Content Meets Practice in Cultural Management Education

The intent of this paper is to expose activity theoretical perspectives to work-based pedagogy through the pedagogical model of the Degree Programme of Cultural Management at Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences (MUAS) and the case study Mikkeli Meets Russia event. The paper brings up the key differences between traditional learning and work-based pedagogy. It presents the strategic partnership between MUAS and Mikkeli Theatre as one form of collaboration in work-based pedagogy. As a conclusion it can be said that requirements of working-life and the main tasks of the University of Applied Sciences put a great deal of pressure onto professional education. In response to these demands new pedagogical models must be developed and researched. Compared to traditional classroom teaching, work-based pedagogy has changed the context of assignments, evaluation and the schedule of the studies. It has also laid more emphasis on the collaborative relationships between students, teachers and working-life.


Introduction
The main tasks of the Universities of Applied Sciences (further UAS) in Finland are teaching, research and regional development with an emphasis on a strong co-operation with companies in each region.The law relating to the Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) (Ammattikorkeakoululaki 9.5.2003/351)defines the main tasks as to provide teaching based on the requirements and developing work of working-life and on research to support individual's professional growth to practice research and development work which benefits teaching and local industrial development.These tasks are also presented through the model of the European University domain (figure 1).
To rise to these challenges many Universities of Applied Sciences have been forced to redefine their pedagogical approach.Different kinds of pedagogical models (Learning by Developing, Tiimiakatemia (Team Academy), Problem Based Learning etc.) have been tried in Finland to better handle all of these tasks.
But what are the prospects of a pedagogical future for UAS? Virkkunen & Ahonen (2008) have presented a description of one possible developmental direction for the Universities of Applied Sciences (figure 2).In the model the historical development is assumed to proceed in two directions.Firstly, the development can be seen to proceed separately from at school and in working-life learning to learning happening in a school's and working-life's interface.
Secondly, the development is seen proceeding from handling the competences required in present working-life in the direction of creating the competences related to developing working-life.Conceptual differences between task oriented competence and expertise are related strongly to this dimension.A new way of action can be found from the interface of these two developmental tendencies.This way of action is based on UAS' and working-life organisations' persistent developing work.The effort to work more towards this dimension of partnerships and co-configuration with working-life organisations was the fundamental basis of the work-based pedagogy of Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences (further MUAS) / Degree Programme of Cultural Management (further CMA).
MUAS/CMA has been worked systematically to develop a pedagogical approach and the structures to make collaboration with working-life partners possible.The work has been done partly through partnerships, which have been classified into different categories.One category, used in the study presented here, is called strategic partnership.A strategic partnership agreement was signed between MUAS/CMA and Mikkeli Theatre in the autumn of 2008.The aim was to provide long-term, more structured co-operation in order to develop the activities of both institutions as well as, eventually, the cultural life in South-Savo, the so-called Lake District of Finland.
The case presented here and studied in my dissertation, is the event called Mikkeli Meets Russia

