Exploring a practice theoretical tool-kit approach for studying professional and organisational learning processes: a pragmatist interpretation

ABSTRACT

This article conceptually explores different practice theoretical vantage points in empirical studies of professional and organisational learning processes. Through an ethnographic study of a management development program in Denmark, possibilities and limitations of three different practice-theoretical approaches are considered. Firstly, learning processes are examined as professional identity formation through participation in the community of practice around the development program. Next, Schatzki’s practice-theoretical approach is applied, focusing on management as situated work practice. A third approach focusing on persons’ learning paths in professional and organisational practices is considered: Ole Dreier's concept of person is discussed as a further development of practice theories in line with Schatzki’s thinking. The article explores the epistemological and ontological stances taken by the three practice theories in relation to the study of learning processes. A pragmatist interpretation of a ‘tool-kit’ approach to operationalising different practice theoretical approaches in alliance is developed, considering how this can generate constructive analytical tensions for exploring and understanding learning processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Practice theory
• learning processes
• management learning
• theoretical tool-kit approach

Introduction

Practice theory is not a unified theory offering a single understanding of social practice. Rather, it represents a formation of approaches and theories within social science that strive to focus on and understand social activities as they are played out in daily, material, affective, historical, and situated contexts in the lived lives of actors (Schatzki 2019). Over the last 30 years, practice theory has gained ground in a multitude of disciplines within social science, including organisation studies, research in learning processes, and workplace research (Buch, Andersen, and Klemsdal 2015; Nicolini 2013; Guzman 2013; Reich, Rooney, and Boud 2015). This emphasises a shift in understanding learning processes from psychological approaches focusing on the individual, towards socio-material approaches (Hager 2011). These acknowledge the messiness and complexity of the relational and emergent character of practices, (Reich, Rooney, and Boud 2015) while maintaining that these are, nonetheless, the conditions from which learning processes arise in and from.

In this article we discuss and present a pragmatist application of an emergent approach to employing practice theories in empirical studies of professional and organisational learning processes. This approach is fuelled by ongoing inquiry and experience, responding reflexively to the insights and limitations achieved through engaging with specific theories individually and as an alliance. By visiting three different practice theoretical approaches – namely Lave & Wenger’s theory of situated learning in practice (Lave and Wenger 1991), Theodore Schatzki’s practice theoretical understanding of organising (Schatzki 2002 & 2005), and Ole Dreier’s account of personal learning trajectories across social practices (Dreier 1999, 2008, & 2011) – the ambition of this article is to – through an ethnographic study undertaken by one of the article’s authors (Walker 2018) – explore how specific practice theoretical approaches construe practices and the learning within and around them differently, and reflect on analytical tensions arising from this.

In his introduction to newer practice theory, Davide Nicolini (Nicolini 2013) argues for an eclectic and pluralistic application of practice theories to inform empirical studies of learning, work and organisation as social practice. Combining or alternating between different perspectives and thus ‘zooming in and out’ on practice(s), enables the opportunity for multi-facetted analyses to be achieved. Nicolini (Nicolini 2013; Nicolini and Monteiro 2016) contends that researchers may use different practice theoretical approaches as an eclectic tool-kit. This can combine sensitive concepts from different theories – for instance communities of practice (CoP) from Lave & Wenger’s social learning theory (Lave and Wenger 1991) and Schatzki’s practice arrangement bundles from his social practice theory (Schatzki 2005; Schatzki 2002) – to investigate complex professional and organisational learning processes. Here concepts are used to sharpen analytical focus on different phenomena in practice, where theoretical perspectives ‘see’ different aspects of practice. However, there is potential ambiguity, or lack of clarity, in Nicolini’s tool-kit metaphor, due to the role prescribed to the theoretical apparatus in analyses.

One possibility is to understand theories as conceptual tools that are capable of – to different degrees of success – representing the social phenomenon under study. In this way, theories and their concepts become epistemological, applied in an attempt to represent objectively existing phenomena. Theories ‘capture’ and represent the social phenomena in the same way that the use of different lenses in a camera captures and represents the same photographed object differently.

Another possibility is to perceive theories as construction tools that bring forth social phenomenon. In this understanding, theories and their sensitive concepts provide ontologies that the researcher applies to conceptualise social phenomena and construct a field of research.

The epistemological understanding of theory leads Nicolini’s tool kit metaphor in a realist direction, where the researcher can use the tool-kit metaphor as a method for triangulation; theories give different perspectives on the same phenomenon that is observed. The ontological understanding of theory does not share this realist conception of theory. In the ontological understanding, theories offer the researcher ontological approaches to construct social phenomena. They make it possible for the researcher to understand social phenomena in several, potentially mutually exclusive, ways, and the researchers must commit themselves to a particular ontological approach.

