Learning contexts

Abstract

There is a long and vigorous debate in management about the locus of responsibility and decision-making. Who should decide what, at each level or in each section of an organization? An allied question is that of how management and leadership roles are best distributed. Answers will vary with the size, spread and working patterns of organizations and their departments or sections, but these factors do not fully determine the extent of either devolved responsibility or specialized roles. Arguably, all workers in health and social care have at least two learning-related roles – managing and engaging in their own learning, and supporting the learning of others – and some will also have direct or indirect responsibility for managing the learning of others. My editorial in our second issue (Eraut 2002) focused on the nature of these roles in both education and practice settings, and I intend to revisit this topic soon. This editorial seeks to explore the significance for learning of the wider contexts in which these roles are exercised. First, we need to acknowledge that, in workplace settings, most learning occurs through the work in which practitioners engage; however, some occurs away from the work but closely linked with it, and a very small amount has a more generic nature. Most learning is an important, albeit unrecognized, by-product of work, and is therefore highly dependent on both the allocation of work and the work context (Eraut et al. 2000, 2005a). If we were to transfer this insight into higher education settings, we could also argue that attending lectures and seminars, engaging in independent study, writing assignments and participating in work-related discussions can also be viewed as work and that the learning by-product also depends on the allocation of academic work and the contexts in which it is pursued. In both types of setting, the workload, the culture and even the physical environment, can deprive learners of time for reflection or discussion with colleagues, put a high premium on prioritization and encourage coping behaviour rather than quality improvement. Hence, it is possible to apply similar frameworks for analysis to both education and practice settings. I begin by examining four key features of learning contexts. Human and physical environments of practitioners. Practitioners’ relationships at work: strong and weak. Patterns, conditions and allocations of work: individual and collective. Cultures, discourses and knowledge, available overtly or covertly. Then, I move on to consider the potential for learning of each context and the learning affordances for its participants, before concluding with a section on the role of agency in exploiting or neglecting those affordances. Physical factors that affect the wellbeing of practitioners, and hence their sense of agency, include travel to and for work, workplaces that are comfortable and fit for purpose, and access to spaces that allow breaks to be relaxing and enable social contact with a wide range of colleagues. Given the importance of relationships for learning, work or social settings, where people meet relevant colleagues within or outside their own professions, have significant value. Frequency of contact can help to develop working relationships that foster learning. However, although fleeting contacts in heavy workplace ‘traffic’ can be tolerated within an ongoing relationship, they become a barrier to communication without a prior context of mutual understanding. Rapid changes of personnel without appropriate inductions or handovers also reduce the quality of communication, because routine communications without an initial period of mutual learning can be dangerous. In busy contexts, such as hospital wards, the physical environment has to allow the flow of nurses, visiting practitioners, patients and their relations to continue without inappropriately interrupting people's work. A quite different need is for spaces where it is possible to have private conversations. Such conversations include not only the exchange of information about patients and with patients, but also shared decision making, the seeking of advice, coaching in practical skills and the teaching of students. In addition, there is a need for easy visual monitoring of patients, and being able to spot when a colleague might be able to give some help or advice. The layout affects the scope for learning through working alongside colleagues from which much professional learning stems. Many practitioners develop strong professional relationships of mutual trust with some of their colleagues. These relationships contribute to their professional identities, provide important emotional support and lead to considerable informal mutual learning. Research suggests that mutual trust is often a prerequisite for being willing to share one's practice with a fellow professional, especially when there are situations of considerable complexity and uncertainty or particularly challenging circumstances (Fielding et al. 2005). Worries about clients, apparent mistakes, ethical issues and interpersonal problems at work can be discussed with trusted friends, who may be current or, for more senior practitioners, former colleagues. In such matters the cognitive and emotional dimensions can intertwine in complex ways, as practitioners struggle to find a way through an apparent impasse. Under good leadership new relationships may be fostered or old ones gradually expanded by widening the circle, while