Improving inter-profesional collaborations: multi-agency working for children's wellbeing

241 Pages·2009·1.14 MB·English

by  Anne Edwards

Improving Inter-professional
Collaborations
Inter-professional collaborations are invaluable relationships that can prevent
the social exclusion of children and young people and are now a common
feature of welfare policies worldwide.
Drawing on a four-year study of the skills and understanding required of
practitioners in order to establish the most effective interagency collaborations,
this comprehensive text:
• gives examples from practitioners developing inter-professional practices
to allow readers to reflect on their relevance for their own work;
• emphasises what needs to be learnt for responsive inter-professional work
and how that learning can be promoted;
• examines how professional and organisational learning are intertwined;
• suggests how organisations can provide conditions to support the
enhanced forms of professional practices revealed in the study;
• reveals the professional motives driving the practices as well as how they
are founded and sustained.
Full of ideas to help shape collaborative inter-professional practice, this book
shows that specialist expertise is distributed across local networks. The reader
is encouraged to develop the capacity to recognise the expertise of others and
to negotiate their work with others.
This book is essential reading for practitioners in education and educational
psychology or social work, and offers crucial insights for local strategists and
those involved in professional development work.
The book also has a great deal to offer researchers working in the area of
cultural historical activity theory (CHAT). The four-year study was framed by
CHAT and offers a well-worked example of how CHAT can be used to reveal
sense-making in new practices and the organisational implications of enhanced
professional decision-making.
As well as being important contributors to the developing CHAT field, the
five authors have worked in the area of social exclusion and professional
learning for several years and have brought inter-disciplinary strengths to this
account of inter-professional work.
Anne Edwardsis Professor of Educational Studies and Director of Research at
Oxford University.
Harry Danielsis Professor of Education at the University of Bath.
Tony Gallagher is Professor of Education at Queen’s University, Belfast.
Jane Leadbetter and Paul Warmingtonare Senior Lecturers in the School of
Education at the University of Birmingham.
Improving Learning TLRP
Series Editor: Andrew Pollard, Director of the ESRC Teaching
and Learning Programme
Improving Literacy by Teaching Morphemes
Terezinha Nunes and Peter Bryant
Improving Workplace Learning
Karen Evans, Phil Hodkinson, Helen Rainbird and Lorna Unwin
Improving Schools, Developing Inclusion
Mel Ainscow, Tony Booth and Alan Dyson
Improving Subject Teaching: lessons from research in science
education
Robin Millar, John Leach, Jonathan Osborne and Mary Ratcliffe
Improving Learning Cultures in Further Education
David James and Gert Biesta
Improving Learning How to Learn: classrooms, schools and
networks
Mary James, Robe rt McCormick, Paul Black, Patrick Carmichael,
Mary-Jane Drummond, Alison Fox, John MacBeath, Bethan Marshall,
David Pedder, Richard Procter, Sue Swaffield, Joanna Swann and
Dylan Wiliam
Improving Learning through Consulting Pupils
Jean Rudduck and Donald McIntyre
Improving Learning, Skills and Inclusion: the impact of policy on
post-compulsory education
Frank Coffield, Sheila Edward, Ian Finlay, Ann Hodgson, Ken Spours
and Richard Steer
Improving Classroom Learning with ICT
Rosamund Sutherland, Susan Robertson and Peter John
Improving Learning in College: rethinking literacies across the
curriculum (forthcoming)
Roz Ivanic, Richard Edwards, David Barton, Zoe Fowler,
Gregg Mannion, Kate Miller and Marilyn Martin-Jones
Improving Learning in Later Life (forthcoming)
Alexandra Withnall
Improving Mathematics at Work: the need for
techno-mathematical literacies (forthcoming)
Celia Hoyles, Richard Noss, Phillip Kent and Arthur Bakker
Improving Research through User Engagement (forthcoming)
Mark Rickinson, Anne Edwards and Judy Sebba
Improving the Context for Inclusion: how teachers & educational
psychologists can use action research to work together to
develop inclusion (forthcoming)
Sue Davies, Andrew Howes, Sam Fox, Sian Swann, Heddwen Davies
Improving What is Learned at University: an exploration of the
social and organisational diversity of university education
(forthcoming)
John Brennan

Improving
Inter-professional
Collaborations
Multi-agency working for
children’s wellbeing
Anne Edwards, Harry Daniels,
Tony Gallagher, Jane Leadbetter
and Paul Warmington
First published 2009
by Routledge
2Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in theTaylor & Francis e-Library,2009.
“To purchaseyourown copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
©2009 Anne Edwards, Harry Daniels, Tony Gallagher, Jane Leadbetter
and Paul Warmington
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or
other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Acatalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Improving inter-professional collaborations : learning to do
multi-agency work
Anne Edwards ... [et al.].
p. cm. — (Improving learning)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Action research in education—Great Britain—Case studies.
2. Group work in education—Great Britain—Case studies.
3. Marginality, Social—Great Britain—Case studies.
4.Education—Parent participation—Great Britain—Case studies.
I. Edwards, Anne, 1946–
LB1028.24.I36 2008
362.7–dc22 2008029199
ISBN0-203-88405-1 Mastere-bookISBN

ISBN 10: 0–415–46869–8 (hbk)
ISBN 10: 0–415–46870–1 (pbk)
ISBN 10: 0–203–88405–1 (ebk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–46869–5 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–415–46870–1 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978–0–203–88405–8 (ebk)
Contents
List of illustrations ix
Series editor’s preface xi
Introduction xiii
Acknowledgements xvii
PART I
What is the issue? 1
1 Social inclusion and inter-professional collaboration 3
2 Professional learning for inter-professional
collaboration 21
PART II
What does the research tell us? 43
3 The case stu dies 45
4 What are practitioners learning while doing
inter-professional work? 64
5 How and where are practitioners learning? 85
6 What have been the challenges? 102
viii Contents
PART III
What are the implications? 123
7 Implications of the LIW study for the learning of
individual professionals 125
8 Implications for organisations involved in
inter-professional collaborations 145
9 The implications of the Learning in and for
Interagency Working Project for cultural
historical activity theory 172
Appendix A: Activity theory in the Learning in
and for Interagency Working Project 194
References 204
Index 216
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Historical forms of work 14
2.1 The general structure of co-ordination 34
2.2 The general structure of co-operation 35
2.3 The general structure of communication 35
4.1 The development and incorporation of a new tool 78
5.1 Two interacting activity systems 91
5.2 Epistemic levels of mediational artefacts 98
8.1 The structure of pedagogic practices in the English case
studies 149
8.2 The development of a strand in Seaside 152
A.1 Arepresentation of mediated action and object motive 195
A.2 Second-generation activity theory model 197
A.3 Third-generation activity theory model 199
A.4 Cycle of expansive learning 200
A.5 Plan of a DWR session 202

Boxes
1.1 Social inclusion 6
1.2 The need for a whole system approach 9
1.3 Features of inter-professional practice 10
1.4 Disrupting children’s trajectories of exclusion 13
1.5 Co-configuration 16
1.6 Vygotsky and dual stimulation 17
2.1 Purposeful agency in professional practices 23
2.2 Identity 26
2.3 Professional learning in the LIW study 27