Peripheral Participation Research Articles

Physician development through interprofessional workplace interactions: A critical review.

Increasingly, medical training aims to develop physicians who are competent collaborators. Although interprofessional interactions are inevitable elements of medical trainees' workplace learning experiences, the existing literature lacks a cohesive model to conceptualise the learning potential residing in these interactions. We conducted a critical review of the health professions and related educational literatures to generate an empirically and theoretically informed description of medical trainees' workplace interactions with other health professionals, including learning mechanisms and outcomes. Informed by Teunissen's conceptualisation of workplace learning, we highlight the individual, social and situated dimensions of learning from interprofessional workplace interactions. Workplace interactions between medical trainees and other health professionals tend to be brief, spontaneous, informal and often implicit without the predefined educational goals and roles that structure trainees' relationships with physician supervisors. Yet they hold potential for developing trainees' knowledge and skills germane to the work of a physician as well as building their capacity for collaboration. Our review identified a spectrum of learning theories helpful for examining what and how trainees learn from these interactions. Self-regulated learning theories focus attention on how learning depends on trainees interpreting and judging the cues offered by other health professionals. Sociocultural frameworks including the zone of proximal development and legitimate peripheral participation emphasise the ways other health professionals support trainees in performing tasks at the border of their abilities and facilitate trainees' participation in clinical work. Both the landscapes of practice theory and cultural historical activity theory highlight the influence of surrounding social, cultural and material environments. These theories are unified into cohesive model and demonstrated through an illustrative example. Interprofessional workplace interactions harbour a range of learning opportunities for medical trainees. Capitalising on their potential can contribute to training collaborative practice-ready physicians alongside traditional intra-professional interactions between physicians and merits future research.

Professional learning and knowledge ‘transfer’ in practice: Immigrant engineers reticulating the epistemic culture of the profession

It is known that skilled immigrants learn to integrate professionally. This paper complexifies this image. By following the experiences of ‘successful’ immigrants working in the engineering profession in Canada, it argues that immigrants engage in not only learning but also knowledge ‘transfer’. Their learning at work often starts as legitimate peripheral participation, and evolves through expansive participation in work activities. Meanwhile, they also ‘transfer’ knowledge and practices, a role that could be amplified given their transnational experiences. Immigrants’ learning and knowledge practices can also be understood as a sociomaterial process of translation, through which they knot together people and objects, while negotating power, position, and positionality at the same time. Through continuous learning and knowledge practices, the paper further highlights that immigrant engineers necessarily articulate themselves into, and to some extent, reticulate the epistemic ‘machineries’ or ‘culture’ of the profession, which is constituted through a nexus of professional associations, societies, institutions, and practice communities that are bounded by professional domains and interests, and lifeworld exigencies. Conceptually, this paper draws on practice-based theories and views continuous learning and knowing as an effect of the sociocultural and sociomaterial organization of professional practices.

Keeping the Iron Cage from Closing: How clashes over shared principles elicit collective authoring

When less hierarchical organizations attempt to avoid positional authority and rely more on the authority of shared principles, they are challenged to balance a relative open-endedness and sufficient consensus of those principles. However, situations inevitably arise when assertions about the principles clash, disturbing the sense of collective sharing of principles and so triggering tendencies to make the principles more rigid or default to positional rule. This paper explores how internal collective dialogue unfolds in such situations in the central online channels of three mid-sized Nordic software consultancies aspiring for less hierarchical, principles-based organizing. Our research reveals the emergence of “collective authoring”—peripheral participation that reacts to the distress stirred by the clash. The collective responds with tension-mediating remarks and, most markedly, with a polyphony of inquiries and musings that are attentive to what is unfolding but not stubbornly fortified with either side of the clash. We discover how this collective dialogue comes to embed the initial clash with the iteratively maturing and saturating soundscape of deliberations, gradually invoking a tacit sense of the collective understanding of the issue on the channels. The dialogues persist until the most acute sense of distress over the sharing of principles seems to dissolve. We discuss how our findings, by illuminating the role of “the collective,” contribute to the extant conceptions of relational authority and less hierarchical organizing.

The experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse health practitioners in dominant culture practice: a scoping review.

