Using practice theory to investigate professional engineers' workplace learning

Rooney, Donna; Boud, David; Reich, Ann; Fitzgerald, Terry; Willey, Keith; Gardner, Anne

doi:10.1109/fie.2012.6462392

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…These gaps reflect the dominant focus on engineering science and analytical techniques in engineering degrees, from the latter half of the 20 th Century, and educators' lack of understanding of engineering practice (Trevelyan, 2010) as a socio-technical profession requiring capabilities that are both technical and social in nature (Leydens, 2012). Investigating the learning of experienced engineers in the workplace, Rooney et al (2012) found that they learned through situated, relational, collective practices engaging with team members who are in diverse roles. In formulating four principles for the redesign of engineering education, Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, and Sullivan (2009) have recommended that engineering practice should be central to engineering education, with their third principle being: integrate identity, knowledge, and skills through approximations to practice (p. 200).…”

Section: Theoretical Framework and Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing learning outcomes from industry engagement in Australian engineering education

Male

King

2019

JTLGE

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Industry engagement, commonly implemented as a 12 week industry placement during a vacation towards the end of the degree, has traditionally been a provider-mandated component of externally accredited professional engineering degrees in Australia. Such placements are intended to bridge knowledge and capability gaps between academic study and engineering employment and contextualise the final phase of academic study. Changes in the composition of Australia’s engineering industries have made it progressively harder to source such placements. In-curriculum exposure to engineering practice has also been expected, but has been delivered with considerable variability. In 2014 the authors completed a national project, led by the Australian Council of Engineering Deans (ACED), with peak industry bodies and several partner universities, funded from the Commonwealth Department of Industry Workplace Innovation Program, to explore how improving industry engagement could contribute further to engineering graduates’ learning outcomes and employability. The data collected from the engineering students and employers, reported in this paper, can now be regarded as baseline data on industry engagement, against which subsequent developments can be referenced. For the first time, students’ ratings of the value of different methods for industry engagement are shown to be related to their ‘authenticity’. Several industry-inspired in-curriculum interventions were also trialled at partner universities. Guidelines for good practice were developed from melding the experiential findings with theoretical perspectives. In the years since completing the project, the accreditation body, Engineers Australia, has updated and intensified its focus on engagement with practice (including changing its language from ‘exposure’ to ‘engagement’), and many engineering faculties have significantly enhanced their models and requirements for work integrated learning and industry engagement. This paper outlines these changes and examples of new implementations, including virtual and electronically-mediated methods that also reflect ongoing changes in engineering industry practice.

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Section: Theoretical Framework and Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing learning outcomes from industry engagement in Australian engineering education

Male

King

2019

JTLGE

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“…Sociomaterial approaches are also associated with questions regarding knowledge (Gherardi, ). Professionals must not only apply knowledge, they also have to participate in producing and sharing new knowledge (Rooney et al., ). Our use of the term ‘knowledge sharing’ reflects aspects of a general idea of how what one person or group of people knows becomes available to others.…”

Section: Theoretical Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Nursing assistants matters—An ethnographic study of knowledge sharing in interprofessional practice

et al. 2017

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Interprofessional collaboration involves some kind of knowledge sharing, which is essential and will be important in the future in regard to the opportunities and challenges in practices for delivering safe and effective health care. Nursing assistants are seldom mentioned as a group of health care workers that contribute to interprofessional collaboration in health care practice. The aim of this ethnographic study was to explore how the nursing assistants' knowledge can be shared in a team on a spinal cord injury rehabilitation ward. Using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, we captured different aspects of interprofessional collaboration in health care. The findings reveal how knowledge was shared between professionals, depending on different kinds of practice architecture. These specific cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements enabled possibilities through which nursing assistants' knowledge informed other practices, and others' knowledge informed the practice of nursing assistants. By studying what health care professionals actually do and say in practice, we found that the nursing assistants could make a valuable contribution of knowledge to the team.

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“…Instead the approaches emphasize how learning is embodied in dynamic relationships among people and their physical contexts and are associated with questions regarding knowledge (Gherardi, 2009). Professionals must not only apply knowledge; they also have to participate in producing and sharing new knowledge (Rooney, et al, 2012). Professional knowledge and knowledge strategies are complex and are changing in the area of professional practice and work because of shifts in arrangements and responsibilities between professionals (Fenwick, Nerland & Jensen, 2012).…”

Section: Rationale For the Thesismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, knowledge is something that is emergent, a property of re-lationships between professionals. Within this perspective, learning between professionals can then be seen as a part of knowing-in-practice (Rooney et al, 2012). This perspective on knowledge and learning is of interest when investigating interprofessional education and collaboration in health care.…”

Section: Professional and Interprofessional Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interprofessional Collaboration in Health Care : Education and Practice

Falk¹

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Background: Interprofessional collaboration is of global interest for addressing to the complex health care needs and improving patient safety in health care. Professionals have to develop collaborative skills and the ability to share knowledge. Interprofessional education describes learning activities where students learn with, from and about each other to improve collaboration. The dimension of interprofessional collaboration is complex and includes different collaborative competencies to bring about the best for the patients. To become a professional, often understood as someone exerting expertise within a specific field of practice, involves a learning process that challenges the boundaries of the professions. Boundaries are not only barriers, but also places that increase learning. There is a complexity to studying the phenomenon of interprofessional collaboration and learning regarding how it occurs in education and health care practice. By using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, it is possible to more robustly explore the collaborative context. Aim: The overarching aim of the thesis has been to explore interprofessional collaboration and learning in health care education and in interprofessional health care practice. More specifically, the research questions in the thesis were answered in two studies regarding how professional knowledge is developed and shared in interprofessional undergraduate health care education and in interprofessional health care practice. Methods: A questionnaire was distributed to students from a medicine, nursing, physiotherapy and occupational therapy programme who participated in a two-week period of practice at an Interprofessional Training Ward in Linköping. The data was analysed quantitatively to explore how female and male students experienced their professional identity formation. The open-ended responses were analysed using a sociomaterial perspective on practice. An ethnographic study was conducted in a hospital setting during a period of one year, during which two interprofessional teams were observed. A theory-driven analysis was made using a sociomaterial perspective on practice, and this provided a lens through which the nature of interprofessional collaboration and knowledge sharing could be observed. Findings: The main findings from the questionnaire showed that the practice architectures of the Interprofessional Training Ward, prefigured practices where different professional responsibilities were enacted in ways that were reproducing expected and unexpected roles in a traditional health care practice. That disrupted the students´ practical and general understandings of professional responsibilities and the nature of professional work including their professional identity formation. The findings from the ethnographic study showed different patterns of how knowledge was shared among professionals in their daily work practice as it unfolded, like chains of actions. The patterns arose through activities where collaboration between professionals was planned be...

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Using practice theory to investigate professional engineers' workplace learning

Cited by 12 publications

References 18 publications

Enhancing learning outcomes from industry engagement in Australian engineering education

Enhancing learning outcomes from industry engagement in Australian engineering education

Nursing assistants matters—An ethnographic study of knowledge sharing in interprofessional practice

Interprofessional Collaboration in Health Care : Education and Practice

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