Development of the inquiry

In brief, this research builds on understanding from activity theory, developmental work research, and an expansive learning approach, but develops toward a community approach with a focus on several interconnected systems. It utilizes mixed methods of analysis with a large set of data and interviews from a particular case study. The method of analysis is based on GTM with thematic coding familiar to most qualitative research, and a cultural-historical analysis (as in CHAT) through which the findings in the assessment are related to the context of the interaction. At the end of the work, these findings are structured around a CHAT-based framework to suggest improvement for interprofessional design education for sustainability.

Systems of activity in CS

The focus on practices of interaction in developing and implementing CS — and the communities that are in interplay — remains a main inquiry of this work.

Besides the focus of analysis of interaction between disciplinary fields, actor groups, such as the CS initiators, teachers, and students, are studied as separate actors. Finally, in developing an educational program, activity systems can also be understood to be based on the phases of development and implementation in setting up a program for teaching, its implementation, and the learning activities in such collaboration.

Identification of the important actors and activities to be incorporated into the analysis is an essential step in building an understanding of a complex system:

such structuration helps to identify the shared motivations and plausible conflicts within their hierarchical interactions. In this study, these actor groups are

identified as the CS initiators, educators, and students. Initiators are the actors involved in managing the program, mainly the program directorship and

professors involved, but also the department leadership distant from CS, and even the teachers and students taking the lead. Educators are the actors involved in shared CS teaching and its development, involving not only teachers and professors, but also students taking peer learning and teaching roles. Lastly, students reflects the activities of students learning to become disciplinary

professionals and experts of practice, but also on the more experienced members of the CS community developing their professional practice.

In approaching the CS interaction, the focus is on several areas of interest.

Planning and strategy, content development, the role of discipline and personal history, and various experiences of learning transactions in the support, oversight, and evaluation are addressed. At the center of these systems is a shared space for discussing the motivations and objectives of activity, along with reflection on the communities involved and their rules and conventions (see Figure 15).

Figure 15. Identifying the initial analytic elements of interest.

Source: Author

In general, the CS community in Aalto University represents a kind of community of practice in itself — a group of people who share an interprofessional practice for sustainable design. CS, however, also brings various epistemic perspectives together into a shared dialogue, connecting different communities of practice into a broader community of interest (cf. Fischer, 2001) with common motivations regarding the focus of work. In relation to communities of practice (Lave &

Wenger, 1991), the communities of interest (Fischer, 2001; see section 2.1.1) gather various groups of practitioners under a shared focus of interest. In approaching looser and more informal constellations, a concept of assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987)⁸² seems more fitting, also emphasizing the rhizomatic development of new knowledge, exemplified by relations in dynamic networks of interaction and information sharing. As a result, new units of analysis are offered, such as the interaction between professional fields themselves (interdisciplinarity) and within projects (as in Blunden, 2010; see also Ylirisku, 2013).

In CS, different actors are involved in different phases of the program

development and implementation, and such units of analysis can be found in the CS preparations phase, in the implementation and development of the program, in its experience as a participant, and in perceiving the development of the CS program as a project in itself, as an interprofessional learning inquiry into sustainability.

82 As discussed in García Garduño (2017).

Temporal phases in CS interaction

Following the institutional structures and roles in academia, activities in CS development and interaction can be structured into three phases of activity:

priming, implementing, and experiencing, as explained in Chapter 4 (see section 4.2.2). These phases of activity take place on several levels in the program, with actors and activities overlapping to an extent. These three also act as phases in developing interprofessional activity in academia in general, as each phase has specific aspects that become especially important in the interplay between various disciplinary approaches in an academic setting.

Firstly, priming takes place both in priming collaboration for CS management and implementation, and within a project and a project team, as well as in developing the program contents in general. In the context of sustainability, and in

interprofessional collaboration in general, priming becomes important so that shared goals of activity, language, tools for implementation, and measures of success are identified and the inquiry can begin.

Implementing takes then place, when the stage is set and a shared problem space has been initialized for interaction. Such implementation happens when ideas on course contents and activities are put into action, constrained by the roles of actors and structures that dominate the background. In approaching interprofessional sustainability, these processes — and the transparency and shared agency in relation to them — become crucial.

Lastly, experiencing happens when all is set up, and participants are involved in the teaching and learning activity itself. In interprofessional collaboration and learning, however, there is a special demand for collaborative reflection.

Furthermore, as the participants themselves become experts in the interaction, there is a need for better evaluation and feedback, also made on collaborative basis.