Increasing the proportion of culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) health practitioners is identified as one strategy to address healthcare disparities that individuals from minority or under-represented backgrounds experience. However, professional and institutional cultures and structures are known to contribute to the challenges for CALD practitioners who work in dominant culture practice contexts. This scoping review used the theory of Legitimate Peripheral Participation to describe and interpret literature about the experiences of CALD health practitioners in view of informing strategies to increase their representation. A systematised search was conducted across four allied health, medicine and nursing databases. Following abstract and full text screening, articles which fit the inclusion criteria (n = 124) proceeded to data extraction. Categories relating to the experiences of practitioners were extracted, and three themes were identified that were subsequently theoretically interpreted: Discrimination, Consequences and Hierarchy. Discrimination functioned as a barrier to CALD practitioners being legitimised and able to participate equally in healthcare practice, retaining their position at the periphery of the practice community; Consequences reinforced this peripheral position and further impeded legitimation and participation; and Hierarchy was maintained through structures that reinforced and reproduced these barriers. The findings summarise how these barriers are reinforced through the intersections of professional and racial hierarchies, and highlight a need for strategies to address discrimination and structures that marginalise CALD practitioners' identity, practices and participation in their health professional communities.

Crossing boundaries: Beginner teachers transitioning from university graduates to full legitimate participants in the teaching profession

This paper stems from a broader study that foregrounded an existing mentoring programme against the backdrop of low teacher retention in the South African schooling system. It works from the premise that beginner teachers are exiting the teaching profession within the first three to five years of teaching. This research suggests that one way of addressing low teacher retention is through a formal mentoring programme that will assist in the transition from university graduates into school practitioners. Data was produced through semi-structured individual and group interviews with a principal, two mentors, and two mentees. Theoretically, we drew on the work of Lave & Wenger (1991) whose constructs of Community of Practice (CoP) and Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP) were used as analytical tools to frame this study conceptually. The data revealed that beginner teachers come into the profession with marked inadequacies stemming from their initial training at universities which meant that they were insufficiently prepared for the realities of schooling. Furthermore, the data reveals multiple and overlapping CoPs in operation, pointing to viewing mentoring as multidimensional and not only in dyadic terms as a relationship between a mentor and mentee as it has traditionally been viewed.

Playing the ‘pibe chorro’ game: masculine skills and legitimate peripheral participation in street culture

ABSTRACT In this article, I analyse the street learning that a group of boys in a poor neighbourhood in Argentina produce when they play at being ‘pibes chorros’. Through the observation of interviews, photos and audio recordings made in the neighbourhood since 2010, I show how these games are occasions for boys to learn to pretend they know how to steal and to recreate a masculine image of toughness in order to cope with both street life and local working life. In this way, street culture, which in other studies is often seen as a constraint on available educational opportunities, in this article is a central place for learning by legitimate peripheral participation to occur (Lave and Wenger [1991]. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). The masculine acquisitions and skills of street play allow these boys greater preparation and participation social for life in highly formal spaces such as oil, the police and the local state.

The scientific rules, roles, and values that life sciences doctoral students want to see upheld by undergraduate researchers

AbstractArticulating the rules, roles, and values that are expected of undergraduate researchers is important as we strive to create a more accessible path into the scientific community. Rules refer to skills required of scientists, roles refer to behaviors consistent with the expectations of a scientist, and values refer to beliefs of the scientific community. Doctoral student mentors have great potential to serve as agents of influence for undergraduate researchers as undergraduates engage in the process of learning to be a scientist through legitimate peripheral participation. As such, we argue that doctoral students are partially responsible for identifying and promoting the rules, roles, and values that undergraduate researchers develop in scientific research. However, few studies have examined what rules, roles, and values are appreciated, or perceived as desirable, by doctoral students and thus expected of undergraduate research mentees. To address this gap, we surveyed 835 life sciences doctoral students who had mentored or would eventually mentor undergraduate researchers. We assessed what qualities and beliefs they appreciate in undergraduate researchers and what advice they would give to undergraduates to maximize their experiences in research. We analyzed their open‐ended responses using inductive coding and identified specific rules (e.g., effectively communicate), roles (e.g., demonstrate a strong work ethic), and values (e.g., be driven by intrinsic passion) that doctoral students wrote about. We used logistic regression to determine whether demographics predicted differences among doctoral student responses. We found that gender, race/ethnicity, and college generation status predicted what rules, roles, and values doctoral students appreciated and advised undergraduates to adopt. This research illuminates what rules, roles, and values undergraduate researchers are expected to uphold and identifies relationships between mentor identities and the advice they pass on to students.

