Browsing by Subject "Informal Learning"

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    How do Minnesota School Board members learn to do their jobs?
    (2009-06) Conlon, Thomas Julius
    School boards in Minnesota largely function as volunteer or lowly-compensated elected bodies whose members are not professionally trained for their jobs, yet the public demands accountability and results from their local public school districts. This descriptive study examined how a random sample of 322 Minnesota school board members learned to do their jobs under such conditions, as largely autonomous bodies with various differences between school districts. A hard copy of a survey was sent to the identified sample, with a response rate of 66.1%. The study found that, while neither informal, formal, nor external professional transfer skill learning methods solely dominated, whereas Marsick and Watkins (1992) believed that 90% of workplace learning takes place through informal means. Skills requiring large degrees of interpersonal interaction, negotiation, or political awareness were learned predominantly through informal (and to a lesser extent external professional transfer) means, while skills in key duties were largely learned through formal means. Demographic characteristics gathered yielded virtually no differences among groups. Challenges faced by formal training providers of school board members included whether or not the training methods (formal versus informal) were effective for certain tasks or duties, if learning improved using formal methods, and if certain areas not currently covered in formal training might be needed. The study concludes with a call for further research into the experiences of learning to be a school board member.
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    Informal social networks, civic learning, and young women’s political participation in Egypt
    (2017-12) Mohamed, Hassan
    When traditional avenues for learning and participation become inaccessible for marginalized people to learn and participate, people tend to develop other unconventional avenues to learn and participate in decisions that affect their lives. This dissertation examines how rural young women in Egypt utilize self-created social networks as unconventional avenues to learn and advance their civic and political participation. It turns the focus of public participation away from classical, formal Tocquevillian understandings to the unconventional avenues of participation that have remained outside of the scope of much research. It uniquely places the question of the pedagogical and political consequences of social capital into an analysis of women’s social interactions within social networks. The Study adopts constructivist qualitative approach to penetrate women’s realities and capture their unique forms of participation. 49 participants were interviewed through 36 individual in-depth semi-structured interviews and 3 focus group discussions to collect the primary data for this research. The findings reveal that self-created social networks create a space that is not found in other areas of marginalized rural young women’s lives; and that create a unique space for these young women to learn and participate in different civic activities in private and public political domains in Egypt in unconventional ways. Finally, this dissertation sets the groundwork for future study to examine political participation beyond the conventional civic and political activities aimed at marginalized groups in developing democracies around the globe. It also provides policy recommendations for education and international development.