What counts as expert knowledge, and what is expected from knowledgeable practitioners are subject to continual change in professional fields. Consequently, professional education programmes are often challenged to ascertain their capacities to prepare “job-ready” graduates for such changing professional knowledge work. However, what is the nature of these changes and how they get incorporated into teaching and learning practices in university courses are rarely examined, so teachers running courses for professional education get little guidance about how it can be more clearly conceptualised, and done better. Our study focussed on “epistemic shifts” – observable changes in professional fields that bear on how professionals are expected to work with knowledge. We aimed to understand how recent epistemic shifts in specific professional fields were instantiated in assessment tasks in professional courses. We focussed on assessment tasks as these tasks give insights not only into what and how students learn, but also into what counts as “job-ready” graduates. Our detailed case studies came from five courses – in pharmacy, nursing, social work, school counselling and education. Our results show that the epistemic shifts varied in their transformative scale and in the ways they became incorporated in assessment tasks: from implicit incorporation of an ongoing flow of small shifts into established professional tasks, to introduction of new professional epistemic practices. The analytical framework we have constructed helps depict what is actually changing in students’ epistemic practices when assessment tasks are redesigned and what kinds of new epistemic capabilities students will consequently develop.
Insights into the dynamics between changing professional fields and teaching in higher education
1. The University of Sydney Page 1
Insights into the
dynamics between
changing professional
fields and teaching in
higher educationLina Markauskaite and Peter
Goodyear
Acknowledgements:
ARC Grant DP0988307
Dr Agnieszka Bachfischer
Centre for Research on Learning and
Innovation
Earli
Tampere, 2017
2. The University of Sydney Page 2
Today
1. Context
2. Intellectual roots
3. Study design
4. Results & few examples
5. Final notes
Link to eBook
3. The University of Sydney Page 3
Dynamics in professional fields
20th century
• Technical knowledge
• Craftsmanship
• Artistic creativity
21st century
• Data-driven
• Evidence-based
• User-focused
• Process-oriented
• Collaborative…
(After Nicol & Piling, 2000)
http://www.yr-architecture.com/an-architects-expertise
4. The University of Sydney Page 4
Dynamics in professional fields
“…There is a significant push, not only in Australia, but
internationally, to reduce the amount of remuneration
pharmacists receive for dispensing a medicine, and
instead, remunerate them for improving quality use of
medicines or health outcomes.”
“So it’s a major paradigm shift within the profession.”
“So it’s a different type of thinking…”
(Pharmacy lecturer)
Epistemic shifts – changes in
how
professionals are expected to
work with knowledge
5. The University of Sydney Page 5
Questions
1. What kinds of recent epistemic shifts in professional
fields were seen as important for preparing
professionals?
2. How these shifts were instantiated in the concrete
assessment tasks that students did in preparation for
profession?
6. The University of Sydney Page 6
Expert cultures, practices and resourcefulness
Individual resourcefulness & expertise
Epistemic, knowledge-generating practices
Professional fields & expert cultures
7. The University of Sydney Page 7
Theoretical perspective: Objectual practice
We should look for foundations of enduring professional
practices, discovery and innovation in objects and
artefacts
(After Nicolini, Mengis, & Swan, 2012)
8. The University of Sydney Page 8
Method: “Cognitive-cultural archaeology”
Study design
Professio
ns
Pharmacy
Nursing
Social work
School counseling
Education
Sample 20 professional
practice courses
Data Course resources
Interviews (1-3 per
course)
Methods Epistemic
interviewing
Thematic analysis
Analysis of course designs
How have assessments been
redesigned over recent years?
Procedure
1. Analysis of interviews
2. Identification of epistemic
shifts
3. Tracing changes in
assessment tasks
One course per profession
9. The University of Sydney Page 9
Analytical categories
Core epistemic aspects
1. Knowledge-base
2. Epistemic skills
3. Epistemic values
(After Shulman’s “Signature pedagogies”,
2005)
Epistemic relations to
external environment
1. Formal infrastructure
2. Workplace context
3. Boundary crossing
4. Professional epistemic
agency
(After Knorr Cetina, 2015; Nerland, 2012)
10. The University of Sydney Page 10
Results: Epistemic shifts in professional fields
Profession Shifts
School
counselling
Numerous small changes in regulations
Social work Introduction of new practice standards
Teacher
education
(visual arts)
Significant change in expert knowledge
(new arts epistemic practices)
Pharmacy A major “paradigm shift” in professional
values
Nursing A large transformation in professional
epistemic culture
11. The University of Sydney Page 11
Case: School counseling
Professional field
“There’s a lot of policy and procedure. But you have to know
it…”
Assessments
We burn them a CD on which we have the policies and it’s
something – I forget the number, it might 200. There’s so
many.”
