Knowledge Work and Knowledge Creation: The Impact of Instruction

The purpose of this paper is to address how instruction influences the creative knowledge work.Based on different perspectives on instructions and the actions followed, this paper reveal how educators,having different competencies of ICT-instructions,influence students’ creative knowledge work, andstudents’ knowledge creation.The paper's contribution to the existing knowledge is founded in a metaphorical phenomenologicalecologicalapproach to learning as wayfinding inspired by Ahmeds´ (2006) phenomenological theory oforientation and Ingold´s (2000) ecological concept of wayfinding. According to Ingold, all wayfinding ismapping and “in wayfinding people do not traverse the surface of a world whose layout is fixed in advance”(ibid. p. 155). Moreover, wayfinding is related to narratives of journeys previous made (ibid.). Learning,understood as wayfinding, address the environment, the social and the relational elements in knowledgecreation. Knowledge creation is a dynamic interplay of tacit and explicit knowledge including four modes ofknowledge conversation take place in socialization, externalization, combination and internalization(Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995)The research question addressed is; how do instructions in respectively teacher and radiographyundergraduate educations influences the student’s creativity and knowledge creation in the use of virtualmedia?The paper is based on a longitudinal case study of two classes of teacher and radiography students’wayfinding within blended learning environments at University College North. The case selection obtainedinformation about various approaches to instruction and revealed dominating various narratives. Theempirical data has been retrieved from a larger study investigating students’ orientation within differentlearning environments including classroom, internship, home and virtual environment. The samplingconsisted of 18 focus group interviews including students, teachers and internship supervisors. Thesampling was carried out among the informants. Focus group interviews were carried out three times andobservation studies four times in the period 2012-2015. The focus of interviews and observations wasstudents knowledge orientation and knowledge creation under the circumstances of blended learning.The overall findings revealed how the students were subject to learning as wayfinding. Furthermore, lessregulated instructions were revealed to generate more creative thinking than well-planned instructions.The teachers ICT competencies and the instructions they carried out highly influenced students’ creativeknowledge creation. Highly structured instructional designs seemed to decrease students creativeknowledge work and limit their knowledge creation. In contrary, low structured, but goal orientedinstruction, deliberated more creativity in students´ study activities and knowledge creation.One significant implication of this study is that didactical reflections must include facilitation of studentsself-directed engagement if creative thinking and knowledge creation are to unfold its potentials.Moreover, sociality, interactionality, spatiality, mobility, emotionality, structures and identity seem to playa crucial part in the creative knowledge development.The study’s empirical foundation is limited to two bachelor degree education. Thus, there is a need formore cross sectorial and quantitative studies to uncover and test the reliability and validity within other educational environments. However, the findings illustrates a connection between instruction and creativeknowledge work which is missing from other studies.The purpose of this paper is to address different kindsof instruction and how these influence the creative knowledge work.
References:Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer Phenomenology, Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham & London: DukeUniversity Press.Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment. Essays on livelihood dwelling and skill. New York:Routledge.Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create thedynamics of innovation? New York: Oxford University Press.