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

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Professional learning as epistemic trajectories 63
along some key dimensions. The first revolves around the dichotomy of “subjective”
and “objective” where trajectories are constructions of the individual mind,
human interactions or the cultural mind on one side and structural or systemic
characteristics on the other. The second source of variation is the different timescales
that are used within the research traditions that we have reviewed. A trajectory
ranges from students’ performance on school tasks to life- course transitions or
cultural typifications of collective experiences. A third dimension that is related to
both analytical levels and spatio- temporal scaling is content. Do trajectories refer
to cycles of individual problem- solving, learning processes, paths of participation,
cultural/institutional patterns As pointed out several times, it is far from clear what
is learned – and thus what is put on a trajectory. In both the life history and the
community approach, the concept of learning is quite open – or diluted. Within
the cognitivist tradition, it has a more circumscribed meaning and reflects the
specifics of the knowledge domain. However, the first part of the term “learning
trajectories” primarily indicates the role of the trajectories and not necessarily their
content. If this aspect should be highlighted, notably their knowledge content, it
may be more useful to talk about “epistemic trajectories.”
If we reintroduce knowledge (Muller, 2000) into research on professional learning,
our understanding of the interface between schooling and work practice may
have to be revised. Professionalism is often associated with expert groups being
awarded the jurisdiction of an occupational field. The intellectual basis for such
an institutional contract could be traced back to a system of educational requirements
and certification schemes. However, the transfer of knowledge from higher
education to the appropriate sector of work is rarely a simple one- to- one process.
Chemical engineers have a stronger foothold in their discipline than mechanical
engineers, whereas the teaching and health- caring professions seem to base their
occupational practice on “tacit skills” (Lahn, 1995) possibly acquired outside formal
educational regimes. This variation in the interplay between formal education
and professional expertise does not only determine how transitions from school
into work are structured, but also the extent to which a continuous training is
provided. In other words, professional knowledge structures contain the “knowledge
of how to acquire new knowledge” (MacDonald, 1995) – at an individual
and communitarian level but also at an institutional level.
In our introductory sections we approached the term “epistemification.” It
needs some further clarification and should include both the transformation of
work tasks into textual processing and a larger societal complexity. In many sectors
more space is provided for the redefinition of expertise as practitioners from
different fields are brought together to discuss boundary- crossing solutions to
emergent issues. In addition, higher education has become the admission ticket
to working life. A new societal division of knowledge is put on the agenda and
should be a mandatory horizon for studies of professional learning. As a theoretical
reflection on these historical lines Knorr Cetina (1999) talks about “epistemic
cultures.” Her main argument is that scientific production and social organization
diffuse into other sectors of modern societies, and that this trend is supported by