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Emergency workers are confronted with trauma as an essential part of their work. Learning how to moderate the impact and coping with traumatic experiences is at the center of this study. The researchers empirically chart ways that emergency workers cope with trauma, process and integrate these experiences, and describe what supports their learning. Findings suggest a need to engage in alternative forms of communication, differentiating between professional and emotional feedback in order to foster transformative learning. The study reveals two different, complementary ways to constructively communicate, each with its own architecture: structured debriefs and transformative conversations. Mezirow borrowed from Habermas's idea of rational discourse in dialogue, some of which is seen in debriefs, wherein emotions are set aside in the intensity of the moment in favor of processing facts and identifying decisions and actions for the future. In transformative conversations, by contrast, emergency workers seek to understand their inner selves and make meaning of their experiences. The research shows that certain conditions for transformative conversations need to be in place in order to work through emotions and unblock cognition by recognizing and working through affect, emotion, and potential vicarious trauma. This qualitative analysis derives from 57 reflective writings collected from paramedics and firefighters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article imagines the future of HRD using a complexity lens. Complexity calls for rethinking the industrial-era framing of work, learning, and change. We discuss foundational concepts and terminology that inform our work and consider links with HRD. We adopt the idea of 'ready-ing', introduced by Nora Bateson, who challenges strongly held theories of top-down, step-by-step change that do not work well in complex adaptive systems. She instead suggests we should ready people and organisations for change they might not imagine and cannot predict. We then draw from earlier thinking on sculpting the learning organisation that seems relevant to complexity. To illustrate what ready-ing might look like in practice, we elaborate four examples, or sightings, of how organisations ready for change. We discuss the resulting implications for HRD practice in leadership development and organisational change. We also examine ways that university preparation has pivoted towards a future of ready-ing HRD scholars and researchers for 'what if' thinking and complex adaptive change. We conclude with reflections on developing new mindsets and skill sets for HRD's ready-ing for complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study draws a specific link to the practice of action learning (AL) in China. We organized ourselves into an AL set and used Revans' AL, as interpreted by Marquardt (2004), to create a post-teaching dialog to examine the experience gained from delivering an interdisciplinary course online—a novice situation—in a Chinese transnational university. AL's questioning insight occurred after conducting an evidence-based evaluation of online teaching in an interdisciplinary higher education course that used Debattista's (2018) online teaching effectiveness rubric. The rubric offered rich 'programed knowledge' that triggered our question-based inquiry. We conclude that our AL approach is valuable for teacher professional development and offers our rationale for why this particular AL practice would be suitable for the Confucian culture, teaching of interdisciplinary courses, and in novice situations. By conducting AL, we identified a list of key findings, such as proactive communication among teachers in an interdisciplinary course, was vital when teaching to a large group of students. We offer recommendations to improve interdisciplinary online course design and delivery in the future based on reflections from the AL. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research are presented at the end of this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a description of recent transformative learning applications in four broad areas – health care study abroad, community, and the workplace. The applications were selected from a literature review of English language articles published in peer-reviewed journals from 2010 to 2020. To describe the applications in each of the four broad areas, the paper focuses on the rationale for the studies, their settings, their context, the reported transformation or outcome as well as the impediments and facilitating factors for the transformation. The paper also includes an overview of research designs and instruments that can be generally used to study applications of transformative learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces ways that transformative learning is defined, conceptualized, practiced, and researched. Although such viewpoints share much in common, they differ based on context, culture, purpose, and process, among other things. Transformative learning is a living theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stories in this article opened the 2018 International Transformative Learning (TL) Conference. Mezirow founded this conference to grow living theory, but over time, paradoxically, allegiance to his framing of TL can be seen as limiting growth. The Conference designers invited participation from new geographical, cultural, social and political perspectives to bring forward unheard voices to create bridges among differences. Framed by the imaginal and holistic approaches to TL, this article shares the personal stories of transformation narrated by five panelists and the 'wicked' questions these stories evoked. The authors reflect on the humanizing, heart-ful space that sharing stories