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This study uses phenomenographic research methodologies to identify qualitatively different ways engineering and architecture students conceptualize design creation; it seeks to discover if and how their conceptualizations of design creation relate to their conceptualizations of knowledge generation. This work extends prior research by King and Kitchener (1994) and others (Baxter Magolda, 1992; Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, & Tarule, 1986; Hofer & Pintrich, 2002; Perry, 1970) about the ways students develop increasingly sophisticated ways of: understanding and conceptualizing knowledge; sources of truth; how to evaluate various opinions and points-of-view; and ways to assess truthfulness and validity of new ideas. This project stems from the proposition that this development process manifests itself somewhat differently in fields that deal with physical sciences than in those grounded in the social sciences--the realm where these theories were established and defined. King and Kitchener (1994) have shown that conceptualizations of knowledge vary from one field to the next, yet little if any work has been done to assess and compare patterns of conceptualizations in the fields of architecture and engineering. Many national regulatory boards urge engineering to change its educational practices to elicit high levels of student engagement and self-directed learning, and achieve outputs more like those associated with architectural education. An extensive report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Boyer and Mitgang, 1996) was conducted on behalf of the five organizations regulating the education and practice of architecture in the USA. That report described very high levels of student learning and engagement and recommended that the methods used to teach architecture be transferred for use in more fields. The current study provides additional understanding of this topic, identifying the various concepts that architecture students hold about knowledge and design as well as how these conceptualizations are both similar and different to engineering students' conceptualizations. An outcome of this study is increased understanding about aspects of the learning experience and the learning environment that capture students' attention and elicit their engagement. With this knowledge, educators can do more to encourage reflection, exploration, and self-directed learning among students. This is a work in progress, and the first phase has been a pilot study. This paper reports results of the pilot as well as the context, rationale, and design of the overall study. The pilot was the first step in a study seeking to provide new understandings: (1) spanning multiple professions; (2) identifying the various concepts that architecture and engineering students hold about the generation of new designs; and (3) describing how these conceptualizations compare within and between fields. The second phase will use phenomenographic methodologies to identify qualitatively different ways engineering and architecture students conceptualize knowledge and design. To date, the study has been designed and has gained approval to proceed from our ethics review board. Three pilot interviews have been conducted and these have been used to adjust the research design and widen the parameters for the sample group. The research team secured ethics approval for the proposed changes. This pape [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article forms one part of a phenomenographic study that investigates senior teachers' professional development. Professional development is defined as a social construction that is influenced by many factors. This article focuses on one factor - in-service trainings. The article seeks answers for the following questions: what influence senior teachers' wish to participate at in-service training courses, how organization (school management) supports their participation at in-service trainings, and which training courses are considered successful by senior teachers. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews among senior teachers. Senior teachers in this article are teachers over 60 years of age and they all work at vocational education. These are the people who are approaching or already have passed their retirement age. The results revealed that senior teachers are open to life-long learning, they attend to various training courses and experience informal and non-formal learning. However, they are not so eager to take part in every in-service training course. They are rather critical and value their time. The training should give them something new, they do not want to waste time on useless and not prepared trainings. Group works are considered suitable method for senior teachers, however the respondents revealed that group works that are arranged to spend time and are not thoroughly prepared are useless and not at all attractive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital gaming is an exponentially growing, multibillion-dollar industry. The largest cohort of adolescents in global history has now taken this up across every continent. The World Health Organization has noted the phenomenon and is calling for more research into young people's perceptions. Opinion is divided over the risks and benefits of digital gaming, leading to some confusion about the design and implementation of various strategies to promote the health, wellbeing, and development of adolescents. Specifically, there is a dearth of literature on the ways adolescents experience digital gaming from their perspectives. This paper reviews what is known about adolescent experience with digital gaming and argues the importance of exploring this further. A pilot, qualitative study using phenomenography as a methodology is proposed to identify the different ways Australian urban adolescents (13-15 years) experience digital gaming. Preliminary results may challenge prevailing views of adolescent digital gaming with implications for the development and refinement of effective preventative and intervention strategies in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper