Working Relationally on Complex Problems: Building Capacity for Joint Agency in New Forms of Work

Abstract

Discussions in this chapter are based in cultural-historical accounts of human agency, which emphasise the dialectical nature of the relationship between person and institutional practice and the importance of agency in that dialectic. This account of agency is located within wider discussions of self and agency and draws on understandings of schools as organisations, which work best when there is a tension between central direction and professional discretion. These ideas are discussed in relation to a study of inter-professional work set in four schools in Chile. Under recent legislation, funding had been allocated to appoint psychologists and social workers to new roles within schools to help reconfigure the trajectories of vulnerability among students from low-income families. The study reported here examined how these professionals accomplished new forms of collaborative work with each other and teachers while navigating or negotiating their professional intentions alongside the established school practices. The dialectic of person and practice is compared across schools to identify whether and how their professional agency was exercised in creating new forms of work, which involved using a relational form of expertise, constructing and employing common knowledge as a resource in their work with each other and with teachers and exercising relational agency when supporting young people alongside other professionals.