Abstracts - Earli

Concepts of gender, subjectivity, emotions and agency are conceptualised in post-structuralfeminist framework. Identity is understood as a dynamic process emerged from inter-subjectivediscourses, experiences and emotions. Researchers’ subjectivity is seen to be constructed and rereconstructedthrough the social interaction that the researchers have in particular socio-cultural,historical and institutional context. The data of the study is gathered through open interviews oftwelve women working and in different fields of Finnish universities. Narrative approach is usedin analysing and describing how subjects are telling their research work processes and identities.Results describe the processes by which the women researchers are involved in the academicpractices of knowledge production. The study also demonstrates which factors are related toindividual researcher’s ways of knowing. The factors include researchers’ personal histories, theirwork experiences as well as academic traditions and theorising in the field. Additionally,discussions with colleagues and constraints of work organisations arising from neo-liberal publicmanagement are important for women researchers’ in their negotiation of subjectivities.Knowledge cultures and the identity construction of the learning professionalMonika Nerland, University of Oslo, NorwayThis paper examines the ways in which professional knowledge cultures – that is, the ways inwhich knowledge is produced, accumulated, distributed and collectively approached – serve toconstruct the learning professional in specific ways. Using the concept of "epistemic cultures"(Knorr Cetina) and the Foucauldian notion of power/knowledge as points of departure, theprofessional domains of teaching and computer engineering in Norway are explored as to what itmeans to engage in learning and how the learning activities are shaped within the differentdomains. The two cases illustrate profound differences in ways of organizing knowledge andpatterning learning and identity construction. The knowledge culture of the teaching professionstresses the need of differentiation in the way the professional work is performed, whereas theculture of computer engineering advocates the need of standardization and consistency. In theteaching profession knowledge tends to be mediated in personal interaction and enacted by theindividual teacher with concern for the current needs of the student. In computer engineeringknowledge is typically mediated through a range of artifacts and collectively shared objects,making workplace learning a matter of identifying and applying apt standards and patterns of "bestpractice" in short-term sequences of problem solving. Consequently, whereas professionaldevelopment in the teaching profession largely is constructed as forms of experiential learning, theaccess to and utilization of codified and universal knowledge is given emphasis in computerengineering. The paper discusses the implications of the different constructions for individuals andprofessional communities alike. It is argued that the two cases illustrate critical issues forknowledge work in today’s society as to balancing the quest for collective standards and theprovision of shared profession-specific knowledge with the concern for discretion and individualfreedom.– 638 –