Crucially, it must be emphasised that Nicolini does not share the realist understanding of theory. Practice does not become exhaustively depicted by triangulating data through different theoretical lenses. On the contrary, Nicolini argues, the use of different practice-theoretical approaches construct the empirical material in relational ways to explore social phenomena. A tool-kit approach therefore, Nicolini continues, contributes by adding complexity and allowing for new and enlightening articulations, rather than reducing them and providing conclusions (cf. Nicolini 2013, 215). Nicolini thus seems to opt for the constructionist side of the realist/constructionist dichotomy in social (science) theory. We, however, suggest a pragmatist interpretation of the ‘tool-kit’ metaphor that transcends both poles of the dichotomy and stress that different practice theoretical approaches are indeed tools – i.e. instruments – that are useful for different purposes and enable an abductive process of inquiry (Dewey 1938/2008).¹ Abductive analysis (Tavroy and Timmermans 2014; Timmermans and Tavroy 2022) thus outlines a methodological approach that enables researchers to move towards the generation of meaningful theoretical insights in qualitative research. By engaging in processes of reasoning that values contextual sensitivity, iterative engagement with the empirical material, and theoretical engagement to creatively refine plausible explanations the analysis progress to produce ‘inferences to the best explanation’.²

By abductively analysing empirical material using three different practice-theoretical approaches, the article (1) illustrate how social phenomena are theorised differently by three practice theoretical approaches, and (2) demonstrates how a practice theoretical tool-kit-approach may contribute to creatively exploring and understanding different aspects of professional and organisational learning processes for different purposes.

In what follows, we present the methods involved in producing the empirical material that provides our point of departure. Thereafter, we undertake abductive analyses of elements of this material; using (1) Lave & Wenger’s theory of learning as legitimate peripheral participation, and (2) Schatzki’s practice theoretical approach to understanding organising and organisation, discussing the strengths, weaknesses and ambitions of these theories. In order to address the weaknesses identified, (3) Ole Dreier’s conceptualisation is presented as a productive effort to integrate these positions rather than alternating between them (Dreier 2008, 2011, 1999). This fuels our ongoing discussion conducted throughout the article, examining the implications of how such an operationalisation can contribute to analysing learning processes as social practices, particularly in terms of a tool-kit approach.

Material and methods

In order to engage the suggested practice theoretical analyses of learning processes, we offer a brief introduction to an ethnographic study (Walker 2018), investigating the organisational aspects of a leadership development programme (LDP) in the Danish public sector. The study focused on a diploma programme provided for middle managers in public institutions. With inspiration from Institutional Ethnography (Smith 2005) three participants were followed across their participation on the programme and at work – across educational and managerial practices. This constitutes the ‘situation’³ of the empirical study.

The aim of the LDP was to support participants’ critical engagement with theoretical perspectives and models and stimulate new understandings of their managerial practices. The formal programme description explained that participants were expected to use their own organisations as a ‘developmental laboratory,’ experimenting with resources offered on the programme to tackle organisational problematics and challenges. The LDP was organised as 10 modules, each finalised with written or oral examination, where participants should develop the design and implementation of empirical studies into their own organisation, analysing and reflecting upon their own practices by actively applying resources offered on the LDP.

Three participants in this programme were followed within and across education and managerial practices, with special attention focused on the texts and documents that were produced – for instance their exam papers, and the agendas and minutes of meetings. One of these participants, whom we call Eve, offers a position that presents the point of departure for our analyses. Eve was shadowed (Czarniawska 2007) in multiple intervals over the course of more than two years. Interviews were conducted with Eve, her employees and her immediate superior (n = 7). Furthermore, Eve’s exam papers were treated as artefacts of the educational practices. This empirical material provides insight into educational and managerial practices within which Eve and her fellow LDP participants, teachers and work colleagues participated. The study did not focus specifically on the participants’ behaviour or personality types, focusing instead on the different practices that play out around Eve, how these are organised and unfold through interactions between human and non-human actors. The method did thus not ascribe agency to particular entities on an a priori basis (Latour 2005; Smith 2005).⁴

One year prior to Eve starting on the LDP, her role as daily manager of a daycare institution changed due to organisational restructuring in the municipality driven by budgetary concerns. She became subordinate to a ‘cluster manager’ with overall responsibility for a collection of institutions within the given geographic area. Eve’s exam papers reveal her critical reflections on these changes, where she describes overcoming an instinctive opposition to these changes and experiences strengthened motivation to engage constructively with them. Eve often expresses regret over the character of her managerial work and organisational understanding prior to her participation on the LDP. She describes her experience of the LDP as ‘almost like meeting a new religion,’ and reports perceiving the programme as a significant factor in the improvement of her managerial work and organisational consciousness.

In the following, the pragmatist development of a specific ‘tool-kit’ of three practice theoretical approaches is unfolded. This was developed abductively during the study to understand and analyse the empirical material and gain insight into professional and organisational learning processes that played out in the social practices followed. Rather than conceiving of this as the construction of an apparatus that can ensure a theoretical triangulation of the empirical material and illuminate learning as a stable phenomenon, we recognise the ontological differences (Buch 2020) of these theoretical approaches in analysing social phenomena differently. We use the different practice theoretical approaches to prompt the situation as new experiences are made during the research process. We begin with an analysis of empirical material informed by Lave & Wenger’s situated learning theory (1991). This theory directs attention towards consideration of the possibilities for participation within the social practices of the LDP, as well as conditions for the development of identities within these. Subsequently, we shift theoretical approach and the empirical material is analysed with the help of Schatzki’s practice theory (2002, 2005). The final step in our abductive analyses addresses limitations identified with these approaches by operationalising Ole Dreier’s understanding of personal trajectories within and across social practices as a central aspect of learning processes (1999, 2008, 2011). For each approach, we begin by describing how learning is to be understood, before applying key concepts in the analysis, enabling consideration of eventual potentialities and shortcomings in each approach.

