REFLECTIONS OF A VISITING CO-OP PRACTITIONER A VIEW OF CO-OP FROM DOWN UNDER

Introduction

How others see us and our systems for cooperative education provide opportunities for critical reflection on our own practices. In the latter half of 1995, during nine and a half weeks of travel and study in Canada and the U.S., I adopted the role of visitor-as-naive-questioner. Formal and informal interviews with a variety of people in co-op together with an examination of some current co-op literature provided the basis for this view of co-op from a visiting academic from the University of Technology, Sydney. Meetings with co-op administrators, university faculty, college staff, union officials and students illustrated that the discourse on co-op in North America shares a number of commonalities with Australia and New Zealand. While our dialogues focused (politely) on our shared values and similarities in practices, I was concerned that this educational tourism should also contribute to my own development as a critical and 'reflective practitioner'(Schon, 1983).

This paper is in three parts. The first part deals with the images and metaphors that I used to construct a comparative overview of cooperative education in Canada and parts of the U.S. The second part reviews some of the perceived outcomes of changes in cooperative education and the theoretical shifts that are occurring in a number of settings. Brief mention is made of an emerging model of cooperative education and a resource booklet that is being designed for Australian students, faculty and employ­ers. The final part of this paper suggests that a bird's eye view of coopera­tive education, has opportunities for widening the existing visions by asking some new questions.

Images and Metaphors

There are inherent dangers for (educational) travellers who attempt to pick up foreign educational ideas and transplant them into their own, very different culture and environment. One of the founders of the study of com­parative education, Nicholas Hans, noted that this practice (still popular with Education ministers) was akin to gathering flowers from exotic places only to see them die when the transplanting to foreign soil had been completed!

It was therefore not the purpose of my visit to engage in cultural bor­rowing by transplanting ideas and practices from North American coop­erative education settings to Australia; or vice versa. Rather, the purpose of my 'Cook's tour' was to begin a dialogue around some commonalities such as adult learning resources, changing co-op practices and perceived differences in outcomes. Readers can judge if the imagery of the educa­tional tourist undertaking the North American 'Cook's tour' is in fact useful for reflecting on their own practices. Perhaps a more familiar image, the North American 'snowbird' in search of (educational) exotica in south­ern climates, can now be turned upside down, by the fact that I left a warmer climate to come to Canada and the U.S.! The search for knowledge has costs as well as benefits.

The metaphors and images that we construct around the process of changing any system (including cooperative education), first need to be made explicit so that other stakeholders in the process can also see the pic­ture. To that end, I found Gareth Morgan's (1994) Imaginization: The art of creative management a most useful tool for critically reflecting on my own views of cooperative education in the context of what appeared to be hap­pening in Canada and the U.S. For example, I found that by listening to others about their co-op experiences and practices, I was holding up a mirror for myself. That is, with a little imagination, the reflections of what I saw and heard, enabled a reimaging of myself as a program coordinator. Through this reflection on cooperative education practices overseas, I began to see the need for adopting different managerial styles for a more collaborative co-op program that focused on co-learning.

This paper should also be placed in the context of the various contrib­utors to this edition of the Cooperative Education Journal. Each writer has attempted to hold up a mirror to their own beliefs and practices in some dimension of co-op education. Each is searching for improving coopera­tive education practices, principles, models or systems. However, as an educational tourist I did not always see the clarity of the vision as expressed in these written and thoughtful papers. Instead, the episodic and transitory nature of any educational visit leaves the viewer with a wide variety of confusing and conflicting impressions. By means of a set of concrete images: 'spider plants', 'strategic termites', 'political footballs', 'building bridges over murky swamps', etc., it is possible to unravel my experiences as part of my own reflective processes. Deconstructing these images and their meanings became for me a valuable learning experience about my own co-op practices and the taken-for-granted assumptions on which they were based.

