SYMP 253 - Multiprofessional collaboration supporting individuals and communities

In this symposium we discuss a project ‘Multiprofessional collaboration supporting individuals and communities’ that creates knowledge about successful and unsuccessful practices in developing communities and supporting individual (adult and child) wellbeing, learning and good life at school and beyond. In this project we are asking what and how are the 1) encounters and processes, 2) possibilities and obstacles, and 3) ways to overcome obstacles that professionals – teachers, special educators, school social workers, counsellors, school psychologists, nurses, principals and other managers/ directors etc. – working in different fields of school development are experiencing in their everyday work. We identify professionals’ goals, find out what are they doing to achieve those goals, and what kind of successes and failures they experience at their everyday work.
 
Our theoretical starting point is in the tradition of socio-cultural educational psychology (see Martin, 2006). Particularly we follow the cultural-historical seam that has it’s origin in Vygotkskyan and Leontjevian school that has been further developed – in ways that are relevant for our project – as Development work (e.g., Engeström, 2010; Engeström & Sannino, 2009) and in the tradition of subject-scientific psychology of everyday living (see Hojholt & Schraube, 2016; Suorsa, 2015). Of particular significance for the project are the theoretical developments in the field of cultural-historical activity theory that discuss the similarities and differences of these approaches. The project hosts a conversation between these two approaches, and explores the points of resemblance also to different approaches.
 
The project consists of interrelated studies that will be presented in this symposium. Teemu Suorsa begins by presenting an overview of the project and some of the basic concepts used in research. Teemu Suorsa continues by exploring researchers’ collaboration with student welfare groups in Finnish schools. Next Kirsi Raetsaari discusses the phenomenon of high school dropouts from the point of view of professionals and students. Further, she discusses the possibility of developing the school in a way that takes these different subjective standpoints into account. Finally, Sirpa Ylimaula describes her participatory research on workshops for young people not in employment, in education nor in training, where the aim was to strengthen the participants’ skills and capabilities in everyday life and help them to find education and/or employment. The presentations will be followed by a discussion about the studies in relation to theoretical and methodological principles in cultural-historical activity theory. After each presentation, there is a short time for questions and comments. There is also time for a more extensive discussion on the project’s theoretical and methodological starting points and implications.