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Experience, trajectories, and reifications: an emerging framework of practice-based learning in healthcare workplaces

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Abstract

Learning by working is omnipresent in healthcare education. It enables people to learn how to perform, think, and interact in ways that work for their specific context. In this paper, I review my approach to studying this process. It centers on the question why healthcare professionals do what they do and how their actions and learning are intertwined. The aim of this paper is to illustrate what I have learned from the research I have been involved in, in such a way that it enables other researchers, educators, and clinicians to understand and study practice-based learning in healthcare workplaces. Therefore, I build on a programmatic line of research to present a framework of practice-based learning consisting of three inextricably linked levels of analysis. The first level focuses on how situations lead to personal experiences, the second level looks at strings of experiences that lead to multiple trajectories, and the third level deals with reifications arising from recurrent activities. This framework, and its interrelations and inherent tensions, helps to understand why healthcare workplaces can be both a powerful learning environment and a frustratingly hard place to change.

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Acknowledgments

First, I would like to thank the people with whom I shared the pleasure of collaboratively conducting all sorts of research projects. In preparing this manuscript Glenn Regehr has been of invaluable help in discussing and organizing the ideas put forward in this paper. Tim Dornan’s comments and coaching have also been instrumental in developing this paper and I would like to thank Joanna Bates and Chris Watling for their constructive feedback.

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  1. Faculty of Health Medicine and Life Sciences, School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Pim W. Teunissen

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Correspondence to Pim W. Teunissen.

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Teunissen, P.W. Experience, trajectories, and reifications: an emerging framework of practice-based learning in healthcare workplaces. Adv in Health Sci Educ 20, 843–856 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-014-9556-y

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