Professional Practice in Education: Research and Issues

Abstract

AS pointed out in my Introduction to this Special Issue, there have been various reasons for the recent increasing interest in researching and reforming professional practice. A major reason is our limited understanding of the nature of professional practice itself. Professional practice is a typical interdisciplinary topic which can be viewed, and has been viewed, from the perspective of a variety of disciplines and fields, such as sociology, cognitive psychology, philosophy, management theory, economics, and learning theory. As well, there are various literatures which are arguably relevant to an understanding of professional practice, even though their main foci are somewhat different. These include research on the nature of expertise, on workplace learning, on situated learning, etc. Hence research on professional practice represents a convergence of rather diverse literatures. This paper will provide a brief critical outline of the main findings of some of these relevant literatures and a discussion of the implications of these overall findings for professional practice.