Teaching
Regional development

University of Applied Sciences
Working and business life

An activity-theoretical perspective to school learning and work-based pedagogy
The theoretical footing of the pedagogical model for the Degree Programme of Cultural Management (CMA) at MUAS is in activity theory (Kuoppala, 2007).Activity theory has been widely adopted within the fields of education, for examining work practices in a range of contexts and to examine organisational and strategy practice (Jarzabkowski, 2010).
Activity theory sees human actions as object oriented, evolving, historically developed and socially constructed.The central principles of activity theory are: activity systems as a unit of analysis, multivoicedness of activity, historicity of activity, contradictions as driving force of change in activity and expansive cycles as a possible form of transformation in activity.Activity theory is based on ideas of Russian theorists Vygotsky (1978) and Leont'ev (1981) about human action.Engeström (1987) has developed it further by emphasising the collective nature of activity (figure 3) (Engeström, 2001).
From a pedagogical point of view, we can see a student, teacher or working-life partner as a subject.Other parts of the triangle are defined by the action The emerging third generation of activity theory takes two interacting activity systems as its minimal unit of analysis (figure 4).This has focused the research efforts on the challenges and possibilities of inter-organisational learning.(Engeström, 2001) Specifically this aspect of activity theory is interesting from the point of view of work-based pedagogy.Can working-life organisations and educational organisations find these shared objects and, through these shared objects, to find the motivation for collaboration and learning?
This chapter examines theoretical perspectives on work-based learning and its distinctions for school learning from an activity theoretical perspective.
If we want to study development, we have to observe changes between the old and new ways of action.Compared to classroom teaching, the workbased pedagogy of MUAS/CMA has some key differences.These differences can be observed through the dimensions of change.What elements of teaching have changed the most in the transformation from school learning to work-based pedagogy?The first clear change is the context for learning assignments.In classroom teaching the main purpose of an assignment is to reproduce and test the students' theoretical knowledge.In terms of activity theory, the text is the object (Engeström 1987;Miettinen 1990).According to Engeström (1987), this purpose is one of the biggest contradictions of school.The outcome of students' activity is to reproduce and modify oral or written forms of a text.In other words, text becomes a closed world, a dead object cut off from its living context.
This contradiction has also an interesting connection with motivation.According to Leont´ev  1978) there cannot be 'objectless activity'.Leont´ev further pointed out that motives cannot be taught; they can only be nurtured by developing the content of the actual, vital relations of the learners.According to Bierly et al. (2000) the paths to individual wisdom are experience, spirituality and passion.These authors maintain that passion is strongly linked to motivation.
Motivation is crucial because it puts the energy of the individual into implementing wisdom.Bierly et al. (2000) define wisdom as the ability to use knowledge for action, a very crucial aspect of learning and teaching.Engeström (1987) points out that taking a text out of its living context reduces it to a meaningless object.Because the object is a source of motivation, we then encounter difficulty with motivation.He continues, saying that going to school is a far cry from a learning activity.Students remain the subjects of separate learning actions, not a whole system of learning activity.Engeström´s contention is that the object of a learning activity cannot be reduced to a text.Rather the text should be a tool.(Engeström, 1987).
Also Miettinen (1990) emphasises that learning should connect with students´ reality.The information should be used to explore and solve problems that are important from the point of view of a society and its students.This would mean new forms of activity in schools and new kinds of connections with the surrounding society.
Engeström and also Miettinen (1990) note that school learning has been characterised by memorisation and reproduction of school texts.It has been accompanied by an instrumental motivation for success, which tends to eliminate substantive interest in the phenomena studied and the knowledge learned.
The fundamental problem is that information learned in this way is difficult to use or apply to life outside the school.
Learning can be observed through the model of school learning (figure 5).This model is an early attempt to analyse school learning from the point of

