HRD Educators' Views on Teaching and Learning: An ...

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ADHXXX10.1177/1523422315572618Advances in Developing Human ResourcesCho and Zachmeier

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HRD Educators’ Views on Teaching and Learning: An International Perspective

Advances in Developing Human Resources 2015, Vol. 17(2) 145–161 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1523422315572618 adhr.sagepub.com

Yonjoo Cho1 and Aaron Zachmeier1

Abstract The Problem. The development of human resource development (HRD) practitioners and scholars in university-based courses and programs is a significant but underexplored area of research. No recent scholarship has addressed the views of those who teach HRD subject matter, the methods they use, or the challenges they face in their work. Moreover, although HRD is recognized as an international field, HRD education has not been examined with an international perspective. The Solution. The purpose of this study was to examine HRD education as an international phenomenon. An overview of the research on HRD education is provided, and the results of a thematic analysis of interviews with 40 HRD educators who teach in higher education institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia at three annual HRD conferences in the United States, United Kingdom, and Taiwan are presented in four broad themes: the nature of HRD, contextual differences, curriculum, and teaching and learning. The Stakeholders. This study will be of interest to those who teach and study HRD and develop curriculum for HRD courses and programs for higher education institutions and other organizations, as well as to those who hire HRD graduates. Keywords HRD education, scholarship of teaching and learning, international perspective In Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate, Ernest Boyer (1990), then president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, proposed 1Indiana

University, Bloomington, USA

Corresponding Author: Yonjoo Cho, Indiana University, 201 N. Rose Ave., Bloomington, IN 47405, USA. Email: [email protected]

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four kinds of scholarship: discovery, integration, application, and teaching. “Theory,” he wrote, “leads to practice. But practice also leads to theory. And teaching, at its best, shapes both research and practice” (p. 16). The scholarship of teaching and learning in human resource development (HRD) has been neglected (Zachmeier & Cho, 2014), and there is a sense that university-based HRD education—defined here as programs and courses concerned with HRD subject matter that are taught in higher education institutions—is not adequately responding to societal, economic, and technological changes (Ardichvili, 2012; Ardichvili & Oh, 2013; Holden & Griggs, 2010; Sambrook & Stewart, 2010). HRD subject matter—focused on core processes and structures for teaching, learning, development, and change at the individual, team, organizational, community, national, and international/global levels—is taught in multiple departments, academic programs, and courses, including education, management, psychology, social work, and public policy. This multitude of academic locations for HRD subject matter speaks to its vibrancy and relevance. As there is virtually no integration or synergy among these areas, however, it is difficult to speak of a common HRD profession, track its evolution and current status, or assess the quality of professional preparation of future practitioners and scholars. As the field is focused on facilitating change and development through learning, HRD academic programs have a unique role in providing relevant, rigorous, and highquality professional preparation. To this end, we sought to examine the topic of HRD education from multiple perspectives. We hope to encourage dialogue and share information about the teaching of HRD subject matter in HRD programs and in related academic programs that focus on workplace-based teaching, learning, and development. In this opening article, we provide an overview of the current state of HRD education research and an analysis of the views of scholars who teach HRD subject matter in higher education institutions in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Problem Statement and Research Purpose HRD is focused on learning and development in organizations, but the field has paid little attention to the learning and development that take place in HRD courses and programs (Kuchinke, 2001; Sambrook & Stewart, 2010; Zachmeier & Cho, 2014). Hoping to inspire further research on the significant but underexplored area of HRD education, Kuchinke (2001) proposed an agenda that included issues related to the subject matter, institutional characteristics, and evaluation of university-based HRD courses and programs. But the body of literature on issues of teaching and learning in HRD programs and courses is still small, and many topics in Kuchinke’s research agenda have not been explored. A recent review of the literature identified only 48 peer-reviewed articles in five representative HRD journals (four Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD)-sponsored journals and the European Journal of Training and Development) that addressed university-based HRD education (Zachmeier & Cho, 2014). Research on HRD education is also geographically narrow: Most has focused on the United


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States and the United Kingdom. Moreover, many of the claims that have been made about the content and quality of HRD courses and programs are not supported by empirical evidence. It is time to reexamine what we know about HRD education, to explore new trends and issues, and to do so with an international perspective. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the trends, challenges, and opportunities faced by HRD educators (i.e., those who teach HRD subject matter). By comparing and contrasting the views and experiences of HRD educators in different parts of the world, we hope to identify informed approaches to HRD education and provide a current picture of the diversity that exists within HRD as an academic subject.

