Contradictions and dilemmas - developing a framework for professional development for trainers

Contradictions and dilemmas - developing a framework for professional development for trainers
Graham Attwell
Pontydysgu

Lifelong learning is leading to wider contexts and processes of learning including work based learning, informal learning and e-learning

There is a diffusion of the training process with increasing numbers of people responsible for some form of training

Professional trainers have new roles and responsibilities

Traditional structures and systems have failed to keep up with the changes

There is a need for opportunities for CPD - linked to practice

Professionalisation requires opportunities for Continuing Professional Development and recognition of competencies

Our focus: Trainer, tutors, and others in enterprises who integrate training and education functions in to their jobs with varying degrees

A focus on practice
On the one hand the trainers themselves can be regarded as the experts on learning and training at the workplace. On the other hand workplace trainers are experts on the “local knowledge” of work processes, tasks and functions. Training workers exhibit, develop, transfer and covey the knowledge useful at work, i.e. the so-called work process knowledge (Boreham, Fischer & Samurcay, 2002).

to what extent do existing “train-the-trainers” provision, policies and practices and the way of their recruitment correspond to the “internal logic of training” at the workplace?

Pre-training biography/experiences;
Initial take-up of training functions;
The everyday practice of learning support;
Changes and developments with regard to this role (e.g. expansion in terms of content or time; promotion etc.).
A model of practice

One goal of our project is to identify typical problems and challenges (across the different contexts of our study) that workplace trainers encounter during their professional development ‘circle’. Such problems can be seen as the major incidents of making professional development necessary and setting it off.

Trainers of continuing VET: in firms
They are members of the firm (in the majority of the cases managers )
In few cases (>10%) professional trainers are working in specialized training firms
Professionals from consultant firms work occasionally as specialists but also as trainers
CONSEQUENCE: DICHOTOMY of professional situation (identity NOT as trainers)

Trainers in firms: Characteristics
Secure jobs
Good wages
Teaching duties are PART (small) of overall working duties
Very elaborated knowledge of firm + staff
Often training (in didactical techniques etc.) for becoming good trainers

Important findings
No specific professional trainers employed full time by the firms
Firms tend to train their employees exclusively by people of their own staff
Only for specific subjects (e.g. ‘Effective Press Relations and Media Interview Training’, ‘Crisis Management’ and ‘Management of Change’) cooperation with specialized training firms

Contextual contradictions and dilemmas

Professionalisation versus the wider contexts and opportunities for learning

Formal versus informal learning

Identity as a trainer versus identity as a (skilled) worker

Pedagogic skills versus technical skills

Individual versus organisational learning

Regulation versus innovation

Certification versus the practice of training

Frameworks for learning versus Frameworks for qualification

one of the keys to promoting learning organisations is to organise work in such a way that it is promotes human development. In other words it is about building workplace environments in which people are motivated to think for themselves so that through their everyday work experiences, they develop new competences and gain new understanding and insights. Thus, people are learning from their work - they are learning as they work Barry Nyhan

but studies in work and work practices are seldom related to training and still less to the training of trainers

Developing Communities of Practice

What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members.
How it functions - mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity.
What capability it has produced – the shared repertoire of communal resources (routines, sensibilities, artefacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members have developed over time.
Dimensions of a Community of Practice

Promote a culture of knowledge sharing and exchange

The completeness of a job. A complete/holistic job offers learning opportunities because it allows workers to prepare and support work autonomously
Rik Huys Katleen De Rick Tom Vandenbrande

Difficulty. A confrontation with problems is a prerogative for an
opportunity to learn

The number of short-cycle tasks in a job. Acquiring occupational qualifications requires that the job has a variety of tasks that belong to this occupation

Autonomy, or ‘regulation capacities’ in a job

Contact opportunities. Social contacts allows one to learn from others and to solve difficulties together with others and learn from
these solutions. It thereby allows for the development of social communicative
qualifications;

Organisational tasks. Insight into the functional interdependence between workers in organisations helps to reveal the innovative potential of workers

Information supply. Without information and feedback on one’s own work it is difficult to learn from work and mistakes made.

New Pontydsygu web site - www,pontydysgu.org
Graham Attwell Thank you for watching

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Contradictions and dilemmas - developing a framework for professional development for trainers

by GrahamAttwell on Oct 31, 2007

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