1.3 Methodology

prevalent. As individuals transition from school to the world of work and navigating labour markets, they need to be able to thrive in uncertain and changing contexts. This places an emphasis not on structured thinking and simple problems but on complexity, on being confident to contribute to complex naming and solutioning and navigating unknown futures.

1.3 Methodology

Research study participants were sampled from two groups of postgraduate students in a Singapore Education Faculty. Students were engaged in the dialogic inquiry of problems encountered in their workplace. They were encouraged to raise questions, to analyse tentative answers and experiment with possibilities, and to question long held assumptions and paradigms. The educators for each group surfaced the idea for this research project with a shared interest in dialogical inquiry (Stack, 2007; Bound 2010) and in knowledge co-construction. As we were practicing these approaches in our own classrooms, we wanted to find out more about how students experienced these approaches and what the possibilities were for expanding the approach beyond the boundaries of our own classrooms in the adult education sector in Singapore.

The research questions posed were:

4. How do adult learners in formal graduate courses develop awareness of their inquiry and how do they co-construct knowledge?

5. How do adult learners perceive the relevance and value of dialogical approach to teaching and learning?

6. What are the implications of the dialogical approach for the practices of adult educators?

1.3.1. Profile of Research Participants

Participants were recruited from two different Master’s level courses at a Singapore University. Lessons were delivered in classrooms, and online (e.g. forum discussion). The Workplace Learning and Performance (WPL&P) course had 30 participants and Computer Supported Collaborative Learning and Knowledge Building (CSCL&KB) had 14 participants.

Workplace Learning & Performance Participants (WPL&P): The 30 participants in this course were aged between 21 years to 70 years, 57% of them were male (Figure 1.1). Ninety percent of participants were of Chinese ethnicity, and the rest were of Malay, Eurasian, and Indonesian ethnicities. About 70% of the participants were teaching and training professionals from both the preemployment and continuous education and training sectors, about 24% were managerial and administrative professionals, and the rest were self-employed. In terms of work experience, the number of years ranged between 5 to 36 (Figure 1.2). Class and group discussions, student artefacts and assessment artefacts were collected by the researchers and sixteen participants were interviewed.