This document analyzes a summer school program through surveys, interviews, and observations to understand how it helps develop professional expertise in a non-formal educational setting. It finds that the summer school fosters coherence in epistemic frames - the way of thinking in a profession - through six main conditions: 1) common values among participants like humanism, curiosity and reciprocity; 2) nonlinear and interactive curriculum design; 3) principles of co-creation where all contribute; 4) extensive knowledge connecting occupations to wider ideas; 5) democratic structures with open communication; and 6) interaction with the natural environment and local community.

1. Theoretical Framework
Developing professional expertise in non-formal education
Introduction Methods Case
Results
References
Summer School is organized by a network of educators,
researchers, journalists, entrepreneurs, activists,
and other professionals from diverse fields of practice.
It is fundamentally a non-governmental, non-commercial
and non-university based project.
— 4 weeks;
— 28 studios (courses ranging from robototronics,
theoretical physics to photojournalism and pedagogy);
— 1400 educational events;
— 1200 participants (of different occupations, status
and geography);
— fully self-reliant in terms of the provision of amenities.
How do we get enrolled into the expert cultures of
professions? How do we learn to think like a doctor or a
lawyer? A number of recent studies have looked at the
workplaces and universities as primary sites of
socialization into the worlds of occupations. In our project
we went off the beaten track and explored at how the
task of engagement into the epistemic cultures of
professions is approached in non-formal educational
setting. The study looks at the case of a non-university-
based summer school.
Instruments:
— a survey (202 informants) addressing two dimensions of inquiry: (1) participants’ experience of educational
practices at Summer School and (2) their subjective immediate outcomes;
— 20 in-depth interviews with research coordinators;
— 30 observations of educational practices.
A two-stage data analysis was guided by the following research questions:
1. What characterizes an epistemic culture in the non-formal educational setting of a summer school?
2. What conditions allow the coherence of an epistemic frame to develop and how?
Every profession has its own distinct way of thinking,
a certain grammar or, in other words, an epistemic
frame composed of interrelated sets of skills, knowledge
bits, experiences, values, epistemic rules and identity
features unique to a particular vocational field or
community of practice (Knorr Cetina, 1999; Shaffer,
2004).
Coherence is an idea of connectedness between
the epistemic frame elements and it is central
to the development of professional expertise as it is not
the sum of the elements that frames proficiency but the
quality of connections that experts are able to draw in
order to form professional judgments.
The core question, therefore, is how such coherence
emerges.
Common set of values
Despite the social diversity of participants, data shows
considerable homogeneity of values, most of them
falling into the categories of subjectivity (in a sense
of consciousness and agency), humanism (as a desire
to make the world a better place), curiosity
and reciprocity (in a sense of non-commodification).
These four major thrusts of motivation connect
education to its purposes making learning experience
more relevant, meaningful and coherent.
Nonlinearity and interactivity of curriculum design
Formal education is traditionally confined to the rigid
frames of curricula and operates on the simple-to-
complex basis. This largely contributes to the frag-
mentation of an epistemic frame and, therefore,
inability to apply abstract ideas to practice and simply
boredom. In this regard our data highlights
the importance of so-called agile principle of program
design (and not just delivery). This is basically a spiral
or ping pong approach where the content is neither
top-down nor bottom-up but rather a result of mediation
between individual ambitions and the needs of co-
participants. This condition allows for coherence
to emerge through the constant negotiation and
relevance checks of the study content.
Education as co-creation
Data showed an important attribute of non-formal
education – the principles of co-creation and
collegiality. It is essentially an idea of republicanism
(from res publica (lat.) – co-creation of the social space
through engagement of all its members). This condition
facilitates smoother inclusion in the expert community,
a stronger sense of professional belonging and better
support structures for novices. For instance, this is
especially important for teacher communities of
practice where collegiality and team work are often
limited to a superficial formal minimum.
Development of extended professional worldview
It is not uncommon that universities tend to become
increasingly instrumental in response to the immediate
needs of the market. It pushes higher education to limit
liberal arts scope as irrelevant to competence-driven
curricula. In this context, it is of interest that our data,
contrariwise, indicates a strong advantage of extensive
cross- and beyond the curricular programs. This
condition drives the incorporation of occupational
epistemic cultures into the wider knowledge frames –
connecting professional worldviews to the bigger ideas
about the world around and extending contexts.
Democratic structures
Plenty of informal interaction brings about flatter
and quicker communication. Open doors (practically
non-existent in the context of a field camp) induce
lecturers to be ready to host colleagues of all ages and
fields in class and stay prepared to argue better.
Moreover, conventional to education roles are in flux
and you switch from giving seminars one day to being
a student or washing kitchen pots on another without
losses to your authority. (As for authorities,
the management of Summer School operates
on network and deliberation principles). This condition
facilitates a constant exchange and deeper diffusion
of ideas across the fields and communities of practice.
Integration into immediate environment
An important element of the study programs
at Summer School is their close interaction with both
natural environment and local community.
The seminars on hydro mechanics are held at the river
banks and sociology is studied through exploring
the life in the nearby villages. This condition is not
about being practice-based as such, but about staying
in touch with the surroundings and co-existing
organically.
The first stage of analysis revealed three major recurrent motifs of an insight, momentum and a sense of direction
as subjective educational outcomes. This vectored us towards the idea of coherence – the quality of forming an
integral perspective, a consistent and synergetic whole that creates necessary settings for the genesis of the
forenamed outcomes. We found six such “glues” – essential conditions that allow coherence of an epistemic frame
to emerge.
Cetina, K. K. (2009). Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make
Knowledge.
Shaffer, D. W. (2004). Epistemic Frames and Islands of Expertise: Learning
from Infusion Experiences.
Conditions for the emergence of coherence in epistemic frames. Galina Shavard, Andrey Grechko