CSO 589: Advanced Training Techniques ~ Course Outline and Reading List, September-December 2016 Semester

COURSE OBJECTIVE

To engage current and prospective trainers and training managers in a joint quest for innovative solutions to the training needs and competency aspirations of different levels of an evolving workforce.

COURSE DESCRIPTION/CONTENT

Key concepts. The nature and patterns of learning in human society. The historical evolution of the learning process. Linkages between Knowledge, Attitudes and Practice (KAP), respectively. Applying the KAP model and its derivatives to learning and training situations. Training typologies and training specifications. Selected theories and models of learning, training and skill-acquisition, Un-packaging, repackaging and fine-tuning identified training techniques. Devising innovative solutions for today’s problems. Linking identified training solutions to real-life challenges, and to selected substantive areas (clusters) covered in the Department’s M.A curriculum.

CLICK: Course Outline and Reading List

The Apprentice's PKA

In a recent blog piece, focusing broadly on KAP, I remarked as follows:

"The 'KAP approach' is indeed not immune to this ebb and flow of a puzzle. However, its focus of attention is not directly on the easier path to the knowledge-action space. Rather, the focus is on the (taken-for-granted) flow of effects that one should typically see, empirically if not so readily theoretically, from imparted knowledge, as the starting point, to attitude (a concept which subsumes/ presumes values) and on to behavior or practice. Clearly, however, K is not always the starting point of the great variety of human ventures that we can bring to mind. The explorer's mind-set, for example, does rearrange the KAP sequence into another: APK." 

READ: The Explorer's APK

Here, I want to say something very briefly about PKA, which is qualitatively different from KAP and APK. I make use of the confounding and yet familiar imagery of the apprentice. I want to say that, first and foremost, the apprentice 'apprehends' the responsibilities and expectations of his or her 'chosen' work-role through, and by means of, practice. That is to say, the 'practical' apprehension of a specific form of practice makes the apprentice. A keen look at the phenomenology of apprenticeship supports this eye-view. So, too, the weight of definitions of it.

Apprentice training is a form of output training, as defined by Mullins (1999: 689-90). According to him, output training is typically conducted by small enterprises or organizations, whose driving concern is to optimize output from new employees or newly deployed equipment within the shortest time possible. The goal is to defray the costs of such employment or deployment in the shortest time possible, and/or to justify the investment risk involved (Mullins, 1999: 689-90). 

Mullins (1999: 689) adds that "This type of training is centred around the individual, is performed in-house and is only initiated when new equipment, product or persons are introduced into the organisation." 

Mullins' definition is consistent with several others. For example, The Working Centre defines apprenticeship as "a workplace-based training program for people who want to work in a skilled trade" (see ww.theworkingcenter.org). One online business dictionary likewise defines apprenticeship as a:

"[A method] in which trainees learn a craft or trade by hands-on experience while working with a skilled worker, usually under a written or implied indentureship agreement."

Here is a more extended definition by Fuller and Unwin (2013: 2):

"Apprenticeship should be a model of learning for skill formation which takes the apprentice on a journey to becoming a full member of an occupational community. This assumes that there is a defined occupational community to join; and that apprenticeship is a recognised and formalised route to achieving the relevant occupational expertise required to join the community. What follows from this is that each occupation has a defined knowledge-base and an associated curriculum which has to be completed and examined in order for the apprentice to show that they meet the requirements to practice as a recognised member of the community. As a result, the apprentice has at the outset a clear sense of the occupation they are aiming for, and that if they meet the requirements they will gain the necessary certification for employment in that occupation." 

These definitions suggest that the apprentice's course or trajectory of skill-acquisition does not track the standard 'KAP approach'. Instead, what we witness is a PKA process whereby learning begins emphatically with Practice, which generates Knowledge -- certainly of the 'how-to' variety. Knowledge culminates in Attitude change, or attitude settling. 

One may of course prefer an alternative view, whereby the apprentice's P in due course branches simultaneously and equally (in)to K and A, with the two eventually fusing into a sort of K/A, or even A/K. However, I find PKA to be more logically sustainable.

REFERENCES
Fuller, Alison and Lorna Unwin (2013) "Apprenticeship and the Concept of Occupation: Briefing Paper" London Institute of Education, University of London (www.gatsby.org.uk)

Mullins, Laurie J. (1999) Management and Organisational Behaviour. London: Financial Times Pitman Publishing

The Explorer's APK

In my most recent piece, focusing broadly on KAP, I remarked as follows:

"The 'KAP approach' is indeed not immune to this ebb and flow of a puzzle. However, its focus of attention is not directly on the easier path to the knowledge-action space. Rather, the focus is on the (taken-for-granted) flow of effects that one should typically see, empirically if not so readily theoretically, from imparted knowledge, as the starting point, to attitude (a concept which subsumes/ presumes values) and on to behavior or practice. Clearly, however, K is not always the starting point of the great variety of human ventures that we can bring to mind. The explorer's mind-set, for example, does rearrange the KAP sequence into another: APK." 

I want to say something very briefly about APK, making use of the iconic imagery of the explorer. It is that A, the quester's attitude or frame of mind -- the love of the unknown, the wanderlust -- is at the heart of the explorer's "journey." It is the starting point of all that is possible, and all that is venturesome.  

The journey itself, to the destination and back, is the P, fashioned by years of applied attitude. The goal is to bring as much of the destination back to the place of departure. In more realistic terms, it is to bring back the destination's artifacts and, or at the very least, the narratives (embellished or neat) by which those who stayed behind are to apprehend the journey there. It is in this sense that accounts of Gulliver's Travels and Zheng He's (Cheng Ho's) voyages are simultaneously forms and narratives -- or blueprints or models -- of practice; and likewise those of Ibn Battuta, Magellan, Columbus, Vasco Da Gama and Stanley.

What the explorer returns with, thus, is the K, in its multiplicities. He or she returns to a world which K has the potential, perhaps, to enrich and to subtly change -- via the retold stories of the going and the return, and of the things seen and unseen along the way, and of the ended journey. All this in turn via the adulation of those left behind and now, with rejoicing rejoined. The explorer returns, indeed, with the memories and the Knowledge -- the sights and sounds, the feel, the tastes, the scents -- of newly known or more widely prized things.

I also said in my earlier piece that other permutations can easily be imagined as well. I imagined the following:

           KPA
APK   AKP
PKA   PAK.

It will take another time to talk about them.

READ: The Apprentice's PKA



PS (March 26, 2016): Just seen this on Twitter: ASK ~ Triangle of Success! Does S stand for P here?