Individual and Social Influences on Professional Learning: Supporting the Acquisition and Maintenance of Expertise

226 Pages·2018·1.55 MB·English

by  Hans Gruber

Professional and Practice-based Learning
Hans Gruber · Christian Harteis
Individual and
Social Infl uences
on Professional
Learning
Supporting the Acquisition and
Maintenance of Expertise
Professional and Practice-based Learning
Volume 24
Series editors
Stephen Billett, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Christian Harteis, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany
Hans Gruber, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
Professional and practice-based learning brings together international research on
the individual development of professionals and the organisation of professional life
and educational experiences. It complements the Springer journal Vocations and
Learning: Studies in vocational and professional education.
Professional learning, and the practice-based processes that often support it, are the
subject of increased interest and attention in the fields of educational, psychological,
sociological, and business management research, and also by governments,
employer organisations and unions. This professional learning goes beyond, what is
often termed professional education, as it includes learning processes and
experiences outside of educational institutions in both the initial and ongoing
learning for the professional practice. Changes in these workplaces requirements
usually manifest themselves in the everyday work tasks, professional development
provisions in educational institution decrease in their salience, and learning and
development during professional activities increase in their salience.
There are a range of scientific challenges and important focuses within the field of
professional learning. These include:
– understanding and making explicit the complex and massive knowledge that is
required for professional practice and identifying ways in which this knowledge
can best be initially learnt and developed further throughout professional life.
– analytical explications of those processes that support learning at an individual
and an organisational level.
– understanding how learning experiences and educational processes might best be
aligned or integrated to support professional learning.
The series integrates research from different disciplines: education, sociology,
psychology, amongst others. The series is comprehensive in scope as it not only
focusses on professional learning of teachers and those in schools, colleges and
universities, but all professional development within organisations
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8383
Hans Gruber • Christian Harteis
Individual and Social
Influences on Professional
Learning
Supporting the Acquisition and Maintenance
of Expertise
Hans Gruber Christian Harteis
Institute of Educational Science Institute of Educational Science
University of Regensburg Paderborn University
Regensburg, Germany Paderborn, Germany
ISSN 2210-5549 ISSN 2210-5557 (electronic)
Professional and Practice-based Learning
ISBN 978-3-319-97039-4 ISBN 978-3-319-97041-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97041-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950549
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2018
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Series Editors’ Foreword
Work-related and practice-based learning processes are the subject of increased
interest and attention in the field of educational, psychological, sociological and
business management research and also by governments, employer organisations
and unions. This because of the crucial importance of these processes to support
workers maximises the development of their knowledge and skills to cope with the
changing requirements of work. Expertise research provides a comprehensive theo-
retical and empirical platform to consider, support and evaluate issues associated
with professional- and practice-based learning, thereby addressing these interests.
This book uses expertise research to develop a concept of professional learning
that focusses on individual development in the social context of a work environ-
ment. It proposes that during engagement in work, individual learning processes are
influenced and shaped through their professional environment and practices, and the
practice in which they work is shaped reciprocally by their development. Usually,
researchers focus either on the individual development or the social embedding of
work practice in occupational networks. This book aims to elaborate the contribu-
tions of both the social and individual factors to this work-related learning by engag-
ing in the recent international research in the fields of workplace and professional
learning.
The case made in this book centres on expertise as individual capacity to perform
continuously at an high level of personal performance that is developed and extended
across working lives that necessarily engages the contributions of both individual
and social factors. A key focus for the case made in this book is the need to go
beyond discussing the development of expertise. Instead, it is argued that a particu-
lar level of expertise is not sufficient to address the changing requirements of work.
Instead, a lot of personally mediated effort is also necessary to maintain expertise,
to keep expertise flexible and helpful for the challenges of a dynamic work
environment.
By elaborating the contributions of both social and individual factors to profes-
sional learning, a fresh perspective is offered founded on theoretical and empirical
research issues. For this purpose, research from a range of disciplines is utilised and
integrated. These disciplines include education, sociology, psychology and others.
vii
viii Series Editors’ Foreword
It is proposed that such an interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive
explanatory account and advances the means by which the development of innova-
tive ways of fostering processes of learning through work can be considered and
supported.
In this way, the book seeks to address the needs from researchers of the various
disciplines who are interested in professional- and practice-based learning. It also
offers advice to government agencies, employer organisations, professional associ-
ations and employees’ unions that are seeking advice on how workplaces might best
