Cultivating the Learning Within Projects Book

Foreword     x
Preface     xiii
Acknowledgements     xv
List of Figures     xvi
Glossary of Abbreviations     xvii
Introduction     1
Why it is important to learn and understand learning within projects     2
Developing a project learning libido     7
Important methodological and contextual information concerning the contents of this book     8
The structure of this book     15
Conceptualizing Learning Within a Project     17
Organizational perspectives on learning     17
The cognitive perspective of OL     20
The behavioural perspective of OL     21
The sociological perspective of OL     21
The relationship of OL to individual learning     23
The cognitive dimension of learning     25
The situated dimension of learning     30
Situated learning theory     30
Communities of practice     35
Why focus on the situated dimension of learning for cultivating learning within projects?     42
Sociological Perspectives and Learning in Projects     45
A view from within the field     46
A view from outside the field     52
Concept of aproject team from a learning perspective     56
The pentagon of project situated learning behaviour     63
Cognitive Style     66
The theory of cognitive styles     67
How does cognitive style relate to learning style?     69
The methods of understanding cognitive styles     71
Cognitive styles assessment in the project team case study     80
How did the cognitive styles of project participants in this project case impact their situated learning behaviours?     84
The match/mismatch of cognitive style to project information-processing demands     85
Participants individually and collectively selecting situations which align with their cognitive style     86
Predominance of a particular cognitive style type across a team     88
Summary     90
Learning Relationships and Pyramid of Authority     93
Learning relationships     94
The importance of understanding the learning relationships     94
How did the learning relationships exhibited in this project case, impact participants' situated learning behaviours?     97
Pyramid of authority     108
What is a pyramid of authority?     108
The importance of managing politics for learning in projects     110
How did the pyramids of authority of project participants in this project case impact their situated learning behaviours?     115
Summary     132
Knowledge Management and Situational Context     136
Knowledge management     137
Managing knowledge flow in projects     137
How did the project participants' knowledge management approaches impact their situated learning behaviours in this case study project team?     143
Situational context     149
Situational context and situated learning     149
How did the situational context of this project case impact the situated learning behaviours of project participants?     151
Summary     164
The Project Learning Opportunity: Where to Now?     167
A summary of the key issues for project learning     167
The conceptual issues     168
The methodological issues     173
Limitations of this study and recommendations for future research     175
Some questions to further stimulate your thinking on this topic     177
Summary     178
References     181
Index     198