examines how four first-year engineering students interact with one another in teams to answer two research questions: 1) How do students experience working in diverse teams? and 2) Do their perceptions of diversity, affect, and engineering practice change as a result of working in diverse teams? Despite engineering's emphasis on developing students' teaming skills, little research has been conducted on how students develop sensitivity to students from different cultures and backgrounds within diverse teams. We interviewed four students in a first-semester, first-year engineering team twice for a total of eight interviews to understand their experiences working in diverse teams. Each interview was analyzed using a modified form of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to understand the lived experience of each participant. In this paper, we present the results from the qualitative analysis of one team's complete interviews as a first step in the larger research project. Results from this first-year engineering team show that in spite of explicit instruction and discussions about the importance of diversity, these students did not wholeheartedly value diversity in teaming activities. This team renegotiated and compromised their operationalization of what diversity meant in their engineering team. While based on individual values, this compromised understanding of diversity in engineering-teaming tasks led to inequitable experiences and lack of growth across the team. It limited the roles students took on during teaming activities, helped establish boundaries around communication in the team, and influenced the type of work teammates were trusted to take on and complete. Despite being from diverse parts of the world, having different experiences with and perceptions of diversity, this student team felt they were more homogeneous than different. Our work highlights the need for a deeper examination of the intricate complexity of teaming experiences during inquiry and design activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT This paper reports the findings of research into young people's experiences of political information. We used a phenomenographic approach to identify variations in experiences of political information. The research explores how young people use information and technology to mediate political information to develop knowledge to become informed citizens. It focuses on how processes of discovery, production, retrieval, manipulation, dissemination, use, and evaluation of information are utilised in different ways by young people through a range of information behaviour techniques. 23 interviews and 3 focus groups were conducted with pupils aged 14-15 at a secondary school in England. The interviews and focus groups were recorded and transcripts and notes taken during the data collection sessions formed the data for analysis. Phenomenographic analysis was carried out, utilising manual coding and NVivo software. A phenomenographic outcome space represents the six qualitatively different ways in which the participants experienced political information, and identifies a range of political information sources, including social media and online news sources, which inform young people's political knowledge and attitudes. The outcome space illustrates the differences in ways young people experience political information and suggests potential for development to more complex ways of understanding the information they encounter. This represents a contribution to understanding the variation in information experiences and is of theoretical and practical value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenography is an emerging method in the engineering education research community. Critical variations exist across studies regarding the use of phenomenography as a methodological approach. Beyond many of the documented variations, including the Swedish and Australian approaches, many nuances are not necessarily explicit in existing studies. The authors of this study contributed to this area of scholarship through individual reflection, collaborative discussion, and synthesis of their experiences of making methodological decisions while designing and conducting phenomenographic studies in engineering education. The results of this work include the identification of five key considerations: Nature of phenomenon, Application of outcome space, Development of outcome space, Treatment of data, and Stance towards participants. Reflections on each of these considerations are summarized and provided in full. Our analysis of the reflections revealed that the application of the phenomenographic methodology must respond to nuances in individual contexts. Thus, the primary contribution of this paper is the identification of five key considerations that can help guide a phenomenographic research approach, and transparency of how five emerging phenomenographic researchers have dealt with these considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents integrated research and education methods for exploring how to engage and evaluate Navajo students in culturally-contextualized engineering design curricula. Under the theoretical frameworks of social constructivism and culturally relevant pedagogy, this study proposes to: (1) explore the ways in which Navajo students and Navajo professionals experience and understand engineering design in the context of their culture, community, and society through a phenomenographic approach; (2) conduct a design-based research study on the development of culturally-contextualized theory of learning and curriculum modules that will be piloted in several schools in the Navajo Nation; and (3) create and pilot tools to evaluate Navajo students' experience of engineering design. The primary research questions are: (RQ1) What are the ways in which Navajo students and Navajo professionals experience, understand, and apply engineering design in the context of their culture, community, and society? and (RQ2) How do culturally-contextualized curricula affect the experience and understanding of engineering design, sense of cultural identity, and cultural attitudes of Navajo students? