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The Forum on the Future of Public Education

The Forum on the Future of Public Education strives to bring the best empirical evidence to policymakers and the public.

The Forum draws on a network of premier scholars to create, interpret, and disseminate credible information on key questions facing P-20 education. The Forum pursues original research and facilitates collaboration between researchers and policymakers to examine the pressing issues shaping the future of public education. Key constituencies of the Forum include scholars who influence research, policy and practice; policy makers and policy making bodies at all levels; members of the media who influence public opinion; foundations, organizations, business groups and others who support, criticize and advocate for reform; and citizens who make choices about education for themselves and their children.

America is witnessing a drastic redefinition of the policies and practices associated with “public education.” Too often, discussions around the future of public education are strong on passion but short on actual evidence. The Forum for the Future of Public Education is filing that gap by building a resource of objective, research-based insights on key educational issues. We are establishing an open venue- a true public forum to debate controversial and consequential policy issues that will shape American’s future.

EPOL Research Brownbag - Ron Jacobs

Mar 2, 2017, 12:30 by ketchum@illinois.edu
Ronald Jacobs of the College of Education at Illinois will give a March 15, 2017, talk called "Conceptualizing Knowledge Work for Human Resource Development" at the Education building in Champaign.

March 15, 12-1pm by Dr. Ronald Jacobs (Room 22)

Conceptualizing Knowledge Work for Human Resource Development

This Brown Bag session represents Dr. Jacobs’ scholarly focus and reports information from a manuscript now in preparation.  Jobs are undergoing change, and most of the change is towards knowledge work. Knowledge work requires employees to use their thinking abilities to an extent more than ever before. The concept of knowledge work was first suggested by Peter Drucker in his text, "Landmarks of Tomorrow" (1957).  Today knowledge work has become part of jobs at many different levels, including: frontline employees, technicians, engineers, and managers.

While knowledge work has received much attention in the management literature, there has been limited attention given to the topic in the human resource development literature.  As a result, two fundamental questions about knowledge work have not been fully addressed, which the human resource development discipline might be uniquely suited to help address.  The first question is what are the characteristics of knowledge work that differentiate it from other patterns of work behavior? The second question focuses on how organizations might reliably develop employees to perform knowledge work?

This Brown Bag session will have the following goals:

Review the various definitions of knowledge work B. Propose a definition of knowledge work relevant to human resource development, based on the notion of knowledge-based tasks C.  Discuss an employee development framework that has been implemented in organizations to help employees learn to perform knowledge-based tasks D.  Discuss research implications to advance understanding of knowledge work.