ABSTRACT
This chapter converses the key debates, in three sections: the meanings of professionalism, the 'good' professional and enactments of professionalism. It suggests that student professionals might be encouraged both to develop critical understandings of the changing purposes and meanings of 'professionalism', and to find spaces for changing this governing regime. Concerns over the changing pressures and conflicts about professionalism are accelerating in health and social care. In professional education and work, Edwards has shown how pastoral power functions in 'confessional' technologies such as learning contracts, self-evaluation and reflective portfolios. In just one dimension of this variation, put forward by Events, professionalism increasingly is defined very differently by a professional group compared to the employing organisations. The chapter presents some concrete educational approaches. These aimed at helping student professionals to critically analyse complex dilemmas, to explore the lines between reasonable and unreasonable action, and to develop flexible understanding of professionalism as well as strategies for acting in complex dilemmas.
