Learning Across the Professions

With the increased expectations placed on the contribution of the professions side by side with the scrutiny and accountability of individual professional practitioners, the question of the education of professionals has become a policy imperative and indeed an area of regulation in many professions both in the public and private sector. In addition cross professional working has become a key focus in education, health and welfare leading to the suggestion in the recent Review of Teacher Education in Scotland (Donaldson, 2011) that student teachers should be educated for part of their programme of study alongside cognate professions. There is considerable debate about the form that professional learning should take whether this is in initial professional education or the continuing professional development of experienced practitioners. Consequently learning across the professions is a growing area of research. From preliminary discussions, a range of issues have been identified:

• pedagogy and practice in initial professional education exploring pedagogies, service learning and the use of practicum
• the nature of professionalism and the evolution of paraprofessionalism and interprofessionalism
• the nature of professional learning and the concepts of professional culture, work and identity
• expertise and accomplishment; defining expertise and career long development
• professional learning and organizational transformation
• what can public sector professionals learn from the private sector and vice-versa?
• the nature of life-long learning in both public and private sectors.

Contact details

Theme Leaders

Prof Christine Forde, School of Education

Mr Kevin Lowden, School of Education

Other contacts

Prof Tony Townsend, School of Education

Dr Margery McMahon, School of Education