“…there are fairly accepted ways of doing things…”
Notations: ✓✓ – explicitly articulated in assessments, ✓– present, but expressed
only indirectly, ✔– have been changed during the recent change
Professio
n
Core epistemic aspects Epistemic relationships
Kn.
base
Epistemi
c skills
Epistemi
c values
Formal
infrastr.
Work
context
Boundar
y
crossing
Prof.
agency
School
counsellin
g
✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓✔ ✓✓ ✓✓
12. The University of Sydney Page 12
Case: Social work
Professional field
“…there are now national practice standards for social
workers...”
Assessments
“So these [learning outcomes] are going to be radically re-
written before next year.”
“It’s different language more than anything. It’s not different
in terms of its intent nor the ground that it covers…”
Professio
n
Core epistemic aspects Epistemic relationships
Kn.
base
Epistemi
c skills
Epistemi
c values
Formal
infrastr.
Work
context
Boundar
y
crossing
Prof.
agency
Social
work
✓✓ ✓✓ ✓✓ ✔✔ ✓✔ ✓✓ ✔
Notations: ✓✓ – explicitly articulated in assessments, ✓– present, but expressed
only indirectly, ✔– have been changed during the recent change
13. The University of Sydney Page 13
Case: Nursing
Professional field
“practice thinking, critical inquiry and clinical decision
making skills”; “effectiveness of patient centred care”
Assessments
“so I wanted them to create [nursing guidelines] with
evidence of what is the best”
“… it’s not just clinical skills … you need evidence
behind what you’re doing…”
Professio
n
Core epistemic aspects Epistemic relationships
Kn.
base
Epistemi
c skills
Epistemi
c values
Formal
infrastr.
Work
context
Boundar
y
crossing
Prof.
agency
Nursing ✔✔ ✔✔ ✔✔ ✔ ✔ ✔✔ ✔✔
Notations: ✓✓ – explicitly articulated in assessments, ✓– present, but expressed
only indirectly, ✔– have been changed during the recent change
14. The University of Sydney Page 14
Summary: Changes in assessments
Professio
n
Core epistemic aspects Epistemic relationships
Kn.
base
Epistemi
c skills
Epistemi
c values
Formal
infrastr.
Work
context
Boundar
y
crossing
Prof.
agency
School
counsellin
g
✓✓ ✓ ✓ ✓✔ ✓✓ ✓✓
Social
work
✓✓ ✓✓ ✓✓ ✔✔ ✓✔ ✓✓ ✔
Teacher
education
✓✔ ✔✔ ✔ ✔✔ ✓ ✔
Pharmacy ✓✓ ✔✔ ✔✔ ✔ ✔ ✔✔ ✔
Nursing ✔✔ ✔✔ ✔✔ ✔ ✔ ✔✔ ✔✔
Notations: ✓✓ – explicitly articulated in assessments, ✓– present, but expressed
only indirectly, ✔– have been changed during the recent change
15. The University of Sydney Page 15
Main insights: Standards vs. value and skill
driven epistemic change
1. Professional learning is shaped by diverse changes in
professional fields: from standards, to values
2. The link between the changes in professional fields and
in teaching practices is not straightforward
3. Some shifts that look “radical” have small implications
on the ways students learn (and vice versa)
4. Influential changes reshape core epistemic aspects:
epistemic values, skills, and knowledge-base
16. The University of Sydney Page 16
If you are interested...
Email:
Follow our website:
https://epistemicfluency.com
Lina.Marakauskaite@sydney.edu.
au
Notas do Editor
http://www.yr-architecture.com/an-architects-expertise
An example of a big picture
An example of a specific case
And such changes happen not only over centuries, but almost continually… and it changes professional epistemic practices… how they come to know and work with knowledge
What kinds of recent epistemic shifts were seen as important for preparing professionals in various professional fields?
