CORE QUALITY CRITERIA: CULTURE OF LEARNING

Main aspects important for quality assurance in the case of a specific quality area (i.e. culture of learning)

INDICATORS
(CORE AND ADDITIONAL/DESCRIPTORS)

What might indicate quality in the partnership?

EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT INDICATORS

What evidence is available to support the inclusion of the indicators?

Strategy in place for capitalizing learning within partnership

Creating a climate for open dialogues, an environment of challenge and trust , exploring issues from many points of view and perspectives , acting as "critical friends" .

Consciously work through groups and alliances in order to build support for joint actions.

Community involvement - stakeholder buy-in - formal structures to allow dialogue and discussion - mechanisms exist to act on recommendations

Seizing new opportunities

Modelling and visualize local partnerships using semantic networks (Germany) 

Semantic networks allow their users to find information quickly and classify them. Furthermore, it is possible for users to index any content quickly and easily and to accumulate knowledge in institutions and companies.

The software tool “Topic Navigator”, which was developed in the context of the Apollonia project (Berlin Marzahn-Hellersdorf), carried out under the German “Learning Regions” inititative allows both, the modelling and visualization of local partnerships in the form of semantic networks (Schmidt T., Schötz, G., 2005). Content (topics) can be described with respect to its various connections within a network. Thus, local partnerships can be built on a common knowledge base, rendering transparent the distribution and sharing of knowledge within the network. Topics, relevant to a local partnership can be represented and associated, using freely scalable visualization tools. A prototype has been presented at the International Conference of the Learning Regions and the R3L initiative.

“Topic Navigator” was tested with 10 educational organizations and staff developers who had agreed to join a series of workshops, in order to discuss in a confidential circle the major topics of organisational change, emerging from the shift to lifelong learning. The software tool was used to determine the structural challenges going along with this paradigmatic change, and correlations within and between solutions found.

The first step was to generate “Topics”, that is to identify indicators and criteria, necessary for the description of structural relations on systems level, such as nature of problem, themes and aspects of this problem, topics associated with the problem, persons and organisations concerned with the problem, activities / projects developed to address the problem. In a second step, associations between the topics were mapped, according to “types of associations” and “sets of associations”.

Finally, the topics and structural relations between them were rendered into a complex map, making visible the distribution and sharing of knowledge within the network. Moreover, to determine the relevance of topics and their associations within a local network, led to a noticeable expansion of analytical tools and unexpected boost of creativity.

The reason for this might be seen in the fact, that medium and large scale networks comprise a huge complexity of relationships and problems, which in simple conversation cannot be derived.

Interpersonal dialogue (especially in groups) only temporary does allow for the abstraction depth necessary to make visible the “hidden” parameters underlying the network process, and organisational learning (Preisinger-Kleine, 2003).

Last not least, tools like “Topic Navigator” might enable partnerships to more effectively cope with the challenges emerging from competition in networks, by making transparent areas of common interest and collaboration on one hand, and uncovering untapped resources as well as claims at stake on the other. Reassessment of answers to problems thus can be based on in-depth knowledge of the “hidden curriculum” determining the local partnership.