Analysis 1: Learning as development of identities in communities of practice

Lave and Wenger (1991) offer an analytical approach to learning as ‘an integral and inseparable aspect of social practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, 31). This focuses on opportunities for participation and relations in a CoP, understood as an ‘activity system about which participants share understandings concerning what they are doing and what that means in their lives and for their communities’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, 98). Access to participation in a CoP provides opportunity for the development of identity, where the changing character of membership can occasion particular processes of identity formation. Thus, CoP organise possibilities for learning through participation in practices. Studying activities as Eve participated as a member of a CoP in the LDP during the module enables consideration of how available positions and opportunities for participation occasion the development of identities, and how particular understandings of management manifest through these processes. In this manner, the implications that participation in the educational practices of the LDP can have for the development of Eve’s managerial identity can be explored.

The entry point for the ethnographic study was observation of the final module of the LDP, organised as seven whole-day seminars across a period of four months, during which the participants should work towards their summative exam project based on their chosen organisational topic. The sessions were planned as a mixture of presentations made by the instructor regarding the design of exploratory empirical projects and relevant methodology, as well as group work, where participants should discuss and reflect upon their work on the exam projects as it unfolded. The participants did not undertake the programme with a continuous cohort of participants from beginning to end, meaning that they did not all know one another. The instructor attempted to divide the participants into smaller working groups but, due to varying levels of attendance, new groups and combinations were improvised from the participants who were present on each given day. Therefore, participants would begin by introducing themselves and their projects to the other members of the group. Here, it became possible to follow how participants’ stories took form as steady narratives, where a pattern became recognisable across the different groups and the sessions of the module.

In perceiving the groups on the LDP as communities of practices and considering the conditions for legitimate peripheral participation, this situation provoked reminiscence of Lave & Wenger’s discussion of identity development among participants in groups during Alcoholics Anonymous sessions, where members’ shared stories of sobriety were an important way of expressing membership of this particular CoP (Lave and Wenger 1991, 79). Newcomers learn to formulate themselves in an appropriate manner through participation in meetings and through interactions with more experienced members. On the LDP, the prevailing form of narrative became recognisable, where the participants presented their organisational role and described how they experienced ‘cross pressures’ between expectations of staff and their obligation to work with wider organisational directives and reforms. Here, they typically articulated a shift in their understandings and priorities, with narratives emphasising the necessity of engaging with change processes as ‘organisational conditions’ and relinquishing previously held ideas of autonomy in their managerial practices. Participants accepted and supported one another in their narratives of working ‘professionally’ with organisational change processes, including those with which they did not agree. The possibilities for participation available within the CoP therefore support a process of identity development where members acknowledge a reduced level of autonomy. This articulates a change in professional identity, where an organisational professionalism is emphasised at the expense of the vocational professionalism to which they previously may have referred.

The development of identity presented through the narratives during the final module was recognisable throughout the exam papers produced by Eve throughout the LDP. These articulate a longer but coherent process of identity development, culminating in the exam paper for the final module. In this project, Eve reflects over the manner in which changes in her ‘organisational consciousness’ have impacted favourably upon her working relationship with the cluster manager, where she has become better equipped to cooperate more productively in this relationship. Application of Lave & Wenger’s practice theoretical approach as an analytical framework enables us to understand Eve’s identity development in terms of her participation in CoPs to which the LDP has provided access. As artefacts of the practices that Eve participated within, exam papers provide insight into the kinds of managerial identities called forth by the LDP and made legitimate. The exam papers can be regarded as accounts of the kinds of managerial identities that participants believe to be fitting within the LDP. These manifestations emphasise managerial identities preoccupied with organisational priorities and loyalty.

During a research interview with Eve, on the topic of the influence of the LDP on her approach to middle management, she explained:

I think that throughout the programme I have obtained a view of myself as a tool. Like, that I am not just … ‘Eve the pedagogue’ or ‘Eve the manager’; I am part of an organization, I am one of these cogs that should get the whole thing moving, so, strictly speaking, it doesn’t … in a way it doesn’t really matter what I think, as long as I play along.

She regards the primary task for practitioners in the daycare institution as ‘solving the task for the customer.’ Here, we meet Eve’s own report and description of her identity development in relation to participation on the LDP – remembering that she regards the programme as having a positive influence on her managerial practices. We become aware of her acceptance of herself as a ‘cog’ and a ‘tool,’ who’s function is solely to administer organisational initiatives and oversee restructuring, undisturbed by her own – or the staff’s – relations to the ‘customers in the shop.’

Application of Lave & Wenger’s approach to learning highlights which opportunities for participation are available within a CoP, and implications this can have for the development of identity. This makes it possible to consider the influence that participation in the CoP offered by the LDP has on the development of Eve’s managerial identity. The theory makes it possible to understand the influence of the programme on her understanding of her function as middle manager and the analysis thereby opens up for understandings of important professional learning processes. Furthermore, organisational learning processes can be examined. The obligatory nature of participation in the LDP emphasises this as a deliberate organisational initiative, working towards shaping managerial identities in a particular manner and allowing consideration of the organisational implications of endeavouring to tailor learning processes in this way.