"THE INFORMATION SHOULD BE USED TO EXPLORE AND SOLVE PROBLEMS THAT ARE IMPORTANT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF A SOCIETY AND ITS STUDENTS."
Content Practice Student view of activity theory.The 'Content' refers to the theoretical and methodological knowledge of studies.Engeström & al. uses the term 'Objectified knowledge (tools)' and uses this term to a great extent for books, theoretical models and computer programs (Engestöm & al., 1984).I call it 'Content' here because it refers more to the study module which is an important unit in educational discourse.In school learning the learning actions happen on the Content-Student axis.There is a risk of leaving out Practice.If the connection between Content and Practice is disturbed, then the students will not necessarily understand the meaning of the Content, since it does not anchor their lives.In work-based learning the risk is that learning actions happen on the Student-Practice axis, leaving out Content.Then the learning actions related with the development of knowledge may be disturbed.(Miettinen, 2009) In the case study Mikkeli Meets Russia (MMR) the learning content for the students was marketing, speech communication and practical training as well as a thesis on the Russian-Finnish event production.The aim of work-based pedagogy is to take into account all of these angles.By combining real-life cases with networks, connecting them with theoretical knowledge, and supporting students in handling reallife cases, we believe that we are at least one step closer to our goal in education.
Edwardsson, Stiwne and Jungert (2010) present in their study what this can mean in practice.They have studied experiences of engineering students in education and employment.Their research was a longitudinal study in which, among other things, the authors identified the turning points, the critical moments, in the students´ study paths.One of these critical points was a thesis related to a real working-life case.Many students considered this moment the best part of their learning experiences.They also considered it to be crucial, because the idea of being employed by the firm, or university, for which the thesis was done was strong.The thesis also took place under similar working conditions, which differed from study conditions.Edwardsson, Stiwne and Jungert's (2010) study pointed out that determining the place for the graduate project seemed to have been an even more crucial deciding point than the choice of the profile courses.There were two reasons.Most students get their first jobs as engineers through their master´s theses.Secondly, according to most students, the opportunities to learn generic skills and cultural values are best realised in extracurricular activities and work contexts.Scardamalia & Bereiter (2010) and Hakkarainen & al. (2004) emphasise similar aspects in their writings about knowledge building and knowledge communities.The meaning of communities and the authentic context of learning is underlined in these theories.There have also been other attempts to analyse work-based learning, such as active learning (Prince, 2004) and student-centered learning environments (Baeten et al., 2010).These studies also show the importance of the real workinglife connections to students and their learning.
Desirable characteristics for a productive person in the modern work place are, for example, a high level of technical skills and the ability to be independent, to improve personal competencies and to develop new methods for coping with challenges.(Hakkarainen et al., 2004) These requirements put a great deal of pressure on professional education.In response to these demands new pedagogical models must be developed and researched.

Pedagogical model of MUAS/CMA
The new curriculum of the Degree Programme of Cultural Management (CMA) in 2007 revolved around developmental assignments.It partly reflected activity theory, that is, the object-oriented aspects of learning.In most of the courses the assignments are developmental assignments, which are based on real working-life cases, for example an event plan.The goal is that the needs and goals of the study module, the R&D project and working life are united with the student´s personal goals in a developmental assignment.The personal goals of the student are defined in the "personal study plan" called HOPS.This combination of goals is illustrated in Figure 6.
Other important tools in the work-based pedagogy of MUAS/CMA, besides the developmental assignments are the competence passport and guiding clinics.One study module usually has several different partners, increasing the challenge in organising this kind of learning.There are also cases in which the same issue is approached from different perspectives given by the study modules (see appendix 1).The term R&D means the research and development project and refers to projects financed by different funding organisations.In these cases the goals of the project include strong, longitudinal and developmental aspects.These projects always include collaboration with working-life partners.In other words, they form a developmental network of partners, project personnel, teachers and students.

Goals
In the model of work-based pedagogy at MUAS/ CMA contact lessons are scheduled three days per week and so-called 'guiding clinics' are held in the afternoons.During the guiding clinic a teacher helps students with their developmental assignments.Two days per week are reserved for concentrating on reading, writing and meetings.This arrangement helps the students to concentrate on one subject at a time, diminishing the fragmentation of the day.
The evaluation tool of the model is called the competence passport.Its purpose is to make visible the students' goal setting and evaluations vis-à-vis the working-life partners.Students receive personal evaluations and feedback from the teacher.They present their developmental assignments to other students for peer evaluation and feedback.By the end of the studies the student has also filed the working life partners´ network to use after graduation, for example, for employment.
The biggest differences between work-based pedagogy and traditional teaching are the authentic developmental assignments, the schedule and the evaluations (see table 1).In work-based pedagogy at CMA every developmental assignment is related with a real case; some assignments have stronger connections than others, but the connection can be found.The aim is that the theoretical content of the studies, so called text, is enforced right away.Adapting activity theory, the text is used as a tool, not as an object.The idea is that cases motivate students to learn.But what is the object of study in a workbased pedagogy?According to Komonen (2007) the object is the authentic developmental needs of working life.This means that the goal of learning is to produce new concepts and models of activity.
A second difference has to do with the schedule.Formerly, teaching was conducted mainly in classrooms five days a week.In this new model contact lessons take place three days a week of which afternoons are devoted to guiding the developmental assignments, a concept that also reflects the change in teaching.The last two days of the work week are reserved for reading, writing and meetings with working-life partners.The hope is to promote deeper learning (e.g.Baeten et al., 2010) by concentration, collaboration and applying knowledge to practice.
A third difference has to do with evaluations.Previously, evaluations were done mostly by the teacher, sometimes supplemented by the student's self-evaluation and/or peer evaluations.In the new model there are evaluations by the teacher, the student and the working-life partner.Evaluations and goal setting are also made more visible by the competence passport.Students become involved in a project through developmental assignments in speech communication and marketing courses.In the MMR case study the event manager's assistant was related to the MMR project through her practical training and her thesis.
The model for work-based pedagogy was also developed through national networks.In the spring of 2008 the UAS' Degree Programmes of Cultural Management founded a working group whose purpose was to compare experiences of pedagogical working models of work-based pedagogy and make changes as needed.MUAS's Degree Programme of Cultural Management was also involved in the KEKO -project, in which a teacher's role and qualifications in work-

