Community Service Learning and the Emergence of Systems Thinking: A Teacher Education Project in an Urban Setting in Turkey

This study explores how community service learning experiences are reflected in the cognition of prospective teachers. Initial thoughts related to the experience are analyzed in relation the emerging thoughts throughout and after the experience. The study explored the thoughts of 15 prospective foreign language teachers related to their participation in a community project. The participants tutored students with visual disabilities at a learning center in an urban setting in Turkey. As part of the community-based field experience, participants worked with the learners with visual disabilities over a 16-week period. For this study, multiple reflective narratives of experience were collected from each individual. The goal for the collection and analysis of these narratives was explore the participants’ thinking patterns throughout the project and encourage them to reflect on their experience. The analysis of participants’ discourse relied on analysis of co-occurring lexemes in sample utterances text with descending hierarchical classification and correspondence analysis. The main themes that reflected the thoughts of the participants were related to (a) visions for community service, (b) teaching students with visual disabilities, (c) reflections in action, (d) awareness through interactions with difference, (e) interactions with people during community service, and (f) efforts to contribute to the project site. These themes were discussed in relation to the contribution of community service learning and the emergence of systems thinking among program participants.     

Changes in Multicultural Experience: Action Research on a Service Learning Curriculum

Service learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities designed for student learning and development. This study investigated the changes in the multicultural experience of graduate students who participated in a service learning curriculum. The participants comprised six graduate students who enrolled in the “Service Learning Research” course. Action research and qualitative methods were applied to analyze data including interview content, reflection diaries, and community service dossiers. The results revealed the following problems that the participants experienced at the beginning of service learning: (1) a sense of anxiety and anticipation before service engagement; and (2) substantial barriers during service delivery. Through guidance and reflection after intervention, the students demonstrated the abilities to question and observe. Moreover, the evaluation revealed that the participants reflected on the changes in their multicultural experience. Directly contacting service recipients was an essential factor affecting the participants’ changes, and keeping reflection diaries and engaging in in-class discussion facilitated supporting and inspiring the participants. According to the results of this study, we recommend that service learning curricula be reinforced through integrating multicultural teaching and challenging students to reflect on their conduct as well as supporting the students. Additionally, suggestions for subsequent studies are provided.     

You are Seldom Born with a Drum Kit in Your Hands: Music Teachers’ Conceptualizations of Knowledge and Learning Within Music Education as an Assessment Practice

Due to an increased demand for evaluation and accountability, the focus on assessment in public education has become stronger. Already leading to teachers’ deprofessionalization, another risk is assessment leading to criteria compliance and becoming a tool for measuring teaching quality. Those whose learning is affected are thereby not only students, but also teachers. One major factor to restore professionalism and focus assessment on learning is to change practitioners’ ways of thinking and not only their behaviour. Therefore, a group of seven music teachers and a researcher in music education have carried out a research and development project using participatory action research as approach as well as method. This article explores and presents these upper secondary school music teachers’ conceptualizations of musical knowledge, learning and educational communication working with peers. Using Deweyan pragmatism as a lens to interpret the qualitative data, the results show that while a professional language does exist, the music teachers’ conceptualizations of musical knowledge and learning and educational approaches differ. A key aspect for the teachers to develop their professional language, concepts and assessment practices is the teachers’ opportunities to communicate—both factual as well as perceived.     

基于节能服务的嵌入式低碳服务机制研究

碳排放依赖型企业在引入嵌入式低碳服务(embedded low-carbonservice)时往往面临着低碳节能水平信息不对称带来的项目风险.鉴于此,在低碳经济背景下,本文考虑了低碳服务商(lowcarbon service provider)的投资水平和低碳节能能力不可观测情形嵌入式低碳服参与主体间最优激励契约的设计问题.同时对该情形下的最优激励契约进行了分析.应用嵌入度刻画嵌入式低碳服务参与主体间的价值共同度,分析了嵌入度对最优激励契约的影响.研究表明,低水平的嵌入度将使得低碳服务商承担更大的项目风险,同时形成需要低碳服务商每期预付节能保证金的合同模式.高水平的嵌入度能促进嵌入式低碳服务的低碳减排效率.     