However, this approach does have clear limitations. It focuses solely on the ‘community’ – the relations between participants in a specific situation, without consideration of the significance of wider social and historical conditions (Contu and Wilmott 2003). Analysis focuses on learning as something that arises in a delimited situation with a specific population of individuals. Lave & Wenger’s approach neglects the significance of the broader practices that are reproduced in the specific community and over-emphasises the specific community between the involved individuals (Nicolini et al. 2022; Buch 2020). What are the practices of the community? How do different practices relate to one another? How are organisations housing many different CoPs to be understood, and what about members that participate in many different CoPs concurrently? Lave & Wenger’s approach is ill equipped to assist inquiry into these questions because it considers situated learning primarily through relations between the individual members of a community, reflecting its substantivist ontology. Lave & Wenger contribute to understandings of opportunities for participation and the development of identity within the LDP, but cannot provide insight into how middle management is unfolded as situated practice, nor how the managerial identity produced in the educational practices of the LDP is translated (or not) into situated work practices. Such inconsistencies were highlighted by abductive analysis of material collected by shadowing Eve in situated work practices. The identity she presented through narratives during participation in the LDP and research interviews became less recognisable. Therefore, reflexive application of theories sensitive to exploring and understanding (dis)connections between practices and implications for identity development presented the opportunity to develop further analyses.

Analysis 2: Learning as transformation of practices

With Schatzki’s theory, the object of analysis is not individuals, opportunities for participation or relations in communities, but practice itself (Buch 2020). For Schatzki, practices specify the intelligibility of human action: ‘What makes sense to people to do’ (Schatzki 1996, 118). Schatzki’s practice theory offers an understanding of the social world as comprising inter-connected practices, where human activities are organised and unfolded in interplay with the material conditions in place (Schatzki 2002). Organisations are conceived as bundles of social practices interacting with changeable material conditions – so called practice-arrangement bundles (Schatzki 2005). Schatzki’s practice theory does not have an account of learning (Schatzki 2021; Kemmis 2021); analytical attention focuses on how practice-arrangement bundles transpire, how they are reproduced and transformed and how practices are organised. Practices are understood as the site through which persons can experience identity and meaning, but persons can also influence how practices play out (Schatzki 2002). It is the relational interplay between organisation of activities, material conditions and persons that is decisive for how practices unfold – whether they are reproduced, altered, or terminated.

This understanding directs analytical attention to practices, rather than the community and the situation for learning is therefore not solely the local community of practice, as is the case in Lave & Wenger’s approach. It becomes possible to consider possibilities and conditions for learning trajectories across practices (Buch 2020), where practice-arrangement bundles are the arena through which persons can experience and construct meaning and knowledge of the world, and through which they have the capacity to change it. Schatzki’s practice theory provides the opportunity to analytically ‘zoom out’ (Nicolini 2013) from a given local practice and consider its connections to others. Simultaneously, it provides the opportunity to ‘zoom in’ (Nicolini 2013) and investigate how specific practices are organised and unfold.

We can use Schatzki’s practice theory to zoom out and direct analytical attention towards which particular practices become (dis)connected and how organisational change unfolds. Here, Schatzki draws on the concept of ‘lines of flight’ provided by Gilles Deleuze (Schatzki 2002, 249), to describe how entities (for instance individuals, tools, materials and ideas) can be followed in their movement across practice-arrangement bundles, enabling implications of the relations that arise through this movement to be examined. In our analyses, Schatzki’s conceptualisation of practices and the relations between them help to consider the implications of the establishment of connections between practices – namely the educational practices of the LDP and the managerial practices in the daycare institution and municipality, but also in a wider sense. Connections between practices can be seen to be the result of unfolding activities: all public managers in the municipality were obliged to complete the LDP, following guidelines introduced through legislation (Regeringen 2007), where leadership development was identified as a strategy to improve quality in the public sector. We can follow how new connections are established between pedagogical practices in the daycare centre, local managerial practices, educational practices in the LDP, regulation and control practices at the cluster and municipal level, as well as public administration practices at the national level. We become especially attentive to lines of flight between educational practices in the LDP and Eve’s managerial practices in the workplace. Shadowing Eve’s iterative movement between these practices clarifies how issues from the workplace are engaged with by using theoretical tools, models and organisational reflections introduced in the LDP. Furthermore, the movement of entities from the LDP into managerial practices in the daycare institution can be followed. Observations (Walker and Plotnikof 2021) show how organisational challenges resulting from restructuring processes become transformed into managerial problems. These managerial problems are addressed in the LDP, where managers are to critically reflect on what they can do differently to solve these problems. Likewise, it becomes clear how theories and models from the LDP, informed by positive psychology and appreciative inquiry, connect with managerial practices in the workplace. For instance, it is observed that it becomes illegitimate for employees to bring attention to intrinsic problems with organisational restructuring processes – only discussions of potential solutions are legitimate. In this way, Schatzki’s analytical framework enables exploration of how connections between educational practices and situated managerial and working practices manifest, as well as considering the implications of these at the organisational level, providing insight into organisational learning processes. When the theories and positive psychology of educational practices on the LDP interconnect with everyday work practices, they are seen to inhibit opportunities for critical appraisal and reflection on the actualities of organisational practices. Schatzki therefore offers a way to ground studies of situated learning processes socially, historically and materially – not specifically adressed within Lave & Wenger’s approach.

Schatzki’s theory also enables the researcher to ‘zoom in’ on specific practices and explore how they unfold. This makes it possible to focus on middle management as a practice, to investigate how this practice is organised and unfolds, as well as consider which implications this can have for learning processes. Schatzki offers four analytical categories (Schatzki 2002) that can be used to analyse activities that are organised through practices. Practical understandings, denote actor’s foundational normative understandings of activity and contribute to their discrimination between correct and incorrect ways of continuing the pattern of action; rules, principles or instructions, that actors follow; teleoaffective structures, that denote how actors’ goals or intentions contribute to determining an activity; general understandings, that denote fundamental religious, ideological or other – for instance professional – convictions regarding the character of the world and the overall meaning of the given activity. Schatzki, however, emphasises that activities are not framed solely by social practices. Activities are played out in objective time and space, where material arrangements have a stake in how they are configured (Schatzki 2019). By applying these elements, Schatzki’s practice theory can support analysis of a situation that played out in Eve’s daycare setting, where it becomes possible to ‘zoom in’ and consider middle management as a situated, emergent practice. This highlights an incongruence between the managerial identity development called forth by our analysis of LDP participation informed by Lave & Wenger’s theory, and that which becomes observable in considering work practices with Schatzki’s conceptual framework.