Review of the Literature HRD first appeared as an academic subject at George Washington University (GWU) in the late 1960s as an effort to train professionals who themselves provided training to U.S. government employees (Nadler, 1970). A proliferation of academic programs in the 1980s was accompanied by a good deal of thought about how to develop HRD practitioners (Gentilman, 1983; Olson & Berne, 1980; Pace, Peterson, & Porter, 1986) and what it meant to practice HRD. In particular, the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) competency studies (McLagan, 1989; McLagan & Bedrick, 1983) produced a model for HRD practice that described the work and competency requirements for HRD roles, and that defined standards for HRD work. McLagan’s (1989) seminal work led to the classical definition of HRD integrating three areas of development: training and development (T&D), career development (CD), and organization development (OD). HRD programs and courses have long been offered in higher education institutions in many other parts of the world as well, and there appears to be growth in the teaching of HRD subject matter. Research on HRD education, however, has not kept pace with the growth and development of HRD as an academic subject. What we know about HRD education comes mostly from a small body of research conducted in past decades under very different economic, technological, and social conditions. The methods and important findings of six previous studies are summarized in Table 1. Gaudet and Vincent (1993) provided the first comprehensive picture of universitybased HRD programs in the United States. A decade later, Kuchinke published research on graduate HRD programs in the United States (2002) and a comparison of graduate HRD programs in the United States and the United Kingdom (2003). More recent studies have focused on HRD education in Europe (Sambrook & Stewart, 2010), South Korea and the United States (Lim, Song, Choi, & Kim, 2013), and master’s level programs in the United States (Zachmeier, Cho, & Kim, 2014). Another important contribution to the research on HRD education was made by a special issue of Journal of European Industrial Training (renamed European Journal of Training and Development in 2012; Holden & Griggs, 2010), which included articles on specific issues associated with the teaching and learning of HRD subject matter, such as the challenges presented by online learning (Callahan, 2010), the benefits


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Table 1. Comparison of Previous Studies on HRD Education. Authors

Method

Gaudet and Survey Vincent (1993)

Kuchinke (2002) Review of program and course descriptions and syllabi Kuchinke (2003) Review of program and course descriptions and syllabi

Sambrook and Literature review Stewart (2010) and survey Lim, Song, Choi, Review of program and Kim (2013) and course descriptions and survey

Zachmeier, Cho, Review of course and Kim (2014) and program descriptions

Sample

Major findings

Administrators of 194 bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and certificate programs in 122 U.S. institutions selected from the 1990 ASTD directory A total of 55 graduate programs selected from the 1996 ASTD directory with faculty members who were members of AHRD A total of 55 U.S. graduate programs selected from the 1996 ASTD directory and 28 U.K. graduate programs selected from the membership of UFHRD

HRD curriculum focused on instructional design and training and development

Considerable variation among HRD programs in program structure, curriculum, and institutional affiliation

Substantial differences in content and structure between the United States and United Kingdom. Focus on instructional and adult learning in the United States, and HRM in the United Kingdom. UFHRD*, EHRD*, and Lack of scholarly interest AHRD members in HRD education Graduate programs at Heterogeneous curricula 101 institutions in the in the United States; United States selected homogeneous curricula from Roberts (2012) in South Korea. and 15 in South Korea Considerable overlap in selected through web perceived importance searches; AHRD, KSLP*, of subject matter and KMA* members A total of 108 master’s The nature of HRD as programs in 100 U.S. an academic subject institutions selected varies with institutional from Roberts (2012) location (i.e., school of and ASTD’s online education, school of directory business)