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its everyday use in the higher education discourse, there is still ubiquity around the concept of employability where it continues to be used in a number of contexts and with reference to a range of meanings that include skills, knowledge and attributes in varying degrees of importance (Knight & Yorke, 2002; Moreland, 2006) to a multidimensional psycho-social construct based upon career identity, personal adaptability and social and human capital (Fugate, Kinicki & Ashworth, 2004). Although HEIs have placed a greater emphasis on developing employability support for students (Rae, 2007), employers are still finding graduates lack appropriate skills, aptitude and behaviours for the workplace (Tymon, 2013). Despite this extensive discussion, there is little that considers how well students understand the concept of employability and how this affects their job seeking behaviour. To investigate this understanding a sample of 35 undergraduate business students from a range of levels and programmes took part in an online survey asking them to reflect on their employability. These written accounts were then analysed phenomenographically to investigate the qualitatively different ways that business students conceive of employability. To maximise variation in the sample, participants were first to final year students, including some on placement, and were following a mixture of generalist business and specialist programmes, including accounting, marketing and IT. The responses were analysed in three phases (Marton & Säljö, 2005); sorting quotes into groups oriented around the meaning of employability, examining each group further as a decontextualized set of responses and then determining categories of description to represent the outcome space. This methodology was selected to fully appreciate the variety and breadth of conceptions students held, and identified a hierarchy of five distinct ways of understanding employability. The results of this study should be of value to educators and career support professionals in facilitating interventions that move students' conceptions of employability from that of a possession, to one they must participate in, encouraging students to be more self-aware when entering the employment arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its everyday use in the higher education discourse, there is still ubiquity around the concept of employability where it continues to be used in a number of contexts and with reference to a range of meanings that include skills, knowledge and attributes in varying degrees of importance (Knight & Yorke, 2002; Moreland, 2006) to a multidimensional psycho-social construct based upon career identity, personal adaptability and social and human capital (Fugate, Kinicki & Ashworth, 2004). Although HEIs have placed a greater emphasis on developing employability support for students (Rae, 2007), employers are still finding graduates lack appropriate skills, aptitude and behaviours for the workplace (Tymon, 2013). Despite this extensive discussion, there is little that considers how well students understand the concept of employability and how this affects their job seeking behaviour. To investigate this understanding a sample of 35 undergraduate business students from a range of levels and programmes took part in an online survey asking them to reflect on their employability. These written accounts were then analysed phenomenographically to investigate the qualitatively different ways that business students conceive of employability. To maximise variation in the sample, participants were first to final year students, including some on placement, and were following a mixture of generalist business and specialist programmes, including accounting, marketing and IT. The responses were analysed in three phases (Marton & Säljö, 2005); sorting quotes into groups oriented around the meaning of employability, examining each group further as a decontextualized set of responses and then determining categories of description to represent the outcome space. This methodology was selected to fully appreciate the variety and breadth of conceptions students held, and identified a hierarchy of five distinct ways of understanding employability. The results of this study should be of value to educators and career support professionals in facilitating interventions that move students' conceptions of employability from that of a possession, to one they must participate in, encouraging students to be more self-aware when entering the employment arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Challenges & Social Responsibility in Business / Issukiai ir Socialine Atsakomybe Versle is the property of Challenges & Social Responsibility in Business and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Workplace problems are different from traditional textbook or classroom problems because they are ill-structured and complex in nature. Research shows that engineers need a wide range of knowledge and skills in order to succeed in workplace problem solving. However, it is unclear how engineering students, who will become professionals in the workplace after graduation, experience real world engineering problem solving. Motivated by a desire to better understand engineering problems and prepare students for engineering practice, this study aims to explore students' experiences of workplace problems solving. As previous research points out that educational programs such as the Co-Op program provide opportunities for students to observe and experience engineering in the workplace and prepare them with workplace competencies, in this study, we interviewed 22 engineering Co-Op students about their problem solving experiences and explored: what are the different ways in which Co-Op students experience workplace problem solving? In order to answer this question, we conducted a phenomenographic analysis on our interview transcripts to capture the variation in students' experiences. The analysis results show that students experienced workplace problem solving in six different ways, which are: 1) workplace problem solving is following orders and executing the plan; 2) workplace problem solving