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

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Professional learning as epistemic trajectories 61
and the future in the very process of negotiating the present” (p. 155), and that
learning is an event on these trajectories. One plausible interpretation of learning
trajectory in these and other passages would be: It represents a mental construction
that synthesizes experiences and projections from the past, the present and
the future – as a “metascript” (Wenger, 1998) that impacts on our perception and
actions in situations, and that are at the same time shaped by these instantiations. In
more general terms Wenger uses the concept “trajectories” to amplify the temporal
character and recursiveness of identity formation and learning which subsequently
is viewed as aspects of all human activity. They are conceived as a “shared repertoire
of communal resources” that can be used appropriately.
However, Wenger vacillates between different understandings of the term “trajectory.”
In the following extract it is not clear whether he refers to subjective
(individual/collective) patterns of identity formation or structural attributes of
communities and work organizations: “Identities are defined with respect to the
interaction of multiple convergent and divergent trajectories” (1998, p. 154). The
latter interpretation is strengthened by the many references that are made in his
texts to different types of transitions within and across professional communities.
Wenger introduced a series of so- called boundary-crossing devices that facilitate
these movements, like structures for negotiation and brokering of knowledge
and skills, for overlapping membership and multiple commitments, like in project
organizations. At the core of these distinctions is a concern with “psychosocial
contracts” of authorization, advancement, performance and so on. They seem to
be institutional categories (“paradigmatic trajectories”) and do not classify patterns
in human action (or learning content, Eraut et al., 2005). To conclude, a reference
to “cultural learning trajectory” would take care of the subjective aspects as well
as the objective – understood as cross- cultural infrastructures.
Although the concept of “trajectory” summarizes some structural characteristics
of expert communities and formal institutions, its main function in the social learning
theory of Wenger is to draw our attention towards a temporal order that shapes
collective interactions, which are recursively transformed through this practice.
And, of course, “shared learning histories” may be at the base of identity formation.
The societal level is accounted for by tying the different contexts together (see
also Dreier, 1999; Edwards, 2005). It is, so to speak, constructed from below. As
a critical comment one could claim that learning trajectories in professional work
may be shaped by the larger socio- economic environment and by institutional
contingencies that are not necessarily present at the community level. For example,
one important distinction in studies of occupational careers is whether these are
embedded in a welfare state or a market liberal system (Lahn, 2003). From the
sociology of professions we also learn that strategies for competence development
in professional groups are often motivated by a protection or expansion of a field
of jurisdiction (MacDonald, 1995; Freidson, 2001) rather than an updating of
operative skills. Without going into the debate on professionalization strategies it
suffices for our discussion to point out that professional development and learning
could be seen as boundary crossing from an interactional point of view and