ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes the Working as Learning Framework (WALF), outlined in Chapter 2, in examining attempts by a group of health visitors in an English city (Mid City) to enhance their professional practice and, in particular, to forge an expansive learning environment. Our study followed the ups and downs of their project over a two-year period. The chapter analyses the sources of their commitment to innovation, the obstacles they encountered and the forces that ultimately thwarted their objectives. The fate of their project was a function of their distinctive location within the productive system of community healthcare within Mid City. Aspects of the horizontal axis facilitated their efforts; in particular, their professional training, the character of the care they offered to clients, and their multiple relationships with other health and social care occupations. However, pressures in the vertical axis contributed to the breakdown of trust between the health visitors and their managers. As a result, their attempts to generate an expansive learning environment were gradually undermined by a lack of appropriate institutional and organizational supports.