Note. UFHRD = University Forum for HRD; EHRD = The European HRD Network; KSLP = The Korean Society for Learning and Performance; KMA = The Korean Management Association.

of work-based learning (Shaw & Ogilvie, 2010), and the potential of critical pedagogy (Armitage, 2010). The studies identified in Table 1 have made important contributions to the understanding of HRD education, but because each used different methods and focused on Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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different program levels, any comparison of their findings is problematic. At best, they provide a kaleidoscopic view of a large and complex topic. By talking to HRD educators about their views of and experiences with HRD education, we hope to connect and contextualize the disparate findings of previous research.

Method The purpose of this study was to examine the trends, challenges, and opportunities faced by HRD educators. The following questions guided our inquiry: •• What are the views of HRD educators regarding their students, institutions, and the subject matter that they teach? •• How do strategies for teaching HRD in university-based programs and courses differ from country to country? •• What are the challenges inherent in the teaching of HRD? •• Do HRD programs and courses provide adequate preparation for future HRD practitioners and researchers? To answer these questions, we conducted interviews with 40 educators, all of whom were senior faculty members or occupied leadership positions in their programs or in various HRD professional associations. All of our interview participants had experience teaching HRD subject matter in higher education institutions in 11 countries (the number of participants from each country is in parentheses): the United States (19), the United Kingdom (10), Malaysia (2), South Korea (2), Australia (1), Germany (1), Ireland (1), Japan (1), Netherlands (1), Taiwan (1), and Thailand (1). In addition, as 3 U.S. participants were originally from China, India, and Turkey, we had an opportunity to ask questions about HRD education in those countries. We conducted semistructured interviews in person, by telephone, through Skype, and, in two cases, by email. We prepared a list of questions for our interviews based on an extensive review of the literature on HRD education (Zachmeier & Cho, 2014; see the appendix for the interview protocol). As we encouraged our subjects to discuss the topics related to HRD education they felt were most important, each interview took a unique course. We first contacted six authors of the AHRD Standards for HRD Graduate Program Excellence (AHRD Standards, hereafter) developed by the AHRD’s Academic Standards Committee (Chalofsky et al., 2008). This little-known document reported on “standards that could be used to assess and enhance the quality of graduate programs in HRD” (Ruona, 2009, p. 44). We recruited more participants through a snowball approach (Creswell, 2013) in which we asked the initial participants to help us make contact with additional participants at three HRD research conferences (the 2013 AHRD conference in Washington, D.C.; the 2013 UFHRD [University Forum for HRD] conference in Brighton, United Kingdom; and the 2013 Asia Chapter of AHRD conference in Taipei, Taiwan). To analyze the interview data, we applied a six-step thematic analysis procedure as recommended by Braun and Clarke (2006): (a) transcription, reading, and rereading; Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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(b) generating initial codes; (d) identifying themes; (d) reviewing themes; (e) defining themes; and (f) producing the report. We provided participants with transcriptions of their interviews to validate our data. Participants supplied additional thoughts and corrected spelling mistakes, incorrect abbreviations, and missing statements.

Findings We present the results of our thematic analysis below. The themes we identified are grouped into the following four broad themes: the nature of HRD, contextual differences, curriculum, and teaching and learning.

The Nature of HRD Fifty years after HRD was first mentioned in print (Harbison & Myers, 1964), there is no consensus about what the field is. Our interviews inevitably turned toward this issue, both in terms of HRD’s nature and purpose. Our participants expressed views that ranged from absolute certainty that HRD was definable (“HRD is a discipline.”) to comfortable acceptance of its amorphousness (“We don’t know what HRD is, and we never will.”). The many conceptions of HRD provided by our participants follow. HRD is a business field, an education field, an applied field, a professional area, and a behavioral science. HRD is not a discipline, or it is a discipline. It is both interdisciplinary and not interdisciplinary. HRD is a process, a consultative approach to the diagnosis of organizational issues. The purpose of HRD is to organize learning, to promote employee learning and development, to bring about change, to solve problems, to develop human capacity, to improve organizational performance, and to develop communities and nations. HRD is an academic label, a loose affiliation. HRD is humanistic. “HRD,” one participant said, “is whatever people want it to be.”