The evolution of a post-socialist satellite city in Central Europe. A historical and socio- spatial case study of Luboń near Poznań (Poland)

The aim of the article: The evolution of a post-socialist satellite city in Central Europe. A historical and socio-spatial case study of Luboń near Poznań (Poland) is a socio-economic and spatial analysis of the development process of a satellite city with an industrial and agricultural core located in Central Europe. Luboń is a city founded in 1954, which allows to trace the entire process of its development, based on the research methods used, including statistical data on changes in, among others, population numbers, as well as spatial data based on georeferencing of photographic images of archival maps of the City of Luboń. The methods used as the way of describing and analyzing the history of the city were inscribed in the philosophy of the evolutionary approach referring to the dynamics of change and the complexity of development processes and their imbalance. The authors of the article formulate answers of three research questions: (1) how did the industrialization origins and socio-spatial alterations shape satellite city contemporary form? (2) how was its spatial form affected by the de-industrialization process of the first decade after 1989? (3) how has the city changed under the demographic and suburbanization pressure of its larger neighbour over the years? The article also contains elements of historical analysis, reconstructing urban dynamics. It also includes elements of conceptualisation based both on genetic studies of the concept of “new cities”, but also on assumptions present in Soviet urban planning thought, which was a direct inspiration for the solutions of the 1950s. The generalizations, after answering the research questions, proposed in the conclusion indicate the existence of the state of crisis and invite to discuss the dynamics of the phenomena of metropolisation from the point of view of peripheral participants of the process.

How Others Matter in Children’s Socialization: The Huotang-Centered Allomothering System Among the Matrilineal Mosuo

Allomothering, the practice of child-rearing by caregivers other than childrens’ mothers, has garnered more attention recently. This study examined allomothering within the matrilineal Mosuo, an ethnic group in Southwestern China known for its nonmarital reproductive and dual-residence system, in which partners maintain separate residences, fostering cooperative multigenerational child-rearing. Still, specific parental interactions within the Mosuo have not been completely investigated. Using the grounded theory approach, we conducted two rounds of semi-structured interviews to explore Mosuo’s allomothering system and child socialization practices. Initial interviews (N = 19, M = 53.68) focused on child-rearing beliefs and family relationships. Subsequent interviews with caregivers (N = 17, M = 40.6) and children (N = 19, M = 15.7) delved into detailed intergenerational parental interactions. Our findings show that grandmothers primarily handled children’s daily care, with mothers and sisters dividing responsibilities for financial provisions and co-caregiving. Mothers tended to enforce discipline, and aunts provided nurturing attention. A female-led “Huotang-focused” allomothering system is prevalent, where “Huotang” signifies the communal hearth, central to family interactions. Maternal uncles, while not directly involved in care, oversaw moral and behavioral guidance and assumed economic obligations. Fathers, exhibiting less authority than maternal uncles, predominantly engaged in rough-and-tumble play, marking their interactions with their children by distinctive friend-like characteristics. Children’s socialization reflected legitimate peripheral participation, with the children observing and modeling their maternal caregivers’ behaviors and beliefs. Mosuo’s allomothering interactions offer fresh insights into cooperative strategies and prompt a reconsideration of traditional parental roles in child socialization.

Exploring perceptions of pre-clerkship students about workplace learning in the clinical learning environment at Gulf Medical University, UAE

BackgroundMedical students view clinical workplace placements as an inspiring and motivating learning environment where active student participation is pivotal to development of students’ identity. The progress from pre-clerkship to clerkship education harbors many challenges which consist of experiential learning, adjusting to the clinical environment, and understanding roles & responsibilities. Workplace learning is underpinned by various adult learning theories including social theories,constructivism, supported participation and legitimate peripheral participation. Workplace learning course was recently initiated for pre-clerkship students at a medical university in UAE, which will enable their smooth entry into the clerkship phase of the curriculum.ObjectivesThe research aims to explore students’ perceptions of various domains of their clinical learning environment (CLE), highlight the challenges they face, and extract valuable feedback to improve their environment.MethodsThis study was conducted qualitatively by using focus groups method in order to explore students’ perceptions of the clinical learning environment. Two focus group discussions were conducted (n = 8 +/-10) to determine the common challenges of workplace learning and its potential solutions. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis. The approach used to carry out this study was phenomenology, as it helps to understand the learning and behavior of these students who are undergoing this pre-clerkship training in order to transition smoothly to the clerkship phase.ResultThe focus groups helped to deeply explore the perceptions of students about their clinical learning environment. It helped to reveal the challenges encountered by the students including the significance of proper orientation of staff and students, language barrier, availability of learning opportunities, and supervision quality. The focus groups provided worthwhile suggestions to improve the learning opportunities in the clinical learning environment which include orientation of the staff and students what to expect, improved supervision, mentoring and providing learning opportunities to encourage participation.ConclusionThis study attempted to identify the pre-clerkship students’ perception of their clinical learning environment and the challenges they face over there. Possible suggestions by the students included a formal orientation for the staff and students to be carried out at the beginning. Efforts should be made by clerkship directors to provide students with learning opportunities by increasing patient exposure, encouraging participation, and providing high-quality supervision.

