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Bridging professional learning, doing and innovation through making epistemic artefactsLina Markauskaite and Peter GoodyearCentre for Research on Learning and Innovation

Practice-Based Education Summit “Bridging Practice Spaces”

@ CSU, Sydney13-14 April, 2016

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Expected publication:28 May, 2016

Context: Epistemic fluency

Grounded (and extended) view of cognition

Professional expertise is inseparable from capacities to (co-)construct epistemic environments that enhance knowledgeable actions.

Such expertise is grounded in embodied, situated professional knowledge work.

Much of this work is done by (co-) creating epistemic artefacts that embody actionable knowledge.

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Learning trough making epistemic artefactsQuestions:1. What is the nature of the artefacts that

students produce during their professional learning?

2. How does students’ work on making these artefacts help them to bridge knowledge learnt in university setting with knowledge work in workplaces?

Focus:Assessment tasks and artefacts in courses that prepare for professional practice

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Theoretical perspectives

1. Socio-cultural “mediation” (Kaptelinin, 2005)2. Socio-material “objectual practice” (Knorr Cetina,

2001) 3. Ecological cognition (Ingold, 2012; Knappett, 2010)

Objects are the foundation of enduring professional practices, discovery and innovation... and human consciousness and learning.

Objects are entities people act towards and/or act with (Star, 2010)

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Socio-cultural “mediation” perspective

Object

ObjektAs “problem space,” concrete (material) entity

PredmetAs “true motive,” psychological stimuli

“…the activity does not have a direction and does not really start until the object of activity is defined” (Kaptelinin, 2005)

Notations: N – Need; M – Motive; O – Object; A – Activity SC – Social Context; CM – Conditions and Means

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Socio-material “objectual practice” perspective

“The lack in completeness of being is crucial: objects of knowledge in many fields have material instantiations, but they must simultaneously be conceived of as unfolding structures of absences: as things that continually 'explode' and 'mutate' into something else, and that are as much defined by what they are not (but will, at some point have become) than by what they are” (Knorr Cetina, 2001)

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Ecological cognition perspective

“Things are ambiguous and undefined; when you say ‘pass me that green thing over there,’ the thing is unintelligible in some way. Objects, on the other hand, are named, understood and transparent” (Knappett, 2010, 82)

Inhabited world is not so much composed of objects as of things – forms arise in flows of materials, rather than being set a priori, and “stand against us” (Ingold, 2010)

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Objects vs. things

– “The use of terms such as “tinkering” (to describe working on doable problems) misses the mark when work is viewed in the wider context of motivated object-oriented activity” (Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006, 285)

– “...There is not much feeling for thingness in these cases, of stuff just being there, not fully perceived or understood. It is as if every entity around us in our material world can be precisely named and functionally ascribed” (Knappett, 2010, 82).

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Epistemic artefact: convergence of object and thing...

Artefact - lat. arte (“Skill in doing something”) and factum (“A thing done or performed”)

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Study: “Cognitive-cultural archaeology”

Phase 1 Phase 2Disciplines Pharmacy

NursingSocial work School counselingEducation

PharmacyEducation

Sample 20 professional practice courses24 projects-assessment tasks 16 academics

3 tutorial groups, 6 weeks2 students’ groups, 4 weeks

Data Interviews: 1-3 interviews per course Course materials: outlines, assignments, handouts, examples, etc.

ObservationsCourse materials, artefacts produced by studentsOpen interviews

Methods Cognitive task analysis (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006)Epistemic interviewing (Brinkmann, 2007)

Ethno- audio/video taped observations

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Objects for assessment tasksMotives/Objects

Everyday practices Unusual practices

Fine-tuning skill and knowledge

Key specific skills

Eg. Administering behavioural assessments

Hardest elements of professional practiceEg. Teaching lessons of most difficult to teach topics

Shaping professional vision

Core inquiry frameworksEg. Mastering a generic framework for pharmacy practice

Hidden elements of professional vision Eg. Seeing social justice in a lesson plan

Making professional artefacts

Production artefacts for/in action Eg. Designing a plan, writing a report

Production of generic artefacts-toolsEg. Creating guidelines

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Nature of “translational” artefacts

Learning/hybrid artefacts

Workplace-based/focussed artefacts

Accountability

Formal testsEg. OHS test

Experience recordsEg. practice logbooks

Pedagogical

Educational artefactsEg. concept maps, essays

Deconstructive artefactsEg. analyses and reflections of professional experiences

Professional

Rare/hybrid professional artefactsEg. medication review, nursing guidelines

Common professional artefactsEg. medication dosage assessment

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A case: Constructing nursing guidelines

“[T]his Nursing School didn’t want to have a set of guidelines as such to give the students out of the books. They said we want the students to be freer thinking. And I watched the students struggle and I thought “well, maybe often they do need guidelines.” I don’t teach to guidelines. I teach to principles. But when you want them to go back and practice, they need guidelines <…> So that’s what I thought that a way of getting around that is if they developed their own guidelines.”

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Needs and motives

“...the hardest bit is to engage the students into feeling like nurses, feeling like they’re doing nursing. And to actually make their clinical practice in the simulation laboratories meaningful <...> trying to get them to think as a nurse and that was the whole purpose behind doing this assignment too - to look at the fact that it’s not just clinical skills that you need evidence behind what you’re doing.”

Task design:1. Look for evidence & best-practice2. Critically evaluate and make choices3. Perform clinical skill in a simulation laboratory4. Take pictures of your performance5. Develop guidelines that combines your performance with

evidence

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Entangling social, material and human

“I suppose the modus operandi behind it [the task] was to get them to engage and connect with what they’re doing”

Notations: N – Need; M – Motive; O – Object; A – Activity; EA – Epistemic Artefact; T – Thing SMHE – Social, Material and Human Entanglements

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Final points

1. The nursing guidelines are not the object (“ultimate reason”) of the students’ behaviours. Rather, they are the epistemic artefact that holds together diverse things and objects, through which actionable knowledge is constructed and expressed.

2. Activity is not so much directed towards a specific thing or object (“the ultimate reason”) as it is this “ultimate reason” of learning.

3. Social contexts and material means is not an inanimate background, but rather as the very matter through which motives are expressed and coordinated, and through which the objects come to life.

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Final points

Productive epistemic artefacts connect the object (‘why’ of work) and the thing (‘what’ of work) trough action (‘know how’) and ways of thinking that underpin situated professional innovation.

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If you are interested...

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Lina.Marakauskaite@sydney.edu.au