The Relational Turn in Professional Practices: Relational Agency as an Analytic Tool

The Relational Turn in Professional Practices: relational agency as an analytic tool

Overview 

The practical problem

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The evidence base

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Relational agency as an analytic resource

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Its implications for the practical problem

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Its potential contribution to CHAT

The Practical Problem 

We are facing complex problems: from climate change to social exclusion

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They can’t be solved by single experts or even by established inter-professional teams

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Problems are multi-faceted and change as they are worked on

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Interpretations and responses which capture complexity and change are essential

Social Exclusion

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As defined by the OECD in the 1990s

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Lack of connection with what society can offer you

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Lack of contribution to society

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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

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They follow the ‘object’ that is the child’s trajectory weaving support around the child and withdrawing when not needed

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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?

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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)

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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)

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Inter-professional collaborations are new activities which are located outside these practices

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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

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Revealing categories, values and motives in the natural language of talk about problems of practice.

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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

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transfer, translate, transform (Carlile 2004)

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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)

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Recognising what the object motive is for the other

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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

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Common knowledge recognises the meanings and values embedded in discrete practices and allows people to work across practices

Applications: Examples of OSAT DPhil Theses 

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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

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Examining how new practices are created through expanding the object of activity and processes of internalisation and externalisation

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Intention / object motive brought to the fore

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Allows an analysis of how knowledge is brought to bear and whether (and how) it is taken up in other practices

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A broader focus on obuchenie and thinking pedagogically about organisations