Whilst this structure was developed during the analysis itself, in the end it helped to structure the overall findings. In summary, to structure the interaction in interprofessional, interdisciplinary collaboration, and in interprofessional learning in general, the activities can be perceived to occur in three phases, through priming, implementation, and experiencing (see Figure 16). The three phases of interprofessional, transdisciplinary collaboration together form a PIE model for interprofessional collaboration and learning.⁸³ The collaborative meaning-making takes place within this framework.

83 This term is admittedly humorously put, but it is theory-driven and well justified in relation to empirical analysis. While considered genuinely useful and important in approaching interprofes-sional collaboration, the concept is still also catchy enough to be remembered in future action.

Figure 16. The dynamics in three phases of interprofessional learning.

Source: Author

One weakness of CHAT-based analytical reflection is the challenge of connecting several interacting activity systems together. If these connections are described with a “series of triangle diagrams,” there emerges “a misguided impression that each activity was isolated from one another” (Yamagata-Lynch, 2007, p. 473). In this work, this challenge was overcome by letting go of the triangular diagrams and instead using only the conceptual nodes. These nodes were then expanded with notions from other theories. In this view, the interaction between the

temporal phases also connects to the dynamics between various actor groups. At the outset reside the involved communities, practice, and outside actors; at the core, there exists a shared objective; and in between, activities (and rules, division of labor, etc.) are in interplay among the selected tools and instruments to support interaction.

Developing the analytical framework

The breadth of the context in interprofessional design and sustainability introduces a multitude of theoretical sources to this work. GTM (Glaser, 1978) aims to consolidate theories together through comparisons between them and the emerging data. Naturally, all the presented theories have their own complex histories and means to practice them, but these are not revisited in great detail in this work. Rather, insights from the theory are used to compare different

approaches, develop connections between categories and constructs, and develop an integrated understanding of the lens in this assessment. In a GTM process, the aim is not so much to develop existing theory, but to create grounded theories

that are context-driven and categories abstract enough for generalization.

However, this work also aims to develop practice in managing education, in teaching and learning, and in design action itself.

The notions from contemporary theories on meaning-making (as revisited in Chapter 2), despite their differences, align in a similar manner, emphasizing reflective processes between actors, networks, or communities, and the material, semiotic (or even tacit) activities. Since 2011, however, the CHAT elements have been identified as the main components in the assessment (see Marttila,

2012). After encountering CHAT in theoretical studies, more emphasis was put on the activity taking place around the introductory CS studies (i.e., the setting of instruments, tools) with a focus on studying the interaction between different professionals, and on the student-teacher interaction and teacher perceptions of the program and its leadership (i.e., activity systems, communities). The educator interviews addressed the development of the course content (i.e., history,

background), and its structure and modes of working (i.e., rules, roles, division of labor). Also addressed were the progress of the course and learning processes, including tools and methods used, with an interest specifically in disciplinary variations and meaningful moments of learning. Discussions included reflection on CS as a context of action, and interprofessional design collaboration and sustainability as its context.

As a result, the CHAT-based but GTM-type development of the inquiry in this work is supported by concepts emerging from supporting theories (e.g., PT and ANT), with concepts such as translation and hybridization used as constructs of interest in interaction between phases of activity. The findings are then assessed through the CHAT framework, and eventually structured as a cycle of development in building and developing an interprofessional study program. Lastly, to understand the processes that are important, the focus is structured along the phases of program development and implementation, and the dynamics connecting these phases together.

Progress of data gathering and assessment

The main research data consisted of three sets of interviews spanning several years (2010–2015). Eventually, through the encounters in theory described, the lens for assessment was formed, based mainly on categories and the scope of analysis familiar from CHAT.

The initial general areas of interest in the assessment were the planning of CS content and strategy, and the development of the CS studies. Gradually, based on the encounters at the beginning of the study, the focus moved toward roles and practices in contemporary higher education, and disciplinary and personal factors. Eventually, the focus moved toward the building of professional

experience, and experiences on learning in general, also addressing the support and oversight of the program.

From the beginning of the research, the idea was that some students would be interviewed closer to the end of their studies. The specific sample selection, however, remained open for some time. Eventually, as various student-driven activities were initiated (see section 4.3.1) after encountering student interest in developing CS, a set of interviews was implemented with selected students

involved in these activities. Thus, the student interviewees were selected according to their involvement: in this sense, only students involved in CS activities were interviewed. In the student interviews, questions related to the specific CS

activities in development, but also to more general motivations for being involved in developing the CS community, and perceptions on being a CS student in general. In summary, the conceptual journey to structure the lens for assessment can be seen in the research inquiry development timeline, along with the

gathering of main sets of data (see Figure 17).

Figure 17. Timeline for the development of the research

inquiry and gathering of data. Source: Author