Findings from recent professional development studies have encouraged researchers, designers and educators to move beyond passive and intermittent notions of learning, to recognise more active learning opportunities, linked to... [ view full abstract ]
Findings from recent professional development studies have encouraged researchers, designers and educators to move beyond passive and intermittent notions of learning, to recognise more active learning opportunities, linked to practice, and supported through engagement in collaborative learning communities (Cherkowski, 2012). Such perspectives recognise learning-as-practice, bound in the embodied, cultural, and contextual processes of community activities (Fenwick, Nerland and Jensen, 2012). Yet, while valuable in framing professional development through learning in situ, many studies have narrowly focused on workplace engagement, with less attention paid to individual’s membership across multiple learning communities. Within education, it has been argued that membership in any one community confers an encompassed identity, where across different communities’ individuals are compelled to renegotiate and reconcile their engagement (Hodgen and Askew, 2007). Challenges then arise for the learning developer, where in the context of a mobile workforce (i.e. sports coaching) what is needed is a better understanding of how learners negotiate learning identities throughout their practice.
The aim of this study was to examine the impact of multiple community membership on elite coaches’ engagement with workplace learning opportunities. Framed around Hodkinson et al’s (2008) notions of ‘learning cultures’, ethnographic data from 6 professional Olympic coaches makes clear the multi-dimensional environment of high-performance coaching. In doing so, the authors critically consider coaches constructed sociological identities and understandings of professional role, features which sought to mediate dispositions towards learning affordances. Notably, findings highlight the transient nature of the coaching workforce, where individuals were required to (re)negotiate shifting workplace/political boundaries, creating working and learning practices that represented socially constructed legacies of past participation. The implications of this work are to suggest that any change/learning across individuals, practices and communities is inter-linked and interdependent. Therefore, amongst organisations looking to instigate pedagogic change, there must be efforts made to ensure congruence between these features.
