| Learning from experience is a fundamental part of leadership and management development. The purpose of this study was to investigate how department chairs learn from experience in the academic workplace. This study examined the research question: To what extent do department chairs learn from experience in the academic workplace from employing learning tactics, as defined by Dalton (1999)? The learning tactics were action, thinking, feeling, and accessing others. The research question was operationalized by three subquestions. The constructivist paradigm of inquiry guided the methods and procedures chosen to address the research questions.; The study used a triangulation mixed-method design that included quantitative and qualitative methods. Data were collected from a stratified random sample of department chairs from post-secondary schools in Washington, D.C. The quantitative data indicated that few chairs used all four learning tactics in the workplace. There were statistically significant differences found between men and women and their use of the thinking and feeling learning tactics. There were no statistically significant differences found between African-American and Caucasian chairs in their use of the learning tactics. There was evidence of learning versatility, as defined by Dalton (1999), by only 20% of the department chairs. Qualitative data from the critical incident open-ended questions were content analyzed using inductive and deductive methods. These data indicated that department chairs used learning from past experiences when faced with on-the-job challenges. Also, there was no evidence of learning versatility found in the critical incident narratives. |