Research and Reflection: Potential Impact on the Professional Development of Undergraduate Occupational Therapy Students

In occupational therapy education in South Africa, community service (CS) focuses learning opportunities during fieldwork placements. CS therefore enabled the researcher to utilise successive small scale research projects to guide learning of students during fieldwork while simultaneously developing the occupational therapy service at a residential care facility. This community setting provided a powerful environment through which research, in combination with opportunities for reflection, contributed to nurturing skills needed by these future health professionals. A technical action research (AR) approach incorporated AR cycles and opportunities for structured reflection. Therefore situations were created for the students to embrace experiential learning. Experiential learning in the form of anticipatory reflection, reflection-in-action, reflection on reflection and retrospective reflection impacted on the quality of the students’ work. Besides encouraging unique leaning opportunities for students when engaging in research during their fieldwork placement, engagement in AR cycles simultaneously improved service delivery to residents in the facility. Key benefits of this investigation were that fieldwork education utilising AR cycles within a CS situation promoted students to identify voids in their theoretical background as well as practice skills; to apply reflective practice that could contribute to their personal and professional development; and to utilize learning opportunities optimally. Despite positive gains showed by this study, the role of power relations between the researcher as fieldwork educator and the students prohibited the AR cycles from being more emancipatory in nature and should be addressed in follow-up studies.     

An Approach to the Notion of Reflective Teacher and Its Exemplification on Mathematics Education

Within research into the teaching profession, there are two main areas of interest, which have been thoroughly defined and consolidated: teacher’s knowledge and teacher’s professional development. This paper considers the latter area, and specifically sets out to define the concept of the reflective teacher and to show how we have applied this concept in our research. It aims at defining a more precise notion of teachers’ professional development linked to the concept of a reflective teacher, drawing on information from different interdisciplinary sources so as to frame the concept clearly. We discuss the conditions which determine the reflective teacher, and report on how these were put to use in a training course for practising teachers in which participants reflected on challenging episodes from their professional experience. We hope that clarifying this term will enable different educational agents (school teachers, teacher trainers or researchers) to have an informed view that can be interpreted and critiqued, and that it will also be of value to initial teacher training and to in-service courses.     

The Organizational View of Public Participation: A Narrative Analysis

The following research paper presents results of an ethnographic investigation focused on the participatory process of a public project for urban environmental rehabilitation. This public intervention, called Iguaçu Project, is being carried out in the Baixada Fluminense, in the Rio de Janeiro Metropolitan Region (RJMR). Drawing upon the literature on social learning from both organizational and environmental management studies, the research investigates when and why social learning occurs within a participatory arena. The paper presents an analysis of stories told by nine key informants, selected as representatives of the main social categories involved in the project. The different meanings the narrators attributed to participation, environment, knowledge and learning in their stories, are analysed through abductive reasoning, i.e. through a continuous reference to the literature and confrontation with former narrative analysis in business organizations. The findings show an interpretative framework based on development of multiple-loop learning theory, defined as contextual loops. Furthermore, it identifies five explanatory propositions to answer the research questions. The occurrence of social learning in participatory arenas seems to depend upon five organizationally related factors: a systematized organizational structure; the participants’ commitments and the pluralism of the participatory arena; the process proponents’ reliability, the supporting role of a facilitator.     

Enriching Service Learning by its Diversity: Combining University Service Learning and Corporate Social Responsibility to Help the NGOs Adapt Technology to Their Needs

Community-based service learning helps students link subject matter to everyday life and developing sense of responsibility to their community. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Both promote civic engagement but the two hardly come across each other. We explore the process that enriched service learning with its diversity by combining CSR practices of a multinational software company. It begins by exploring different forms of action research with a focus on action engagement to improve students’ involvement in marginalized communities. The article provides field-based reflections of the sustained engagement and suggests ways in which service learning experiences may create rooms for innovation and growth in the non-profit sector, local communities, businesses, and students themselves.     

基于利他偏好的项目团队多主体合作行为

当前经济学研究成果表明: 代理人之间的合作行为具有利他动机. 本文运用博弈理论, 将利他偏好纳入到了项目团队成员合作行为决策模型中, 建立了利他偏好条件下的项目团队多主体合作二层规划模型, 讨论和分析了利他偏好对团队成员合作努力、生产努力, 以及最优利润分享和团队绩效的影响, 得出的主要结论有: 1) 利他偏好有助于促进团队成员之间的合作和提高项目团队整体绩效; 2)利他条件下团队成员合作努力的大小与利润分享无关, 但与团队成员本身的素质直接相关; 3)团队成员的利他偏好会降低其生产努力, 而其他团队成员提供的合作对其生产努力的影响则因具体情况而异; 4)利他偏好能够降低最优利润分享. 最后运用数值 分析和案例研究的方法对理论结论进行了检验, 并为项目团队多主体合作提供了策略建议.     

