Expansive Learning at Work

1684 Words7 Pages
1. INTRODUCTION Learning encourages innovation and creative thoughts. It also enhances the traditional approaches by acquiring the continuous learning for attaining the desired goals. This essay will focus on the work of three vital researchers such as Barry Zimmerman (2000), Etienne Wenger (2000) and Yrjo Engestrom (2001) who presented theories on Self-efficacy, Social Learning System and Expansive learning respectively. This essay compares these three theories and analyze how the perspectives of these learning theories influence human resource development practices in an organization and concludes by finalizing the theory out of these three that is most important at the workplace and benefits the employees. 2. OVERVIEW OF THEORIES 2.1 Self-Efficacy Self-efficacy is one's belief of having the ability to perform a particular task and accomplish desired goals. The feeling of self-efficacy plays important role in achieving the goals. According to Zimmerman, self-efficacy motivates the students and helps them take new challenges in life by consistent learning. Self-efficacy differs from several motivational constructs. Self-efficacious students are hardworking, more emotionally stable and can handle difficult situations efficiently when compared to inefficacious students. The self-efficacy concept was explained by Zimmerman by using references from diverse authors. Bandura (1977a,1997) described self-efficacy as individual judgments of one's capacities to arrange and execute approaches to accomplish desired goals. The self-efficacy level depends upon the task difficulty. He additionally discussed human motivation with reference to outcome expectations. He analyzed that even though self-efficacy and outcome expectations both influence motivation, however self-efficacy plays a vital role in the human motivation as the kind of outcomes individuals
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