The facilitative role of workplace supervisors
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2000
Closed Access
| Filename | Description | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 01Front.pdf | contents and abstract | 188.6 kB | ||
 | 02Whole.pdf | thesis | 14.11 MB |
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NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. Access is restricted indefinitely. ----- This study explores the issues involved in the suggestion that workplace supervisors
should act as facilitators of the learning of their staff. This suggestion is quite prevalent
in the literatures that focus on workplace learning and the learning organisation.
The different traditions of adult education have different conceptions of the nature of
facilitation. Each makes different assumptions about the role of the facilitator, the
nature of the learner, the ethical context and the degree of interpersonal interaction
involved. These differing conceptions are explored and the ethical, political, personal
and interpersonal assumptions of each conception are described.
The workplace is considered in order to develop an account of its characteristics as a
context for facilitation. A dual view of social contexts, built on integrative and
coercive assumptions is employed to illuminate a range of issues, including workplace
ethics and identities.
The empirical phase of the study was conducted in two parts. The first involved
interviews with existing employees focusing on their work, relationships with
supervisors, and the latter's roles in their learning. Secondly, different participants
were interviewed frequently during the first three months of their time in a new job.
The interviews revealed a disjunction between the participants developing workplace
identities and their sense of themselves as whole persons, and discovered a
fundamental concern to build and save face for their workplace identities. A trial
model of trust building is then employed to explore the participants experiences of
trust with their supervisors. The burden of trust with supervisors is found to be
asymmetrical, with the fundamental burden falling on the supervisor who needs to be
able to trust each staff member to perform-and with staff having to prove their
trustworthiness in this regard. These requirements are found to run counter to
the requirements for trust in most facilitative relationships, where the burden of trust falls
on the learner-with the facilitator needing to prove trustworthy.
The role of the participants' supervisors in the participants' learning is examined
closely. While all the participants strove to prove themselves trustworthy, and while
most of their supervisors developed a sufficient level of trust in them, none of the
participants developed sufficient trust in their supervisors to enable them to reveal
issues in their learning that reflected adversely on their workplace identities. All hid
learning issues from their supervisors and found others, including their peers and the
researcher, to help them in their reflections. Their supervisors were highly influential
but had only indirect involvements in the learning processes of their staff.
Finally the possibilities for supervisory facilitation as might be implemented for each of
the traditions' of adult education are considered. This concluding analysis draws on
the central issues already explored: workplace identity and the demands of face
building and saving, trust building and betrayal, and ethics. [t concludes that the
workplace context is more and less capable of supporting facilitative relationships
between supervisors and staff, depending on the conception of facilitation being used.
Some broader implications for concepts such as the 'learning organisation' and for
teacher-student relationships in higher education are drawn.
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