ABSTRACT

Recent literature presumes a generic field of professional education within which subjects share similarities and there are grounds for learning from each other. Earlier literature had identified disciplines as having distinct cultures related to the interplay of epistemology and the biographies and action of academics. Bines adapted a typology of professional education, related to the history of professions as a progression from an apprenticeship model through a technocratic model to the current position where more sophisticated notions of the relationship between theory and practice are being developed. Concerns about the knowledge base of social work identified in the data may have parallels in other forms of professional education. General issues about the nature of knowledge; its presentation in specialist or generic forms; the relative weight given to theory, skills and values; and the place of practice learning are germane to all forms of professional education.