Renewing occupational cultures—Bridging boundaries in learning spaces

Abstract

Professional bureaucracies of the Finnish municipal services are challenged by many modernization pressures manifested currently in the form of New Public Management. Along with efficiency demands the new emphasis is on the provision of client-oriented services by the means of multiprofessional teamwork crossing the traditional sector boundaries. This paper analyses the learning processes needed when representatives of different professional and other occupational cultures start cooperation.The participants of the research are professionals taking care of the elderly: in a small rural municipality the social and health care staff plan joint home care services and in a city, where a joint home care unit is already established, the professional collaboration is extended towards theatre, art exhibitions and other cultural services. In both cases the researchers invited the professionals to have future oriented discussions on joint dialogue forums. In the analysis of the proceedings the forums were conceptualized as 'learning spaces' and the differences in professional cultures as 'tresholds'.The results of the analysis point out how the professional cultural confrontation between the social and health sector was more severe (the thresholds were higher) than between the home care staff and the cultural sector professionals. The paper suggests that the dialogue method facilitates learning and crossing the professional cultural boundaries if all participants themselves let this happen and secure that the results of the dialogues will be turned into concrete actions.

Professional agency in the stream of change: Understanding educational change and teachers' professional identities

“…One practical intervention to enhance educational changes collectively (among teachers and administrators) could be the setting up of dialogical work conferences (e.g. Kalliola & Nakari, 2007). Such events could help to promote collaborative and participatory development, by creating dialogical platforms among various actors in organizations.…”

“…The guidelines further seek to ensure that each participant has the same status in the dialogue, irrespective of official positions, and that the work experience of each participant is valued and heard (Kalliola & Nakari, 2007). This kind of intervention would have the potential to increase teachers' ownership of changes, encouraging them to take more collective responsibility for changes.…”

Agency-centred coupling—a better way to manage an educational organization?

“…Secondly, at the collective level, organizations and local communities within and beyond organizational boundaries should be supported through the promotion of social linkages, involving collaboration and boundary-crossing between different working groups. This could be initiated, for example, through community and organizational level interventions whose aim would be to enhance the communal consciousness of official and unofficial power-relations and of cultural practices within educational organizations (Kalliola and Nakari 2007). All in all, we would argue that in order to enhance the management of educational organizations it will be necessary to support practices at both the individual and the collective level;…”

Multiple Forms of Professional Agency for (non)crafting of Work Practices in a Hospital Organization

“…This choice fits with the Nordic action research tradition, which is interested in engaging with reflective subjects in the field to create meaningful results that are beneficial for all actors involved while using research methods that respect and develop democracy (Hasle & Sørensen, 2013). In light of the number of experiences using this method in Finnish working life development research (e.g., Lehtonen & Kalliola, 2008), our aim was to offer dialogical spaces for the participants in the work community amid organizational developmental work, together with the possibility to learn from each other's experiences and to reflect on them in crafting a shared future vision of their work and work organization (Kalliola & Nakari, 2007). To gain a democratic and dialogical space, the method suggests specific ground rules that are introduced as guidelines for dialogue (Gustavsen, 2001).…”