Between Blackboxing and Unfolding: Professional Learning Networks of Pastors

Introduction

Professional learning is considered to be among the most important factors in a changing knowledge society (Jensen, Lahn, & Nerland, 2012). Being a professional does not necessarily mean to be in control of an expert domain or to be competitive in a market (Freidson, 2001; Friedmann & Phillips, 2004; Jensen et al., 2012; Mulchahy, 2012). To many professionals, learning is more than acquiring standards or developing individual and cognitive achievements. Instead, professionals have to handle and negotiate challenges in a materially and socially complex everyday life. They often work in networks across expert fields. However, these networks create different conditions for knowledge construction and learning. In some situations it means to frame existing knowledge, like for instance developing standards and routines. In other situations it means to handle the innovative and new. Professional learning, then, can be seen as network processes between what I will call “blackboxing” and “unfolding”.

In this article I will examine professional learning using the case of pastors from the Church of Norway (CoN). Pastors attracted me because pastors in Norway play a specific role in the welfare system for a large part of the population (Kulturdepartementet, 2013; Slagstad, 2011). Pastors baptize a large part of the children, conduct funerals and they are often part of a public crisis team. Many congregations offer the churches as a shelter for illegal immigrants, making pastors take part in both political and interreligious dialogues. Through centuries pastors have had an established role with a public “license” to deal with life and death (Freidson, 1994; Hughes, 1993). In times of extraordinary events and accidents, the churches function as a public gathering place.¹ Even though the church has got this central place in the Norwegian society, very few of the population actually attend weekly church services (3%). A changing knowledge society and new ways of collaborating seems to challenge former practices with secularization and diversified roles of church and religion (Afdal, 2013; Heelas & Woodhead, 2005). Facing people in extraordinary situations is part of their daily tasks, as well as communicating with believers as well as “less-believers” and non-believers. Pastors have ended up with a status of being “in-between” – and professional learning might be at the core of their challenges.

Research within the church context often sees professional pastor learning as individual processes of a reflective practitioner and knowing-in-action (Burns & Cervero, 2002; Campbell-Reed & Sharen, 2011; Olson, 2009). Many studies describe learning of pastors also as entering communities of practice (Hess, 2007; Mercer, 2006; Naidoo, 2010) An analysis of Norwegian and Dutch curricula explores three different learning approaches to learning in protestant pastor education (Reite, In press) showing how some courses allow a triangulating “network” of knowledge sources, actors and sites and facilitate learning new knowledge. An ethnographic socio-material analysis of pastor learning, however, has not been conducted before.