Contextual Differences The academic field of HRD was first developed in the United States (Kuchinke, 2003; Stewart & Sambrook, 2012) and was then adopted by other countries. The roots of HRD in the United States, however, are different from its roots in other parts of the world. HRD was a convenient label for a new field with diverse origins. These diverse origins are evident in some of the unique characteristics of HRD education in the countries represented in this study. The United States. Institutional location is a long-standing issue in the United States. The first HRD program (a master’s program at GWU) was taught in a school of education, and HRD is commonly thought of as an education field. HRD’s place in schools of education, however, has long been uneasy (Kuchinke, 2004). Many of our U.S. participants spoke of the difficulties that schools of education presented: lack of understanding of HRD’s focus on organizational life, incongruity with other departments (most of which focus on K-12 education), and recent mergers of unrelated departments.


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Some U.S. participants proposed that schools of business might be a more appropriate location for HRD programs, that schools of business have more prestige, attract better students and faculty, and offer more opportunities for collaboration with other departments. Other participants identified potential problems that might come with a business school location: that HRD’s learning focus might be lost and that HRD programs would not fit into business school accreditation schemes. Most of our U.S. participants expressed the view that HRD programs are not a perfect fit wherever they are located, but that they could also thrive in any location with adequate support. As one participant said, “Home is where the funding is.” The United Kingdom. HRD had a strong identity and a growing number of programs in the 1990s in the United Kingdom (Stewart, Lee, & Poell, 2009). Since then, the number of dedicated HRD programs has decreased significantly. Some U.K. participants spoke of the “marginalization” of HRD and lamented its lack of recognition outside of academia. One partial explanation for HRD’s lack of stature is the influence of the national qualification body Chartered Institute of Personnel Development’s (CIPD) de-emphasis of the term “HRD,” which seems to have begun soon after the merger of two government-sponsored institutions: the Institute of Training and Development (an HRD association) and the Institute of Personnel and Management (a human resource management [HRM] association) in the 1990s. Some participants suggested that even though most of the dedicated HRD master’s programs that existed in the 1990s have disappeared or now exist as single courses in HRM programs, more students are studying HRD subject matter than ever. HRD, they said, occupies a strong and secure position within HRM. Europe (Germany, Ireland, and Netherlands). Due to the small number of participants from Europe, we can offer only a few observations about HRD education in this region. In Europe, HRD as an academic subject is disparate and HRD subject matter is found in programs with a variety of labels. The Research Forum for Education and Society’s Online Directory of Masters Programmes in Learning and Work (http:// www.b.shuttle.de/wifo/l&w-pro/=index.htm) lists 110 examples in 23 European countries. HRD-related programs listed in the directory include adult education, vocational education, HRD, HRM, and organization (work). In Germany, HRD is an uncommon label in academia, but academic courses and programs that focus on workplace learning abound. In the Netherlands, which once had a handful of well-regarded HRD programs, only one faculty chair is currently dedicated to HRD. Whereas HRD programs were once housed in schools of education in that country, there has been a recent shift toward teaching HRD subject matter in schools of management. In Ireland, as in the United Kingdom, HRD exists as single courses within HRM programs. Asia.1 In some Asian countries, such as China and Japan, HRD is a nascent field. In others, such as Turkey and Australia, HRD tends to be subsumed under HRM as in the United Kingdom. In Thailand and Malaysia, however, HRD is considered a field on its own. Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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Faculty in HRD and related programs in many Asian countries are expected to have received their education in the United States and the United Kingdom. Some participants spoke of the challenge of adapting theories developed in the West for the unique contexts of their own countries. Thai and Malaysian participants brought our attention to a distinctive feature of HRD education in their countries: a strong focus on community development. The first HRD program in Thailand was developed at the National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA) under the seventh national socioeconomic national plan in 1992 with the help of Len Nadler, who also established the first HRD program in the United States at GWU. Participants noted that in the early days of the program, the curriculum at NIDA was nearly identical to that of the U.S. counterpart. In South Korea, due to its emphasis on lifelong learning, national HRD (NHRD) is experiencing strong demand. One example of this, our South Korean participants told us, is a high-profile research team that has developed a model for the assessment of NHRD systems in developing countries (Oh, Ryu, & Choi, 2013). Some East Asian participants expressed the view that academics in their countries are well connected to practitioners and mentioned the popularity of practitioneroriented research topics like global talent management and corporate universities. Our South Korean participants spoke of their country’s prominence in practitioner-oriented professional orientations such as ASTD (South Korean members have been second only to U.S. members for almost a decade) and their organizations’ rapid implementation of state-of-the-art practices. In contrast, we were told of a deep disconnect between academic institutions and industry needs in India (see Ghosh & Barman, 2015). Students at the master’s level have little work experience, and university curriculum tends to emphasize theory over practical skills. Participants from Japan, Korea, and Taiwan also informed us that higher education institutions were not the only providers of HRD education. In these countries, companies’ HR departments, corporate universities, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and consultancies also prepare HRD practitioners. For example, Samsung’s HRD Center recruits and invests in the development of line managers and employees from diverse units to carry out its HRD efforts. One of our Korean participants stated, “Corporate HRD leads the field.”

