Although recent studies on learning at work have increasingly focused on subjectivities and identities (e.g. Billett, Fenwick, & Somerville, 2006), we need a better understanding of how subjectivity and learning are intertwined within boundary-crossing practices outside the individual’s own work organisation. This paper addresses the processes by which vocational teachers’ subjectivities are constituted in social practices when they cross the traditional boundaries between school and work. In Finland, initial vocational education and training has traditionally been school-based. However, recent reforms have aimed at greater integration between schools and workplaces, increasing the amount of students’ workplace learning. The reforms have also increased the amount of work done by teachers outside their own institutions, requiring extensive collaboration with workplace personnel. The present study focuses on how vocational teachers constitute their subjectivity within boundary-crossing practices; it examines how they negotiate their subject positions, and how they perceive spaces for activity from these subject positions. We understand learning as an active process in which individuals participate in practical activities, communities, and practices, and in which subjectivities are formed (Billett, Fenwick, & Somerville, 2006; Fenwick, 2006). In line with post-structural approaches, we also see subjectivity as constituted within particular social, cultural and historical practices, discourses and relationships, and through the taking up of subject positions. Furthermore, subjectivity emerges through the subject’s capacity to exercise agency (Fenwick, 2006; Weedon, 1997). Thus, becoming a subject means becoming an active agent. The process is based on the subject’s reflective awareness of his/her subject positions, and how, on the basis of this, he/she can enter into appropriate activity orientations (Phillips, 2002).

The data for the study were obtained by open-ended narrative interviews. In 2006 sixteen vocational teachers were interviewed, and fourteen of these teachers were re-interviewed in 2007. The teachers varied according to age, gender, length of teaching experience and vocational field. The data were analysed via narrative and discursive approaches.

The findings demonstrate that vocational teachers’ subject positions are constructed in particular situations and relationships, and that they are not constant. Depending on the boundary-crossing situation, teachers bond with various subject positions, either passively adopting the positions offered to them or actively negotiating positions through discourses and activities. Thus, both social practices and individual agency are emphasised in a variety of ways in these negotiation processes. Moreover, the findings illustrate that teachers’ perceptions of their possibilities for activity vary, as do their subject positions; also that the positions taken mediate their activities, e.g. the exchange of knowledge and their experiences in boundary-crossing practices. In addition, the positions taken create different prerequisites for developing the teachers’ work and education. We suggest that in boundary-crossing situations, subjectivity constitution is an essential part of the individual’s work and learning; also that work organisations can benefit from workers’ boundary crossing. To promote individuals’ working and learning it is important to focus on social practices in terms of the subject positions that individuals bond with, and to consider how these practices create opportunities and constraints for action and learning.