Karen Jensen

Sociomaterial approaches to conceptualising professional learning and practice

Why focus on professional learning, and why does it need reconceptualising? Professionals’ knowledge and decisions influence all facets of modern life. As Abbott (1988) expresses it, the professions have come to ‘dominate our world. They heal our bodies, measure our profits and save our souls’. Some might argue that professionals’ learning and work are not terribly different to other vocational practitioners. However, an important distinction is wielded by the internal and external regulation of professionals’ knowledge, relationships and performance, and ultimately, their public accountability for what they know and do. This accountability has increased and shifted to more organisationally driven audit of performance outcomes, along with other fundamental changes to conditions of professional practice influenced by market pressures, network arrangements, declining discretion and public trust, new public managerialism and so forth, as many have argued (inter alia, Adler et al. 2008; Brint 2001; Evetts 2009; Freidson 2001). At the same time, the body of shared professional knowledge is not stable but increasingly challenged and subjected to continual transformations. New digital technologies, new textual audit regimes, proliferating transnational and virtual knowledge resources, interprofessional practice with its corresponding knowledge conflicts and new knowledge requirements – such pressures are all raising questions about the complexities of professional knowledge and knowledge strategies. We are among those who accept, first, that professional practice is a particular domain of vocational learning and work, and second, that professional practices and knowledge are shifting dramatically in ways which have important implications for education. Further, we hold that certain conventional conceptions of professional learning are limited both in understanding different professionals’ challenges of learning in practice,

The binding role of knowledge: an analysis of nursing students’ knowledge ties

The paper discusses the challenges individualisation and de‐traditionalisation represent for professional learning and commitment. We point to the fact that integration via human bonds, face‐to‐face interaction and stable communities has become increasingly less effective in modern society, and to the need for professionals to establish modes of social integration that go beyond the interpersonal and local levels of traditional communities of practice. Drawing on the work of Karin Knorr Cetina on ‘object‐centred sociality’, it is suggested that knowledge and alignment to the more abstract world of theory may play such a role. In this paper, we do this by way of a two‐step procedure. First, a brief summary of the key concepts and ideas in the development of Knorr Cetina’s theory is provided. Thereafter, these are used as a sensitising device to analyse the results from a project which has studied identity formation among students of nursing. The data, although quite exploratory in nature, illustrate how weakened social ties are being strengthened through commitments to more abstract and open‐ended knowledge projects and how these, in turn, contribute to the development of new and more timely modes of social integration among the students.

The desire to learn: an analysis of knowledge‐seeking practices among professionals

This study explores the knowledge‐seeking processes among professionals, highlighting three core questions: What induces professionals to engage in continuous learning? What makes them strive for something beyond the immediate obvious goal or situation? How can we theorise practice in a way that allows for engagement and engrossment—the emotional basis of expert work? We attempt to answer these questions by way of a two‐step procedure. First, we elaborate the work of Karin Knorr Cetina on the dynamics of desire in expert work supplemented by insights from the work of Gilles Deleuze. Then we use the ideas and visions of these two theoreticians as a sensitising device to analyse the results from an ongoing research project: ‘Professional learning in a changing society’ (ProLearn). The project studies the knowledge‐seeking practices of four targeted professions: nurses, accountants, teachers and computer engineers. Although the findings identify practices reminiscent of those of other expert groups, they also suggest areas in which our groups are particularly vulnerable. Specifically, these areas relate to processes of accessing knowledge and developing the sense of mastery which Knorr Cetina and Deleuze point out as essential to the development of a more life‐affirmative motive.

Professional Learning in the Knowledge Society

This book presents an entirely new approach to professional learning based on perspectives of the knowledge society and, in particular, an interpretation of Knorr Cetina’s work on scientific ‘epistemic cultures’. Starting with a conceptual chapter and followed by a suite of empirical studies from accountancy, education, nursing and software engineering, the book elaborates how: a) knowledge production and circulation take distinct forms in those fields; b) how the knowledge objects of practice in those fields engross and engage professionals and, in the process, people and knowledge are transformed by this engagement. By foregrounding an explicit concern for the role of knowledge in professional learning, the book goes much farther than the current fashion for describing ‘practice-based learning’. It will therefore be of considerable interest to the research, policy, practitioner and student communities involved with professional education/learning or interested in innovation and knowledge development in the professions. T H E K N O W L E D G E E C O N O M Y A N D E D U C A T I O N

