Topic
Professional development
About: Professional development is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 81108 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1316681 citations.
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220 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a business school has identified a set of generic skills to be taught to all undergraduate students and begun implementing a project to teach and assess the skills in the context of each discipline.
Abstract: Feedback from employers of graduates indicates a need to include a focus on generic skills to complement disciplinary expertise. Educational research shows that such skills are most effectively taught in the disciplinary context. Therefore, in order to better meet the requirements of employers for graduates who are more 'fit for purpose', universities may need to change the curriculum and how it is taught. Such changes involve significant investment in staff development and monitoring of the change process. Measures of effectiveness of changes must be developed and used to improve graduate quality. This paper describes how a business school has identified a set of generic skills to be taught to all undergraduate students and begun implementing a project to teach and assess the skills in the context of each discipline. The measures of effectiveness that were developed are outlined and lessons learned to date in efforts to improve educational quality are discussed.
220 citations
TL;DR: In the medical profession, it is the responsible behavior of the professional that will protect the role of the healer as discussed by the authors and encourage the moral and intellectual growth of physicians by setting standards based on higher aspirations than can or should be enforced.
Abstract: As society, including the medical profession, moves into a new century, the rate of change in the relationship between professions and society is unprecedented. All societies need healers, and in the English-speaking world the services of the physician-healer have been organized around the concept of the professional. The great increase in both state control and corporate involvement has seriously intruded into the traditional autonomy enjoyed by both the medical profession and individual physicians, and further changes can be expected. More physicians are becoming either employees or managers in the state or corporate sector, while others are being forced to compete in a marketplace that rewards entrepreneurial behavior. It is the responsible behavior of the professional that will protect the role of the healer. Medicine has been rightly criticized for placing undue emphasis on both income and power and for protecting incompetent or unethical colleagues; and it has failed to accept responsibility for injustices or inequities in health care systems and has moved slowly to address new diseases or issues. Nonetheless, all evidence indicates that society still values the healer-professional and does not wish to abandon professionalism as a concept--it appears to prefer an independent and knowledgeable professional to deal with its problem rather than the state or a corporation. For this reason, medicine's professional associations and academic institutions must ensure that all physicians understand professionalism and accept its obligations. In doing so, the objective should be to encourage the moral and intellectual growth of physicians by setting standards based on higher aspirations than can or should be enforced. In facing the complex world of our future, such action will both serve society and maintain the integrity of the profession.
220 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a sociocultural construction of professional identities in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is presented, and a specific focus is placed upon the notion of the "critically reflective emotional professional" and how that might be taken up or resisted at different levels of the ECEC policy-policy landscape.
Abstract: This paper is concerned to present professionalism in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) as a sociocultural construction. In particular the article is concerned with how professional identities are inflected by autobiography and the spaces and opportunities that exist for the construction of alternative professional identities. Drawing on a recent empirical study with nursery workers in London a critical appraisal of hegemonic discourses is presented and a consideration of ‘professionalism from within’ is offered. A specific focus is placed upon the notion of the ‘critically reflective emotional professional’ and how that might be taken up or resisted at different levels of the ECEC policy–practitioner landscape.
219 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a teacher education environment offers support to trainee teachers for developing a professional identity by exploring the practice of teaching for its underlying public meanings and as these meaning relate to their own structures of personal meanings.
Abstract: Contemporary teacher education demonstrates the continued use of competency‐based, personality‐based and inquiry‐based approaches. These approaches are commonly regarded as representing alternative paradigms for designing curriculum and pedagogy. From a Vygotskian perspective, characterized by the use of bridging concepts relating individual functioning and personal development to sociocultural process and setting, these approaches may serve to provide elements for a more comprehensive paradigm of professional development. Drawing on Vygotskian theory, a teacher‐education environment offers support to trainee teachers for developing a professional identity. A central element is that trainees explore the practice of teaching for its underlying public meanings and as these meaning relate to their own structures of personal meanings. Such an exploration involves the shaping and testing of personally‐meaningful action in professional practice. Commitment to meanings found to be valid and practicable constitut...
219 citations