still retaining their quality. Without any close colleagues, difficult experiences are likely to wear people down and erode their confidence. This impinges on our learning focus because feelings, and especially self-confidence and self-esteem, play a major role in a person's readiness to learn. Worse still, bad relationships and/or weak leadership constrain learning and elicit self-protecting survival behaviours rather than a collective search for improvement. The very essence of the relationships discussed above was mutual trust, but the term ‘network’ brings a rather different meaning, especially when it refers to electronic networks. Networks based only on information exchange can make important contributions to learning but require very little mutual trust, so they are commonly described as ‘weak’ relationships. In weak networks, personal commitment is fairly weak and the people involved are exposed to very little risk other than receiving bad or outdated information; and many sources are reputable enough not to engage in practices that risk their reputation for little personal gain. In between are personal networks of contacts within an organization – former colleagues and fellow professionals with whom one has met on various occasions. Some of these contacts may have been strengthened through use, while others have almost faded away. Occasional favours may be returned, but such relationships tend not to gather significant strength until those involved have worked together. Another kind of relationship develops when people regularly have contact through their daily work and, without any deep discussions, come to respect each other for doing a good job, giving reliable information and causing few problems. Such relationships are quite likely to develop across professions, where mutual reliability is important but not the sharing of practice. The conditions of work are possibly the most critical factor of all. Pressure of work not only poses difficult problems of prioritization, but reduces the time available to tackle those and other problems. Opportunities to consult or get help are severely constrained because neither party has the time to talk, or even to move within earshot. An experienced manager can help to redirect effort in a crisis, but will find it difficult to keep track of several crises at a time. When people have no time to stop and think, and feel that they are on the brink of disaster, intentional learning disappears from sight. When such conditions persist for long periods of time, considered responses become increasingly rare, situations are poorly investigated and rapid intuitive responses are overused, with a consequent decline in the quality of practice. Moreover, the stress of having to depend on frantic coping strategies leads to resignations and burnout, which further exacerbate the situation. Continuity of staffing is another factor. Newcomers take time to understand local patterns of work sufficiently well to be able to contribute effectively, efficiently and pleasingly, and the not uncommon assumption that, apart from students, it is the newcomer's responsibility to learn the ropes unaided is far from helpful. Apparently naïve questions can be quite challenging for those with a more humble mindset. When newcomers are welcomed, they feel able to ask more and are willing to be asked more; thus, patterns of communication can be established that enhance learning and the quality of practice. Working patterns have a major influence on learning opportunities in the workplace. Research at the Universities of Brighton and Sussex, which included studies of the learning of newly qualified nurses as well as other early career professionals, found that the following working processes gave rise to important learning (Eraut et al. 2005a): participation in group processes; working alongside others; consultation; tackling challenging tasks and roles; problem solving; trying things out; consolidating, extending and refining skills; and working with users/clients/patients. Some of these processes are constrained or supported by the physical environment, as described above. All depend on working patterns and the allocation of work. Working alongside others is particularly important, when it lasts long enough for mutually beneficial relationships and implicit understandings of each other's practices to develop. Exploring issues such as what prompted a practitioner to do something at a particular moment opens up for discussion and evaluation aspects of practice that had hitherto been tacit. To discuss a problem together, respond and observe the immediate consequences, offers a rich, and often rare, learning opportunity. Our research project found that students and newly qualified professionals in their first few months needed to ask questions and receive feedback about practice problems and episodes as or very soon after they happened, and this kind of support was much more readily available when working alongside a more experienced colleague. The same principle could also apply to someone returning from a training course, who could work alongside either a former ‘graduate’ of that course or a colleague who had attended it with them. Where people are given mentor or preceptor roles, opportunities to work alongside each other can be expected to give considerable additional value. Indeed, nearly all the processes listed above would be enhanced by working alongside appropriate peers or more experienced colleagues. Exchanges with