Moving from school to the workplace: Disciplinary innovation, border crossings, and the reshaping of a written genre

Although studies focusing on new employees' ability to appropriate work-rel ated genres have tended to feature workplaces where the genres in use are w ell-established, the present study presents a more complex scenario involvi ng disciplinary innovation through the introduction of a new genre and the experiences of graduates trained in the use of this genre as they ventured into the workplace. Specifically, the study involves francophone nurses, wh o were trained to write nursing care plans during their studies in francoph one universities in the province of Quebec (Canada) and were then employed to work in an English-medium hospital in Montreal. Data for the study, whic h involved 11 nurses, were gathered using qualitative research procedures, including interviews, observation on the units, and the collection of docum ents, as well as a formal task. in contrast to previous studies, the care p lans produced by the new nurses at the English hospital did not over time i ncreasingly reflect criteria for 'good' care plan writing as identified by a more experienced employee. Drawing on Russell's (1997) synthesis of Enges trom's systems version of activity theory and genre theory, the study suges ts how the divergences which emerged at the rhetorical level were related t o differences in the appropriation of motive. The various positionings with in discourse were further discussed in terms of how macro-level events medi ate locally produced, macro-level events.