Strategic partnership as a form of collaboration for work-based pedagogy
Work-based pedagogy seems to be tied to the field of professional education.Benefits to the learning in a wide sense are beyond dispute.The term "wide sense" refers not only to students´ learning but also to teachers´ and working life partners' learning.This is fundamental change in the discourse of learning.
When we talk of these so called learning communities, we can't avoid practical challenges related to organising the co-operation and promotion of this kind of learning.Such challenges are for example organisational structures (meaning schedules, guiding and activity systems), resources and commitment.If we want to create new learning environments, the new forms of collaboration must be searched.One possible form of collaboration is strategic partnership.The term comes from organisation theories and refers to "a long-term relationship where participants co-operate and willingly modify their business practices to improve joint performance" (Whipple & Frankel, 2000).
According to Koza and Lewin (1998), there are several reasons why firms enter into alliances or partnerships.These reasons also apply to learning and business alliances.When the reason for an alliance is connected with learning, the partners hope to gain information about technologies, products and skills from each other.Business alliances maximise the utilisation of complementary assets.Each partner contributes a distinctive capability through a particular value-adding activity.In a learning alliance the partners seek to reduce a significant information asymmetry between them.In a business alliance the partners seek instead to establish a position in a product or geographic market or market segment.
In their study Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven (1996) claim that firms have cooperated when they have needed to, when they were able to and perhaps when it was popular to do so.Strategic alliance formation is a complex phenomenon involving both strategic and social factors operating within the logic of needs and opportunities for cooperation.Firms in a vulnerable strategic position or strong social position were more likely to work though strategic alliances.
Eisenhardt and Schoonhoven's central conclusion was that the failure to include either strategic or social explanations creates an impoverished picture of alliance activity.(Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven, 1996) When comparing the formation of the strategic partnership of CMA and the Theatre to Eisenhardt & Schoonhoven´s study it can be seen that both CMA and the Theatre were in a vulnerable strategic position at that time.According to memos from that process, CMA was seeking strongly to establish its place in the field of cultural management and South-Savo and also the Theatre had challenges with the amount of visitors and its economical situation.The main point in a strategic partnership between MUAS/CMA and the Mikkeli Theatre was to concentrate on developing work along chosen themes and to establish both quantifiable and qualitative goals for the partnership.(Memo of INTO -pedagogy 9.5.2008)As for the motives of CMA and the Mikkeli Theatre in forming a strategic partnership, there was a willingness to develop something new and highly visible with few resources, as well as a need to find new partnerships, concepts, clients and financial support (Memo of the CMA´s teachers´ meeting 4.2.2008).It appears that the economic reasons for the partnership were quite strong, but also the collaborative aspect for the relationship was strongly present in the goal setting.
Strategic partnerships can be seen as collaborative relationships.Typical features for these kinds of relationships are; long-term, development of new or existing objects, sharing costs and information and willingness to work together to achieve collective goals.Benefits of collaboration are usually both economical and non-economical, as several studies have named them "resource-based and knowledgebased " (e.g.Koza & Lewin 1998;Lowensberg 2010;Barringer & Harrison 2000).The event Mikkeli Meets Russia emerged from a strategic partnership.In the next chapter I will present the case as an example of work-based pedagogy and collaboration.