created, which re-minded those present of shared community. TL is about change in the individual, as theory seeks to explain; yet it is also about embedded social, cultural norms and assumptions that shape and sustain systems. The authors conclude by reflecting on the humanizing potential of narrative, as well as the theorizing about the interdependence between individual and systemic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the pragmatics of operationalizing reflection in experience-based workplace learning. It proposes a constructivist-situative framework – not typically considered feasible – based on balancing the complementary strengths of each individual framework. We distinguish among four empirically demonstrated approaches that operationalize reflection using one or the other framework: cognitive process approach; integration of critically reflective work behaviours; use of phenomenological critical incidents to review emotionally laden experiences; and situated exploration of interactions between individuals and tools. Next, we apply these four approaches to previously collected data from medical and managerial workplace learning contexts. Through secondary analysis, we explore the utility of a combined framework, and consider the challenges therein. We argue that operationalizing reflection based on complementarity looks feasible though challenging. We close by discussing the practice of researching reflection through reflection, and speculating on opportunities for future workplace learning research based on emerging redefinitions of workplaces, interventionist methodologies, and conceptualizing learning environments as sociomaterial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand key dimensions of reflection in experience-based workplace learning for research being collaboratively undertaken by scholars in Dutch and US research institutions. We systematically explore and compare Tara Fenwick’s analysis of five perspectives on cognition to distinguish among constructivist, psychoanalytic, situative, critical-cultural, and enactivist perspectives on reflection. Our aim is to examine how to conceptualize reflection so that one or more perspectives can complement our understanding of learning through experience at work. We position reflection not only from a practical but also from a theoretical perspective that moves beyond the individual focus of the constructivist perspective. Fenwick’s five perspectives are described in terms of whether and how reflection is utilized, key activities in the process of reflection, relative focus on the individual and/or the context, triggers for reflection, role of power and positionality, role of emotions, and reflection outcomes. We conclude that adding other lenses to the dominant constructivist perspective helps expand our understanding of reflection as well as identify and attend to other tools, people, and factors in the work situation that influence reflection processes and learning outcomes. The paper closes with a discussion of promising new approaches that have emerged since Fenwick’s analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Team learning is not a well researched or examined phenomenon. This paper describes a team learning model that grew out of case study research in one company. The model is derived in part by drawing on the literatures of both group dynamics and adult learning. Team learning processes and phases are described and illustrated. The paper concludes with implications for adult educators who work with teams in organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Changing workplace demands now challenge human resource developers to extend the scope of their practice from predominantly one of training individuals, to one of facilitating learning of individuals, teams, and organisations. In our work, we suggest that human resource developers need an equally broad vision of the field in order to embrace this broader scope. One such compelling vision which we believe may drive a redefinition of the field is that of the learning organisation. The learning organisation is defined both in terms of the outcomes by which we assess whether or not the organisation has learned, and by the process by which the organisation must change to embed learning. A model of how the organisation learns is given along with design principles for human resource developers who would create a learning organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we develop a theoretical framework for understanding informal and incidental learning that is, while not empirically tested, at least in part empirically derived. Informal and incidental learning can be characterized by the following: (1) based on learning from experience; (2) embedded in the organizational context; (3) oriented to a focus on action; (4) governed by non‐routine conditions; (5) concerned with tacit dimensions that must be made explicit; (6) delimited by the nature of the task, the way in which problems are framed, and the work capacity of the individual undertaking the task; and (7) enhanced by proactivity, critical reflectivity and creativity. We first identify why our theory is important for recent trends toward continuous learning for continuous improvement. We illustrate our theory, discuss other uses of the concepts of informal and incidental learning, expand on our definition in terms of the above seven characteristics, and further discuss implications in light of current trends. *Based on a paper previously submitted at the Adult Education Research Conference, The University of Georgia, May 1990, and the Center for Creative Leadership, July 1990. These ideas are also more fully explicated in Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace, Routledge, 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]