Learning Across Sites: New tools, infrastructures and practices - Earli

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58 L. C. Lahn
course a successful use of these guidelines depends on a deep understanding of
the professional domain on the part of the designers. Another strength that can
be attributed to this tradition is its insistence on process descriptions – although
the trajectories to be accounted for are rather short- lived. In recent studies of
professional and vocational learning “learning logs” have become increasingly
popular (Achtenhagen, 2001; Fuller & Unwin, 2002). Compared with “think
aloud” techniques, they do not carry the theoretical burden of mentalism. Besides,
these logs are often extended in time and space. However, this scaling varies to
a considerable degree between different approaches. On one hand qualitativeoriented
researchers have derived guidelines from diary methods, whereas others
use precoded questionnaires with low demand on response elaboration. The latter
alternative has attracted a growing popularity in research on screen- based work
thanks to computer programs that allow a continuous logging of users’ “navigational
patterns” or e- portfolios (Deakin, Côté & Harvey, 2006). These reports
could be linked to video- data in case of cooperative performances.
In sum, when using methods for mapping educational learning trajectories, one
should be attentive to the framing of the target behavior and the sampling of time
and spaces. This last point reminds us that professional performance and learning
events may take the shape of shorter or longer cycles. For example, when we contrast
the surgical work and training episodes of medical doctors and nurses with
the defence of a lawyer and the familiarization of students in legal argumentation.
Clearly, these situations differ in formats – in terms of “body language” on the
first and formalized language in the second. In addition, the expert surgeon may
gain practical experiences of cases, whereas the law students are offered written
material to work on.
Biographies and lifetime learning trajectories
The term “learning trajectories” is widely circulated within the research literature
on adult and lifelong learning and has been defined in a number of ways. For
our purpose one could distinguish between an autobiographical and life- courseoriented
approach and a historical and work- oriented approach. The former is for
example represented by different texts on “lifetime learning trajectories” (Gorard
et al., 2001) – sometimes implying that earlier stages in life have a determining
influence later. The other tradition puts a heavier emphasis on the social and institutional
context of the learner and provides a more dynamic model of professional
development. Another difference is methodological – respectively a preference for
diary methods and narrative analysis or qualitative interviews and discourse analysis.
Both research strands differ radically from the theoretical framework of cognitivism,
even if they tend to preserve the individual learner as unit of observation. This is
less clear in the historical approach. Of course both frameworks use an extended
temporal and spatial span for learning – compared with the educational learning
trajectories we reviewed above.
The standard procedure in autobiographical and narrative positions is to ask