How these shifts were instantiated in the concrete assessment tasks that students did in preparation for profession, in university courses?
Knowledge could be studied at different levels
Top Global knowledge culture (or formal knowledge). Knowledge that we often see in books, formal methods, etc. Education often is the main consumer of this kind of knowledge and knowing
“epistemic practice and culture” brings “knowledge practice” from ideal, abstract down to the (collective) local settings and machineries of knowledge production. Practical methods, artefacts, etc
(Piaget with his developmental stages somewhat confused all education, formal knowledge does not replace, functional intuitive ways of knowing, but complement)
In education, it is necessary to make one further step and bring it down to individual resourcefulness and capacities to work with knowledge
Personal epistemic and conceptual resourcefulness that enables to make knowledgeable actions that on one side are sensitive to concrete situations, on the other draws on the resources of local and global cultures
Today I mainly focus tools, methods, artefacts that we see at the second level
Professional learning and assessment in higher education often involve production of various artefacts, such as lesson plans and reflections in teaching, assessment reports and case studies in counselling
Disciplines
pharmacy, nursing, social work, school counseling and education
Sample
20 professional practice courses
24 projects-assessment tasks
16 academics
Data
Interviews: 1-3 interviews per course
Course materials: outlines, assignments, handouts, examples, etc.
Methods
Cognitive task analysis (Crandall, Klein, & Hoffman, 2006)
Epistemic interviewing (Brinkmann, 2007)
Knowledge base – what professionals are expected to know
Epistemic skills – on what kinds of thinking and problem solving practices they are expected to engage
Epistemic values – what kinds of engagement with knowledge and knowing are valued
(After Shulman’s signature pedagogies: surface, deep, implicit structure, 2005)
Formal infrastructure – “information structures with a global outreach” that hinge and generate standardization and codification
Workplace context – ways of engaging with situated knowledge generating work
Boundary crossing – relational practices on the professional boundaries
Epistemic agency – learning to create formal expert professional knowledge & culture
“A signature pedagogy has three dimensions.
First, it has a surface structure, which consists of concrete, operational acts of teaching and learning, of showing and demonstrating, of questioning and answering, of interacting and withholding, of approaching and withdrawing.
Any signature pedagogy also has a deep structure, a set of assumptions about how best to impart a certain body of knowledge and know-how.
And it has an implicit structure, a moral dimension that comprises a set of beliefs about professional attitudes, values, and dispositions.
Finally, each signature pedagogy can also be characterized by what it is not–by the way it is shaped by what it does not impart or exemplify. A signature pedagogy invariably involves a choice, a selection among alternative approaches
to training aspiring professionals. That choice necessarily highlights and supports certain outcomes while, usually unintentionally, failing to address other important characteristics of professional performance."
Lee S. Shulman, 2005
“There’s a lot of policy and procedure. But you have to know it…. we do exercises. We give them lots of handouts….They’re all given a CD. We burn them a CD on which we have the policies and it’s something – I forget the number, it might 200. There’s so many.”
“But there are fairly accepted ways of doing things, good practice.”
“Yes. It’s making a bit of a difference for them as to how they prepare for a student. And the sorts of activities that a student might get involved with. So, for example, a number of practitioners would call themselves ‘direct practice practitioners’, so they work directly with individuals where it’s communities. And they wouldn’t see themselves as researchers or policy writers. But research and policy are very much part of a social worker’s practice. And we expect that students will learn about applicable research and what policy informs their practice, no matter where they are. So it was interesting yesterday’s conversation that a number of practitioners were saying ‘oh I have to think a little bit about how I engage a student in those aspects of practice’. Nobody was saying you can’t do it and won’t do it. But just requiring them to think a little bit differently. Very interesting.
Infrastructure driven shifts
Vs
Value and practice driven shifts
Professional learning is shaped by diverse changes in professional fields: from standards, to values
Changes in formal professional infrastructure do not necessarily result in significant changes in epistemic practices
Influential changes reshape core epistemic aspects: epistemic values, skills, and knowledge-base
The link between the changes in professional fields and changes in teaching practices is not straightforward
Some shifts that look “radical” have small implications on the ways students learn (and vice versa)
Standards driven vs value and knowledge driven change