Developing Professional Learning Environments: model and application.

Abstract

In this article we offer a number of insights and instruments to facilitate the realisation of learning communities in professional training contexts, and in the context of adult education in general. We direct our attention towards environments that support the development of professional skills that follow the line of the behavioural sciences, and more especially, management competencies and organisation psychology competencies. Firstly, we give a brief outline of our view of learning and the general approach that this may require. We then go on to present a number of theoretical viewpoints mainly from an experimental, and from a constructionist, situated learning perspective. We structure our argument introducing three concepts: orientation, elaboration and integration. Simultaneously, we illustrate our point with a case: CIGO, 1 a training program that regards the development of variable competencies with reference to change within groups and organisations. Finally, we discuss the model/method more critically, which leads us to its refinement, showing the tensions between the practice of oreinting, elaborating and integrating within a learning trajectory.