Exploring positive deviance for enhancing learning outcomes in higher education and training

Kionig, L; Vold, T; Braun, R

Exploring positive deviance for enhancing learning outcomes in higher education and training

Kionig, L Vold, T Braun, R

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Publication Type:: Conference Proceeding
Citation:: 2016 15th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, ITHET 2016, 2016
Issue Date:: 2016-11-28

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Kionig, L	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Vold, T	en_US
dc.contributor.author	Braun, R https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4153-8769	en_US
dc.date.available	2016-07-01	en_US
dc.date.issued	2016-11-28	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	2016 15th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, ITHET 2016, 2016	en_US
dc.identifier.isbn	9781509007783	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/120212
dc.description.abstract	© 2016 IEEE. Due to the terror actions of the 22nd of July 2011 there has been an increased focus on the preparedness and also training for handling and managing crisis. Organizations and municipalities are obliged to have plans for handling crises and plans for training their employees. The focus is often to learn from what went wrong and most reports focus on the improvement areas, implying that there are faults and deficiencies. Positive Deviance (PD) is about looking for success stories, when the statistics imply that it should not be a success. The term PD was in the 1990's introduced and explored by nutrition professor Marian Zeitlin in her book 'Positive Deviance in Nutrition' at Tufts University. Also visiting Tufts University was Jerry and Monique Sternin which brought the ideas further and developed it as a tool for social change. From the PD webpage www.positivedeviance.org, we find: 'Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges. The Positive Deviance approach is an asset-based, problem-solving, and community-driven approach that enables the community to discover these successful behaviors and strategies and develop a plan of action to promote their adoption by all concerned.' However, to look for the small successes and explore 'why this was a success', is also possible in other areas than within social change. Which (minor) elements contributed to how this actually had a successful ending, even if the surrounding factors indicated failure? In finding these minor details that contributed to an unexpected success lay a learning potential that is worth exploring, for instance in the area of Crisis Training. One student group in the Crisis Communication course received a task that was about discovering and explaining PD in crisis communication in a municipality. This student group was struck by the fact that the respondents were so positive and elaborated so freely about the success stories and how they seemed to reflect upon the reasons why the successes came about. Their respondents very much appreciated this type of focus, rather than 'defending' the cases that went wrong or were unsuccessful.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	2016 15th International Conference on Information Technology Based Higher Education and Training, ITHET 2016	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1109/ITHET.2016.7760748	en_US
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess
dc.title	Exploring positive deviance for enhancing learning outcomes in higher education and training	en_US
dc.type	Conference Proceeding
utslib.for	0805 Distributed Computing	en_US
utslib.for	0806 Information Systems	en_US
utslib.for	100510 Wireless Communications	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology/School of Electrical and Data Engineering
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CRIN - Realtime Information Networks
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - GBDTC - Global Big Data Technologies
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access	*
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

© 2016 IEEE. Due to the terror actions of the 22nd of July 2011 there has been an increased focus on the preparedness and also training for handling and managing crisis. Organizations and municipalities are obliged to have plans for handling crises and plans for training their employees. The focus is often to learn from what went wrong and most reports focus on the improvement areas, implying that there are faults and deficiencies. Positive Deviance (PD) is about looking for success stories, when the statistics imply that it should not be a success. The term PD was in the 1990's introduced and explored by nutrition professor Marian Zeitlin in her book 'Positive Deviance in Nutrition' at Tufts University. Also visiting Tufts University was Jerry and Monique Sternin which brought the ideas further and developed it as a tool for social change. From the PD webpage www.positivedeviance.org, we find: 'Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges. The Positive Deviance approach is an asset-based, problem-solving, and community-driven approach that enables the community to discover these successful behaviors and strategies and develop a plan of action to promote their adoption by all concerned.' However, to look for the small successes and explore 'why this was a success', is also possible in other areas than within social change. Which (minor) elements contributed to how this actually had a successful ending, even if the surrounding factors indicated failure? In finding these minor details that contributed to an unexpected success lay a learning potential that is worth exploring, for instance in the area of Crisis Training. One student group in the Crisis Communication course received a task that was about discovering and explaining PD in crisis communication in a municipality. This student group was struck by the fact that the respondents were so positive and elaborated so freely about the success stories and how they seemed to reflect upon the reasons why the successes came about. Their respondents very much appreciated this type of focus, rather than 'defending' the cases that went wrong or were unsuccessful.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/120212