In the Eye of the Beholder

By sheer coincidence I was in Canada during the recent referendum campaign on Quebec's future. I had been in the U.S. (Texas), when a simi­lar campaign for separation had been waged and lost. My perspectives on both referenda were filtered through Canadian and U.S. media values respectively. As a foreigner, both sets of experiences reminded me that there are fundamental cultural differences that separate people within Canada and between Canada and the U.S. These differences were also evi­dent (but in much more subtle ways) in what I saw of co-op practices.

To put this in context, I first needed to recognize the dominant cultural values in which cooperative education has become embedded. To make sense of cooperative education as defined in North American contexts, (see Ryder, Wilson & Associates, 1987) I had to recognize that different cultural values had shaped each country's system. For example, in the U.S. the values of rugged individualism, competition and local control over private enterprise infused greater variety of cooperative education practices at the College and Univer­sity level. In Canada, these dominant values were mediated by attempts at the Provincial level to set up structures and systems that would safeguard equity and access of students. In particular I was struck by the efforts made by vari­ous government agencies to assist minorities, particularly the disabled. Yet in all of this, there still seemed to be a number of paradoxes that suggests coop­erative education is really a chameleon. For example,

• the stress on individual responsibilities and accountabilities - e.g. stu­dents finding their own placement in industry, was supported by an often cumbersome university bureaucracy that stressed collective accountabilities for course credits. Two sets of values were espoused by stakeholders - employers and universities.
• the importance of informal, social networks in getting access to work placements (often based on gender, race, class ); while the formal university and college system continued with 'measurable' merit, based on grades in academic examinations. The two systems co­exist, but only one is rigorously evaluated.
• the opportunities for a work placement were ultimately controlled by competitive market forces in industry and by the dominant values of the employers; these did not always match the stated educational outcomes espoused by the cooperative education directors (or their brochures) produced entirely within the institutions of higher edu­cation. The two cultures operate to produce 'contested learnings'.
• the 'voices' of the employers were seldom heard, either in the pub­lished literature, the cooperative education conferences or indeed within the planning meetings of cooperative education programs. I was told, "most employers appear to be happy with this system". The taken-for-granted assumptions about co-op being "a good thing" were most universally endorsed by those faculty least affected by the process - those who did not visit students in their workplaces.

I therefore like Morgan's (1994) organizational change metaphor of a spider plant, when applied to changes in cooperative education. The most successful co-op programs appeared to be based on a networking model that suggests that each individual in a co-op program has the opportunity to grow by throwing out new 'feelers' or new 'roots' that in tum flourish as new plants. Moreover, the organic nature of each individual 'plant' is such that it retains viable connections with the source (the university, co­op administrator and faculty) while seeking to make adjustments in the new environment of the workplace.

After discussing the complex business of managing change in any large organization with Gareth Morgan of York University, I found it useful to actually draw this spider plant and explain to colleagues what this meant in terms of developing a new co-op program based on active, experiential learning principles. Instead of abstract conceptualizations or complex organizational charts, I found the processes of drawing (imag­inization) and discussing with stakeholders (the discourse of cooperative education) to be a valuable learning experience. One of the outcomes from this sabbatical experience was a learning journal with pictures that forms the basis of this narrative.

Many persons that I spoke with noted that the strength of any co-op program appears to be directly associated with the quality of the commu­nication links established between the student, the workplace supervi­sor/ mentor and the university-based administrator or faculty facilitator. The spider plant needs to grow and flourish in many climates.

Administrators of cooperative education programs acknowledged that their programs were often 'political footballs'. That is, the cost of each co-op program was often the subject of intense political debate within and between Faculties, particularly as universities in both Canada and the United States are under increasing pressures to downsize and adopt a leaner, flatter and more cost-efficient organizational structure. Under these circumstances, the raison d'etre for the continuation of any large coopera­tive education bureaucracy is under intense scrutiny by economists and management consultants who question the need for direct involvement by Faculty in the whole process anyway. Meanwhile, the naive questioner continued to ask:

1. "Why is it that such an important educational component of your program attracts so little evaluation research funding?"
2. "How do you quantify that your co-op program is universally regarded by students and/ or their employers as 'a good thing'?"
3. "Who is doing research into the workplace learning dimensions of co-op?"
4. "Why do you continue to do it this way when new (e-mail, fax, voicemail technologies) are available for keeping in contact with students and employers?"

