Hospitals, and surgical operating theatres (OTs) in particular, are environments in which inter‐professional teamwork and learning are essential to secure patient safety and effective practice. However, it has been revealed in many studies that inter‐professional collaborative work in hospital organisations faces many challenges and constraints. In this study we examine surgical operations as participatory practices from the perspective of inter‐professional learning and cooperation. We ask what kinds of shared practices enable learning and collaboration within the surgical operating team. We used an ethnographic approach to data collection including observations and interviews of surgical residents and nursing staff. Observations were conducted in the OTs of one non‐academic hospital in Finland in 2007. The transcripts and episodes were analysed qualitatively. We suggest that inter‐professional teamwork can be implemented by collegial support, transgressing professional roles and sustaining an inclusive atmosphere. There is a need to strengthen and develop the practices of inter‐professional education, not only in formal educational but, especially, in practical clinical settings.

Teachers are frontline actors in actualising educational innovations. In some contexts, teachers’ professional agency is undervalued. This study investigated teachers’ agency and its related workplace affordances in Hong Kong, which features a centralised-decentralisation education governance system, and a hierarchical work culture. The study was based on 21 semi-structured interviews with teachers, and employed a deductive thematic analysis. Agency enactment was categorised into 1) pedagogical agency within classrooms, and 2) relational agency in the professional community. The factors contributing to workplace affordances were grouped as pertaining to 1) the collegial community, 2) school leadership, 3) access to resources, and 4) availability of time, space, and job stability. Agency-supportive leadership and a favourable collegial environment significantly facilitated teachers’ agentic actions. Teachers did not explicitly resist but implemented emotionally meaningless order in a ‘work-to-rule’ manner. The study contributes to professional agency research as applied to a particular political, regional, and socio-cultural context.

In this article we describe various ways in which power is exercised between personnel in a hospital operating theatre. We aim to investigate how the forms of discursive power and workplace learning are intertwined with each other by utilizing an ethnographic approach in the fieldwork. Our data were collected mainly through observations and interviews with surgical residents, physicians and nurses. In the article we describe the delicate ways in which power is exercised and resisted in everyday practices. We argue that there is a close relationship between learning and manifestations of power, together with the various forms of these manifestations and the restrictions that may be placed on them. Additionally, we show how learning takes place in terms of finding, experimenting with and transgressing participatory agency among nurses and residents in the work community.