The significance of work allocation in the professional apprenticeship of solicitors

It is a peculiarity of the solicitors’ profession that it has historically relied on methods of pre-qualification ‘training’ by way of apprenticeship and that an entirely respectable non-graduate route into the profession remains. In a political context, however, where the profession is called upon positively to demonstrate its standards of performance, the professional regulator seeks to attach a competence framework to the existing model; shifting the focus from how the trainee learns to what the trainee learns. This paper will explore the period of traineeship from the perspective of the trainees themselves, drawing on two small qualitative studies, focussing on the fundamental context factor of the allocation and structuring of their work. In the first study the context for this evaluation is the set of outcomes being tested by the professional regulator and in the second, the perceptions of qualified individuals looking back at their apprenticeship, The paper concludes that there remains work for the profession to do not only in fostering supportive and expansive apprenticeships, but in attending, however, supportive the surrounding environment, to the work being carried out by trainees and its relationship with the work carried out by newly qualified solicitors

Social epistemic cognition in online interactions

Social media and online social networks dramatically change the way in which knowledge is acquired and disseminated. How do we re-understand about human knowledge and knowing? This work aims at extending the current understanding of human epistemic cognition in online social environments, where epistemic cognition refers to cognitions and cognitive processes related to epistemic matters such as knowledge and beliefs justification. We approach our inquiry with mixed methods: (1) quantitative study to test whether epistemic cognition might differ in individual and social contexts, and whether online interactions might mediate the later; and (2) social cognitive task analysis with interviews to manifest the intricate interplay of dynamics between social epistemic cognition and online interactions. We introduce the new construct of social epistemic cognition and contribute to the field of HCI with an evolved theory which states that epistemic cognition can be promoted in online social environments as mediated by online interactions