Participatory practices at work: Understanding and appraising healthcare students' learning through workplace experiences

Abstract

This chapter explores the concept of participatory practices to explain healthcare students' participation in and learning through clinical experiences. These practices comprise a duality between what opportunities for learning are provided in the workplace settings in which individuals participate (that is, affordances), on the one hand, and how individuals elect to engage in and learn through those practices, on the other. Given this duality, learning in the workplace arises through a relational interdependence between settings and persons. Such a conception emphasises that in considering students' learning it is insufficient to consider the provision of particular experiences (e.g. activities and interactions in clinical settings) alone. Rather students construe and construct meaning (i.e. learn) from what they experience in person-particular ways. Clinical experiences can thus be understood in terms of how students are invited to participate in healthcare activities and how they elect to do so, and thus are relationally interdependent. This has clear implications for understanding, supporting and developing workplace based learning in healthcare settings. Drawing on examples from medicine and midwifery students' experiences in clinical settings, this chapter illustrates the concepts of participatory practice.