One of the outcomes of the debate in universities is that the coopera­tive education community recognizes that it has not been playing on a level playing field. It is also my impression that the goal posts for co-op programs are being moved by various interests who have power to shape the goals and objectives of cooperative education. In Table 1, some per­ceptions from various stakeholders in the debate are purposely contrasted. These perceptions raise questions about what influence they have in our own programs.

The role that employers play in co-op programs is still puzzling. At Northeastern University, I was told that many of the most innovative co­op programs are in fact initiated by employers who have identified special project needs. However, such needs cannot be met unless universities can also design greater flexibility into their calendars and courses. Unfortu­nately, during my short travels I was only once encouraged to meet with these innovative employers 'with a social conscience' to hear what initia­tives they had taken. Although I must take responsibility myself for not initiating more visits to enterprises, I am still left with a dominant view of co-op programs being constructed around university programs, timetables and systems of placement. This 'gap' in my experience has also led me to reflect more critically on my past practices as a co-op coordinator of a post­graduate program. To have meaningful contact with employers requires more than the one off-campus visit, a workshop at the University and some periodic telephone contacts. To develop true partnership between co-op educators and work-based supervisors and mentors, new commu­nication structures must be initiated by all members of university Faculty. This approach has been successfully demonstrated in my own university with smaller co-op programs ( e.g. see Petty & Sietsma, 1994). The question still is: "How do you do this with large numbers of students, dispersed widely across various states and cities?"

The costs of visiting each student on site are becoming prohibitive everywhere. The size of each co-op cohort was often reported as the criti­cal intervening variable in how much involvement there could be by uni­versity Faculty. (Little mention was made of the fact that many Faculty felt pressured to spend more time on research, publications and consultancy work). At the University of Technology in Sydney, in the Faculty of Engi­neering alone, approximately 1200 students are placed annually by two co­op coordinators. More creative solutions to these problems of large numbers need to be found. Greater participation in international co-op forums that focus on these practical problems is one useful starting point suggested by some Canadians (e.g. Reeve 1994).

Although issues of diversity in the workplace, particularly those related to gender, seem to have attained greater attention on the U.S. and Canadian co-op agenda in recent years, there is still a long way to go. In the editorial to a special issue on 'Feminisms in Adult Education' in the Canadian Journal for the Study of Education, the editors note:

" .... one would have thought that redressing the inequities of women would be well underway and a prevalent feature of the field. Regrettably, after more than 25 years since the Report of Canada's Royal Commission into the Status of Women, this does not appear to be the case." (Payeur, Taylor & Warren, 1994. p.i).

Eighty percent of the workers employed in factories owned or controlled by transnational capital are women, most of whom also have second careers as housewives. Yet what Hart (1992) has called the 'housewification thesis' of capital in search of cheaper labour, gets little mention in the co-op literature. For students training as managers, production engineers or HRD personnel, this fact alone deserves some examination as part of cultural changes in the workplace. In fact the co-op literature generally, and co-op administrators in particular, tended to show little interest in these fundamental issues. Hard­edged critiques of the workplace (including co-op) by feminists such as Hart (1992); Biott and Nias (1992); Iannello and others (1992) are not yet making any impact on changing the taken-for-granted structures and practices of many university co-op programs. The feminisation of the workforce has many implications for co-op programs, particularly in the way that they pre­pare people to work in a more diverse workforce.

Recently the The Journal of Cooperative Education devoted its Winter 1994 issue to this theme of Diversity and Cooperative Education'. That this theme was timely was indicated by a major survey of 645 national (US) companies which reported that only 29 percent offered a program for managing diver­sity. Not surprisingly 75 percent expressed concern about managing a shrink­ing labor pool (Moore, 1994. p.9). In Toronto, which is the most culturally diverse city in Canada, if not the world, the issue of addressing diversity had become almost institutionalized. In Ontario, a new government with a man­date to affect 'a common sense revolution', is busily dismantling or privatiz­ing a range of these services and structures (including co-op programs). The bureaucrats that I spoke with suggested that these 'liberal' social policies of diversity are doomed to disappear; with a bang and a whimper.

