Relational agency: Learning to be a resourceful practitioner

Abstract Professional practice is usually seen as developed and enacted within specific institutional settings. However, new forms of practice are being required which call for a capacity to work with other practitioners and draw on resources that may be distributed across systems to support one's actions. In this paper the concept of relational agency is described and illustrated with reference to a series of research studies. It is argued that relational agency leads to an enhanced form of professional agency which is of benefit to the objects of practice. The analysis is located within Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and implications for CHAT are also discussed.

[1]  A. Stetsenko,et al.  Activity as Object-Related: Resolving the Dichotomy of Individual and Collective Planes of Activity , 2005 .

[2]  J. Wertsch.  The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology , 1981 .

[3]  R. Pea.  Practices of distributed intelligence and designs for education , 1993 .

[4]  Y. Engeström,et al.  Perspectives on activity theory: Play, learning, and instruction , 1999 .

[5]  L. S. Vygotskiĭ,et al.  The history of the development of higher mental functions , 1997 .

[6]  G. Bedny,et al.  The Systemic-Structural Theory of Activity: Applications to the Study of Human Work , 2005 .

[7]  G. Jack,et al.  Social capital and child welfare , 1999 .

[8]  O. Dreĭer.  Personal Trajectories of Participation across Contexts of Social Practice , 1999, Outlines. Critical Practice Studies.

[9]  A. Edwards,et al.  Relational agency and disposition in sociocultural accounts of learning to teach , 2004 .

[10]  A. N. Leont’ev,et al.  Activity, consciousness, and personality , 1978 .

[11]  J. Porac,et al.  Cognition and Communication at Work , 1999 .

[12]  R. Evans,et al.  Developing Preventative Practices: The Experiences of Children, Young People and their families in the Children's Fund , 2006 .

[13]  Karen Littleton,et al.  Social processes in children's learning , 1999 .

[14]  A. Kozulin.  The concept of activity in Soviet psychology: Vygotsky, his disciples and critics , 1986 .

[15]  Deborah Hicks.  Self and Other in Bakhtin's Early Philosophical Essays: Prelude to a Theory of Prose Consciousness , 2000 .

[16]  Anne Edwards,et al.  Let's get beyond community and practice: the many meanings of learning by participating , 2005 .

[17]  A. Edwards,et al.  Learning to See in Classrooms: What are student teachers learning about teaching and learning while learning to teach in schools? , 2003 .

[18]  John Shotter,et al.  Cultural politics of everyday life , 1993 .

[19]  A. Masten,et al.  The development of competence in favorable and unfavorable environments. Lessons from research on successful children. , 1998, The American psychologist.

[20]  Anne Edwards,et al.  The New Multi‐Agency Working: Collaborating to Prevent the Social Exclusion of Children and Families , 2004 .

[21]  L. Protheroe,et al.  Teaching by proxy: understanding how mentors are positioned in partnerships , 2004 .

[22]  Charles Taylor.  The Ethics of Authenticity , 1992 .

[23]  S. Chaiklin.  The category of 'personality' in cultural-historical psychology , 2001 .

[24]  S. Billett.  Relational Interdependence Between Social and Individual Agency in Work and Working Life , 2006 .

[25]  James V. Wertsch,et al.  Culture, communication, and cognition : Vygotskian perspectives , 1987 .

[26]  A. Edwards,et al.  Steps towards participation: the social support of learning trajectories , 2005 .

[27]  Seth Chaiklin,et al.  The Theory and Practice of Cultural-Historical Psychology , 2000 .

[28]  Charles Taylor,et al.  Human Agency and Language: What is human agency? , 1985 .

[29]  Victor Kaptelinin,et al.  INTRODUCTION: "Perspectives on the Object of Activity" , 2005 .

[30]  Etienne Wenger,et al.  Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation , 1991 .

[31]  J. Greeno.  On Claims That Answer the Wrong Questions , 1997 .

[32]  G. Salomon.  Distributed cognitions : psychological and educational considerations , 1997 .

[33]  M. Little,et al.  Refocusing Children's Services towards Prevention: Lessons from the Literature. , 2006 .

[34]  J. Bruner.  The Culture of Education , 1996 .

[35]  S. Chaiklin,et al.  The institutionalisation of cultural-historical psychology as a multinational practice , 2001 .

[36]  A. Clark.  Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again , 1996 .

[37]  T. Mischel,et al.  The self : psychological and philosophical issues , 1977 .

[38]  A. N. Leont’ev.  On Vygotsky’s Creative Development , 1997 .

[39]  Y. Engeström,et al.  Activity theory and individual and social transformation. , 1999 .

[40]  Neil Mercer,et al.  Words and Minds : How We Use Language to Think Together , 2000 .