is implementing customers' ideas and satisfying customer needs; 3) workplace problem solving is using mathematical and technical knowledge and skills to solve technical problems; 4) workplace problem solving is consulting different people and collecting their inputs; 5) workplace problem solving is using multiple resources to draw conclusions and make decisions; 6) workplace problem solving is exploration and freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of a larger study into upper-level physics student identity development that is currently underway students were questioned about their conception of understanding. Contained with this paper are the results for students' conceptions of understanding which correlate significantly to those found by Waterhouse and Prosser [2]. However, having carried out pilot interviews of the interview protocol used to examine identity and cognitive development, the researchers noticed a large frequency in the amount of students that indicated their conception of understanding to be 'when you can explain it to others or yourself.' This prompted a further examination of this conception of understanding via phenomenographic interview and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What can Academic Development (AD) and other professional areas and disciplines learn from free-range farming? Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practice (OEP) are mushrooming and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are here already. The idea of moving away from battery-type Academic Development Activities and silo modules and programmes towards open cross-institutional approaches in line with OEP are explored within this paper based on a recent small-scale, fully-online study. This brought together academics and other professionals who support learning, from different disciplines and professional areas who are studying towards a Postgraduate Certificate (PgCert) in Teaching and Learning in HE/Academic Practice during a facilitated open Problem-Based Learning (PBL) task around assessment and feedback using freely available social media. The study aimed to explore if and how online PBL can be used within PgCert provisions to provide opportunities to connect, communicate and collaborate in a community of practice beyond institutional walls. The phenomenographic methodology underpinned this research. Participants' experiences in this open Academic Development activity were captured through individual remote interviews, a series of questionnaires and reflective accounts. Findings indicate that open online PBL has the potential to enable learners and educators to break out of academic and virtual silos. It also widens meaningful collaborative learning within Academic Development in multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional groups -something participants in this study commented extremely positively about. This provides evidence that freeing AD is the way forward to share available resources, and establish more organic and healthy learning communities beyond the module, programme and institutional level. Recommendations are made to Academic Developers and other tutors on how to bring learners from different programmes, institutions and countries together online using social media to create the conditions and the environment for a meaningful, rich and fruitful exchange and enable collaborative formal and informal learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents several management education and development conference paper abstracts. They include, "The Effect of Instructional Delivery Method on Student Achievement," regarding the educational value of undergraduate human resource management classes, "A Personal and Experimental Reflection on Teaching and Learning wtih the Consultant Learning Method," about an analysis of undergraduate and graduate management courses, and "What it Means to Supervise: A Phenomenographic Study of Doctorial Student Supervision," discussing what doctoral supervisors look for in their management students.

This section focuses on several studies presented at a conference on international management. The article, "The Impact of Trade Liberalization Policies on National Patters of Corruption and Software Piracy," focuses on the impact of trade liberalization policies on national patterns of corruption and software piracy. "Repetition of Foreign Market Entry Forms: Managerial and Organizational Drivers," studies the repetition of forms of entry in a foreign market by taking into account not only organizational factors but also the managerial risk determinants of such repetitions. "Foreign Expansion Under Uncertainty: A Strategic Real Options Perspective," investigates the expansion of 30 of the largest global manufacturing companies in 6 industries in China over the last 20 years.

This article presents abstracts of studies on international management. The paper "Regional Strategies for Service Sector Multinationals," examined the intra-regional sales of all 49 multinational enterprises (MNE) in the retail sector. Data is not available for most other service sector MNEs, especially in insurance and banking. Only one of these 49 retail MNEs is global, defined as operating with at least 20 percent of its sales in each part of the triad. The paper "Market Equilibrium, Cartel or Lack of Strategy? Entry Level Compensation in Japanese Firms," examined the determinants of base pay for entry level college graduates in Japanese firms. In a sense, Japanese firms' compensation strategy for college hiring is to behave as a cartel and to minimize wage competition. The paper "A Comparative Analysis of Indian and Chinese Negotiating Behavior," highlighted the similarities and differences between Indian and the Chinese negotiating behavior. While a lot has been written about the Chinese approach to negotiations the literature on Indian negotiating behavior is relatively sparse. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by providing a comparative contrast of the negotiating styles in these countries. The starting premise of the paper is that institutional environments affect the ease with which value is created, sustained or amplified over time.