Mikkeli Meets Russia (MMR): a new event as a learning environment and a vehicle for local collaboration
In the last two years the number of Russian tourists visiting Finland has doubled.Russian tourists inject some EUR 800 million.Approximately EUR 270 million is spent on services and EUR 530 million on purchases.Such sums are an important economic factor, especially in eastern Finland.(Länsi-Savo 19.11.10)The idea that prompted the Mikkeli Meets Russia event was this large numbers of Russian tourists visiting the area of South-Savo.Especially, during the first days of the New Year there was a lack of suitable activities for these tourists.The beginning of the year is also a holiday for Finns, so the problem of satisfying the tourists and Mikkeli area's economic needs while also giving the Finns their traditional holiday was acute.Used in the terms of activity theory, there was a clear contradiction.There had been a great deal of debate about this problem for several years, including in the local newspapers.The idea for such an event emerged in co-operative meetings between members of MUAS/CMA and Mikkeli Theatre.Some twenty different agencies from various sectors in the area were invited to a meeting where the idea was introduced and the interest of the invited agencies gauged.The common feature of those present was that they all had some kind of contact with Russian tourists.The interest seemed to be shared because there were five meetings in which the attendance varied from ten to eighteen -a substantial figure in this locale.After a long planning process the event was carried out from 1 January to 6 January 2010 and it seemed to be quite a success.The event was held again in 2011 and 2012, only the name was changed to Mikkeli New Year Events.There were even more participants in the second year, and the attendance, which was expected to double from 2,500 to 5,000, was surpassed, the number reaching 5,500 (Memo of CMA team meeting 4.2.2011).
Mikkeli Meets Russia was a series of events held at the Mikkeli Theatre, at a local vineyard and at a local ice skating rink.The event was produced by MUAS and the Mikkeli Theatre.The local boxing association, dance school, Regional Business Development Company Miset Ltd, Mikkeli City Orchestra and the local vineyard were also deeply involved in supplying the programme content.A detailed programme is given in Appendix 2. (MMR Final Report, 2010) The goal was to hold an annual event, the main goal being the year 2012 and thereafter.The hope was that the New Year's events in Mikkeli would become widely known in Finland and the area around Saint Petersburg.(Länsi-Savo 24.11.2010) Figure 7 presents the context and process of the event.The term "Russian tourists-discussion" refers to the general discussion, for example in local newspapers, of the lack of programme services for Russian tourists especially at the time of the New Year.This discussion was taken into account in collaboration discussions between MUAS and the Theatre.Based on these discussions the idea of the new event was born.The first MMR led to the annual event and to the R&D project called Promoottori, which had the goal to develop new events for the area of South-Savo.This also offered great learning environments for the students of Cultural Management.
The planning process for the first Mikkeli Meets Russia event started in 2008.The idea took shape in meetings between MUAS, Mikkeli Theatre and local agencies.The purpose of these networking meetings was mostly to discuss financial and time investments.Along with the networking meetings in the spring of 2009 the planning group worked on planning the event.The group consisted of a teacher from MUAS, the manager of Mikkeli Theatre and a representative from a travel agency in the Mikkeli area.The three of them established a structure for the event and arranged for programmes and services during the first week of the year.In the spring of 2009 MUAS obtained financing to support the work of developing the events from the Ministry of Education.The decision was taken to commit one teacher to produce the event.To assist the teacher a student who did her practical training and wrote her thesis as part of the MMR project was employed.
In the autumn of 2009 the production phase began.Other students also became involved in the process.The event was carried out in the first week of New Year 2010.Later in January 2010 the event and the process were evaluated in various meetings, and soon thereafter, planning for the next year´s event was begun.The overall process of developing the first MMR, the key organisations and their participants are presented in figure 8.The key organisations were selected for this table on the basis of their attendance at the networking meetings, and these four organisations participated in every meeting.The term "Others" in the table refers to additional organisations involved in the process.At the top of the table are the phases of the developing process of the event.
The target group of MMR was families with children from Russia and Finland.This pilot project created a basic structure for future planning.The event also served as a learning environment for the students involved.The strongest input was from the students at CMA.The event managers included a teacher from CMA and one of her students.This arrangement was made possible by financial support from the Ministry of Education (see Villacís, 2009).
Six other students from CMA were involved in the process, assigned developmental assignments in marketing and speech communication.There were also students from the Degree Programme of Tourism who carried out the customer survey; students from Health Care took care of first aid, and students from the Vocational school applied fantasy make-up.The aim of my dissertation is to study how did the collaboration between MUAS and the Theatre develop through MMR?To what extent and why did the regional actors become committed to the process and how did MMR change teaching and learning at MUAS? Due to the advanced state of my research process, the results will be available in the near future.

