ABSTRACT
Across the professions, approaches to learning are often dominated by taken-for-granted assumptions about the processes of becoming and being a professional. The four editors of this book came together in order to examine and challenge some of these assumptions and some of the underpinning notions current in professional education. We have backgrounds in specific areas of professional learning (teacher education, medical and health-care education and social work education) and we are all concerned more generally with work and learning. Because our work crosses disciplinary and professional boundaries, we kept encountering contradictory understandings and practices within and across different arenas. We were interested in exploring these contradictions and tensions with others; and we therefore organised a series of one-day conferences for professionals from a wide range of backgrounds to engage critically with both theoretical and empirical research informing practice for professional learning. This book developed from the first conference, ‘Professional lifelong learning: Beyond reflective practice’, and presents the work of some of those concerned practitioners, educators, academics and researchers who are engaging in a variety of ways with a critical approach to reflective practice. As with approaches to learning in general, the authors within this book have different, sometimes contradictory, views and emphases but all offer critical perspectives and fresh insights on contemporary thinking in relation to reflective practice.