Curriculum The list of topics that our participants identified as core HRD curriculum is long. It includes HRD principles, assessment and evaluation, instructional systems design (ISD), adult education, OD, research methods, instructional technology, systems theory, consulting, coaching and mentoring, leadership development, and to a lesser extent, CD. These topics are similar to those listed as “Core Theory in HRD” in the AHRD Standards (Chalofsky et al., 2008, p. 3). Also long is the list of topics our participants felt were missing from HRD curriculum: corporate social responsibility, ethics, law, governance, policy, economics, performance analysis, leadership, diversity, CD, globalization, community development, national HRD, informal learning, workforce development, sustainability, intercultural


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competence, multinational HRD, e-learning and technology, historical analysis, and critical HRD. In spite of these perceived gaps, many of our participants expressed the view that HRD curriculum has improved over the years as the body of HRD research that informs it has grown. Curricular content depends on many factors. Many of our participants spoke of the importance of involving various stakeholders from industry and government in the development of HRD curriculum. Some, mostly in the United States, where there is no widely accepted set of curricular standards, spoke of the effects of student demand on curriculum. Student demand for functional topics like ISD appears to be shrinking as demand for strategic topics like OD and leadership is growing. In all countries, students appear to value the practical over the theoretical. While many of our participants identified specific skills and knowledge that students should acquire in an HRD program, most emphasized the importance of broad competencies and orientations. One U.K. participant said that HRD educators should “let the content float.” HRD graduates, our participants said, should be confident among the leadership in their organizations, comfortable working in and with other cultures, and accepting of ambiguity. They should have an understanding of how organizations work, how people learn, and they should be able to contextualize and adapt the theories they have learned in their coursework. Accreditation and standardization. HRD educators in the United States have long debated the benefits and detriments of accreditation of programs and standardization of curriculum (Dooley, 2005; Kahnweiler, 2009; Watkins, 1990). The majority opinion among U.S. participants regarding accreditation was unfavorable or at least skeptical. Some of our participants spoke of the potential for abuse in accrediting schemes. Others spoke of the complete lack of support within the HRD community for an attempt in the mid-2000s to establish an accrediting body for HRD programs. A commonly expressed view was that accreditation might promote the development of small or new programs but that it would not help large or established programs. A less common view was that accreditation could help employers and HRD graduates by making the meaning of a degree in HRD clear. Many of our U.S. participants expressed more favorable opinions regarding standards for HRD curriculum. We asked U.S. participants for their views of the AHRD Standards (Chalofsky et al., 2008), a report that establishes guidelines for various elements of HRD programs, including curriculum. Our participants identified several potential benefits of the standards: that they could be adopted voluntarily and implemented to various degrees; that they could be used for self-evaluation, benchmarking, program development, and visibility; and that they could facilitate communication with administrators and possibly protect programs from “generic” school of education or school of business standards that are not applicable to HRD. In spite of these more positive views regarding standards for curriculum, many U.S. participants said that any kind of standardization was anathema to the ever-changing and context-dependent field of HRD.