Conclusion
The intent of this paper was to expose activity theoretical perspectives to work-based pedagogy through a pedagogical model of CMA and the case study Mikkeli Meets Russia event.According to recent studies the new ways of learning seems to be here to  Scardamalia & Bereiter (e.g. 2010) knowledgebuilding and ways to teach it.These and several other studies bring up collaborative relationships and their benefits for learning.At the beginning of the paper the activitytheoretical perspective to school learning and to workbased pedagogy was presented.The second part described the pedagogical model of MUAS/CMA.It presented the benefits and complexity of which this kind of learning consists.A strategic partnership was seen in this paper as a form of collaboration advancing work-based learning.The third part of the paper was about the Mikkeli Meets Russia case study as an example of a collaborative relationship and a learning environment.
As a conclusion it can be said that work-based pedagogy has changed teaching and learning at MUAS/CMA in several ways.Compared to traditional classroom teaching, it has changed the context of the assignments, evaluation and schedule of the studies, not to mention the change in teachers' profession (e.g.Mäki, 2012).It has laid more emphasis on collaborative relationships.As a consequence of this, CMA and the Theatre signed an agreement of strategic partnership.Strategic partnership provides longitudinal work for partly shared goals.Based on this partnership, the new event MMR was created and the larger R&D project (Promoottori) relating to event management was funded.At this point it also seems that students are more content to study and they complete their degrees in the prescribed time clearly more often than prior to this change (Havukainen/ Students' feedback, March 2011).But these are just the first signs of the results of work-based pedagogy and they must be explored more deeply.
The goal of teaching is always learning.This paper referred to Engeström´s (1984) model of school learning and related it to the context of work-based pedagogy.Hopefully the potential risks presented in this paper can be avoided and instead, create systems to unify these three pillars of Student-Content-Practice as an ensemble.Through this kind of pedagogical approach we could educate highly competent, networked Cultural Managers for all the different sectors of society.

APPENDICES Appendix 1
Study modules and developmental assignments in CMA for the autumn of 2010

FIGURE 3 .
FIGURE 3. THE STRUCTURE OF ACTIVITY SYSTEM(ENGESTRÖM, 1987) FIGURE 6. GOALS OF WORK-BASED PEDAGOGY(HAVUKAINEN, 2007) ENCATC JOURNAL OF CULTURAL MANAGEMENT AND POLICY"WHEN WE TALK OF THESE SO CALLED LEARNING COMMUNITIES, WE CAN'T AVOID PRACTICAL CHALLENGES RELATED TO ORGANISING THE CO-OPERATION AND PROMOTION OF THIS KIND OF LEARNING.." FIGURE 7. CONTEXT AND TRAJECTORY OF THE MIKKELI MEETS RUSSIA EVENT

ENCATC JOURNAL OF CULTURAL MANAGEMENT AND POLICY
Prince (2004) of this tendencyEngeström &  Kerosuo (e.g.2007)have studied inter-organisational learning,Prince (2004)active learning and stay