Defining the problem: Four epistemic projects in professional work and education

Abstract

In this chapter, we show how preparation for professional work entails four distinguishable kinds of epistemic challenges – each addressed in terms of a characteristic epistemic project. We organise the analysis using two fundamental distinctions. The first of these is a distinction between representational and performative views on professional action and professional learning. Representational views foreground articulated knowledge and its (sometimes problematic) connections to professional action. Performative views foreground the tight relations between knowing, being and acting in the world. The second distinction concerns working across professional boundaries – the ‘spatial’ boundaries that mark of one profession from another or professionals from their clients and the ‘temporal’ boundaries where established and innovative practices mingle. We also make a crucial distinction in this chapter between knowledge work and epistemic work and between using existing knowledge to get work done and working in ways that create new knowledge.