The importance of social interactions

In their work about alcoholics anonymous, Lave and Wenger (1991) claimed that when newcomers enter a community of practice for the first time they are not told explicitly what to do. Instead, they have to learn it through social interactions and sustained participation in the practices of that community. Van Maanen (1976) and Eraut (2000) would describe this as the process of socialization that is key for the individuals to acquire information about the new community or organization that they are entering.

Looking back at the previous section, in it I argued that when Julie entered the placement she was not entirely a newcomer (Lave and Wenger, 1991), due to the previous knowledge she had regarding, amongst other aspects, the who’s who in the placement and her previous interactions with them. I also argued that such knowledge, promoted by the fact that her placement was characterized more as a classic case of near transfer (Mayer, 1975; Royer, 1978), possibly facilitated firstly, her participation in the social activities of the placement and, secondly, her belonging to that particular community of practice (Wenger, 1998).

However, Julie’s transition between university and the workplace was not so easily characterised as a case of near transfer (Mayer, 1975; Royer, 1978) and direct application of knowledge (Bransford and Schwartz, 1999) regarding social interactions, because there were some aspects of her work in the placement that contrasted with her experience as a student, which required her to adapt to the new situation. One of those contrasting aspects was Julie’s changing understanding of the concept of deadlines. In her student life a deadline was a fixed date regarding an exam she had to take, or a paper that she had to submit. These dates were set by her teachers or the university and her role in that context was that of a complier. During the placement this understanding changed.

“No they are quite different deadlines. I would see a deadline (in the placement) as a meeting with my supervisor. So when I’m presenting my work to her, that’s a deadline. But I wouldn’t say that’s a strict deadline, because in university you have a strict deadline, whereas in this, if I forgot something, I’ll say to my supervisor, ‘I haven’t been able to do this, I’ll do it for you by tomorrow’. If I give a good enough reason, obviously I can’t always say I haven’t been able to do something.” (Julie, Interview 1)

In Julie’s understanding of the figured world of work deadlines were reconfigured as a flexible date, set between herself and the rest of the research team and it could include any work that had to be done or, even, a meeting. Thus, in the placement, the notion of deadline acquired a broader sense and, most importantly, allowed a shift in Julie’s role. Where before her role as a student was to comply to externally set deadlines, now she could negotiate them with her colleagues. Therefore, this was one instance in which an apparently case of near transfer of setting (Royer, 1978) and content (Mayer, 1975) did not afford a direct application of knowledge (Bransford and Schwartz, 1999), because of the socially constructed meaning of the concept in both situations.

Looking at Julie’s experiences of the placement, it was the interaction with her supervisors that gave her access to this new meaning and allowed her to master it. Theoretically, the process of negotiating meanings (Wenger, 1998) is a well-established constituent of learning as legitimate peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991), which reinforces the relevance of contextual aspects and of social interactions in learning transfer situations. I argue, however, that both of them become even more important in situations of far transfer (Mayer, 1975; Royer, 1978) that require the student in transition to adapt to the new situation.

Another aspect that changed for Julie was her perception of work. In the placement she developed a sense of shared responsibility about her tasks and activities that transformed her previous view of working as an individual activity towards a more social one. The main difference to her previous view

was, then, that she felt responsible towards others. She felt that the quality of her work was not just important for her, but for the team.

“I feel like in the workplace you’re responsible to other people as well, and you’re answerable to other people. Whereas, on your study, you’re not really answerable to anyone else. It’s your own work. If you get a bad grade it’s your own fault and then we can say to you, ‘why haven’t you done the work?’, but then you’re guilty yourself if you get a bad grade.”

(Julie, Interview 3)

In her transition from being a student at university to working in university as a researcher she encountered a major difference in how she had to relate to others while developing her work. Those were two different figured worlds and, while at university she felt accountable only to herself, with her experiences of working in teams in university further supporting this view of students as individualistic and maybe even a little irresponsible towards others. In the workplace, the shared responsibility was, in my interpretation of the data, a consequence of starting to belong (Lave and Wenger, 1991) and of feeling like she was “working with them now (…) towards the same goals” (Julie, Interview 5). Hence, as with the previous situation, what started as a possible near transfer situation in terms of setting (Royer, 1978) and content (Mayer, 1975), actually required Julie to adapt to new processes and understandings of a similar task, due to the presence and action of relevant others in the placement.

Apart from introducing evidence that not every situation that Julie encountered in the placement was of near transfer (Mayer, 1975; Royer, 1978), both instances, the new meaning of deadlines and the new understanding of working in a team also introduce a new point, which relates to Eraut’s (2000) claim that working with others is one of the most important features of the workplace.