基于案例学习和目标驱动学习的观点生成框架

群体观点生成是观点评价和群体一致性意见达成的基础．本文提出基于案例学习和目标驱动学习的观点生成框架，将人工智能技术集成入群体决策支持系统中，通过动态问题分解过程、多案例经验学习过程、主动的目标驱动学习过程的协调运作，既支持初始观点生成，又支持观点的修改与扩充．本文采用描述性智能辅助技术，使得观点生成的智能辅助方法不仅易实现，而且具有高度的灵活性和适应性．     

Enriching Service-Learning by Developing e-Tutoring in Foster Homes

In view of the learning divide between the children in ordinary families and those in foster homes, online one-to-one tutoring has been provided by university students as a service-learning option. Through the synchronous e-tutoring system platform, the goal of this study is to develop a service learning mode for creating campus-community partnerships and mutual learning experiences. Thus the study applies Ramsden’s theory of university teaching (2003) into an action research project for investigating (i) how e-tutoring can solve the problems occurring in face-to-face tutoring in foster homes; (ii) the effects of e-tutoring; (iii) the new issues identified; and (iv) new strategies for future iterations of the program. For explaining a social phenomenon through a theoretical framework, grounded theory analysis was applied and eight themes were identified in the qualitative data of 10 observation reports, 28 interviews, and 140 weekly journals from both ends of two foster homes and one university. Eight subcategories (content and learning, practical learning, tutoring concerns, knowledge gains, competency gains, adult guidance, e-tutoring approaches, and transformative development) are categorized along with Ramsden’s hierarchy theory—teaching as telling or transmission, teaching as organizing student activity, and teaching as making learning possible. With transformative development of the campus-community partnership the consensus goal among university faculty, directors of foster homes and relevant personnel of e-tutoring (Enos and Morton 2003), the study discussed future improvements for the e-tutoring program. The action research strongly suggests that e-tutoring should emphasize more reflective listening rather than subject-mattered achievement and turn service-learning into an opportunity of achieving the sustainable integration of community resources and social welfare institutions.     

基于互惠偏好的多主体参与项目团队合作行为

多主体参与的项目团队合作模式将是未来发展的趋势,并且来自不同主体的团队成员的行为选择策略将会直接影响到团队的合作效率,甚至影响项目成败。依据社会偏好理论,在考虑代理人互惠偏好的前提下,构建了来自不同主体的多个代理人的项目团队委托代理模型,将代理人在完全理性条件下和互惠条件下的行为选择进行了比较,分析了互惠偏好对代理人努力选择、团队绩效和项目团队激励效果的影响。结果表明:互惠偏好对项目团队合作和团队绩效的促进作用并非具有绝对性,但能够提高利润分享的激励效果。最后,通过案例研究对理论研究结果进行了验证。     

网络博弈合作剩余收益分配的协商方法

参与者在进行网络博弈时有机会与其相邻参与者签署协议进行合作,此时参与者之间的博弈关系构成了一个网络结构,并可以使用无向图来表示.参与者之间依据网络结构选择合作对象进行合作,进而产生剩余收益,而剩余收益通过协商的方式在两个参与者之间进行分配.本文依据协商理论与匹配理论,研究网络博弈环境下参与者之间如何签署协议进行合作,进而分配合作产生的剩余收益的问题,称为网络协商博弈,并给出基本的可行解的形式.通过限制参与者可以签署协议的数量,本文对网络协商博弈进行分类,使用协商与匹配方法研究每一类网络协商博弈的合理解的具体形式并设计求解方法.本文的结果表明:参与者之间的合作以及合作收益的分配不仅与网络博弈自身有关,而且与参与者能够签署的合作协议数量有关.研究拓展了协商方法在网络协商问题中的应用,为多边合作对象的选择以及合作剩余收益的分配提供了参考.     

Operationalising “Double-Loop” Learning in Service Organisations: A Systems Approach for Creating Knowledge

Learning organisation literature has widely discussed the connections between “double-loop” learning and its significance to organisational performance, but paying little attention to tools and systems that can operationalise “double-loop” learning in organisations. This paper investigates the impact of applying a systems approach for service operations design, expressed as the Vanguard Method (Seddon, Freedom from command and control: a better way to make the work work, 2003), in order to activate “double-loop” learning in service organisations. Two case studies were conducted in the banking mortgage operations and adults’ social care services in the UK, using the dimensions of the learning organisation questionnaire (DLOQ), semi-structured interviews, observations, and documents. The findings of the cross-case analysis support the link of applying the Vanguard Method with operationalising “double-loop” learning through three main factors, namely systematic-operations improvement, organisational capacity development, and outside-in mode of work; that are all embedded into the seven dimensions of the DLOQ. The value of this paper is the introduction of a service operations design tool that can activate “double-loop” learning performance in the fast changing knowledge era. It also provides an impetus for service organisations to creatively influence employees’ competencies to effectively improve internal systems.     