Here, a conflict between two daycare practitioners and a child and its parents gave rise to an unfounded (according to Eve) complaint from the parents about how the practitioners spoke to their child. The cluster manager insisted that Eve should hold a meeting with the two practitioners and the parents to find a solution. The practitioners were, however, not interested in such a meeting, stating this would ultimately confirm they had acted inappropriately and thereby uphold the parents’ complaint. Eve appealed to them to participate, stating this would provide opportunity for her to support them, and display a ‘united front’ in the face of the unjust complaint. Eve did not mention to them that the cluster manager had insisted on their attendance, believing that an ultimatum of this kind would provoke the practitioners and result in their absence. On the day of the scheduled meeting, both practitioners called in sick. Consequently, they were called in to a disciplinary meeting where they should receive a written warning. Eve was to hold these disciplinary meetings, supported by a manager from another institution in the cluster (Lynne). Lynne was to take minutes of the meeting and forward them to the cluster manager for formal approval – following standard municipal procedure. The following description stems from field notes written at the second disciplinary meeting, with a practitioner named Michael.

Eve and Lynne talk about the fall-out from the first disciplinary meeting, held the day before. They had quickly received feedback from the cluster manager, that minutes of the meeting suggested they ‘had not been sharp enough.’ They were to give a clearer reprimand, to be reflected in the minutes. Michael arrives and the meeting begins with Eve reading aloud from an official document with guidelines for the meeting. She explains that she must proceed with some formal procedures, and asks Michael to confirm that he has been informed of the meeting through the appropriate official channels, which Michael confirms. Eve moves to the next stage of the meeting, stating, ‘I will not challenge you, about whether you were sick or not … .but I expect you to participate in such meetings in the future.’ Michael explains that he felt sick, and that his ‘body told him that he should not apologise to the mother’ which he felt would be expected. When he finishes explaining, Eve states clearly ‘I must be able to expect that you participate in things that you might not like so much, or that are challenging for you, and in the future, instances like this will have serious consequences for your employment here.’ Michael confirms he understands. After this, Eve asks how his working relationship is with the boy and his parents at the moment. Michael explains that he thinks it is difficult. He is worried about receiving a similar complaint again and has discussed with colleagues possibilities for moving the boy into another group, where the boy already has some close friends - therefore, ‘it would not seem strange to move him.’ Eve emphasises ‘you must be able to work with all the parents and their children.’ Michael explains that he acts professionally with the boy but would rather not have anything to do with him or his parents. Eve looks over towards Lynne and asks: ‘Lynne, what have you written in the minutes?’ She responds: ‘Michael must be able to work with all of the parents … .I haven’t written anything else down because it shouldn’t be included here.’ Eve suggests that Michael speaks to relevant colleagues and moves the boy into another group, but that this will not be included in the minutes. She reads aloud from an obligatory section of the document structuring the minutes, regarding the formulation of their ‘binding future agreement,’ where Michael is expected to attend all future scheduled meetings and work together with all children and their parents. Eve and Lynne advise Michael to seek all available help to get the situation ‘out of the stomach and into the head,’ provide him with a contact number for professional support and encourage him to call. Michael states that he will consider this, he seems uncertain and asks again what it was that would be kept out of the minutes of the meeting. Eve answers ‘speak with your team about moving the boy out of your group.’ She continues: ‘I don’t think central administration would be very pleased if we write that in the minutes … but that is how we look after one another.’ Michael leaves the room and Lynne prints out the minutes, giving a copy to Eve, saying markedly: ‘We’d better hope that this is sharp enough!’

Firstly, this fieldnote points towards a discrepancy between the managerial identity presented in Eve’s educational practices and that which manifests in this situation – there is greater complexity and Eve is clearly not merely a ‘cog’ administering organisational procedures. Schatzki’s four analytical categories direct focus towards how middle management unfolds as a situated practice, clarifying how activities are organised as well as embracing the significance of the material arrangements that are involved in configuring the situation. When we consider which explicit rules are at play, it becomes clear specific protocols are followed. Michael must confirm that he has been informed through correct channels, the meeting must result in a formal reprimand and formulation of the ‘future agreement’ must be included in minutes. Consideration of the practical understandings directs attention towards how all participants accept the disciplinary meeting is a process that must be completed. Thinking over teleoaffective structures makes it clear that alternative intentions and goals than those representing the official organisational agenda and purpose for the meeting are conceivable, and pursuable. Eve and Lynne regard manipulation of the minutes of the meeting – and thereby its subversion – as a legitimate part of their work: ‘That is how we look after one another.’ Likewise, the solution of moving the boy into another group is notable. Consideration of the general understandings indicate that there is an acceptance of a managerial action space, where middle managers exercise discretion, passing judgement on what is most appropriate in the given situation. This is not merely a case of administering organisational procedures. Rather, the pedagogical practices and everyday tasks of the institution are significant elements in the practices of middle management – ultimately there must be enough staff available to operate, influencing the character of the meeting. Likewise, consideration of material arrangements makes us attentive to how middle management unfolds as practice. Eve reads from a document with formal guidelines outlining how the meeting should proceed. The minutes of the meeting, written by Lynne on a stationary computer contribute to how the practice unfolds, but in a different manner than officially intended. Here, actors manipulate the minutes – an organisational control mechanism – redacting them with specific purpose. This episode illustrates how the actors are capable of acting in a different way than that which the organisation officially expects. The episode shows that the actors establish a space for middle management that liberates itself from organisational directives. Managerial practices are therefore seen to be resilient to eventual changes in managerial identities occasioned through practices of the LDP – the transformative influence of the LDP espoused by Eve is not seen in the professional raison d'être of work practice. Schatzki’s practice theory provides a strong analytical framework that includes focus on the organisation of specific practices and the manner in which material conditions contribute to their configuration. This illuminates middle management as a situated practice and gives rise to analyses that confront the narratives and presentations of managerial identity that are called forth in the practices of the LDP. Here, the empirical material is no longer self-narratives, but situated organisational activities. The theory enables analysis of organisational practices (in this case middle management) as situated and emergent.

