Description:

This paper focuses on individual and collective processes involved in workplace learning.

Activities always occur in Communities of Practice in which learning means participating in a Legitimate Peripheral way (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Participation is closely linked to i) following local laws or rules, which are described as "professional gender" (Clot, 1999) or "emergent patterns" (Lemke, 2000), and to ii) developing personal style in practice (Clot, 1999; Lemke, 2000). The Communities of Practice are in charge of attributing this legitimacy, but they also show dynamics which lead to emergent and negotiated forms of relevant activity (Durand, Saury and Sève, 2006). For Dodier (1995) and Jobert (2005), vocational learning and competence are exercises of virtuosity in which singular and personal dimensions are fundamental.

Individual activity plays a double function of i) appropriation of professional gender, ii) and contribution to the re-creation of it. The goal of this study is to analyse the articulation of legitimate activities and singular creation of activity.

Method

a) Participants

A thirty years-old trained nurse volunteered to participate to this study. She had a 3-months professional experience in an abdominal unit.

b) Procedures

In the course of a previous research (Bronckart, Bulea & Fristalon, 2004), with 5-months observation time in different units in the hospital, the nurse's activity was observed during 10 days in an abdominal unit, then video-recorded at the end of this period.

The video-recording of the action of putting a dressing was selected and two interviews ante and post video-recording were made during which the nurse was asked to discuss the characteristics of her action. The ante interview focused on her relationships with artefacts, persons, habits or patterns, directed at the upcoming activity. The post interview focused on the nurse's impressions, significant events, directed at the activity that took place.

c) Data processing

The nurse's activity of putting a dressing was selected because of its dimension of technical innovation. This nurse put a dressing for the first time with a new technique, with new instrumental artefacts. The data processing identifies i) how her activity complies with the instrumentals rules and social rules of the unit and compares it with technical advices, worksheets and real processes of activity (chronology of events, uses of tools); and identifies ii) how it signals the individuation of the practice, by the identification by the nurse of the events significant for her in the process.

Results and discussion

The results show that i) the nurse organizes space and discourse to act efficiently, and to make visible her virtuosity, and that ii) her virtuosity is an expression of both her singular practice and local collective rules. These results - tentative because of the singular dimension of this study - seem to contradict Dodier's and Jobert's affirmations about the role of virtuosity, but they are still compatible with them. On the other side, the study completes Lave and Wenger's approach of collective action.

These results confirm that technical learning in this unit is based on a double process of i) internalization of safety rules, and of virtuosity as markers of membership in the local surgery community; ii) and individualisation as a singular and personal expression of these general and local rules. In these practices, the nurse can both shows her partners her virtuosity or her personal competence, and proves her membership in the community.

References

• Bronckart, J.-P., Bulea, E. & Fristalon, I. (2004). Les conditions d'émergence de l'action dans le langage. Cahiers de Linguistique Française, 26, 345-369.
• Clot, Y. (1999). La fonction psychologique du travail. Paris : PUF.
• Dodier, N. (1995). Les Hommes et les machines. Paris : Métailié.
• Durand, M., Saury, J., Sève, C. (2006 à paraître). Apprentissage et configuration d'activité : une dynamique ouverte des rapports sujets-environnements. In J.-M. Barbier & M. Durand (Eds.) Sujets-activités-environnement : approches transverses. Paris : PUF.
• Jobert, G. (2005). Engagement subjectif et reconnaissance au travail dans les systèmes techniques. In Revue Internationale de Psychosociologie, XI-24, 67-95
• Lemke, J.-L. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(4), 273-290.
• Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning : Légitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.