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In the United Kingdom, accreditation and standardization have long been a reality due to the influence of the CIPD and student demand for professional qualifications to accompany academic degrees. Many of our participants from the United Kingdom expressed a grudging acceptance of the role of the CIPD in providing professional qualifications to HRD graduates and determining HRD curriculum, but some also said that what they taught in their HRD classes was restricted and there was “less opportunity to do as much critical work with students.” One participant said that her fellow faculty members had chosen not to seek CIPD accreditation, in large part because of a high percentage of foreign students, to whom CIPD membership would not have any value.

Teaching and Learning Many of the issues our participants discussed that related to teaching and learning seemed to stem from student demographics. Many of our participants, especially in the United States and United Kingdom, expressed strong opinions regarding the experience and maturity necessary for HRD students. HRD, many participants said, is difficult to teach to young students. A few participants suggested that HRD may not even be appropriate for those without work experience. Nonetheless, HRD is taught to undergraduate and graduate students in every country represented in this study. Our participants shared a number of activities and approaches for teaching HRD at different levels. For less experienced students, recommendations included guest speakers, field trips to organizations, and internships. For more experienced students, recommendations included action learning, critical reflection, and flexibility. The primary goal at the undergraduate level, some of our participants said, is to provide students with useful theories and models; at the graduate level, the goal is to provide practitioners with the structure and vocabulary necessary for career advancement. In countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, Japan, and Taiwan, where HRD exists as an academic subject primarily in the context of HRM, many participants spoke of the challenges of overcoming students’ lack of previous exposure to HRD or preconceptions about HRD (e.g., that it is a “soft” subject). In addition, teaching HRD as a single course in an HRM program makes it difficult to give students more than an overview of the field. Participants from the United Kingdom said that eventually, however, their HRM students tend to place a high value on the concepts and techniques of HRD. While linking theory that students learn in class to practice tends to be a challenge for those who teach inexperienced students, building students into critical thinkers is a common issue for those who teach experienced students. Some participants told us that developing critical thinking was especially challenging in an online context, which is increasingly common in the United States. A few participants expressed the worry that rapid changes in instructional technology were forcing educators to focus on technology to the detriment of their teaching and scholarship. Participants from every region spoke of challenges and opportunities associated with new technologies. Some described online education as “impersonal” and “lacking intimacy,” and possibly inadequate for HRD subject matter. Others spoke of the need for HRD educators to prepare Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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their students for responsible use of technology in practice. Those with positive and negative views of technology expressed the opinion that “the future is online.”

Discussion In this study, we provided an overview of the current state of research on HRD education and an analysis of HRD educators’ perceptions of and experience with teaching and learning in HRD. We identified four broad themes of themes through a thematic analysis of interviews with 40 HRD educators: the nature of HRD, contextual differences, curriculum, and teaching and learning. In this section, we discuss the significance of the study, its limitations, and some of the implications of our findings for research and practice. We also suggest possibilities for future research.