Economic warfare goes global: the incorporation of the Indies in the great reprisal against the French, 1635–1640

ABSTRACT This article examines the Indies’ significant role in Spain’s economic warfare during Philip IV’s reign. It challenges the perception of the American territories as peripheral participants, emphasizing their central involvement in the General Reprisal against the French during the Franco-Spanish War. The study reveals interconnected policies between the Indies and European territories, the adaptations of the reprisal scheme to suit the American settings, and the consideration of each territory’s unique conditions. It also highlights the importance of the French mercantile community in Seville, their integration into the Atlantic trade, and their strategies to recover property in the American territories. Additionally, the article analyzes the introduction of rogation days in the Indies as a complementary measure, serving as a propaganda tool to otherize the French, influence public opinion, and shape perceptions of foreignness. Overall, the research enhances our understanding of Spain’s economic warfare strategies and their global impact.

Newcomers Learning Religious Ritual

In this article, we explore the learning of newcomers in a religious community through a micro-sociological approach, making use of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger’s (1991) notion of “legitimate peripheral participation” to conceptualize initial stages of inclusion and involvement in social practice. Our case study concerns Orthodox Christianity and is based on material gathered through fieldwork in a course targeting potential new members organized by a Finnish Orthodox parish. In the analysis, we inquire into how beginners learn skilful participation in Orthodox liturgical life, and specifically embodied ritual conduct. This learning takes place primarily through participation in real-life divine services. The article highlights challenges faced by beginners in acquiring the embodied repertoire of Orthodox ritual, including adapting to the artistic use of ritual gestures, and negotiating the meanings produced through them. Furthermore, it also illustrates how nuanced dynamics between newcomers and old-timers influence the learning process.

"Not my Priority:" Ethics and the Boundaries of Computer Science Identities in Undergraduate CS Education

Researchers in the CSCW community have long problematized the separation of social and ethical considerations from design work. Despite increasing attention to tech ethics and ethics education, however, computer scientists' sense of ethical responsibility remains of concern. This paper offers insights on how this boundary between tech and ethics is maintained and reinforced for students as they develop their identities as computer scientists. Drawing on interviews with eight undergraduate computer science (CS) students at McGill University, we explore the role that ethics play in the legitimate peripheral participation of students inside and outside their formal education. We found that while individual opinions on the importance of ethics varied, students agreed that ethics are not valued or rewarded in their education, extracurriculars, or future work prospects. We describe how placing ethics outside the boundary of computing acts as a form of occupational closure, excluding both important multidisciplinary work and marginalized bodies. We argue that in order to promote ethical practice in the design of CSCW systems, we must make it in the interest of future designers to learn socially grounded ethics. This requires that designers, researchers, and future employers actively reshape the boundaries of computing by asserting social and ethical considerations as values of computing and design.

Boundaries, barriers, or bridges? Unraveling the integration of doctoral students in the accounting academic community

ABSTRACT We aim to understand how the accounting academic community shapes and socializes doctoral students. From a critical-qualitative stance, the analyses found support in Étienne Wenger’s Social Learning Systems, focusing on the relationship between doctoral students’ socialization and the accounting academic community – understood as a Community of Practice (CoP). Our findings indicate that doctoral students, as Legitimate Peripheral Participants, do not become central members due to imposed communitarian limits. These limits work as an impediment to the relationship between the individual and the CoP. Some participants indicated a loss of meaning and episodes of epistemic violence that (re)produce community limits that define the ‘good accounting academic’, among other aspects, regarding boundaries and power dynamics. We contribute to expanding the discussion on Social Systems of Learning and CoPs by presenting empirical evidence of the barriers between CoPs and the professional socialization process.

Metabolic alterations of peripheral blood immune cells and heterogeneity of neutrophil in intracranial aneurysms patients.