The movement from Lave & Wenger’s approach to Schatzki’s analytical framework shifts focus from the development of identity and opportunities for participation within a specific CoP. Instead, the researcher is able to investigate how practices interconnect and hang together – how they unfold, are reproduced and change. However, while persons are acknowledged in Schatzki’s theory as enacting social practices, focus is not trained upon them, nor their movement across practices. Therefore, implications and understandings of Eve’s dissonant managerial identities called forth by the different analyses remain hitherto unexplored, calling on a practice theoretical approach more sensitive to such aspects.

Analysis 3: Learning as personal trajectories through structures of social practices

Ole Dreier’s understanding of learning, which is the third theory which we address, offers an analytical perspective that seeks to integrate the approaches offered by Lave & Wenger and Schatzki (Buch 2020). Dreier emphasises that learning cannot be understood through an individual’s participation in a single CoP, but that learning transpires through persons’ participation and movement across accessible social practices (Dreier 2008). Learning processes transpire on the basis of persons’ reflective processes, that arise through their experiences in and with a dynamic world of changeable practices (Buch 2020). In this way, Dreier incorporates a relational ontological foundation for his theory of learning that is equivalent to Schatzki’s. However, with a different endeavour from Schatzki, he is more interested in consideration of how different formations of practices are related to one another, and how persons comprehend themselves and act, according to these practices. Dreier’s theory of learning focuses on personal agency, while persons are simultaneously grounded in social practices, through which they develop capacities to participate in and navigate complexes of social practices (Dreier 2011). The resultant development of identity gives rise to potential stances (Dreier 2008, 3), from which they can act in the various social practices that they move across.

Thus, Dreier offers an analytical framework that can contribute with a new vantage point, for exploring and understanding the empirical material – where persons (not communities nor practices) become the locus of agency. Dreier’s perspective does not attempt to ‘look inside’ the psyche of the person, rather focusing on the social practices the person populates: ‘looking into the world to grasp the person as a participant in that world’(Dreier 1999, 30). Eve’s learning and identity development can be considered through different stances that become assertable in different practices she participates in. When she is active in the educational practices of the LDP, she produces an organisational identity with the function of administering organisational initiatives in the daycare institution. However, production and performance of identity is more complex when Eve is observed in situated managerial practices within the institution itself. Here, we can see how she follows organisational edicts, while actively pursuing a different agenda entirely. We see how she consciously manipulates minutes of the disciplinary meeting, which becomes essentially hijacked and utilised as a means for her to display a capacity to ‘look after’ staff – working around organisational protocols to do so.

Considering Eve’s trajectories within and across educational practices and working practices highlight learning processes whereby numerous legitimate stances are developed and achieved, and where she exercises the adoption of them. Development of an ‘organisational stance’ becomes expressed in her exam projects, produced throughout the LDP – and specifically in her final exam project. This focuses on how she can translate an unpopular team-restructuring initiative introduced by the cluster manager, in order to make it more acceptable to staff. The exam project shows how Eve actively uses theoretical resources and models from the LDP in an attempt to gain greater engagement from the staff in the restructuring. In the document, she repeatedly expresses dismay at the staff’s opposition to the initiative and their lacking engagement in the new structure – stating this must simply be accepted as an organisational condition. Concurrently, she reflects on her own frustration over the restructuring, at the start of the process.

Up to this point, our analyses of educational practices and working practices have included different approaches to management – different stances adopted by Eve. Dreier, however, draws our attention to how persons can adopt different stances within the same practice, informed by their learning trajectories. In a staff meeting in the daycare centre held after completion of the LDP, Eve attempts yet again to address opposition to the new team structure. Here, Dreier’s conceptualisation offers a sensitivity that enables insight into how Eve adopts different stances during interactions with staff over the course of the meeting. We become aware of how Eve begins by acknowledging staff concerns and opposition. Together, they investigate ways of accommodating the restructuring in a manner that will disturb current working patterns as little as possible. Shortly afterwards, Eve shifts stances markedly, where she presents specific arguments for the restructuring. She explains how the new fluid team structure lessens the risk of children being held in particular (and potentially detrimental) positions in their everyday life in the daycare centre; as could be the case in the previous stable ‘room’ structure, where the same three pedagogues looked after the same 12 children. Applying Dreier’s conceptualisation, we become attentive to how Eve partakes in situated managerial practice by adopting different stances. She displays agility, speaking from a new position where organisational convictions inform a critical appraisal of the previous frames for their work, highlighting potential flaws in the structure romanticised by staff.

