Dr Karl K Durrant
Identity & Professional Learning
Why this work matters
Professional development is commonly treated as information transfer — training modules, workshops, competencies. Organisations invest heavily in content delivery, but behaviour and culture remain unchanged. This pattern persists because the field has misunderstood what professional learning actually is.
Professional learning is not the distribution of content. It is the design of participation through which people become who they are. Professionals do not learn in isolation. They learn through the communities they participate in, the practices they inhabit, and the identities they are recognised within. This is not a minor distinction. It is a fundamental shift in how we must think about professional development, organisational culture, and leadership.
My work reframes professional learning around
* Participation, not information
* Identity formation, not behaviour modification
* Communities of practice, not learning events
These are structural concepts that redefine how organisations learn, adapt, and transform. This is the intellectual soil from which sustainable culture change grows.
My core interests centre on
* Situated cognition: How knowledge is enacted in real settings
* Professional identity: How practitioners become who they are
* Legitimacy and recognition: How communities endorse participation
* Community design: How participation architectures shape outcomes
* Bridging divides: Between vocational practice and academic theory, between organisational layers, and between cultures of knowing
I engage both academic traditions and organisational realities — not to simplify complexity, but to translate it usefully.
My background
I hold a doctorate that examined how identity forms in practice. My research drew on rich theoretical traditions and grounded fieldwork, with a deep interest in how people actually learn, become, and belong. Over time, this research evolved into what I now call the Identity-in-Practice Framework™ — a model that reframes the problem of professional development and offers a structural lens for designing identity-forming communities.
Photograph
Place your professional portrait here — calm, neutral, thoughtful.
The purpose of the photo is presence, not performance.
It should reflect seriousness, approachability, and intellectual calm.