Hanna Toiviainen, Hannele Kerosuo and Tuula Syrjälä
The paper aims to argue that new tools are needed for operating, developing and learning in work‐life networks where academic and practice knowledge are intertwined in multiple…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to argue that new tools are needed for operating, developing and learning in work‐life networks where academic and practice knowledge are intertwined in multiple levels of and in boundary‐crossing across activities. At best, tools for learning are designed in a process of co‐configuration, as the analysis of one tool, Development Radar, aims to demonstrate.
Design/methodology/approach
The “Development Radar” narrative offers a way to analyse what co‐configuration might mean in the development practices of the learning network. The data consist of the researchers' and participants' tool‐related actions in planning and running a workshop of the Forum of Workplace Development, for which Development Radar was created. Analysis draws from cultural‐historical activity theory by including cultural sources of knowledge beyond the immediate pedagogic interaction.
Findings
Metaphors seem to be facilitative in the early phase of co‐configuration of a tool but not enough for sustainable workplace learning. What is needed is opening up the core concepts for all parties involved and providing ongoing negotiations and elaboration concerning their potential and meaning.
Research limitations/implications
Expansive learning is supported by co‐configuration of tools that simultaneously provide a generic orientation basis of learning and are open to contextual knowledge creation in and across the levels of developmental activities.
Practical implications
The visual co‐configuration of tools may be crucial for understanding learning, development and the implementation of tools in a specific context, and even have an effect on the professional identity of users.
Originality/validity
The significance of tools for the quality of workplace learning is generally acknowledged but the investigation into the pedagogical dynamics and material co‐configuration of tools needs more attention.
Details
Keywords
Shona M. Bettany and Ben Kerrane
Using the family activity of hobby stock-keeping (“petstock”) as a context, this paper aims to extend singularization theory to model the negotiations, agencies and resistances of…
Abstract
Purpose
Using the family activity of hobby stock-keeping (“petstock”) as a context, this paper aims to extend singularization theory to model the negotiations, agencies and resistances of children, parents and petstock, as they work through how animals become food within the boundaries of the family home. In doing so, the authors present an articulation of this process, deciphering the cultural biographies of petstock and leading to an understanding of the emergent array of child animal food-product preferences.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from petstock-keeping parents through a mixture of ethnographic, in-depth interviewing and netnographic engagements in this qualitative, interpretive study; with parents offering experiential insights into animal meat and food-product socialization behaviours played out within the family environments.
Findings
The findings discuss the range of parental behaviours, motivations and activities vis-à-vis petstock, and their children’s responses, ranging from transgression to full compliance, in terms of eating home-raised animal food-products. The discussion illustrates that in the context of petstock, a precocious child food preference agency towards animal meat and food products is reported to emerge.
Research limitations/implications
This research has empirical and theoretical implications for the understanding of the development of child food preference agency vis-à-vis animal food products in the context of family petstock keeping.
Practical implications
The research has the potential to inform policy makers around child education and food in regard to how child food preferences emerge and can inform marketers developing food-based communications aimed at children and parents.
Originality/value
Two original contributions are presented: an analysis of the under-researched area of how children’s food preferences towards eating animal food products develop, taking a positive child food-choice agency perspective, and a novel extension of singularization theory, theorizing the radical transformation, from animal to food, encountered by children in the petstock context.