A core focus in Organizational Education is on organizational learning (Göhlich et al., 2018). We believe, that to understand learning in, by and between organizations it is also of significance to understand the dynamics of organizational routines (Becker, 2018; Kallemeyn, 2014). Early conceptualizations of organizational routines have concentrated on members following rules or standard operating proceduresallowing organizations to cope with uncertainty and enable effective decision-making. As Elkjær (2018, p. 156) says about this position on learning through routines: “These standardized procedures are a central element in organizational learning, because it is through the search for solutions to problems that the standardized procedures may change and make ways for new routines. It is when organizations are able to rely on their routines without initiating search and learning processes that the organization has learned”. For more than 20 years there has been a development in the research field now described as Routine Dynamics. Many researchers in this tradition build on practice theory and process theory(Feldman et al., 2021; Howard-Grenville & Rerup, 2016). It is still limited how much the insights from Routine Dynamics have been applied in educational research in general and in research on educational organizations more specific, but we find some great potentials here  (Merki et al., 2023; Wolthuis et al., 2022). The purpose of our paper is to discuss this potential applied to the understanding of how a national network of science teacher educators between different organizations is emerging and stabilizing. The creation of routines can be viewed as a “quest for certainty” or a way to manage and absorb the uncertainties emerging between organizations. Organizational routines establish expectations and anticipations for future actions (Feldman et al., 2022). Routines are dynamic and ongoing accomplishments. When routines break down or the unexpected happens members of the organization find ways to make sense of the situation in their performances and recreate the routines. We find it especially interesting to understand how this kind of organizing and coordination of such complex educational networks is done in practice.   

The background of the paper is a 4-year longitudinal study (2023-2026) of an emerging interorganizational network of professional learning communities (PLCs) in the field of science teacher education in Denmark called Naturfagsakademiet (NAFA) (English translation: Danish Academy of Natural Sciences: https://nafa.nu/about-nafa/ ).The main objective of NAFA is to enhance knowledge sharing and knowledge creation among science teaching professionals at different educational levels, both teacher education and primary and lower secondary schools. A central part of this is the organizing of national and local PLCs at all the teacher education institutions on the six university colleges in Denmark. In NAFA a PLC is defined as a committed and systematic inquiring community between a group of educators, who share experiences and knowledge from practice through inquiry and reflective dialogues centered on students’ learning. We will use NAFA as a case to investigate the role of routines in managing uncertainties in network collaboration using concepts from Routine Dynamics as analytical lenses. The research question we want to explore in this paper is:

How can the application of concepts from Routine Dynamics contribute to the analysis and understanding of the management of uncertainties between educational organizations?

The research project is a longitudinal study and consists of an ethnographic part and social network analysis (SNA) part. The ethnographic part is investigating how routines in NAFA are enacted in different settings such as PLC meetings both online and physical (Neale, 2021; Ybema et al., 2009). The SNA part of the study examines the network structure of the PLCs in and between the university colleges. It is informed by both qualitative and quantitative data (Froehlich et al., 2020). Data from surveys are used in the SNA and will focus on observing analytical themes such as centrality, relationships between weak and strong ties, and holes within networks (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011). The SNA will zoom in on the collaboration within the network of PLCs in NAFA. The empirical data we analyze in our presentation on the conference will be in the form of snapshots from this longitudinal study. We have collected different empirical data since the beginning of 2023 focusing, among other things, on the PLC meeting routines. In our presentation we will especially analyze and discuss videorecorded online meetings on the Teams platform to identify communication concerning the management of uncertainty and the negotiations of routines. From a process theoretical perspective we analyze how the members reflect on both the distant past and the distant future in the situated activity of the meeting as part of making sense of the network routines (Hernes & Schultz, 2020). The concepts from Routine Dynamics we will apply in our study for analyzing how members of NAFA are managing uncertainties in the network are part of a broader framework for understanding routines as an interplay between patterning and performing (Feldman et al., 2022). The concept of patterning means the process of reinforcing old and creating new patterns by taking action (p. 4). The way this process is performed will have implications on the expansions or contractions of future possible paths. Using the analytical concepts of repairing routines, expanding routines and striving for change proposed by Feldman (2000) and the corresponding concepts of flexing, stretching and inventing of routines developed by Deken et al. (2016) we show how change and continuity – and the unexpected and the expected – are part of NAFA and the way uncertainties between the participating organizations are managed.

Some of our preliminary results from our study show the following: In the NAFA network there has been decided to work with core themes in science education in and between the participating university colleges. In the NAFA program six themes are predefined over the whole period. Each year in May a new theme is launched, e.g. evaluation or technological ‘Bildung’. The theme period ends in March, where all PLCs meet on a network meeting and present their different ways of working with the theme. The themes are points of orientation and each PLC should be working with this theme and not others. Uncertainties emerge here in the form of how to finish and continue with elements from one theme in the transition to a new theme. This creates a need for expanding and stretching existing routines. In our analysis we find different forms of artifacts used in the NAFA network to absorb uncertainty. These artifacts influence and represent the different PLC-routines in NAFA. They are circulating between the six university colleges. We find examples of how artifacts – such as reports and documents – are used to repair routines when something breaks down, because these are used as a kind of collective memory to show what has been decided earlier in the distant past. On the other hand, new artifacts are developed in the network in form a written agreements pointing to expectations for actions taking place in the distant future. In such cases artifacts help in the striving for change and the invention of new routines in the network. Artifacts are also paramount for enabling the PLC meetings between the university colleges such as the Microsoft Teams platform that limits uncertainties on where to meet.

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