{"title":"Learning in unaccredited internship as development of interns’ ‘horizontal expertise’","authors":"","doi":"10.1007/s12186-023-09342-x","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<h3>Abstract</h3> <p>The rise of internships as a form of work experience that students pursue during their degree or after graduation has been accompanied by an upsurge of discussions, critical and favourable, on the role of internships for interns’ employment opportunities. There is a need, however, to understand the learning that goes in internship as for many students internship is a setting where work practices are encountered for the first time. Recently it has been suggested that unaccredited internship can be seen as constituting a separate work activity that needs to be examined in its own right. The aim of this article is to contribute to this literature by focusing on the learning challenges that arise in unaccredited internship and identifying the capacities that interns develop as a result of tackling these challenges. To that end, I identify a set of analytical concepts from vocational learning literature developed to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with learning across contexts (i.e. education and work): horizontal expertise, boundary-crossing, recontextualisation and identity-renegotiation. Then I analyse data on learning in unaccredited internships collected from five focus groups and two interviews (18 interns). A dialogic discourse analysis of focus group and interview discourses revealed that the interns in unaccredited internship developed an emerging capacity to learn and work competently across multiple contexts and to initiate and coordinate subsequent cycles of boundary-crossing between education and work. The paper proposes the notion of “interns’ horizontal expertise” to describe this emerging capacity that arises from learning in unaccredited internship and continues after the internship and explains how this concept differs from other expressions of horizontal expertise in the literature such as the horizontal expertise of seasoned professionals in inter-professional activities and boundary-crossing in work placements.</p>","PeriodicalId":46260,"journal":{"name":"Vocations and Learning","volume":"36 2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Vocations and Learning","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12186-023-09342-x","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The rise of internships as a form of work experience that students pursue during their degree or after graduation has been accompanied by an upsurge of discussions, critical and favourable, on the role of internships for interns’ employment opportunities. There is a need, however, to understand the learning that goes in internship as for many students internship is a setting where work practices are encountered for the first time. Recently it has been suggested that unaccredited internship can be seen as constituting a separate work activity that needs to be examined in its own right. The aim of this article is to contribute to this literature by focusing on the learning challenges that arise in unaccredited internship and identifying the capacities that interns develop as a result of tackling these challenges. To that end, I identify a set of analytical concepts from vocational learning literature developed to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with learning across contexts (i.e. education and work): horizontal expertise, boundary-crossing, recontextualisation and identity-renegotiation. Then I analyse data on learning in unaccredited internships collected from five focus groups and two interviews (18 interns). A dialogic discourse analysis of focus group and interview discourses revealed that the interns in unaccredited internship developed an emerging capacity to learn and work competently across multiple contexts and to initiate and coordinate subsequent cycles of boundary-crossing between education and work. The paper proposes the notion of “interns’ horizontal expertise” to describe this emerging capacity that arises from learning in unaccredited internship and continues after the internship and explains how this concept differs from other expressions of horizontal expertise in the literature such as the horizontal expertise of seasoned professionals in inter-professional activities and boundary-crossing in work placements.
期刊介绍：
Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational and Professional Education is an international peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for strongly conceptual and carefully prepared manuscripts that inform the broad field of vocational learning. The scope of the journal and its focus on vocational learning is inclusive of vocational and professional learning albeit through the very diverse range of settings (e.g. vocational colleges, schools, universities, workplaces, domestic environments, voluntary bodies etc) in which it occurs. It stands to be the only truly international journal that focuses on vocational learning, as encompassing the activities that comprise vocational education and professional education in their diverse forms internationally. Vocations and Learning aims to: enhance the contribution of research and scholarship to vocational and professional education policy; support the development of conceptualisation(s) of vocational and professional learning and education; improve the quality of practice within vocational and professional learning and education; and enhance and support the standing of these fields as a sectors with its own significant purposes, pedagogies and curriculums. Vocations and Learning: Studies in Vocational and Professional Education encourages the submission of high-quality contributions from a broad range of disciplines, as well as those that cross disciplinary boundaries, in addressing issues associated with vocational and professional education. It is intended that contributions will represent those from major disciplines (i.e. psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, labour studies, industrial relations and economics) as cross overs within and hybrids with and amongst these disciplinary traditions. These contributions can comprise papers that provide either empirically-based accounts, discussions of theoretical perspectives or reviews of literature about vocational learning. In addition, books, reports and policies associated with vocational learning will also be reviewed. Topics addressed through contributions within the proposed journal might include, but will not be restricted to: curriculum and pedagogy practices for vocational learning the role and nature of knowledge in vocational learning the nature of vocations, professional practice and learning the relationship between context and learning in vocational settings the nature and role of vocational education the nature of goals for vocational learning different manifestations and comparative analyses of vocational education, their purposes and formation organisational pedagogics transformations in vocational learning and education over time and space analyses of instructional practice within vocational learning and education analyses of vocational learning and education policies international comparisons of vocational learning and education critical appraisal of contemporary policies, practices and initiatives studies of teaching and learning in vocational education approaches to vocational learning in non-work settings and in unpaid work learning throughout working lives relationships between vocational learning and economic imperatives and conceptions and national and trans-national agencies and their policies.
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