"Becoming" a Professional

This book is founded on the idea that ‘becoming’ is the most useful defining concept for a new ‘professional’ class whose members understand that development in their working lives is an open-ended, lifelong process of refinement and learning.In a world where being a ‘professional’ is an increasingly indistinct notion and where better education and technology are challenging ‘professional’ norms, it is imperative that we no longer think in terms of an exclusive, ‘Anglo-American’, knowledge-rich class of workers. Exploring the implications of this insight for professions including nursing, teaching, social work, engineering and the clergy, this volume aims to encourage informed debate on what it means to be a ‘professional’ in this globalised 21st century.The book argues that ‘becoming’ a professional is a lifelong process in which individual professional identities are constructed through formal education, workplace interactions and popular culture. The book advocates the ‘ongoingness’ of developing a professional self throughout one’s professional life. What emerges is a concept of becoming a professional different from the isolated, rugged, individualistic approach to traditional professional practice as represented in popular culture. It is a book for the reflective professional.

From the reviews:“This book has effectively brought together a multidisciplinary menu of scholarly work based on a different theoretical perspective, a range of professions and in different contexts of work and study. … this book provides one of the latest additions to an already increasingly well-stocked shelf of publications dealing with professionalism and lifelong learning, particularly from northern perspectives. This book would work well in seminary and graduate school courses on professional development that address issues of professionalism and lifelong learning.” (Norzaini Azman, Higher Education, Vol. 64, 2012)