Exploring Division of Labour: an important analytical tool for understanding new forms of profession

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Learning in and for Interagency Working

• Exploring Division of Labour an important
  analytical tool for understanding new forms of
  professional learning within multi-agency working
• Dr Jane Leadbetter, School of Education,
  University of Birmingham
• Dr Paul Warmington, School of Education,
  University of Birmingham
• j.v.leadbetter_at_bham.ac.uk p.c.warmington_at_bham.ac.
  uk
• www.education.bham.ac.uk/liw

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Learning in and for Interagency Working

• Aims
• to examine support new professional learning in
  multiagency settings (Childrens Services)
• to develop test new model of professional
  learning via DWR intervention
• Context
• UK local authority childrens services provision
• joined up social provision
• Every Child Matters Children Act

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Developmental Work Research

• a methodology for applying activity theory,
  specifically the theory of expansive learning, in
  the world of work, technology and organizations.
• People and organizations are all the time
  learning something that is not stable, not even
  defined or understood ahead of time. In
  important transformations of our personal lives
  and organizational practices, we must learn new
  forms of activity which are not there yet.
  (Engeström, 2001)

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Learning through DWR

• reflective systemic analysis
• activity theory as shared analytical practice
  (researchers and practitioners)
• capacity to interpret the object of practice in
  enriched ways
• conceptual resources bring together scientific
  and everyday (via mirror data)
• production of new patterns of activity (i.e. new
  representations and new practice)
• (i) collective learning challenges
• (ii) contradictions as change mechanism

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Stage 3 Local Authority Settings

• Stage 3 exploratory
• 2 local authorities (over 6 months)
• (A) Youth Offending Team (B) Multi Agency Project
• modest ethnography
• interviews with strategic and operational staff
  (c.20 hours data in each LA)
• 4 workshops in each
• 1x strategic
• 2x operational
• 1x mixed

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Inside the workshops

• drawing on mirror data question existing
  practices (contradictions)
• analysing historical origins of practices
• confronting everyday and scientific
• shift to situation-free conceptualisation
• modelling new representations gt practices

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MAW as an activity system (Leadbetter, 2004)
Tools protocols, systems, materials, language
Outcomes Positive steps or actions for child
Object learning to do joined up work
Subject Children Services professionals
Rules Legislation, time, agreements
Community other professionals, family, peers
Division of labour traditional working
practices
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7. What is being used?
2. What are people working on? 3. To achieve what?
1.Whose perspective?
4. What supports or constrains the work?
5. Who else is involved?
6 How is the work shared?
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Contradictions, tensions, conflicts, breakdowns
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Contradictions arising from DWR sessions and
ethnographic work

• Contradiction between the vertical and horizontal
  boundaries, communication routes and lack of
  learning and transfer
• Contradiction relating to boundary zones,
  division of labour and distributed expertise
• Contradictions around status, expertise,
  Quasi-multiagency working

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• Extract from transcript from DWR session
  demonstrating contradictions between the vertical
  and horizontal boundaries, communication routes,
  learning and transfer
• A Weve got a conference of health
  representatives and theres people there from
  Probation or Drugs and there was no-one there
  from our Youth Offending Team and Id like to
  know why, why wasnt there? The voices arent
  getting listened to across the whole authority,
  not just within our own management structure.
  Theres no forum for that.
• B And that might be because we dont have a
  voice as workers and the invite goes to
  management and they cant make it.
• A Were not given the professional integrity to
  decide where we should and shouldnt go, what we
  should and shouldnt be. Were still fenced.

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• Extract from transcript from interview data
  demonstrating contradiction relating to boundary
  zones, division of labour and distributed
  expertise
• You can't make a nurse out of a social worker
  and you can't make a social worker out of a
  nurse that's not what were talking about doing.
  But there must be some scope to be able to
  develop a greater understanding of the opposite
  services, which, in turn, when you come out into
  practice, will be beneficial. I feel that there
  is a lack of understanding about what other
  agencies do. I think we need to retain our
  specialisms but we need to be doing joint
  training.

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• Extract from transcript showing contradictions
  around status, expertise, Quasi-multiagency
  working
• I think there are people who protect and hold
  their given level of expertise and think it is
  better than somebody elses sometimesif the
  CAMHS worker makes a CAMHS referral to a mental
  health service, well get a service. If a social
  worker does it you wait for the service thats
  why you have the CAMHS worker in the team, to
  access the service, to get rid of the
  barrier.but in some ways because youve got
  them, you actually dont get rid of the
  barrieryou work around the barrier rather than
  actually getting rid of it