Yet in my travels, particularly in Canada, I came across some innovative programs that recognized this diversity through their programs. At the George Brown College of Applied Arts and Technology in Toronto, a new training program for the deaf is being implemented that provides workplace mentors with an understanding of 'signing' that enables the integration of deaf people into the workplace. Talks are also underway to link the assess­ment of prior learnings (APL) for mature aged students, with credit in courses that have co-op components. Meanwhile at Northeastern University in Boston, administrators claim to have achieved significant gains in placing minority students with employers. Part of the success is attributed to sup­port from two funded agencies on campus (The Office of the Diversity Coor­dinator and the Disability Resource Center). The needs of employers and the diversity of students available can be linked through a co-op department if effective communication links are maintained by all.

Programs and Models

An experienced traveller always takes a good book as a guide. In addi­tion to my well-thumbed copy of The Lonely Planet Guide on Canada, I had also brought with me draft copies of "The Lonely Planet Guide on Canada" (Gowing et al., 1994). As a member of the team of eight researchers which had produced this draft booklet, my aim in disseminating this was to focus the co-op dialogue on the learning rather than the admin­istrative dimensions. For the educational traveller, the resource served the purpose of conversation starter and often facilitated a dialogue about best practice. That is, I was able to shift (rather selfishly), the focus of discussion from administrative structures, systems, logistics and budgeting of cooper­ative education programs to my own interests in adult learning and models for change in co-op programs. This did not always work!

In late 1994 I had the good fortune to visit Washington D.C. and meet some innovative co-op educators at an international conference on experi­ential learning. A follow-up visit to New York enabled me to also visit a leading co-op college in New Jersey. This school has a proud history of co­op and an enviable track record in the development of co-op programs across a number of Faculties. Although my 'naive questions' may have started an interesting conversation about 'resources for managing work­place learning', there were apparent cultural differences and values that I did not understand. After some preliminary enthusiasm about cross-cul­tural co-operation, the idea died. In all institutions, there are gatekeepers in positions of power who filter out the uncomfortable new ideas. In the parlance of political baseballing: pitching curly questions to a short-stop hitter led to an instant run-out, but valuable learning!

In my 1995 learning journey about co-op in Canadian university set­tings, I travelled to universities in western Canada (particularly B.C. and Alberta) and eastern Canada (Ontario) as well as some institutions in the eastern U.S. During a two month stay at the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, I made contacts with a variety of adult educators, adminis­trators, researchers and some students who provided their impressions of what was considered best practice in their settings. I met no employers.

Although I witnessed a passionate interest in comparative (adult) education, cooperatives and cross-cultural issues (particularly anti-racism) in the workplace, there did not appear to be the same level of interest in the learning needs of practitioners and their employers. Involvement in co­op or 'practicum' type programs were opportunities for research into 'enlightened' employers strategies (Quarter, 1995) or social action through 'participatory action research' (Hall, et al.1994). Part of an explanation is offered by Argyris and Schon (1996):

"We divide the literature that pays serious attention to organiza­tional learning into two main categories: the practice-oriented, prescriptive literature of "the learning organization", promul­gated mainly by consultants and practitioners, and the predom­inantly skeptical scholarly literature of "organizational learning produced by academics." (p.180)

If this perceived dichotomy is to break down in the context of cooper­ative education, it would seem useful to at least find some common ground. One suggested starting point is to commence a dialogue around the various learning processes involved in any work placement. This is suggested in the spiral model in Figure 2.

