Transcript Theorising in professional learning and practice

Understanding
of professional practice and learning
in globalised work
Tara Fenwick
University of Stirling
transition … derived from
• the Latin transitus
(passage; crossing)
• the Late Latin transire
(go over, cross)
• the Latin trans (beyond,
across)
Why understanding transitions matters
• Psychological – personal struggle, dissonance,
challenges to self-concept. Counselling to provide
personal coping strategies
• Organisation/management studies – planning &
‘managing’ workers’ change
• Policy/regulatory view – ensuring quality &
reliability of professional decision-making
Why understanding transitions matters
• Educational interest – understanding & supporting learning
processes in transition
a sociological starting point …
Transitions in
New Public Managerialism
less knowledge authority &
discretionary judgment
multiple competing stakeholders
and regulatory agencies
increased audit measures
and performativity
personal transitions
in professional practice
•
•
•
•
unfolding career
role/responsibility
knowledge
migration
discourses of transition
• as problem needing
management
• as perpetual, inevitable
• as ‘becoming’
• as institutionalized path
• as turning point
• as journey
Educational assumptions about transition
• people can become ‘prepared’ through
knowledge
• what’s coming is known
• we should develop strategies to ‘cope’
Researching transitions –
insights and problems
psychological approach
• Life tasks & self concept
• Cognitive coping
strategies
– Planning & reflection
– Translate goals and selfbeliefs to action
• Emotional coping
strategies
– “defensive pessimism”
– “optimism”
problems – psychological approach
• Unpredictable effects of cultural norms, values
• Mediated by others’ expectations, language,
positioning (power)
• Hundred of cognitive dimensions influence choices
• People perform and identify with diverse selves
‘life course’ sociology approach
• Life history enmeshed with
environments
• Social/cultural capital
• Discourses influencing selfnarratives
• Triggers of transition, and
responses
• Learning/identity/agency
Role of learning
in lifecourse approach
• what people learn from
their lives, what they
learn for their lives –
and how
• Learning as blocker and
as enabler
• What restricts mobility,
new possibilities?
• What best supports
‘enabling’ learning that
manages transitions?
Problems –
lifecourse approach
•
•
•
•
•
Focusing on the individual
Focusing on events
The ‘becoming’ discourse
Pathologising transitions
‘Managing’ transitions
Career passages approach
• School-towork
• Career
‘stages’
• Periphery
to center
problems – career passages
•
•
•
•
Normative patterns, homogenised, linear
Economism – individualist, adaptive
Work sites as static blocks? – only the individual moves
Deflects critical gaze from processes causing change
Issues - ‘transitions’ as learning
Construction of ‘risk’ (need
help, soothing)
Conception of passage
(space as static)
Preoccupation with personal-psychological, or
personal-social
• (ignores ecologies of practice& transition)
• (accepts existing systems of production)
Conceptions of ‘journey’
• (uni-directional)
• (discourse of development)
Questions for exploration?
• What is a ‘successful’ transition? (& is this a valid question?)
• How can we conceptualise transitions in ways that disrupt
linearity , universality, ‘development’?
• How do we examine the complex ecologies of transition?
• Are distinctly different forms of transition experienced across
professional groups? Across activities? Regions? Moments?
• How do different forms & practices of learning influence
professionals’ transitions?
• Are some transitions more ‘empowering’ or ‘disempowering’?
What is the purpose of educational/ pedagogical
intervention in professionals’ transitions?
(and on what basis do we justify this purpose?)