Public-sector organisations, such as those in education and health care, are increasingly expected to develop work practices and transform their work organisations. As a consequence, professionals need to engage in continuous workplace learning, cross the traditional professional boundaries and transform their professional identities and roles within the changing work practices (Billett, 2011; Helleve, 2010; Hökkä, 2012). To cope with these changes, individuals and work communities need to practise professional agency to remake organisational practices and simultaneously shape employees’ professional identities (Eteläpelto, Vähäsantanen, Hökkä, & Paloniemi, 2013; Vähäsantanen & Eteläpelto, 2011). Therefore, we need new, effective methods to enhance professional agency at the individual and collective levels. So far, most tools have focused on either the individual or organisational level through addressing, for example, the structures and processes of organisations, leadership or employees’ individual learning at work. However, there are few programmes that simultaneously support all of these critical aspects, and such programmes are necessary in order for real changes to occur. Eager to rise to this challenge, we are using our research project to develop a multilevel intervention programme to strengthen professional agency and workplace learning through interventions at the individual, work community and organisational levels. We understand professional agency in terms of making a difference in current work practices and/or professional identities.

Overall, the multilevel intervention programme consists of four different but complementary elements, in that they are mutually constructive. The programme aims to support both individual and social transformations, and it is first being implemented and developed in educational and health care organisations. The four elements of the programme comprise (i) an identity coaching programme, (ii) a dialogical work conference, (iii) a leaders’ coaching programme and (iv) intermediate spaces for creating couplings between these.

The identity coaching programme aims to support subjects’ identity reshaping and their adaptation to new work roles at the individual level. Within small group-based work, various activity-based and creative methods, such as drama methods and discussions, were utilised (see Hänninen & Eteläpelto, 2008; Kalliola & Mahlakaarto, 2011). At the organizational level, we applied the dialogical work conference developed by Gustavsen (Gustavsen & Engelstad, 1986). In work conferences, the target of planning or development is discussed consecutively in various small groups, and the outcome of each small group discussion is brought into the joint discussion. This intervention aims to create a platform for learning and change at the community and organisational levels (Kalliola & Mahlakaarto, 2011). The leaders’ coaching programme aims to construct agency-promoting leadership through (i) supporting the development and cultivation of leaders’ identities and well-being, (ii) offering tools for supporting personnel’s learning and identity work, and (iii) increasing the collaboration between different actors at different levels in the organisation. The small group-based implementation of the programme includes, for example, discussion and drama methods. Between the group workshops, the participants also construct individual portfolios and carry out development projects in their work organisations. Intermediate spaces are necessary for creating couplings between the different elements of the multilevel programme.

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