Significance of the Study This study is the first to focus on HRD educators’ perceptions of and experiences with HRD education, and it is one of the few studies in which HRD education is examined from an international perspective. With increasing globalization, HRD has become an international field (Garavan & Carbery, 2012; Hayton, Piperopoulos, & Welbourne, 2011). HRD education must also be viewed as an international phenomenon (Cho & Kuchinke, 2014; Kuchinke, 2001; Kuchinke & Cho, 2013). Many of our participants, especially those from outside of the United States, spoke of the dominance of U.S. and U.K. perspectives in HRD as an academic subject. In Asia, for example, HRD is commonly thought of as an American transplant. There is a clear need for indigenous methods, models, and materials for teaching HRD subject matter (McLean, 2004; McLean, Kuo, Budhwani, Yamnill, & Virakul, 2012). One commonly recommended method for grounding HRD subject matter in a local context is to develop stronger relationships between academic programs and practitioners and communities, as in Asian countries such as Thailand and South Korea.

Implications for Research One issue that arose in many of our interviews was the lack of research related to the development of HRD practitioners in academic programs. This state of affairs puzzled most of our participants as much as it did us, but a few possible explanations were offered. In the United States and many Asian countries, the strong emphasis on research in many higher education institutions might diminish the role of teaching and learning. In the United Kingdom, the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the government’s periodic assessment of the quality of research in higher education institutions, assigns more value to journals that may be less inclined to publish research on teaching and learning. Some of our participants also expressed the view that AHRD has not encouraged the scholarship of teaching and learning in HRD. As we mentioned above, we found no consensus about the nature of HRD as a field or as an academic subject, but it became clear that there were two prevailing views regarding HRD’s place in the world. According to one view, HRD is a distinct field with Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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a unique body of knowledge, and its boundaries should be established and protected. But this was the minority view among our participants. According to the more popular view, HRD is just one of many fields focusing on issues of learning, development, and performance. It shares common goals with other HR fields, such as OD and HRM (Cho & Yoon, 2010; Ruona & Gibson, 2004) and other learning fields, such as workplace learning (Ghosh, 2014), ISD (Demps, 2008; Hardré, 2003), and vocational education (Hill, Kuchinke, & Zinser, 2013). Relationships among HRD and other fields and academic programs are mutually beneficial and may be necessary to HRD’s continued relevance. After 40 in-depth conversations with HRD educators, we were left with more questions than we had when we began. Many questions have to do with current practice in HRD courses and programs. What are the methods and content of HRD courses and programs, particularly in online learning environments, in countries other than the United States and United Kingdom? Some questions are related to the outcomes of HRD courses and programs. What kind of jobs do HRD graduates get? Are the skills and knowledge they acquire in academic programs adequate for the workplace? Another set of questions has to do with improving HRD education. How do we best address the needs of HRD practitioners, employers, graduates, and students? What is the role of professional associations such as AHRD (Jacobs, 2013) in promoting HRD as an academic subject? How can HRD form partnerships with related fields?

Implications for Practice While our participants told us of many country-specific issues in HRD education, they also spoke of a universal value that HRD offers in every country: All organizations, whether they are public or private, for-profit or nonprofit, need the “soft stuff” of learning and development (McGuire & Garavan, 2013). The distinction between HRD and HRM (Lee, 2015; McGoldrick, Stewart, & Watson, 2001), however, should be viewed as “separate yet complementary processes,” because “both HRM and HRD are part of the people function of organizations” (McGoldrick & Stewart, 1996, p. 9). In this way, infusion of HRD subject matter into related academic programs, such as HRM, technology management, policy studies, and educational administration may allow for growth in HRD education. Some of our participants spoke about the uncertain future of HRD in academia. In the United States and United Kingdom, there is a sense that the population of academics is aging and that a life in academia is less appealing to current graduate students. For some, this was a cause for concern. These participants spoke of the possibility of a leadership void in the HRD community in the near future. For others, it was not troubling in the least. If the field of HRD faded away, they said, another related field could take its place.

