This chapter explores qualitative career assessment as an identity learning process where meaning-oriented learning is essential and distinguished from conditioned or semantic types of learning. In order to construct a career identity in the form of a future-oriented narrative, it is essential that learners are helped through cognitive learning stages with the help of a dialogue about concrete experiences which aims to pay attention to emotions and broadens and deepens what is expressed.
To adequately deal with the challenges faced within residential care for older people, such as the increasing complexity of care and a call for more person-centred practices, it is important that health care providers learn from their work. This study investigates both the nature of learning, among staff and students working within care for older people, and how workplace learning can be promoted and researched. During a longitudinal study within a nursing home, participatory and democratic research methods were used to collaborate with stakeholders to improve the quality of care and to promote learning in the workplace. The rich descriptions of these processes show that workplace learning is a complex phenomenon. It arises continuously in reciprocal relationship with all those present through which both individuals and environment change and co-evolve enabling enlargement of the space for possible action. This complexity perspective on learning refines and expands conventional beliefs about workplace learning and has implications for advancing and researching learning. It explains that research on workplace learning is itself a form of learning that is aimed at promoting and accelerating learning. Such research requires dialogic and creative methods. This study illustrates that workplace learning has the potential to develop new shared values and ways of working, but that such processes and outcomes are difficult to control. It offers inspiration for educators, supervisors, managers and researchers as to promoting conditions that embrace complexity and provides insight into the role and position of self in such processes.
Background/Aims: Analogy learning, a motor learning strategy that uses biomechanical metaphors to chunk together explicit rules of a to-be-learned motor skill. This proof-of-concept study aims to establish the feasibility and potential benefits of analogy learning in enhancing stride length regulation in people with Parkinson’s. Methods: Walking performance of thirteen individuals with Parkinson’s was analysed using a Codamotion analysis system. An analogy instruction; “following footprints in the sand” was practiced over 8 walking trials. Single- and dual- (motor and cognitive) task conditions were measured before training, immediately after training and 4-weeks post training. Finally, an evaluation form was completed to examine the interventions feasibility. Findings: Data from 12 individuals (6 females and 6 males, mean age 70, Hoehn and Yahr I-III) were analysed, one person withdrew due to back problems. In the single task condition, statistically and clinically relevant improvements were obtained. A positive trend towards reducing dual task costs after the intervention was demonstrated, supporting the relatively implicit nature of the analogy. Participants reported that the analogy was simple to use and became easier over time. Conclusions: Analogy learning is a feasible and potentially implicit (i.e. reduced working memory demands) intervention to facilitate walking performance in people with Parkinson’s.
In my PD research, I want to focus on how collectivity is practiced in the arts, by learning from the Indonesian multidisciplinary art collective ruangrupa’s use of [the international art exhibition] ‘documenta’ as a tool, and the potential of continuing the experiences outside this group and context. The art practices programmed by ruangrupa can be understood as complex and ambiguous where art is not at the center of attention but part of a larger communal productivity. And where it is not sufficient to be merely critical, and merely voice opposition, but to engage, and create alternatives in everyday life [without being problem-solving or social design]. My research concerns the potential of continuing these practices and experiences outside this particular artist group and exhibition context. Ruangrupa’s work reveals problems of the current Western art system, how it is (hierarchically) organized, the implicit rules, norms and values it is based on. Ruangrupa's practice thus serves as an exercise and point of departure to answer questions about forms of self-organization within the art field. Its collective and multidisciplinary art practice implies the question whether it also can serve as a model for living together on a larger scale (also outside the arts), beyond hierarchies of social and professional structures. There is currently a lack of research on these particular art practices, so that they are not easily accessible for non-participants. For the art field in particular, this concerns the question whether contemporary art can and needs to take place outside established Western gallery/museum, art/curatorial paradigms and what can be learned from ruangrupa's and documenta fifteen's blending of art practice with daily life practice. This is also an urgent practical issue for art schools (including my school Willem de Kooning Academy) that increasingly develop art study programs outside the studio and gallery art paradigm.
Tango is among the most widespread world music genres nowadays. However, only partial information about the elements and techniques of composing, arranging and performing tango has been documented and made available so far. This research project aims at investigating tango’s main aspects in the oeuvre of relevant tango musicians, promoting its creative practice and expanding its artistic community. By making the implicit knowledge in scores and recordings explicit and ready for creative use by the greater artistic community, tango can be preserved, on one side; and musicians can experiment and reach new artistic horizons, securing its continuation and development as vivid, contemporary music, on the other. The project has two research questions: 1. What are the main features and techniques of tango music composition, arrangement and performance? 2. How can musicians nowadays integrate these features and techniques into their practice to deepen their understanding and enhance their artistic creations and performances? This research uses a mixed method design, including the analysis of scores and recordings, literature review, interviews, observational studies and experimentation. It expands the artistic community on the topic and bridges two top-notch institutions devoted to tango learning: Codarts and UNSAM (Argentina). The research also endeavours improvements in the Codarts curriculum as it complements and expands its educational programme by providing students with research tools to enhance their creative practice. Theoretical and artistic outcomes will be documented and disseminated in concerts, concert-lectures, papers, articles and a tailor-made website containing compositions, arrangements, videos, text, musical examples and annotated scores, so as to record: a) the musical materials and techniques found in the analysed scores and recordings, together with their applications in practice and performance; b) the artistic processes, reflections and production of the participants; c) information on how to create, arrange and perform tangos.
Sustainable business decision-making as villagers of the world In making our society resilient and future-proof we are faced with many complex and multi-faceted challenges and opportunities. Many promising sustainable initiatives require the proactive contribution of businesses to be successful, but fail to reach the required decision making level of individuals and companies, and thus fail to reach their positive impact. The result is a multiple waste: in creativity and innovation, in investment of the organisations involved, in opportunities to improve society and in our overall belief that we can make the necessary changes. In this project we focus on the reasons why individuals and thus companies act and decide negatively on new and existing sustainable innovations and projects, starting from the perspective that a professional’s and a company’s inherent sustainable decision making is at the heart of truly improving society. The aim is to create multiple value (economic, social and ecological) of SMEs by increasing the success rate of sustainability initiatives out of an implicit business professional’s choice to do so. Based on the theory of psychological distance, we combine exploratory case studies of successful pilots with exploratory research via interviews with business decision makers, to analyse what drives professional’s and companies’ decision making, and how this affects sustainable initiatives. The aim is to propose ways to increase the quality of sustainable decision making, and thus the likelihood of success. The learnings are translated to practical guidelines a SME should consider for executing their business in the most sustainable way, and form a base for further applied research on sustainable business behaviour towards a circular economy.
