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Learning from experience: The professional practical knowledge of female educational leaders in Nebraska
Abstract
During the past fifteen years, leadership training programs have provided formal continuing education to women who have contended for positions of power within educational organizations. But there has been little to guide the bulk of their learning--that development of expertise which occurs informally in the workplace. It is from this context of everyday professional practice that four streams of theoretical inquiry have emerged: the nature of professional knowledge, practical knowledge, professional experience, and experience-based learning. All four theoretical areas informed this study which investigated the professional practical knowledge developed by female leaders through their workplace experiences. A qualitative study was conducted, investigating three female leaders who had been participants in a formal leadership training project for vocational and adult educators in Nebraska from 1985-1995. Descriptive profiles (including perceptions of encouraging/hindering environmental factors and the educators' career-mobility strategies) provided a context for the knowledge derived from their experiences in professional practice. Findings indicated that these leaders express their practical knowledge in terms of three dimensions: Images, which serve as meta-organizers for their Principles, which express a coherent sense of purpose, and Rules, which guide their behavior as well as their professional stance. These three dimensions are oriented differentially toward thought and action. Upon a consideration of the data in relation to the literature on learning from experience, it was concluded that, through her experience-based learning processes, each leader had developed a coherent system of practical knowledge, integrated in such a way as to generate the consistent practice which supported her professional achievement. A theoretical generalization of these systems produced a model of practical knowledge as held and used in the leaders' professional work. Recommendations for research include further exploration of this model, particularly in relation to the thought-action continuum which practical knowledge was found to share with a model of experience-based learning. Recommendations for practice include its dissemination through leadership training programs to increase the capacity of professional women's self-directed lifelong workplace learning.
Subject Area
Adult education|Continuing education|Vocational education|School administration
Recommended Citation
Lavin, Ruth Ann Schmidle, "Learning from experience: The professional practical knowledge of female educational leaders in Nebraska" (1997). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9736941.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9736941