Understanding Professionalization as a Representational Process

The Anglo-Saxon meaning of professionalization is “the process of birth and structuring of organized, autonomous groups protecting their common interests, especially by controlling access to their profession and its practice” (Barbier, 2005, p. 126). In France, it also refers to the training of individuals for insertion in a given professional fi eld. This approach underlines the concepts of change, evolution, structuring of specifi c knowledge (Altet, 1978), as well as the dimension of refl exivity in practice (Barbier, 1998).