Potential for change in pedagogical and institutional practices

A nexus analysis of a hybrid education export meeting

Abstrakti

The context of this study is education export from Finland to Austria. The focus is on how a hybrid education export meeting between a Finnish business representative and three Austrian teachers in their school is constructed and what emerges from this encounter. The nexus-analytical research strategy involves engaging, navigating and changing the nexus of practice of interest. Social action and interaction are seen to emerge at an intersection of participants’ historical bodies (experiences, familiar practices, beliefs), interaction order (mutual relationships) and discourses in place (discourses circulating in the material space). The research materials include video recordings of meetings accompanied by observation notes. The analysis focuses on in situ interactions but also wider discourses stemming from the past, visible in the material space as frozen actions. The study sheds light on the hybrid education export meeting as a site for the teachers to negotiate shared understandings about their professional practices and their development in the workplace. The study provides implications for developing meeting practices as well as teacher education considering the needs of both teachers and business professionals taking part in education export encounters.