Actually, it seems that these particular instances might have been prompted by specific social interactions in the placement, like collaborative teamwork (Eraut, 2012), a workplace learning strategy in which the newcomer participates in group processes in order to learn, through practice, how to

become a full participant. In Julie’s placement experience she was involved in collaborative teamwork (Eraut, 2012), by participating in the research team’s meetings and activities, like going on company visits and doing data collection, but also by being included in the relevant e-mail conversations, and by developing research tools and outputs in collaboration.

Reviewing the presentation with my colleagues enabled me to understand the different language and style that has to be used when addressing different audiences, for example, there are key words that I used which possibly make the project attractive to organisations such as ‘participating in this project could provide business continuity’. (Julie, Excerpt from Placement Reflections)

The argument was that social interactions, through collaborative teamwork, but also through other workplace learning strategies, such as ongoing mutual consultation and support, and observing others in action (Eraut, 2012) allowed and contributed to Julie’s learning of her new community’s “body of common knowledge, practice, and approaches” (Wenger et al., 2002, p. 5). For example, in Julie’s experience, ongoing mutual consultation and support (Eraut, 2012) was an important way of learning how to develop her tasks according to the job’s requirements. More specifically, feedback, a form of support, was a constant part of Julie’s interactions with her work-supervisors since the beginning of the placement. It was one of the main ways for Julie to improve her skills on writing, presenting, developing tools for research, communicating with others, and any other relevant activities that she had to perform.

“When I submitted my literature review to my supervisors, they put the paper to my supervisor and the senior lecturer and they both read it and then we came together at the meeting and they went through it, nearly line by line, actually, telling me what they think is good, what they think is bad, what I need to improve on and everything.”

(Julie, Interview 1)

This feedback was mostly delivered one-on-one, face-to-face, and with a great level of detail. With the writing work Julie often also got written feedback that she could reflect upon. One interesting aspect was that, despite being used

to getting feedback from teachers in her student life, the frequency and nature of the feedback she got in her placement was not an exact correspondence to her student experiences and, sometimes, she could get frustrated by it.

“No, I was always annoyed, I was like, ‘why can’t they just do the changes for me?’ (laughing), cause it was extra work for me, and I used to get annoyed. ‘Why do they do this?’. But then, when I was editing my blogs right at the end, I just realised that, you know, I’ve learned a lot since, from what they told me.”

(Julie, Interview 5)

Julie was not always aware of the relevance of those learning situations or strategies for her progress while they were occurring, but she was able to identify the interactions with the placement supervisors and specifically the main supervisor, who was also the person she interacted the most with, both in presence and through e-mail, as key sources of learning in the placement. Julie learned from her in more explicit manners, like with the feedback situation or through tutoring, and in more implicit manners, like, for example through observation.

“She just showed me more. She didn’t tell me, but she just showed me more how to interact with people and, also, when I had to do a presentation, she let me practise in front of her and everything, so. Hum, and she kind of raised my confidence.”

(Julie, Interview 4)

From Julie’s reports, the observation of her placement supervisors was a way of “learning through seeing” (Julie, Interview 4), which as Eraut (2012) highlighted in his own research, is only made available to newcomers by allowing them to take part in the placement’s social activities. One key aspect, however, was that in Julie’s experience the use of observation as a learning tool was not just a strategy of self-learning employed by Julie, since it was also prompted by her main placement supervisor. For example, Julie’s supervisor would include her in the e-mails she sent companies after their meetings in order to show her how to interact with them. This can be seen, in light of Lave and Wenger’s (1991) theory, as Julie’s placement supervisor, an old-timer in that community and thus more experienced, assuming a near-

peer role to promote Julie’s development of knowledge, practices and identity. Succinctly, there were two key ideas developed in this section related to Julie’s experience of the placement. The first is that social interactions in the placement raised concerns about the characterization of Julie’s placement as an overall case of near transfer (Mayer, 1975; Royer, 1978) and presented evidence of changing meanings in her practice that do not support the idea of the transition between university and the placement as a mere case of direct application of knowledge (Bransford and Schwartz, 1999).

The second idea was that social interactions are relevant features of the placement experience regarding the individual’s learning and movement towards becoming a full participant. The same argument, proposed by Beach (1999; 2003), Eraut (2000) and Lave and Wenger (1991), was that learning in the workplace is mediated by people. Relevant others in the placement allow the newcomer access to the community, provide opportunities for participation and become role-models of what a full participant can be. Following this view, the learning transfer process was, then, not just based on knowledge and content, and extended the newcomer’s transition into becoming something different, maybe into developing a professional identity.