Although this spiral model is built on the notion that the co-op expe­rience involves three distinct phases of (i) briefing, (ii) project management and (iii) de-briefing, the central unifying focus is the reflective practitioner. That is, students need to learn how to reflect on their own modes of 'learn­ing-how-to-learn' both in the workplace and back in the university setting. Similarly, workplace supervisors need to be trained in how to facilitate this process so that co-op does indeed add value to their enterprise and in so doing also builds the notion of co-learners where each can learn something of value from the other. Building learning partnerships, we believe can best be facilitated through a focus on a work-based project - both the uni­versity faculty and the employer can assist the student in the design and evaluation of such a project if suitable mechanisms can be set up for three­way communication.

From Impressions to Changing Practices

The following impressions about these best practices in Canada and the U.S., raised for me old questions. That is, my visit raised questions that had been previously raised by our research team investigating best co-op practices iJ1. Australian settings.

1.Most handbooks and guidelines on Cooperative Education are primarily written for the administrative needs of students in the program. n this respect they are excellent. However, few if any focused on learning outcomes or learning processes - on the reasonable assumption that they were probably not writ­ten by adult educators. A content analysis of six different booklets raised the question: "Why is it that 'learning' or 'learning about the culture of the workplace' are not identified as perceived benefits of co-op programs?"

In fact it raised a more fundamental question: " How do people really learn from participation in co-op programs?" and "Who benefits?"

A typical answer was provided to employers by the School of Public Administration in the University of Victoria (B.C.). In their Cooperative Education program they state:

"The benefits extend to each of the partners in the program. The university, through liaison with and feedback from the industrial, business and government communities is assured that its teaching is relevant and that its graduates achieve a high level of academic and professional competence. Increasingly, more and more employers are using cooperative education as a bridge to improv­ing productivity. The benefits to employers can be substantial."

They then proceed to outline the six major benefits under these headings:

• Flexible human resource utilization
• More effective recruitment
• Development of current employees
• More effective planning
• Keeping in touch
• Cost effectiveness

No mention is made of the learning process that employers may need to facilitate as mentors and co-learners. In fact the whole co-op process is almost seen as non-problematic because all students, irrespective of their background will be satisfactorily placed, and learning and the develop­ment of competence will proceed automatically. As we say in this country " ... and pigs will fly!"

Most of the people I spoke with and much of the literature that I read espoused the three-way partnership of their co-op program in a manner similar to our own.

The placement student needs to move towards mastery of the workplace environment and to achieve individual goals relevant to their discipline. The workplace supervisor/mentor needs to perform their normal duties, and also, support the placement student. They may require skills in mentoring, counselling and negotiation. The institution lecturer (faculty) needs to remain cur­rent in their discipline, and to represent their institution in a cred­ible way. They also need to visit the workplace. (The Resource for Managing and Enriching Workplace Learning, 1994, p.2)

In most of the Co-op Guidelines that I saw in Canada and North America, there were similar espoused goals and sentiments. However, these written guidelines for students differed from the above manual in one fundamental way - they seldom recognized all the stakeholders as potential co-learners. By contrast the above Resource Manual was specifi­cally written in three parts - each part colour coded and written specifically for each learning partner - the students, the employer/ mentor and the uni­versity-based facilitator. All co-op coordinators who saw these support materials commented positively on this approach, particularly our empha­sis on the learning and mentoring obligations of employers and university faculty. All wanted to know how to make it work within their administra­tive and budget constraints.

2. The administrators of co-op programs, whether located at the Faculty level (as in the University of Victoria in B.C.) or within a centralized University unit for Cooperative Education (e.g. Waterloo University in Ontario), tend to have different priorities from adult educators interested in experiential, informal or non­formal learning processes. As an adult educator, I found myself listening to administrators who had to juggle declining budgets, growing student emollments and demanding employers who sought to impose their agenda on the co-op programs. While empathizing with their administra­tive and financial concerns, I felt that in many parts of Canada (particu­larly Ontario), the political agenda of economic cut-backs was in tum de-valuing the concerns about educational quality (i.e. learning outcomes) from these programs.

"What actions are being taken to evaluate, monitor and assess how learnings from the workplace are integrated into students' courses and programs of study?" This question prompted tacit agreement that thls was needed, but little action or research seemed to be occurring. In fact, co-op is an ideal opportunity for action research.

