Overview
- Posits ‘becoming’ as a theory of emergent, iterative professional identity formation
- Defines ‘becoming’ as a metaphor for learning
- Advocates an interdisciplinary, international approach to ‘becoming’
- Positions ‘becoming’ within an extensive, multidisciplinary review of the literature
- Explores ‘becoming’ in today’s globalised world where professional status is consistently challenged
- Examines the role of popular culture in forming professional identity as well as societal expectations of professionals
Part of the book series: Lifelong Learning Book Series (LLLB, volume 16)
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Table of contents (13 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
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)
Editors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: "Becoming" a Professional
Book Subtitle: an Interdisciplinary Analysis of Professional Learning
Editors: Lesley Scanlon
Series Title: Lifelong Learning Book Series
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-1377-2Published: 29 June 2011
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-007-3667-2Published: 03 August 2013
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-1378-9Published: 27 June 2011
Series ISSN: 1871-322X
Series E-ISSN: 2730-5325
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: X, 262
Topics: Lifelong Learning/Adult Education, Higher Education, Professional & Vocational Education