Beschreibung:
Purpose – Nursing has for a long time used a variety of technological tools to improve and support patient care. Tool use changes knowledge processes, offering opportunities to explore processes of specialization in this field. The purpose of this paper is to report from a collaborative process to achieve shared meaning potential while adapting a generic learning tool to meet learning needs of specialized nursing. A complex chain of actions, interactions and negotiations during the adaptation process is disentangled. The paper draws from the theoretical construct known as trajectories of participation. Design/methodology/approach – The method employed in data analysis is interaction analysis, allowing detailed studies of the actions represented in the participants' intersecting trajectories. Findings – The analysis shows how project members seek to combine different modes of knowledge when they sort out and establish shared meaning potential. Typically the negotiations start with a concrete problem arising from the current practice's use of tools. The participants clarify and specify a shared object of activity by mobilizing three different modes of knowledge (practical, diagnostic and technical). During this process, the participants' trajectories converge toward consensus. This consensus is a process of constructing and reconstructing tools and practices and an interdependency of tools and practices that is “materialized” in the adapted learning tool. Originality/value – This analysis shows the importance of taking account of processes in the concrete settings when developing new tools for change in specialist nursing. Different trajectories of participation that intersected in the planning activities give insight into how knowledge is mobilized when tools and practices co-evolve on an interactional level.