3. Few Faculty members that I spoke to were directly involved with any co­op programs; even fewer expressed any serious interest in conducting research into this field of practice. Many co-op administrators and Faculty coordinators commented on the fact that they had little or no contact with other Faculties, particularly the Faculty of Education. It seems that co-op lends itself to cross-disciplinary/ participatory research.

As a member of a large School of Adult Education, within an Educa­tion Faculty, I was of course aware of the large amount of research into the teachers' (and nurses) Practicum' experiences. However, this still prompted me to ask: "Why are Faculties of Education doing so little research into co-op occurring in other Faculties?"

Our interdisciplinary approach to research for developing resources for the work placement, the practicum and the clinical experience, were perceived by Canadian academics as 'novel' or 'interesting' but contrary to their dominant funding practices for discipline-based research. I am there­fore left with a powerful prairie image of the grain silos silhouetted against a threatening sky. The silos seem to represent the academic disciplines and research traditions in many university faculties. The threatening sky is the changing economic climate that demands greater accountability and mea­sures of 'performitivity' (Usher, 1995) across existing co-op programs.

4. Finally, these images of silos also helped me reflect on co-op practices within my own university in Sydney. Even though the University of Tech­nology, Sydney has had an espoused policy of cooperative education since it was established almost twenty years ago, we could well ask : "Is there an emerging focus on co-op as a learning process or is it still about prepa­ration for job placement?" Some people I spoke with asked: "Is there really a need to change the focus of this co-op program towards building a ' learning organization'?"

Even if these needs are recognized by employers and program administrators in Canadian, U.S., or Australian universities, it appears that three major hurdles must still be overcome. In Kurt Lewin' s model of change, there needs to be some unfreezing so that the forces for the new change can overcome the inertia of the old, restraining forces. To facilitate a shift towards a greater commitment to co-op as an organizational learn­ing process, there will need to be:

1. 'unfreezing' of the existing systems, by asking administrators key questions such as "Why do we continue to do it this way?" The focus for change needs to be on those administrative structures of co-op that have the greatest potential for student learning e.g. con­verting the mindless record keeping of student's log book into a dynamic, 'reflective learning journal'. Similarly the briefing and de-briefing processes can provide opportunities for co-learning e.g. by using faculty and industry personnel in focus groups. Unfreezing existing co-op systems might include the integration of 'displaced workers' with an assessment of their prior learnings for access to university courses or course credits.
2. interventions and training that facilitate a mind-set shift to process and learning outcomes that are meaningful to all stakeholders in the co-op process e.g. by asking Faculty to assess if students have learnt anything of value while on co-op it will raise new questions about "What's worth learning during co-op? and How does this relate to this course or program?" For example, the completion of an engineering project or a specific task during co-op can also be used to discuss how students were able to learn this and to evalu­ate the role of the mentor as coach, facilitator, teacher or guide.
3. 're-freezing' the new system so that there is an opportunity to con­solidate by considering the questions: "How is this system better than what we had before?" "Who has benefited most from this change?" "How do you know?" The process of institutionalizing new structures, procedures or programs for co-op takes time. Administrators and Faculty need to learn together how they can best 'add value' to an enterprise through their co-op programs. Re­freezing therefore occurs when appropriate research evidence con­vinces all the stakeholders that the changes made represent a considerable improvement over the old system.

From Earning to Learning Organizations

Students in co-op move between organizations that traditionally espoused different values such as learning or earning. According to Field (1995) there is in Australia at least a considerable gap between what is espoused as the ideal of the learning organization and what is practiced to make the vision a reality in enterprises committed to the 'bottom line'. While not having first-hand experience in either Canada or the U.S. of enterprises which espoused some form of learning organization, I gained the impression that at least the concepts put forward by Senge (1989) were well-known but little practiced. More recent commentaries and critiques of Senge's ideas were less well appreciated in organizations that were preoc­cupied with helping students merely get a foot in the door, much less dis­cuss what it was that they were supposed to be learning.