Idea Networking: Constructing a Pragmatic Conceptual Frame for Action Research Interventions

Action research interventions require use of some form of conceptual frame to guide and evaluate the intervention. Pragmatism offers an explanation of ideas that enables this conceptual frame to be constructed inductively from diverse participants’ ideas. They define ideas as experienced patterns of activity. The purpose of this paper is to explain why and how this pragmatic explanation of ideas can be used to induce an action research conceptual frame. As a demonstration, the paper inducts (emerges) a conceptual frame using idea networking for service providers in an emerging cultural accommodation industry. 50 h of interviews and site visits provided 117 individual idea statements which were networked. The conceptual frame that emerged had five elements: sufficient-legitimation, selected-market, inclusive-boomi, appropriately-financial, and collaboratively-empowered. This provides a coordinated, multi-part, way of evaluating any possible future changes.     

poCDIO: A Methodological Proposal for Promoting Active Participation in Social Engineering Projects

Currently, both public and private organizations, as well as the academic milieu are developing social projects in order to strengthen and improve the quality of life. This is the case of Engineers Without Borders Colombia (ISFCOL for its Spanish acronym), an organization formed by engineering teachers and students from Los Andes University and the Minuto de Dios University Corporation that develops engineering projects within communities in order to solve environmental and social problems. However, based in the group’s experience, a problem has been identified regarding the absence of a methodology that promotes the active and effective participation of all the parties involved, which can prevent the accomplishment of otherwise technically viable, socially responsible, and sustainable projects. Looking to address this issue, this paper presents a methodological proposal for promoting the active participation of all the parties involved in engineering projects that have a social impact. The proposal is structured following the stages of the oCDIO context (Observe, Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate), and is successfully applied during the development of an ISFCOL project in which the participation of all the parties involved becomes a key element for the effective accomplishment of the engineering proposal and for the generation of socially responsible impacts. Namely, the project “Fortalecimiento Negocios Verdes Comunitarios Provincia del Guavio” (Community Green Businesses Strengthening in the Guavio Province) whose main goal was to strengthen the innovation and the entrepreneurship in the Guavio region communities, consolidating thus an active participation network of 400 members made up by small entrepreneurs and students from rural communities close to the city of Bogota and from higher education institutions.     

Using Action Research to Implement Selective Waste Collection Program in a Brazilian City

The objective of this paper is to study and report upon the elaboration of a selective waste collection program in a Brazilian city through action research; the overarching goal is that all knowledge generated may serve as a basis of information and reference to aid in decision making for similar programs globally. The municipality chosen was São Lourenço in the state of Minas Gerais. The implementation of the selective waste collection program happened over the course of multiple improvement and learning cycles, and enabled many environmental, economic and social benefits for all of the project’s stakeholders. Eighty-nine tons of potentially recycled material were sent to recycling processes rather than being disposed of in a landfill. No great difficulties were observed for the use of action research as a method, but some challenges were encountered and overcome during the whole process, due to the lack of structure and confidence on part of the population, in relation to the selective collection program. The choice for action research as the methodology and the use of improvement and learning cycles proved to increase the project’s overall efficiency, making it possible to make decisions more quickly, generating better results, and enabling replications of good decisions and correction of errors from one cycle to the next.     

PPPs合作中控制权配置实验

运用基于不完全契约理论的模型分析和实验研究相结合的方法,研究企业与非营利组织合作过程中控制权配置对合作效率的影响。通过构建控制权配置对合作效率影响的数学模型,并在模型推导的基础上,提出了基本研究假设,进一步,开创性地通过采用实验研究方法收集数据并进行假设检验。研究结果表明:控制权配置影响PPP合作中的企业和非营利组织的投入水平,过度的行政指定式控制权分配将会导致合作效率的损失,基于合作双方自由选择基础上的合理的控制权配置一方面能够保证企业选择较低的自利性投入和较高的公益性投入并满足企业的激励相容条件,另一方面也能够激励非盈利组织的公益性投入从而达到更高的PPP合作效率。