The following interaction is an excerpt from a later point in this meeting, where Eve summarises their possibilities in relation to the restructuring process, articulating and exemplifying the adoption of different stances. The participants in the meeting are Eve (E) and the team of nine practitioners, of whom Beth (B) makes audible contributions. At times, it is impossible to verify the identity of the speaker in the audio recording; these are therefore marked as Unknown (U). There are also times when many of the participants voice their agreement; this is marked as Many (M).

1. (E): So you can say, it is something we must work with, and in that way I can see that

2. there are some … like, our children come under a lot more pressure than they did

3. in the old structure.

4. (M): Hmmmm … 

5. (U): Yes.

6. (E): So my task is to look at how on earth I can get [people] to accept that we are still working

7. as teams, because we will never come back to calling ourselves ‘rooms’.

8. (U): No.

9. (B): No!

10. (E): But how, how will we be able to [inaudible word] work together as a team around

11. the children so that they get the developmental opportunities they require, and

12. that there are more sets of eyes on them […] [I] have actually held

13. these reflection meetings and planning meetings and team meetings that made us look

14. at the children all together, so that produced something different. But also the fact that

15. you like, mixed around … 

16. (U): Hmmmm … 

17. (E): those twice a week and you didn’t just say, ‘Yeah, so we’re the red room,

18. and we only do things with the red room.’ But now, said, ‘we’re in the red room, but

19. would also like to be together with the green and yellow and blue, so therefore we’ll

20. mix the children up’ like we did at Halloween, like we did at Christmas and like we did

21. in summer. Because it makes sense that way.

22. (U): That it does.

Here, Eve supports staff concerns that the structural changes are causing the children to feel greater ‘pressure’ (Line 2), reflecting previous discussion on challenges arising from the shift from stable routines and relations to the more flexible and open format. The employees acknowledge this assertion (Lines 4 and 5) and Eve orients herself to how she can succeed in helping them to accept that they must now work in the fluid team format, relinquishing the previous stable ‘room’ structure where the same three pedagogues looked after the same 12 children. Emphasis is placed on the positive aspects of this for children – improving ‘developmental opportunities’ (Line 11) and ensuring ‘more sets of eyes on them’ (Line 12). In Eve’s account here, she articulates her managerial task, ‘it is something we must work with’ (Line 1), making it clear that she has complied with her superior’s expectations by setting up a series of reflection, planning and team meetings (Line 13) to support the shift to a team structure. As such, she has encouraged staff engagement with the change agenda, a claim that also is acknowledged by the staff (line 16). Through the excerpt, Eve acknowledges that the employees’ perceptions and standpoints diverge from the thrust of the managerial change imperative, yet details instances of special days at Halloween and Christmas, where they experimented with integrating the fundamental change agenda with the most valued elements of the previous practices, ‘because it makes sense that way’ (Line 21). In doing so, Eve can be seen to establish a third stance, a position within situated managerial practice enabling navigation informed by the orientation of the organisational agenda as well as the experiences and opinions of staff.

Her capacity and willingness to champion an organisational orientation may be seen as a managerial stance developed through her participation in the educational practices of the LDP. A significant professional learning process comes therefore into focus through analysis, whereby Eve’s trajectory between educational and work practices can explicate how situated managerial practice and managerial identity becomes oriented in terms of both professional and organisational convictions, which seem contradictory at first glance. It is not suggested that LDP participants become robotic organisational agents, but that a propensity to support organisational initiatives augments the existing orientation of their work and loyalty to their own institution and staff. Eve’s agency within managerial practice is elaborated, where occupational professionalism as a practitioner and loyalty to staff is augmented to include the organisational professionalism of management. A wider repertoire of managerial stances becomes practically appropriate and horizons for professional identity broaden.

Conclusion

By using different practice theoretical approaches abductively, our analysis into professional and organisational learning processes has brought out different aspects of the situation. The claim is not, that our inquiry has exhausted the situation – further inquiry might continue. Rather, by drawing on different practice theoretical approaches, it becomes possible to construct the study of learning processes in different ways – corresponding to the specific foci and interests of the chosen approaches. Thus, making it possible to achieve insight into different dimensions of learning processes in social practice, embracing socio-material (Hager 2011) dimensions as well as the messy complexity of the relational and emergent character of practices (Reich, Rooney, and Boud 2015).

By using Lave and Wenger’s approach, Eve’s managerial identity crystalises through her participation in the CoP that was established through LDP modules. The approach also enables an analysis of Eve’s position in the organisational hierarchy. The managerial identity of Eve is clearly enacted as she presents her managerial work in the research interview.

By using Schatzki’s practice theoretical approach our inquiry is directed to the investigation of how middle-management is enacted in situated practices, adding nuance. Eve highjacks the disciplinary meeting from its intended organisational function and uses it for a different purpose – as an opportunity to establish a room for strategic middle management. She performs a very different managerial identity to that produced through the initial analysis with Lave& Wenger, raising questions as to the outcomes of the LDP. The Schatzkian analysis highlights how management as situated practice transpires in organisational activities mediated by material arrangements. Human and non-human actors prefigure how management is enacted in the practice-arrangement bundle, while following (dis)connections between educational and managerial practices can highlight implications and outcomes of specific formal educational programmes for professional and organisational learning processes.

