Co-operative Education: Studies of Learning from Workplace Experience.

Case studies were conducted of four female cooperative education (co-op) students who participated in two 4-month co-op placements in a veterinary clinic as part of a high school biology credit. Two graduate students gathered data onsite during two phases: an initial 2-month period that oriented the methods of the inquiry at the clinic to match what was witnessed and observation and data collection during the last 2 months of the first placement and the second placement. Early in their placements co-op students learned simple tasks they were expected to complete without supervision. Assuming such responsibilities made them immediately feel like contributing team members and motivated them to complete the tasks proficiently so they could later be available to observe and participate in animal treatment. Students learned the relationship of the routines to the clinic's priorities and the science behind the activities in which clinic personnel engage. Two main types of opportunities for learning were tasks they performed and activities they observed and participated in peripherally. Clinic staff enhanced learning through questioning in the context of direct observation, think-alouds, cueing, and direct instruction. Two features of these approaches were that they reflected priorities of the clinic and they took place in the context of experience. The gradation in responsibility had dimensions in the workplace: complexity of tasks and responsibilities, risk if errors are made, and subject matter undergirding placement activities. (Contains 15 references.) (YLB) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ******************************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION O ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION ice of Educational Research and Improvement ED CENTER (ERIC) his document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. CI Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. o Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. CO-OPERATIVE EDUCATION: STUDIES OF LEARNING FROM WORKPLACE EXPERIENCE' Hugh Munby, Peter Chin, Nancy L. Hutchinson, and Jonathan Young Faculty of Education Queen's University Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 Introduction PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY 01144b/96 TO THE EDUCATI INFORMATION 1 This paper is concerned with co-operative education. This part of the secondary-school curriculum is named for the cooperation between schools and employers. It involves students spending part of the school day in a workplace setting for extended periods of time while enrolled in full-time study. Typically, students also engage in classroom orientations to the workplace and in reflective seminars. Co-op education is extensive. For instance, we have estimated that 10% of Canada's 1.55 million secondary-school students enroll in co-op education each year (Munby, Cunningham, & Chin, 1998). Oddly, there is hardly any research literature on this portion of the school curriculum, suggesting to us that nobody is asking curriculum questions about co-op education, such as the sort of learning that it can provide or about how this learning might be enhanced. This paper reports on a recent study of co-op experiences in a veterinary clinic from the perspective of learning in the workplace. The paper opens with a brief statement of the background to the research and then provides an outline of the theoretical framework that informs the research we have conducted at the veterinary clinic. This is followed by a description of the setting and of the data collection approaches used. The text then turns to how the data suggested theoretical approaches to workplace learning that hold promise for thinking in terms that might be useful from the perspective of curriculum and of enhancing students' learning within workplace settings. Background to the Research The background to this research lies in the disparity between the extent of co-op education in secondary-school programs and the amount of research directed at such activities. As we have already noted, enrolments are substantial (e.g., "Enrolment in Co-operative Education," 1998) but research in the area is minimal. A recent systematic literature search identified a study of workplace socialization (Simon, Dippo, & Shenke, 1991) and a multivariate study showing no significant effect of co-op placement on scores on career maturity (Varner, 1994). The paucity of research information on co-op education has a direct bearing on curriculum questions, from local instructional questions to policy questions at the district, provincial, and national levels (Munby, Hutchinson, & Chin, 1998). Among the questions that should be addressed are: "What is learned by students in co-op placements, and how is this learning assessed? " "How might learning from experience be understood so that it can be enhanced? " How might educators make the implicit curriculum of co-op education explicit in their interactions with students and with workplace supervisors? " And "What provisions are made in co-op placements for students with exceptionalities? " The obvious connection between co-op education and career education makes the development of reliable information about workplace learning even more urgent. 1Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, April 1999. The paper is from a program of research on co-operative education and workplace learning. Funding is from the Advisory Research Committee, Queen's University, and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. BESTCOPYAVAILABLE SOUR R (ERIC) We have initiated a program of research at Queen's University to establish a knowledge base for education about the world of work. One strand of this research program concerns identifying a theoretical framework for studying learning in the workplace. As shown below, some theoretical frameworks are currently available. But none quite suits the need for a theoretical approach that can guide instruction and assessment for the kind of workplace learning that secondary-school students might encounter in co-op education and career education. This paper is part of this strand of the research program. Although co-op education credits are taken by a significant number of secondary-school students each year, this portion of the curriculum has received scant attention in the research literature. As shown in the following section, there has been an increase in research on workplace learning itself, but this research has been driven by a focus on the organization, its structure and function, and most of the research is with adult learners. Very few studies on informal and workplace learning pay heed to the relationships between learning, knowledge, and experience, and fewer (if any) consider co-op education placements. Theoretical Framework A major part of the early work in this research program has been the identification and modulation of theoretical frameworks. A search for theoretical and empirical research on workplace learning was initially discouraging. For example, Berryman (1993) found that although studies on informal learning are "critical to the current enthusiasm for work-based apprenticeships, [they] are so few as to preclude a review of any length" (p. 345). A strand of research in workplace learning was developed by Marsick (1987). Marsick defined workplace learning as involving "reflection by individuals and working groups upon their own experience as part of the organizational whole" (p. 3). Marsick argued that learning in the workplace involves negotiation between participants about setting and achieving goals, and about roles and responsibilities. Watkins and Marsick (1992) extended this approach to learning in organizations by identifying four distinct learning types: informal learning, formal learning, incidental learning, and non-learning. They defined learning in the presence of both action and reflection as informal learning, and in the presence of reflection but absence of action as formal learning. Absence of reflection in the presence of action was defined as incidental learning, whereas the absence of both reflection and action was defined as non-learning. This approach seemed to us to be less well-suited to learning in co-op education settings for several reasons. First, the research was directed at adults rather than at adolescents. Second, the approach was concerned for the workplace alone, whereas co-op education involves the students in in-school instruction also, so roles and responsibilities are different. Third, Marsick specifically distinguishes workplace learning from education, when co-op education clearly has a role to play in educating adolescents about the world of work. The theoretical framework needed for our research must satisfy a number of criteria, many of which are closely related to the educative potential of co-op education in the secondary-school system. That is, the theoretical approach must admit a consideration of the workplace experiences as curriculum. So the importance of the experience, of the planning, and of the instruction provided by those at the workplace must be visible in the framework. Equally, the framework must recognize the special character of experiential knowledge, and must provide a cognitive perspective on learning in experience that will permit the research team to identify what features of instruction promote learning and can be incorporated into instruction that could enhance workplace learning. Although the framework needs to allow a focus on the learner in the workplace, it must also allow the research team to understand a basic tension we noticed in our studies of the