ABSTRACT

This chapter demonstrates that education is a diverse phenomenon and it is necessary to relate some of the branches of education discussed to professional education. Education is associated with one particular activity, that of learning and, while it may occur in numerous contexts, it is most certainly an activity. Education is about a learning process, so that at the outset the word ‘process’ needs discussion. Education should always be a planned process directed towards learning and understanding, but the individual branches of education must specify their own aims. Education has been claimed to be normative by many philosophers and they claim that this is a better perspective than the more value-free one that seeks merely to define the process. The chapter discusses some of the central terms in professional education and it has sought to locate them within the wider framework of education.