practitioners in other units could also offer significant learning opportunities, especially if there was ongoing contact between the unit managers. Including less-experienced practitioners in group processes gives them the chance both to increase the number of colleagues with whom they feel confident to consult and to become acquainted with new issues and practices through what Lave & Wenger (1991) call ‘peripheral participation’. It may also make the group more aware of the learning needs that might result from introducing new practices. Opportunities of this kind contribute to the general development of a more vibrant learning climate. The allocation of patients or clients is one of the most important factors affecting the process of tackling challenging tasks and roles. Our research has shown that the level of challenge is critical for learning. In particular, many practitioners are over-challenged in their first few months after qualification with consequent loss of confidence and a risk of leaving their chosen profession. This arises for several reasons: not starting with a reduced load; a failure to recognize the huge change in responsibility after qualification; difficulty in prioritizing; and lack of quick and ready access to support. Similar problems can also occur when practitioners first take up management roles. Being under-challenged is rare at this stage in health and social care, but it can easily occur later on when some people get stuck or hide in a rut, while others seek challenges to the point of burnout. These needs and their links to self-esteem and the emotional tensions of work require periodic attention from managers. The most relevant aspects of culture for an analysis of learning contexts are local practices and beliefs, the way we do things here and the way we would like to do things here. These are strongly influenced by the professional cultures and subcultures, which have helped to shape each practitioner's identity, and the organizational or departmental cultures in which the workplace is situated. For many practitioners, past cultures in similar or different organizations and workplaces have also influenced their personal attitudes and practices. They may also provide the often implicit standards against which they evaluate the current culture. Even though many features and practices are framed by national, organizational or professional regulations, pathways or guidelines, their usage, meanings and practical detail are usually subject to at least some interpretation at the point of use. Common interpretations will form part of the local culture, and individual interpretations are part of the knowledge resources of the workgroup, which may or may not be known or come to be used by others. Some aspects of this local culture will be taken for granted, some will be used explicitly and some will be contested privately, if not publicly, because they cause irritation or disquiet, or are believed to be suboptimal. Newcomers are socialized into this culture through both explicit and implicit learning, but also form professional alliances or develop friendships that link them to particular subcultures and provide some access to a range of individual perspectives. Cultures are major sources of practical expertise from which most participants benefit and, according to their experience and social standing, also contribute. But they can also sustain outmoded practices, ineffective ways of working, negative attitudes towards learning and, arguably, unattainable ideals. In a previous editorial (Eraut 2003), I drew attention to the role of theories in championing the ideology of a profession. Such theories are particularly important in discussions of a profession's goals and purposes, especially in occupations based on personal interaction with clients. I also warned that there was still: … a strong tendency to construct theories of practice which are ideologically attractive but almost impossible to implement. The main problem is that the professionals concerned are urged to adopt practices that involve much greater levels of time and effort than service users and/or the public purse could possibly finance. Hence, there is a significant gap between the theories of practice taught by former practitioners, based on how they would like to have practised, and the activities performed by current practitioners. This contrasts with a common workplace stance, in which current practice is uncritically accepted as an inevitable reality, and any impetus towards improving the service provided by an occupation is lost. Neither provides an adequate basis for a professional career. (pp. 62–3) I use the term discourse in the narrow sense of speech and text, because these are sufficiently important to merit separate treatment. Learning, in particular, is associated with the transmission, reception and sharing of words in a wide range of genres and contexts, and is often accompanied by live or mediated images. Alternatively, learning may occur when the discourse of explanation or reflection adds meaning to shared experiences or performances. Thus, newcomers need both to learn the relevant discourses of their profession, workplace and organization, and to learn through those discourses. They also need some access to the discourses of other professions and other groups within their workplace, and the cultures and discourses of their patients and/or clients. However, some discourses may be situated in settings so specific that their meanings are only