the "learning communities" of workplaces and families or in the new socio-technical spaces of the Internet, as a source of alternative educational strategies. Rather, Nordic researchers more modestly ask whether it is possible to envisage new models of teaching and learning which take seriously both the responsibility to social justice and social wellbeing, which, at least rhetorically, underpinned a commitment to mass education of the 20th century, as well as to the radical challenges to traditional educational models offered by the new socio-technical spaces and practices of the 21st century.

This volume considers, rethinks and reorganizes how support for learning across working life can be best conceptualized, organized and enacted. It considers educational and learning support processes that include approaches that fit well within working lives and workplaces, and support work and learning as a co-occurrence. These are the key focuses for individual and collective contributions to this edited volume, which provide discussions about what constitutes learning across working lives and how this differs from lifelong learning and lifelong education. Accounts of learning across the working lives of social workers, doctors working in hospitals and in general practice, teaching, aviation, nursing, mining, aged care and more. These accounts advance a range of ways in which workers’ learning across working lives is being supported and how this support is also linked to other changes, such as to the occupational practice in which they engage.