Agency in workplace learning: supervisors’ and students’ interacting strategies in a physiotherapy placement

Both supervisors and students play an active role in facilitating workplace learning in healthcare placements. In workplace learning, affordances, referring to the opportunities for learning in the workplace, and agency, referring to the willingness and ability to engage with affordances, are central concepts. To fully utilize the potential of workplace learning, crucial is the extent to which supervisors and students interactively and intentionally engage with affordances for learning in placements. In current literature, the concepts of supervisor agency and student agency are studied individually, but limited understanding exists of how supervisors and students interactively manifest agency in workplace learning. This single case study characterizes agency in supervisors’ and students’ interacting strategies throughout a twenty-week placement. The study focuses on interacting strategies of two supervisors and one student in a revalidation centre, in the context of a student-physiotherapist’s bachelor program in Dutch University of Applied Sciences. Data were collected through observations and interviews. Three strategies of supervisors were identified to elucidate agency in workplace learning: (1) demonstration, (2) stimulated participation and (3) entrustment. Correspondingly, students used three interacting strategies: (1) learner stance, (2) negotiated participation and (3) independency. Agency in workplace learning is manifested as continuous alternations in these supervisors’ and students’ interacting strategies, highlighting the interactive nature of agency in workplace learning. The study contributes by providing insight into the real-life mechanisms of facilitating workplace learning, where interacting strategies of supervisors and students reveal the full learning potential of workplace learning.