Study Limitations The primary limitation of our study is the composition of our sample. While one of our goals was to address the lack of research on HRD education from countries other than


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the United States and United Kingdom, most of our participants (72.5%) teach or have taught in U.S. or U.K. institutions. We interviewed HRD educators from many parts of the world, but in doing so we have barely scratched the surface. Another limitation, also related to our sample, is that we included only HRD educators’ perspectives in our analysis. Educators certainly play a starring role in the story of HRD education, as they develop the courses and programs, and deliver the content. As one of our participants said, “The program is the faculty.” However, the perspectives of other stakeholders, namely, HRD practitioners, employers, graduates, and students are also important to see the relevancy of HRD education. Yet another limitation is the descriptive and exploratory nature of the study. Our inquiry was grounded in previous literature on HRD education but not in explicit theory. Generalizability or theory building was not our primary research goal. Instead, we attempted to investigate HRD educators’ perspectives on teaching and learning in national and international contexts.

Conclusion HRD subject matter carries a specific mandate to improve practice and to do so in ways that are morally, ethically, and academically sound, and justified by rigorous research. In contrast to policy analysts or labor market economists, HRD professionals practice in real-world settings: commercial, community, religious, and nongovernmental organizations; the military; primary and secondary schools; and government institutions. To prepare individuals for such varied applied work, academic programs carry a particular responsibility. Traditionally, the primary responsibility of the university has been the transmission of declarative knowledge. Knowledge of theories, concepts, models, and academic research is necessary but insufficient as preparation for responsible practice. The often-deplored lack of relevance of academic research in many social science fields, including HRD (Cho & Yoon, 2010; Short, 2006; Short, Keefer, & Stone, 2009; Tsui, 2013), is related to this deficit. Recent changes in HRD education, however, present an opportunity for scholarship. In the United States, leading HRD programs have lost faculty members or have lost prominence as schools of education restructure and combine disparate programs. In the United Kingdom, most HRD programs have been reduced to single courses. In the Netherlands, there is only one faculty chair dedicated to HRD. At the same time, online programs have increased in number in the United States, and HRD programs have appeared in East and Southeast Asia. It seems, as some of our participants suggested, that HRD subject matter is increasingly popular at higher education institutions throughout the world. These changes call for us to revisit Boyer’s (1990) conception of scholarship and to determine what it means for educators, students, practitioners, employers, and the field itself. Aristotle famously said, “Teaching is the highest form of understanding” (Boyer, 1990, p. 23). We agree, and we hope that our investigation of an underexplored area— how to develop future HRD scholars and practitioners in ways that are appropriate for specific cultural and institutional contexts as well as increasingly international workplaces—and the articles that follow in this special issue of Advances on teaching and learning in HRD will lead to a higher form of understanding of the field of HRD. Downloaded from adh.sagepub.com at INDIANA UNIV on April 22, 2015

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Appendix Interview Protocol 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

How do you define human resource development (HRD)? What are the essential components of an HRD program? Does HRD have a natural affinity with any other disciplines? Is HRD an independent academic discipline? Is HRD education expanding or contracting? Is current HRD education sufficient for practice? Is there anything missing from HRD education? What is a more appropriate academic home for an HRD program—a school of education or a school of business, and why? 9. What role does or should technology have in HRD education? 10. What role does or should standardized curriculum have in HRD education? 11. Do you have any other comments? Acknowledgments We are deeply grateful to the 40 human resource development (HRD) educators we interviewed for their time and genuine interest in this study.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Note 1. We included Australia and Turkey in Asia because Australia is part of the Asia-Pacific region and Turkey is part of Eurasia.

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Author Biographies Yonjoo Cho is an associate professor of instructional systems technology at Indiana University. She worked as a human resources professional for more than 10 years in South Korea, both in business and in academic sectors. Her most recent position was MBA director and visiting professor at KAIST Business School. Her research interest centers on action learning in organizations, based on her experience as an external facilitator in large companies’ action learning programs. Other research interests include HRD and women in leadership. She received her PhD degree in instructional technology from the University of Texas at Austin. Aaron Zachmeier is an instructional designer at the University of California at Santa Cruz and a doctoral candidate in instructional systems technology at Indiana University. He has worked as a technology consultant, project manager, and faculty developer in the United States, Mexico, and India, and has taught courses on technology topics at Empire State College (State University of New York) and Indiana University. His research interests include HRD education and workplace learning.
