Abstract:
Cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) offers a refreshed view of professional expertise in the context of contemporary changes and challenges in professional work. In this paper I draw on Edwards’ (2009) concepts of common knowledge, relational expertise, and relational agency, to explore how professionals work in partnership with parents in families where child and family wellbeing is placed at risk.
I draw on empirical data from a year-long ethnographic study of a residential service, located in Sydney, Australia. Up to ten families visit Karitane every week for a five-day stay. During this time they are supported by a team that includes nurses, social workers, child care professionals, a paediatrician, psychiatrist, and others. The Residential Unit aims to build parents’ confidence and equip them with a range of strategies that they can continue to implement at home. This involves future-oriented interventions that seek to disrupt trajectories that (re)produce disadvantage and exclusion by building resilience in families that are at risk. This involves as a process of expansive learning (Engeström 1999), repositioning oneself in relation to one’s world and acting differently to transform it (see Edwards & Mackenzie 2005).
The Residential Unit provides a fascinating context in which to explore wider changes in the nature of professional practice and expertise. What Edwards (2009, 2010, 2011) refers to as a ‘relational turn’ in expertise reflects a particular stance on a broad trend in contemporary professional practices. Central to this is a reshaping of relationships –between different professions, and between professions and service users. The Residential Unit has implemented the ‘Family Partnership Model’. This means that professionals help parents anticipate and solve problems, rather than solving problems for them.
Working through detailed examples, I will show how the change to partnership has significant implications for the nature of professional expertise, how that expertise is wielded in practice, and the content and processes of professional learning that must occur as relationships with families unfold. I conceive this in terms of an ‘intra-mediated problem of practice’, in which all three of Edwards’ (2009) concepts are activated as a focus of collaborative work between professionals from different disciplines, and between them and families. Professionals cope with the fragile epistemic basis of this work – where what they know about families and what to do next is always incomplete and subject to change by:
1. Constructing the family as a runaway object, pulling the team into knowledge or epistemic work.
1. Narrative exchange as a tertiary artefact that raises questions of ‘why?’ and ‘where to?’, exploring possibilities beyond the status quo.
2. Pursuing this knowledge work in relation to a problem of practice that is mediated by common knowledge, relational expertise, and relational agency.
The paper will conclude with a distinctive, CHAT-informed way of conceptualising the difference between expert-centred models of professional expertise and practice, and more relational forms. Building on Edwards’ prior work, this is expressed in terms of expertise in practice, learning in practice, the problem of practice, and outcomes.
I draw on empirical data from a year-long ethnographic study of a residential service, located in Sydney, Australia. Up to ten families visit Karitane every week for a five-day stay. During this time they are supported by a team that includes nurses, social workers, child care professionals, a paediatrician, psychiatrist, and others. The Residential Unit aims to build parents’ confidence and equip them with a range of strategies that they can continue to implement at home. This involves future-oriented interventions that seek to disrupt trajectories that (re)produce disadvantage and exclusion by building resilience in families that are at risk. This involves as a process of expansive learning (Engeström 1999), repositioning oneself in relation to one’s world and acting differently to transform it (see Edwards & Mackenzie 2005).
The Residential Unit provides a fascinating context in which to explore wider changes in the nature of professional practice and expertise. What Edwards (2009, 2010, 2011) refers to as a ‘relational turn’ in expertise reflects a particular stance on a broad trend in contemporary professional practices. Central to this is a reshaping of relationships –between different professions, and between professions and service users. The Residential Unit has implemented the ‘Family Partnership Model’. This means that professionals help parents anticipate and solve problems, rather than solving problems for them.
Working through detailed examples, I will show how the change to partnership has significant implications for the nature of professional expertise, how that expertise is wielded in practice, and the content and processes of professional learning that must occur as relationships with families unfold. I conceive this in terms of an ‘intra-mediated problem of practice’, in which all three of Edwards’ (2009) concepts are activated as a focus of collaborative work between professionals from different disciplines, and between them and families. Professionals cope with the fragile epistemic basis of this work – where what they know about families and what to do next is always incomplete and subject to change by:
1. Constructing the family as a runaway object, pulling the team into knowledge or epistemic work.
1. Narrative exchange as a tertiary artefact that raises questions of ‘why?’ and ‘where to?’, exploring possibilities beyond the status quo.
2. Pursuing this knowledge work in relation to a problem of practice that is mediated by common knowledge, relational expertise, and relational agency.
The paper will conclude with a distinctive, CHAT-informed way of conceptualising the difference between expert-centred models of professional expertise and practice, and more relational forms. Building on Edwards’ prior work, this is expressed in terms of expertise in practice, learning in practice, the problem of practice, and outcomes.