support the development and maintenance of workers’ expertise.
Griffith University Stephen Billett
Brisbane, Australia
University of Paderborn Hans Gruber
Paderborn, Germany
University of Regensburg Christian Harteis
Regensburg, Germany
Preface
It is a long time ago that an individual’s allocation to a place within society was
exclusively shaped by birth or origin. In pre-industrial times, the feudal system
banned individuals from any opportunity to influence their own societal develop-
ment. It was at least an important consequence of industrialisation that people faced
opportunities to find their place within society by work biographies which shaped
the habitual, economic and intellectual fundament of societal life. Societal alloca-
tion, thus, became a matter of work-related learning: Learning performance influ-
enced success on the labour market which again determined societal allocation. In
the course of industrialisation, thus, the individuals received for the first time oppor-
tunities for shaping a biography on the basis of their self-intended work perfor-
mance as a result of learning and development. The paradigms of globalisation and
digitalisation introduced a regime of permanent change of work conditions.
Nowadays, it is considered insufficient to learn in order to successfully enter a
workplace. Rather it is necessary to permanently learn during the lifespan in order
to be able to cope with permanently changing (work) conditions. Hence, learning
does not only influence the success of the entry into the labour market but also the
possibility of maintaining one’s position in a working career. Learning in the con-
text of daily working live, hence, increasingly received the attention both of
researchers and of practitioners. Today, “lifelong learning” is a widely and com-
monly used expression which indicates increased awareness for issues of education,
learning and development.
In this book, the expression “professional learning” is used in order to describe
learning processes which occur during work activities as well as learning which can
be utilised for work activities – the entry to the labour market as well as the mainte-
nance of one’s position in working life. This indicates a wide understanding of the
underlying terminology by referring to learning about, for and within work. By
using the expression “professional learning”, we do not refer to the classical under-
standing of (academic) professions – which is prevalent in the German discourse –
but rather consider all kinds of occupations, vocations and professions. In the
broader conception, the phenomena of professional learning become relevant for
and receive increased attention of many disciplines: education, psychology,
ix
x Preface
sociology, human resource management and others. This book aims to develop a
concept of professional learning as long-term-oriented development which connects
different streams of research. However, the main focus is put on educational and
psychological insights and findings which inform about becoming and staying suc-
cessful in working life through learning and development.
The most important pedagogical intention of education is to enable individuals
to responsibly master their life by developing, maintaining and reaching indepen-
dent goals. Becoming and staying successful in working life is an important aspect
of that kind of pedagogical intention. It aims at supporting individuals during their
learning and helping them to develop into successful individuals in their working
lives. During such a development, individuals undergo substantial individual learn-
ing processes which are permanently influenced and shaped through their private
and working environment. Educational support of professional learning can only be
based and designed on insights about premises, processes and products of profes-
sional learning, taking into account both internal (individual) and external (social)
influences. Most commonly, researchers focus either on the internal individual side
of professional learning or on the external social side of the environment. This book
aims at offering a new perspective on theory and empirical research on professional
learning by working out connections between both sides of the same coin and the
internal and external aspects of professional learning.
The line of thought for this book follows such a narrative: The beginning focusses
the phenomenon that some individuals possess capabilities far beyond average per-
formance (Chap. 1). It is important to understand excellent individuals within their
social contexts, how they developed, how their prerequisites for development were
shaped and how they were treated within their social environments, in order to
develop an idea of professional learning. It is the specific pedagogical approach not
to explain excellent performance by biological facilities but to interpret high perfor-
mance as result of learning processes. Educational efforts of supporting profes-
sional learning become relevant on such a theoretical premise. However, by
focussing on learning processes, scientific approaches of investigation face particu-
lar challenges, since learning as thinking and knowing are phenomena which are not
directly measurable. Hence, it is necessary to clarify the scientific perspectives per-
mitting empirical access to these latent phenomena of learning, thinking and know-
ing (Chap. 2). The various theoretical and methodological paradigms of researching
professional learning are to be discussed in order to provide a systematic overview
on current and well-established research approaches. Commonly shared interests
and insights between these approaches are to be worked out. After clarifying the
scientific perspectives, the book separately analyses the development of successful
individuals and of impeded individuals. First, the interrelation between internal and
external factors is discussed, which results in an individual’s successful perfor-
mance (Chap. 3). Educational, psychological and sociological theories are pre-
sented that help to explain an individual’s capacity to permanently perform better
than others do and, thus, are the basis of understanding professional learning.
Second, an analogous exploration of less successful and impeded individuals is con-
ducted. Such an exploration helps to develop negative knowledge about p rofessional