Intracranial aneurysms (IAs) represent a severe cerebrovascular disease that can potentially lead to subarachnoid haemorrhage. Previous studies have demonstrated the involvement of peripheral immune cells in the formation and progression of IAs. Nevertheless, the impact of metabolic alterations in peripheral immune cells and changes in neutrophil heterogeneity on the occurrence and progression of IAs remains uncertain. Single-cell Cytometry by Time-of-Flight (CyTOF) technology was employed to profile the single-cell atlas of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and polymorphonuclear cells (PMNs) in 72 patients with IAs. In a matched cohort, metabolic shifts in PBMC subsets of IA patients were investigated by contrasting the expression levels of key metabolic enzymes with their respective counterparts in the healthy control group. Simultaneously, compositional differences in peripheral blood PMNs subsets between the two groups were analysed to explore the impact of altered heterogeneity in neutrophils on the initiation and progression of IAs. Furthermore, integrating immune features based on CyTOF analysis and clinical characteristics, we constructed an aneurysm occurrence model and an aneurysm growth model using the random forest method in conjunction with LASSO regression. Different subsets exhibited distinct metabolic characteristics. Overall, PBMCs from patients elevated CD98 expression and increased proliferation. Conversely, CD36 was up-regulated in T cells, B cells and monocytes from the controls but down-regulated in NK and NKT cells. The comparison also revealed differences in the metabolism and function of specific subsets between the two groups. In terms of PMNs, the neutrophil landscape within patients group revealed a pronounced shift towards heightened complexity. Various neutrophil subsets from the IA group generally exhibited lower expression levels of anti-inflammatory functional molecules (IL-4 and IL-10). By integrating clinical and immune features, the constructed aneurysm occurrence model could precisely identify patients with IAs with high prediction accuracy (AUC=0.987). Furthermore, the aneurysm growth model also exhibited superiority over ELAPSS scores in predicting aneurysm growth (lower prediction errors and out-of-bag errors). These findings enhanced our understanding of peripheral immune cell participation in aneurysm formation and growth from the perspectives of immune metabolism and neutrophil heterogeneity. Moreover, the predictive model based on CyTOF features holds the potential to aid in diagnosing and monitoring the progression of human IAs.

Ontological complexity of interpolity orders: the encounter between Chosŏn and Tibet in Qing

This article examines the ontological complexity of interpolity orders with a focus on peripheral polities in the Qing order. Existing multiculturalist studies of the Qing order emphasized diverse cultural representations of a single imperial reality, lacking an understanding of multiple realities experienced by peripheral participants. Our analysis reveals the ontological complexity—rather than cultural diversity—of the Qing order, in which multiple ontological agents experienced different lived worlds, from the encounter between Chosŏn Korean envoys and the Tibetan Panchen Lama at Emperor Qianlong’s birthday ceremony. By analyzing the Chosŏn envoy member Pak Chiwŏn’s travelog and Tibetan records, we argue that the Chosŏn envoys with Confucian ontology experienced the Panchen Lama as a subhuman, while the Lama experienced the envoys as ignorant lay beings. Observing this ontological dissonance, Pak Chiwŏn criticized the Qing court’s appropriation of peripheral ontologies and proposed experiencing other ontologies to foreground the presence of the pluriverse in the interpolity order. Beyond the Qing, an ontological approach will help reveal heterogeneous lived worlds of interpolity orders and reconceptualize interpolity order under the condition of ontological complexity.

Case study: adult learning and public health—a foundational training programme in field epidemiology with lessons and opportunities for collaboration

ABSTRACT This article explores the first field epidemiology training programme (FETP) through a case study to understand its approach to learning and education. Field epidemiologists deploy to outbreaks to investigate, control, and prevent future epidemics and pandemics. Since the 1950s, they have learned their trade through FETP. FETP arose at a paradigmatic crossroads, has endured for seventy years, and is now delivered in over ninety countries. COVID-19 has highlighted the urgency for re-thinking learning in the health sector, hence the analysis of this case can inform FETP, public health, and the adult education field. Inductive content analysis of this case using published accounts from the programme designer-leader and participants suggests the programme’s approach to learning reflected Knowles’s andragogical assumptions, Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, and Lave and Wenger’s legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice. Alignment with such influential contributors to the field of adult learning clarifies the programme’s paradigm and explains its endurance. Now, given the lessons of COVID-19, critical learning approaches are needed to enable field epidemiologists to engage issues of culture and power as they investigate epidemics. Recent adult learning theories offer opportunities for adult educators to collaborate with public health programmes. COVID-19 urges that we do not hesitate.

Rethinking College Transitions: Legitimate Peripheral Participation as a Pathway to Becoming

This paper’s purpose is to review theoretical explanations of college transitions, offer a critique of their utility, and make an explicit argument that the field of higher education would benefit from a shift from a view of transition as induction or development to transition as becoming. Moreover, we propose that the use of legitimate peripheral participation paired with transition as becoming as an emerging theoretical viewpoint that (1) points toward ways educators can shape environments that support transitions as becoming, (2) more effectively describes the lived experiences of students in transition, and (3) facilitates improved understanding, study, and implementation of student transition programs in the United States.

Adaptation of Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory for Use in Clinical Practice-A Reply from the Contributor

Adaptation of Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory for Use in Clinical Practice-A Reply from the Contributor

Adaptation of the Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory for Medical Training

Adaptation of the Legitimate Peripheral Participation Theory for Medical Training