Experiences of Practice-Based Learning in Phenomenographic Perspective

Purpose: The paper aims to examine, within the context of professional practice and learning, how designers collaboratively working in international teams experience practice-based learning and how such occasions contribute to professional development. Design/methodology/approach: The paper introduces the cooperation project between Tibro Training Centre and Furniture Technology Centre Trust and its workshop context organized as practice-based learning. Participants' learning context consisted of a mixture of professional practices allowing different logics and different cultures make up an innovative working site. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interview data suggests that three phenomenographic hierarchical categories constitute the learning process: getting a recognized professional identity; perceiving new elements and expanding knowledge and seeing new aspects of design work and new steps of development in profession. Findings: Cooperative practice-based learning is understood as social practice in a community of practice, and as continuous changes of the learning object due to that new aspects are discerned by the learners. These categories illustrate how participants' meaning making and understanding of the learning object were expressed in cooperation as doings and sayings, as translation and as situated activities in a community of practice. Accordingly, it contributed to participants' professional development in spite of their different professional educations and professional experiences. Practical implications: More studies of practice-based learning environments in work places are needed that could help societies and companies to advance integrative efforts of new employees and new immigrants into an increasingly diverse globalized labour market. Originality/value: The results suggest that understanding as well as content structure and meaning making of the learning object are intertwined constituent aspects of practice-based learning.