Monika Nerland

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,

Building professionalism in a knowledge society: examining discourses of knowledge in four professional associations†

This article explores how contemporary professional associations employ discourses of knowledge as a means of promoting professionalism. By analysing policy documents from the Norwegian associations for teachers, nurses, engineers and accountants, we reveal dominant knowledge discourses and discuss how they serve to position the associations in distinct ways towards practitioners, working fields and the public community. Our analysis shows that the knowledge work of the four associations is constructed quite differently, and that this is related to differences in their notions of professional knowledge, their view on standardisation and the structure of their professional field. Moreover, all associations draw on several and partly contradictory discourses. Modern professionalism depends on a reflexive management of knowledge and learning within a context of negotiation between different concerns. We particularly discuss the challenge of balancing between professional‐internal and ‐external demands. †Berit Karseth and Monika Nerland have contributed equally to this work.

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

One-to-One Teaching as Cultural Practice: Two Case Studies from an Academy of Music.

This paper explores one-to-one teaching in an academy of music as culturally constituted. Taking Foucaults concept of discursive practice as a point of departure, the practice of two instrumental teachers is analysed and compared with regards to how the teachers adopt professional discourses to construct their teaching in quite distinct ways, and how the enacted discourses provide the students with different opportunities for learning. The data utilized derive from a multiple case study carried out at a Nordic Academy of Music. The study showed that strategies of teaching emerge from a complex network of discourses that form a certain logic through which the modes of thinking, learning and doing music are regulated. These mechanisms are, however, often taken for granted by the participants. Thus, the provision of various case studies of teaching may open reflexive thinking in a way that is significant for the professionalisation of music education.

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.

Professions as Knowledge Cultures1

The emphasis given to professionals’ learning in today’s society tends to focus the individual learner as the core object of debates and policies. Less attention has been paid to the role of knowledge domains and expert cultures in forming opportunities for learning. Within educational contexts, researchers have pointed to how different disciplines are marked by distinct knowledge practices, modes of inquiry, and principles for determining validity, which constitute students’ learning in distinct ways (Becher & Trowler, 2001; Neumann, Parry, & Becher, 2002; Donald, 2002).

The knowledge work of professional associations: approaches to standardisation and forms of legitimisation

This paper examines how professional associations engage themselves in efforts to develop, regulate and secure knowledge in their respective domains, with special emphasis on standardisation. The general emphasis on science in society brings renewed attention to the knowledge base of professionals, and positions professional bodies as key regulatory agencies. At the same time, knowledge takes distinctive forms in different areas of expertise, and the ‘knowledge work’ of professional associations is embedded in complex settings of actors and interests that need to be negotiated. Based on documents and interviews with core representatives, we examined approaches to standardisation in three associations that represent the main bodies of nurses, teachers and auditors in Norway. The analysis shows that all associations engage themselves in efforts to develop standards for knowledge and professional practice, but that they do so in different ways and with alternative sources of legitimisation. Standardisation is initiated for variegated purposes, and involves the ongoing negotiation of tensions between different concerns. We discuss the approaches taken in relation to conditions for professionalism, and argue that the knowledge work of professional associations is becoming increasingly important in a society where knowledge, as well as the market for professional services, is becoming internationalised.

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.