SYMP 029 - Working relationally in and across practices: Refining concepts in the field of practice

Cultural-historical approaches to learning and work are usually premised in Leontiev’s precept that “society produces the activity of the individuals forming it”. Yet, this statement also points to the challenges presented by work across institutional boundaries in sites of intersecting practices, while tackling problems that require multiple forms of expertise. Conceptual struggles with these challenges have produced three concepts: relational expertise, common knowledge and relational agency. In brief, relational expertise involves revealing one’s own motives and recognising what matters for potential collaborators from other practices; common knowledge consists of these motives and is employed as a second stimulus when working with others on complex problems; and relational agency consists of the acts of collaboration when interpretations of problems and collaborative responses to them are mediated by common knowledge. The eight short presentations in the symposium will each take one or two of the key concepts to discuss how they were used in studies in different settings to address very different questions. In the process, they will reveal how, in sound Vygotskian terms, the concepts were refined in use in the field. All the presenters are contributors of Working relationally in and across practices, recently published by Cambridge University Press.