This section presents abstracts of several conference papers on organization development and change. The research 'Creating an Adaptive Organizational Culture' discusses the key factors following an organizational culture change activity. The study 'Change & Financial Performance' focuses on the longitudinal dynamic linkage between radical change, ideological embeddedness, demographic depletion and financial performance in a macro organizational setting: Israeli kibbutzim. The paper 'Managing Improvisation Within the Management of Change: Some Lessons From UK Financial Services' considers data collected within a study of project-managed change in the financial services sector in Great Britain. The study 'Change Sans Tears: Understanding Change Processes for Frontline Employees in Service Organizations,' proposes a theoretically grounded model of continuous change processes that emphasizes three aspects, first, antecedents of continuous change located in unit and organizational management efforts to respond to market and institutional forces by maintaining a balance between economic and service goals; secondly, multifaceted modeling of change processes by including the inter-relationships among perception of change, role ambiguity and depersonalization tendencies; and last, change outcomes including performance and psychological wellbeing.

This article presents abstracts of articles on management, particularly research methods. The article 'A System's View of Action Research: The Case of the Automotive Company,' suggests that Niklas Luhmann's systems theory drawing on autopoetic theory may serve as a unifying model for action research. The article 'Do We Have Enough? The Accuracy of Incomplete Data From Small Groups' uses simulation methods to demonstrate the relative accuracy of six different indicators when computed from incomplete responses, and shows that the optimal approach for deciding whether to include a group in a sample is neither a minimum response rate, nor a minimum number of responses. The article 'Principles for Action Research' first describes action research then responds to criticisms against action research by deriving and illustrating a set of interdependent principles for action research.

With challenges engineering education faces in meeting societal needs, learning in an interdisciplinary setting has the potential to provide engineering students with opportunities to consider alternative perspectives and engage in deep learning approaches. Few empirical studies have explored interdisciplinary learning situated in other learning literature. This work-in-process explores the variance of students' experience of interdisciplinary settings. A phenomenographic framework is used to guide the methodology of the study. Maximum variation sampling is employed when collecting data using semi-structured interviews with 20–30 engineering students about their concrete experience of interdisciplinary learning. The literature and research on interdisciplinarity as well as adult learning inform the construction of the phenomenographic study and will provide ways to interpret and situate the results. The interpretive framework includes elements from theories of transformative learning, encountering others, and interdisciplinary topology. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this study was to determine the thoughts and conceptualizations of prospective physics teachers on the way to follow to build and maintain a campfire and the effect of lived experience on them with a phenomenographic approach. The sample consisted of prospective physics teachers taking the course called Physics in Nature: Camping and Visiting Practices in Spring 2009. An open-ended question was prepared depending on participants’ lived experiences of the campfire at a residential camp by the researchers and it was asked the whole class. Then categories were determined and thereby the association between these categories was shown through two maps, one for participants and one for nonparticipants of the camp. The categories and subcategories for the two groups were the same except for a few, but there was a difference between the hierarchies of categories and subcategories. This made an important difference in terms of practicality in favor of participants, and all these were considered to be an effect of lived experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenography is a well-acknowledged research methodology in the field of higher education. Phenomenographic studies have been carried out to understand how people conceive of their world. More specifically, studies have been conducted to appreciate how students conceive of learning. They show that learning is relational, non-dualistic and experiential and that there is a hierarchy in the conceptions of learning, from surface to deep learning. In this paper we examine how phenomenographic research, which has hitherto been absent from mainstream management education writing, can inform the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines middle-level healthcare managers' conceptions of Leadership Development (LD). Phenomenography, a qualitative research approach was used to address two broad research questions: What are middle-managers' conceptions of leadership development? And how do middle-managers understand what gets developed in leadership development programmes (LDPs)? Empirical evidence, collected from 23 nurse managers in a large National Health Service organisation in the UK were analysed using phenomenographic methods. The results indicate that middle-managers understand LD in one of five, qualitatively different ways: LD as (1) an event where awareness about one's self and context is triggered, (2) an event in which managers refresh their knowledge and boost their confidence, (3) an events- based process by which managers learn to become listening and empowering individuals (4) any opportunity where managers learn to use resources effectively in order to 'lead from behind' quietly, where appropriate, and (5) a life-long learning process by which one learns to 'lead by example' by 'being out there' so that their team moves forward. All five conceptions of LD are predominantly based on the individualistic model of leader-development, and are delimited by various subtle, implicit leadership beliefs. By revealing a fine- grained look of what constitutes LD, over and above what is normally explored in the literature, it is argued that it is important that researchers and healthcare managers take into account the power of this variation when advancing LD theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]