appreciated by those who have worked in those settings, while others may be understood but convey very little information about a professional's working practices. In another editorial (Eraut 2004), I discussed the significance of what is said and what is not said in daily professional discourse. There are two main reasons for not saying things: not being able to say them, because the knowledge is tacit and has not yet been articulated in comprehensible discourse; and not wanting to say them, because of fears that what you say may be criticised or damage your reputation. They are not completely independent, because power relations in the workplace do not need to suppress certain types of discourse when fear of the consequences of disclosure leads to self-censorship. Self-censorship occurs when there are tensions between common practices and the preferred image of the profession. When unattainable ideals remain as implicit standards, many practitioners prefer to talk about the ideals rather than talk about the practices, even when those practices are seen as essential for their work. Thus: … in many settings discourse helps (1) to provide a defensible account rather than a description of one's actions, (2) to create an impression of control over situations which inspires confidence in the actor and (3) to preserve personal autonomy of action. Uncertainty and risk-taking are disguised rather than shared; and overt sharing of information serves to sustain a power-sharing equilibrium rather than communicate useful knowledge. (Eraut 2004, pp. 172–3) The recognition that workplace discourse does not necessarily provide access to knowledge, which might be usefully shared among practitioners, highlights the need to pay more attention to the knowledge embedded in the practices of both individuals and groups. When such knowledge is recognized but not explained because of its tacit nature, then other ways of sharing that knowledge should be explored (see Eraut 2004). Often the process of trying to share knowledge makes it better articulated and therefore more easily evaluated and further improved. These problems of discourse, knowledge and conflicting subcultures become even greater at the higher levels of organizations, where accurate portrayals of practitioners’ working practices are almost impossible to access. Unless there are particular cases that command attention because of their notoriety or potential notoriety, senior managers mainly deal with aggregated data without much detailed knowledge of what has been aggregated. This may work well when there is little change, but who can remember a time of little change in health and social care? If important knowledge is not available to decision-making groups because it is tacit or absent from the discourse, then the participation in decision making and problem solving by people who have that knowledge becomes very important. Few organizations have found good ways of achieving this, but that is probably because few organizations have articulated the need. Organizational learning is an important concept, but usually it has been applied to learning by members of the organization and not to learning from members of the organization. In this context, the work of Engestrom, Engestrom & Kerosuo (2003), in Finland, has been of special interest. Engestrom argues that tensions and inconsistencies are the most important triggers of new knowledge in complex situations, which are unlikely to be resolved by research. It is only in very challenging situations that organizations are likely to engage in joint problem-solving processes involving a wide range of users and practitioners from different departments and different organizations. Engestrom calls this process boundary-crossing, because it involves transactions between all those people who interact with a particular group of users, yet rarely (if ever) meet each other. The prime purpose of the early meetings is learning from each other through the use of visual evidence and personal testimony, Attention then moves to pooling relevant knowledge resources and mapping the problem space. These sessions provide one of the richest learning environments yet conceived, especially when the need to change the paradigm and invent new ways of thinking about the issues is recognized at an early stage. But the focus always remains on the users. Although this process is quite expensive in its use of people's time, many of the ideas that emerge have wider relevance, even when the particular solution is situation specific. Examples are still rare, because very few organizations have the inner strength to embark on a venture of this kind. They would rather call in consultants than trust the capabilities of their own staff, and it is unlikely that consultants would be cheaper. The term ‘affordance’ was introduced by Gibson (1966, 1979) to characterize a description of an environment that is directly relevant to a person's actions within that environment. Thus, affordances are opportunities for action by individuals or groups, and learning affordances are opportunities for a person or group to engage in learning. A further complication, absent from this literature, is that many opportunities to engage in new activities at work are not perceived as learning opportunities, even though they are responsible for a high proportion of the learning that occurs. As I stated in my introduction, most learning in the workplace is a by-product of engagement in new situations, where learning is not the object. Hence, most opportunities for new work are also learning opportunities, whether or not this is recognized at the time. Wenger (1998) argues that: ‘Learning cannot be designed: it can only be designed for’ (p. 229), then goes on to identify two kinds of learning affordance linked to two complementary dimensions of both practice and identity: participation and reification. Reification involves embedding meanings in artefacts, such as texts, other ‘tools’, plans, procedures, etc., while participation involves making sure that, ‘the right people are in the right place in the right kind of relation to make something happen’ (p. 232). His guiding principle is that: ‘Design for practice is always distributed between participation and reification – and its realization depends on how these two sides fit together.’ He then argues that, while tools are the result of design, practice is a response to design that emerges later, because designs are necessarily under-specified for particular, specific situations. An important consequence of this perspective on cultural artefacts is that the role of published texts is not that of being the knowledge but that of providing a representation that mediates the sharing and expansion of culturally situated practical knowledge. From this analysis we can conclude that the potential for learning in any given context depends on the interaction between the four key features of contexts discussed above. Eraut et al. (2005b) came to a similar conclusion from their research into early career professionals. Their model starts with a triangle depicting interactions between three main Learning Factors: the challenge and value of the work; the availability of support and feedback; and the confidence and sense of agency of the practitioners concerned. These three Learning Factors are then strongly influenced in turn by a second, similar, triangle of three interacting Context Factors: the allocation and structuring of work; relationships at work; and participation by and expectations of the practitioners concerned. The learning affordances for individuals or groups of practitioners depend on those aspects of the context's potential that they perceive to be ‘real’ learning opportunities, and many of them are disadvantaged by their lack of awareness of the informal learning that comes from participation in challenging work. While the concept of learning affordances addresses the extent to which people perceive the possibility of engaging in a particular piece of learning, the take up of such learning opportunities usually depends on their personal priorities and sense of agency. The agency of a practitioner, group or organization indicates the extent to which they are prepared to take initiatives to change their practices or other aspects of the contexts in which they live and work. This depends on the value they assign to those initiatives, their estimate of the learning effort involved, and their assessment of the challenge, the risk and the available support. Hence, the agency of those who are able to draw attention to potential learning opportunities and/or support those who want to pursue them is also important. At the individual level, factors working against practitioner attempts to use personal agency include: lack of confidence in getting support from others, fear of isolation; low chance of success owing to the inherent difficulty of the change; negative or minimal previous experience of taking similar initiatives; uncertainty about the purpose and scope of the venture; effect on relationships with peers or managers, head-above-parapet syndrome; lack of reward or recognition in the past or anticipated future; lack of alignment with a preferred learning trajectory; incompatibility with one's professional identity; and lack of appropriate role models. Lewin's force field theory suggests that reducing the strength of negative factors is often more effective than trying to increase positive factors, especially, I would add, when positive rhetoric has little credibility. A contrasting model of positive intrinsic motivation is advocated by Thomas (2000), who has identified four types of intrinsic reward that address both reason and emotion. Meaningfulness: the opportunity to pursue a worthy purpose; feeling that you are on a path that is worth your time and energy; that your purpose matters in the larger scheme of things. Choice: selecting tasks that make most sense to you and perform them in ways that seem appropriate; being able to use your own judgement and act out of your own understanding. Competence: skilfully performing your chosen tasks; feeling that you are doing high-quality work. Progress: achieving your purpose; feeling that your work is moving forward, and that you are really accomplishing something. [abridged from p. 44] Exceptionally heavy workloads or a low skill mix can cause performance levels to fall below competence levels, thus giving practitioners a feeling of declining standards rather than progress, as well as causing low morale. Choice is a difficult issue to analyse, because people are usually much more aware of the choices they do not make than the choices they do make. There is also considerable variation between different types of service in health and social care. Nevertheless, this analysis gives many clues as to how personal agency might be further developed, but also indicates that the exercise of such agency might require significant organizational and cultural changes in some contexts.