Universities too are not necessarily learning organizations devoted to principles of experiential learning and programs of co-op education. While the following quotation from Ann Jones is drawn from an English text (Wright, ed. 1990), the sentiments expressed were more-or-less echoed by a number of academics who taught exclusively in post-graduate courses, in several Canadian and U.S. universities that I visited.

" .... the purposes of higher education are primarily the pursuit of knowledge, truth and beauty for its own sake .... and students must not be subject to the pressures of the economy, the demands of working life, or the pressures of having to manage their every­day lives ..... There is a strong argument for ivory towers." p. 82

This view is in sharp contrast with a standard U.S. text on cooperative education (Ryder, Wilson & Associates, 1987). These authors extol the value of the work placement in making undergraduate courses more relevant to students as well as being of significant benefit to employers and enriching the outcomes of the university courses that they serve. The point that deserves to be made is that, from my bird's eye view, both perspectives on co-op education persist within the same university and indeed within the same Faculty. Earning and learning need to co-exist within co-op.

In the unpublished findings from a major study of under-graduate stu­dents' performances on a wide range of competencies, it was found that the differences between those who had completed co-op programs and those who had not, were not statistically significant. Further analysis revealed some interesting processes of self-selection in the two samples of University of Vic­toria students. According to one co-op researcher on the team, it appears that students who already have successful prior work experiences, tend to select universities, faculties and courses that offer co-op programs. There appears to be a prior learning style assessment whereby the student reflects (albeit unconsciously) on his or her preferred learning style and therefore selects a program that is most suited to that perceived need. The absence of significant differences between the two groups might be seen therefore as a form of self­fulfilling prophecy - students perform well when they have some control over their preferred mode of learning. Candy's review of available research (1991) suggests that this applies to all adult learners.

In summary then, what came out of this brief but intense Cook's Tour of co-op principles and practices in Canada and the U.S? First, it became increasingly clear that co-op develops and changes through the interven­tions of competing interests - from employers and economic factors, from academics and ideological factors and from students in the choices they make about selecting courses with co-op components. Second, I was left with an impression of considerable energy and enthusiasm to discuss new ideas and new models. However, I also saw evidence of inertia and conser­vatism in systems that had not been critically challenged. For example, a number of feminists explained how the agenda about co-op had been hijacked by male researchers. Their critiques of male-dominated hierarchies and the patriarchal nature of many organizations had created a culture of work in which social relations (particularly gender relations) were often left unexamined. Third, the experience of travelling, discussion and observation of a wide variety of co-op programs helped to focus my own goals on being more reflective about what we do here and what changes might be possible. Finally, I came away convinced that what we were doing in our own uni­versity, was indeed a contribution of value worth sharing with others.

Conclusion

The joy of travelling is that it opens up opportunities for dialogue about shared interests and concerns. This paper has attempted to identify several key issues and a number of questions about cooperative education that deserve to be discussed and researched. Although by now my own interests and biases are transparent, I believe these issues might be sum­marized in terms of (a) learning (b) communication and (c) resources.

A focus on improving learning in the workplace should be of interest and concern to all the stakeholders. This will mean for some a paradigm shift from learning 'content' to a greater understanding of learning processes including reflection and critical thinking. The call for better com­munication systems in co-op is not new and the technologies that can make it happen are now available. What seems to be lacking is the sys­temic thinking required to link employers and university faculty more directly, to make both more accountable for improving the students' learn­ing outcomes from these programs. Finally, it has been suggested that the resources we provide to students (booklets, kits, videos, etc.) should also target the learning/mentoring needs of employers and faculty.

This bird's eye view from 'down-under' suggests that linking the ideals of cooperative education to the vision of building a 'learning orga­nization' (Senge, 1989; Tobin, 1992; Field, 1995) could add value to each set of stakeholders. If we are to convert some of the rhetoric of the 'learning organization' into a reality, we must begin to focus much more rigorously on the principles and practices of 'co-learning' that involves all the stake­holders in co-op - students, faculty, administrators, employers and unions.