Digital peer learning for transformative professional agency: The case of homelessness practitioners in Finland

Abstract

AbstractDigital lifelong learning and more specifically digital peer learning (DPL) can play a major role to foster transformative agency in professions and occupations which are critically positioned for responding to acute societal needs. Yet so far, no published studies seem to have focused on this. This article aims at filling this gap with the help of a study in which online workshops and web forums were created for supporting homelessness practitioners in Finland to share and discuss scattered practical innovations and to generate advanced solutions to problems in their work. By these means, the study also generated data to see if transformative agency takes place among these professionals by means of DPL, how this happens, and with what results for the critical field of homelessness work. This study opens up a new agenda for research and development in lifelong learning in a digital era. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic As digital peer learning (DPL) can be largely organized by the learners themselves, it carries significant advantages for lifelong learning and work development: a close link to the field of practice and to clients' and stakeholders' needs, potentially a wide reach of practitioners, little institutional investment, and cost‐effectiveness. The application of DPL raises a number of challenges we summarize here as the spectator challenge, the challenge of drowning in details, and the discontinuity challenge. What this paper adds DPL literature lacks specific contributions on how it can support practitioners to identify and implement concrete solutions to pressing needs in society. This article shows that DPL may facilitate professional transformative agency in such a way that the two processes can intersect with one another and generate concrete and effective lifelong learning solutions for much needed developments in critical fields such as homelessness work. Implications for practice and/or policy Cultivating personally and professionally meaningful conflicts of motives evokes emotional involvement and potentially also learners' curiosity and cognitive engagement, opening an avenue to transcend the spectator stance. Experience and discursive elaboration of a conflict of motives directs learners to focus on the essential, thus providing an effective means for overcoming the risk of drowning in details. This can be facilitated by offering artifacts, metaphors, or models which may be taken up by practitioners in DPL as support or “second stimuli” to engage in transformative initiatives. To transcend the discontinuity challenge salient in many DPL processes, it is of particular importance to find ways to embed DPL and engage the learners in long‐term change efforts. Even relatively short online workshops and web forum discussions can gain momentum when efforts are made to establish links between past experiences and the future prospects.