Epistemic practices and object relations in professional work

Professional practice is embedded in complex dynamics of knowledge that are present within, but reach beyond, local work. Knowledge is generated from a manifold of sources, and further developed and circulated in professional communities as practitioners are confronted with non-routine problems. Drawing on the work of Karin Knorr Cetina and her associates, we suggest that a perspective of epistemic practices and object relations is useful for conceptualising the epistemic dimensions of professional work and learning. We consider how the perspective has inspired research on professional practice and use examples from the nursing profession to illustrate how it may be employed to examine: (i) how practitioners develop knowledge and practice by engaging with epistemic objects; (ii) how relations with objects give rise to community formation and (iii) how object relations link practitioners with a wider knowledge world. We argue that the perspective is productive for investigating knowledge practices as constituted by dynamic object relations across sites and levels in the expert culture. To further improve its potential in professional contexts, however, we suggest the need for the development of analytic concepts that differentiate between modes of epistemic engagement and account for the presence of multiple knowledge objects in professional practice.

Objectual Practice and Learning in Professional Work

This chapter focuses on one aspect of learning through practice in the context of professional work, namely on how engagement with complex artefacts and objects may involve practitioners in wider circuits of knowledge advancement and serve as a vehicle for learning when explored in situated problem solving. As a point of departure we argue that the permeation of epistemic cultures and practices in society has created a new context for professional work and contributed to transform collective knowledge resources as well as the institutional boundaries of professional communities of practice. As knowledge increasingly is mediated by abstract and symbolic inputs, and more advanced knowledge objects are introduced into the realm of professional practice, a creative and explorative dimension is brought to the fore. By introducing Karin Knorr Cetina’s notion of objectual practice as an analytical perspective, the chapter draws attention to the unfolding and question-generating character of knowledge objects and to how these qualities may generate explorative and expansive forms of engagement among professionals that serve to link everyday work with wider circuits of advancements in knowledge and practice. The group of computer engineers is selected for elaborating and illustrating this perspective.

Insourcing the management of knowledge and occupational control: an analysis of computer engineers in Norway

This article explores self management in professional work in the context of a shift from traditional professionalism to forms of governance where functions and responsibilities previously attributable to the professional communities are ‘insourced’ to the individual worker. Drawing on data from an interview study among recently educated computer engineers we examine how professionals within this field engage themselves in continuous learning and knowledge management by exercising what Foucault calls technologies of the self. Our data suggest that the computer engineers employ a range of techniques related to risk management, career monitoring, self motivation and knowledge control that enable them to cope with the multiple demands of the present. They also connect to new expert communities and engage in new forms of community alignments. However, the long‐term effects of the current modes of regulation are more uncertain.

Changing Cultures of Knowledge and Professional Learning

This chapter examines the relationship between knowledge cultures and professionals’ learning in education and work. An overarching question is: What roles do knowledge cultures play as constitutive arenas for professional learning and development? The chapter reviews theoretical and empirical contributions to this topic, focusing on how the relationship between knowledge cultures and learning has been addressed in research on higher education and in the context of professional work. Strengths and weaknesses from different research strands are discussed, and it is proposed that analytical resources from the Social Studies of Science may be helpful for capturing this relationship as dynamic and emergent in practice. Drawing especially on the perspectives of Karin Knorr Cetina, we present findings from two larger Norwegian research projects, where different ways of organizing knowledge and supporting practitioners’ continuing learning are compared and discussed as differences in professional knowledge cultures. A premise for this discussion is that professional learning today should be understood in relation to wider ecologies of knowledge and practice, and that the continuing enrolment of practitioners in a profession-specific field of knowledge is a critical condition for participation.

Introduction – Professional learning in new knowledge landscapes

Our times are characterised by a prevalent interest in knowledge. In all branches of social life, people are turning to experts to provide answers and solutions to their problems. At the same time the rapid pace of knowledge production generates confusion as it leads to a wide array of conflicting evidence that lives and circulates simultaneously.

The desire to learn

The ability to facilitate knowledge creation and to share knowledge is considered to be among the most important factors in securing the prosperity of modern societies. The concept of the knowledge society was coined to underline this development and to draw attention to the overall challenge posed by living in a society characterized by rapid shifts in knowledge and institutional arrangement.