Figuring the world of family mediation: transformative learning and emerging professional agency in collaboration on boundaries

The dissertation examines the dynamic, changing, and complex settings and tasks of social work. Social work requires practitioners to continually acquire knowledge and navigate organizational and professional boundaries to collaborate with other professionals. The thesis focuses on transformative change, as well as learning associated with crossing boundaries and forming concepts. It explores learning, agency, and professional development in a project, Fasper, designed to advance and transform family mediation activity in collaboration with participants coming from multiple organizations and with diverse professional backgrounds. Thus, it concerns learning when developing novel ways of practicing family mediation and novel ways of making sense of family mediation practice, as evoked by collaboration with and participation across multiple practices.

The dissertation consists of four separate research articles and a summary article that synthesizes and elaborates on the research conducted in the four studies. The research uses longitudinal data collected during and after the Fasper project, consisting of documents from learning network meetings and developed conceptual models, transcripts of discussions in learning networks, documents and legislative literature concerning the history of family mediation practices in Finland, and retrospectively reflective interviews with participants acting as family mediators.

The thesis is based on cultural-historical activity theory, which concerns object-oriented, culturally mediated activity and represents a multidisciplinary framework for studying development, learning, and change. Each sub-study required theoretical concepts of their own for dealing with the specific object of enquiry.

Article I takes a Foucauldian ‘history of the present’ view to understand why family mediation, despite its long history, persists as a blurred service concept. The study reveals tensions concerning self-determination and societal control through the history of family mediation in matrimonial law and shows how the law changes from control of property and living together towards joint parental responsibility. Collaboration across professional boundaries is facilitated by the understanding of family mediation activity as being a concern of multiple professions but not belonging entirely to any of them.

Article II scrutinizes collaborative concept formation and concludes that the formation of concepts is a practical endeavour that involves solving the tension between existing and novel practices. Achieving successful concept formation necessitates alternation between a variety of ways, forms, and directions throughout the learning process.

Article III concentrates on action and interaction in two multi-organizational and multi-professional learning networks by examining discussions during the networks’ first meetings. The research finds that recognizing and talking about boundaries, as well as jointly developing discursive tools, are necessary for beginning interprofessional collaboration that enables transformation. In addition, transformation requires confrontation and finding a common problem space by questioning the current circumstances.

Article IV addresses intrapersonal boundaries and shows how boundaries such as childhood/ adulthood, professional/private, and court work/mediation were crossed by means of semiotic mediating devices. Identity dialogues reshape and clarify the relationship to the surrounding world, and boundaries become embodied parts of the backgrounded personal sense. These dialogues are important in clarifying professional agency and identity as life experiences are interwoven across personal and social domains.

In the summary article, I argue that fostering transformative practices in polycontextual collaboration entails boundary-crossing learning at three levels: interinstitutional, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. The findings show that figuring a world entails transformation on all three levels, while intrapersonal boundary crossing – that is, identifying with the new – becomes critical for change to become real and not only apparent. This way of conceptualizing the development of practices presents a novel approach to the implementation and transformation of social work practices. It provides a creative perspective on co-construction to enhance services and empower professional agency, framing development as a process of figuring the world.