The Relational Turn in Professional Practices: relational agency as an analytic tool
Overview
The practical problem
The evidence base
Relational agency as an analytic resource
Its implications for the practical problem
Its potential contribution to CHAT
The Practical Problem
We are facing complex problems: from climate change to social exclusion
They can’t be solved by single experts or even by established inter-professional teams
Problems are multi-faceted and change as they are worked on
Interpretations and responses which capture complexity and change are essential
Social Exclusion
As defined by the OECD in the 1990s
Lack of connection with what society can offer you
Lack of contribution to society
Vulnerability to social exclusion can arise through changes in life experiences
Preventing Social Exclusion
New government policies which mean: practitioners such as psychologists, mental health workers, family workers and teachers work together to re-configure the life trajectories of children who are at risk of social exclusion
They follow the ‘object’ that is the child’s trajectory weaving support around the child and withdrawing when not needed
They work outside the practices of their home organisations in fluid and responsive ways with each other and with vulnerable children and are creating new practices which demand new expertise
Making the Practical Conceptual
Specialist expertise is embedded in the core institutionallybased practices of being e.g. a mental health worker or a teacher
The Questions:
What are the new features of these new inter-professional practices which arise at the intersections of institutionally based practices?
What is involved in recognising and responding to complexity and change when different expertise is involved?
The Evidence Base Three studies in which practitioners from different professions learn to work collaboratively to disrupt children’s trajectories of social exclusion 2003-2006 The National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund (NECF) 2004-2007 Learning in and for Interagency Working (LIW) 2007-2008 Preventing Social Exclusion in Secondary Schools (PSE)
Cultural Historical Tools
Object of activity and object motive (Leont’ev); mediation (Vygotsky and Wertsch)
Activities located within practices which are historical, laden with knowledge and emotionally freighted – where expertise is the ability to manipulate those practices to take forward intentions (Dorothy Holland)
Inter-professional collaborations are new activities which are located outside these practices
Recognition of object and responses to it in interprofessional activities are mediated by (i) the specialist knowledge to be found in the core practices and by (ii) a form of relational expertise
Rethinking Expertise: the Collective and Distributed Versions Expertise is the: collaborative and discursive construction of tasks, solutions, visions, breakdowns and innovations within and across systems (Engestrรถm and Middleton 1996: 4) Today the trend is towards de-institutionalization, hybrid forms of organisation and co-operative mastery of knowing and knowledge production, towards open expertise produced in multi-actor networks. (Karvinen-Niinikoski 2004: 23) But what happens in the negotiations of expertise?
Subject 1: Teacher Tool
Object: Child’s trajectory Tool Subject 2: Social worker
Relational Agency (Edwards 2005)
A capacity for working with others to strengthen purposeful responses to complex problems. A two stage process within a constant dynamic, which involves:
working with others to expand the ‘object of activity’, or task being working on, by recognising the motives and the resources that others bring to bear as they too interpret it; and aligning one’s own responses to the newly enhanced interpretations, with the responses being made by the other professionals to act on the expanded object.
Preparation for Relational Agency There is a three stage process of preparation prior to relational engagement in action in practices that occurs in sites of intersecting practices – building common knowledge which mediates interpretations and responses  i.
Recognising similar long-term open goals, such as children’s wellbeing, which give broad coherence to the specialist activities of practitioners
ii.
Revealing categories, values and motives in the natural language of talk about problems of practice.
iii.
Recognising and engaging with the categories, values and motives of others in the processes of negotiating action on a complex object
Common Knowledge
collaborations occur in the heat of action
transfer, translate, transform (Carlile 2004)
capacity of the common knowledge to represent the differences and dependencies now of consequence and the ability of the actors involved to use it (Carlile 2004: 557)
Subject 1 Tool
Common Knowledge
Object
Tool Subject 2
Creating Spaces for Narratives: implicit mediation (Wertsch 2007) Well the context is that if a child comes to school and they have come from a dreadful home situation where there is terrible violent crime and abuse and parenting is poor or nonexistent because of addiction problems and so on and so forth and the kid hasn’t had much…can’t read or write to any standard that would allow him to access the curriculum… it can be awful out there, but you don’t have to fail in school because we have got this for you, that person is there for you, if this happens you can do that. And I think it’s a sanctuary. (Deputy Head of School)
Creating Spaces for Narratives It’s interesting it makes me think of boundaries again. There is a sense in which although the child is the same child outside and inside we sort of feel we can almost draw a boundary around the school and say when you are in here you can leave it at the gates or we can minimize the effects yeah….I think we set ourselves a target which is almost unachievable, unattainable in the sense. Um and perhaps the way in which schools with others need to be bridging that boundary differently. It resonated with (name of nearby city) where the teachers’ feeling was although a lot of the cause of underachievement and so on lie…are outside the school, it’s their responsibility to do something about it. And there’s the terrible bind. I think teachers put themselves into feeling responsible for doing something. Of course with one hand tied behind your back. (Educational Psychologist)
A New Relational Expertise: summary
Taking the standpoint of the other (Charles Taylor)
Recognising what the object motive is for the other
It involves building ‘common knowledge’ – so that ‘transfer’ can occur in inter-professional activities – no need to ‘translate’ or wait for people to ‘transform’ how they work
Common knowledge recognises the meanings and values embedded in discrete practices and allows people to work across practices
Applications: Examples of OSAT DPhil Theses
Sheena Wagstaff The development of relational agency over time in PhD supervisions Prabhat Rai Finding common ground between teachers and learners in ethnically diverse primary school classrooms Russell Francis Exercising relational agency in on-line communities Natalie Lundsteen Seeking relational agency in internships in investment banks
Analytic Implications for CHAT
The middle layer between systemic notions of practices which are inhabited and the individual experiences of participants in activities
Examining how new practices are created through expanding the object of activity and processes of internalisation and externalisation
Intention / object motive brought to the fore
Allows an analysis of how knowledge is brought to bear and whether (and how) it is taken up in other practices
A broader focus on obuchenie and thinking pedagogically about organisations