Epistemic tools, instruments and infrastructure in professional knowledge work and learning

Abstract

In this chapter, our attention shifts from inscriptions and epistemic artefacts to the sets of tools and infrastructures in which such artefacts are produced. In particular, we use ideas about instrumental genesis to examine ways in which the qualities of tools and other artefacts combine with schemes for their use. We describe professional epistemic infrastructures as the basic material, symbolic and organisational structures that underpin various knowledge practices. The chapter reviews the status and functioning of tools in epistemic work and forges connections with schemes for their use – culturally shared but individually customised epistemic games. A key theme in this chapter concerns the dynamism of epistemic work – our analyses of passages of professional activity reveal rapid shifts back and forth between different assemblages of tools and different forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. Different intrinsic and extrinsic properties of the tools that constitute professional epistemic infrastructure have strong implications of how professional work is done and how knowledge and skills for such work can be taught and learnt.