Teaching-Learning Ecologies: Mapping the Environment to Structure Through Action
通过三家结构工程和三家硬件工程公司的实地数据，发现两种不同的教学学习生态，并展示环境和技术约束如何通过行动塑造组织学习活动，进而影响组织结构。
Although organizational theorists have long argued that environments shape organizational structures, they have paid little attention to the processes by which the shaping occurs. This paper examines these processes by showing how environments shape teaching and learning activities, which in turn shape structure. Observational field data from structural engineering groups in three firms and hardware engineering groups in three firms revealed that the two occupations exhibited different patterns of learning episodes and different distributions of actors across those episodes, or what, following the work of Roger Barker, we call two distinct teaching-learning ecologies. After detailing the differences in the two ecologies, we show how these differences emerged from patterns of behavior that were influenced by unique sets of environmental and technological constraints. By demonstrating how actions transform environmental constraints into organizational structure, this paper indicates how research on individual learning in organizations can speak to larger concerns in organizational theory. Moreover, by adopting a synthetic and pragmatic approach to individual learning as a social activity, the paper highlights the role of teachers in workplace learning and casts doubts on the existence of a universal model of how individuals learn at work.