Finally, Dreier’s approach enables us to interpret the empirical material to reconsider what prima facie appears as a misfit between LDP-practices and managerial practices. With Dreier’s approach, Eve’s personal professional learning process manifests as her trajectory through different social practices in education and work, and an awareness of Eve’s ability to enact different identities in social practices is brought forward by studying her trajectory. Participation in educational and work practices has enabled Eve to position herself differently and act strategically in future work situations. The three practice theoretical approaches of professional and organisational learning processes are summarised in Table 1.

Table 1. Practice theoretical approaches to studying professional and organisational learning processes.

	Lave & Wenger	Schatzki	Dreier
Unit of analysis	Community (People)	Practices (doings and sayings – activity)	Persons (in structures of social practice)
Core concepts	Learning, identity	Intelligibility, organising	Personal trajectories across contexts
Dynamics	Legitimate peripheral participation	Change in/among practice arrangement bundles	Personal positions and concerns in context
Focus	Zooms in on situated CoP	Zooms in and out on different practice – arrangement bundles and their connections	First-person perspective on practitioners in and across social practices
Ontology	Substantivist – processes among practitioners/learners/people in a CoP	Relational – processes in/among practices and material arrangements	Relational – processes among practitioners in social practice
Agency	Highlights practitioners in a CoP. Agency is limited to the participants’ positions in a community.	Highlights ‘elements’ of practices. Agency is mediated by practice – arrangement bundles.	Highlights persons’ trajectories. Agency transpires in persons’ reflective participation across social practices.
Theoretical ambition	Develop a theory of social learning in practice	Develop a theory of social practices	Develop a theory of personal learning in social practices

Our analysis does not attempt to use the three practice theories for triangulating the empirical material (the realist interpretation of the tool-kit approach), nor is our purpose for introducing the three theories to construct social phenomena differently (the constructionist interpretation of the tool-kit approach). We consider our use of the three practice theories as theoretical tools – as useful instruments that abductively enable our process of inquiry into the situation under study. Following John Dewey’s instrumentalist pragmatist philosophy of science (Dewey 1938/2008) and Tavory and Timmermans abductive analytical approach, we use the different practice theories as post-epistemological theoretical assets in the process of inquiry. We appropriated the three practice theories to explore different aspects of the situation as we analysed the empirical material. Our post-epistemological instrumentalist approach differs from Nicolini’s theory-driven understanding of the tool-kit approach as an ‘ontological unit for making sense of a variety of organizational phenomena’ (Nicolini 2013, 237). Instead of ontologically committing ourselves to the different constructions of the theories we use the theoretical approaches as instruments to abductively redirect our research by questioning the situation differently. Our instrumentalist interpretation of the practice theoretical tool-kit approach thus both transcends the epistemological realism and ontological constructionism horns to forge a third methodological relationalist vantagepoint (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018). Contrary to Nicolini’s interpretation of the tool-kit approach we do not ‘switch theoretical lenses [to] trail[] connections according to a set of specific assumptions’ (Nicolini 2013, 239) – instead we abductively use the different practice theoretical resources to question the empirical material in new ways and reconsider the usefulness of a particular theoretical framework when encountering empirical material that objects to this theoretical casting.

The three practice theoretical approaches discussed in this article do – of course – not exhaust professional and organisational learning processes in practice. Comparing the three practice theoretical approaches does, however, help identify their usefulness in becoming attentive of the focus of their research – and significantly, their potential ‘blind spots’ in the pursuit of insights into professional and organisational learning processes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Previous research has discussed the convergences and possible alliances between practice theories and pragmatism. See e.g. Buch and Schatzki 2019; Buch and Elkjær 2020; Dietz, Nungesser, and Pettenkofer 2017; Buch (forthcoming). The essential contribution of pragmatist approaches in social theory is to reject both realism and constructivism as positions that trap researchers in an ontological and metaphysical dichotomy. Instead pragmatist approaches opt to bypass the metaphysical quarrel between realists and constructivists as irrelevant for the social sciences. Instead pragmatists prefer to discuss the study of social phenomena on methodological grounds (cf. Kivinen and Piiroinen 2018 and Hildebrand 2003). Thus, when referring to social phenomena, we do not give claim to their metaphysical status as either ‘really’ existing (realism) or ‘merely’ social constructs (constructivism). Instead, we discuss how social phenomena such as ‘professional and organisational learning processes’ are ‘best’ studied on methodological grounds.

2 With inspiration from pragmatist philosophy the phrase ‘inference to the best explanation’ was introduced by Peter Lipton (2004) as an instrumentalist methodological principle used in reasoning and scientific inquiry. It suggests that when faced with competing explanations for a set of evidence or observations, one should prefer the explanation that provides the ‘best’ overall account or explanation for the evidence at hand. It is important to note that the ‘best’ explanation is dependent on the specific interests of the researcher and the overall context of the inquiry. Thus, the inference to the ‘best’ explanation does not presume a representationalist epistemology. Rather, the ‘best’ explanation is determined on pragmatic methodological criteria of the explanatory scope, power, simplicity, consistency, and fruitfulness of the accounts.

3 ‘What is designated by the word “situation” is not a single object or event or set of objects and events. For we never experience nor form judgments about objects and events in isolation, but only in connection with a contextual whole. This latter is what is called a “situation”.’ Dewey 1938/2008, 72.

4 For more on methodological aspects of the study, see (Walker 2018)