Pedagogic Professionalism Defi(1)es the Knowledge Economy? Some Preliminary Notes

Abstract

The ability to generate and process information, and hence the availability of knowledge has increasingly shifted to the foreground of the new knowledge societies. At the same time, traditional systems of knowledge production (science) and knowledge reception (professions) are subjected to a steady loss of legitimacy. Within this context, pedagogic professions, which in their struggle for social recognition have never been able to achieve the status of a classical profession such as medicine, are confronted with their own ideas of themselves. The article discusses this context against the backdrop of reconstructing a central, knowledge-based, economic rationality and suggests working out a model of attentive-reflexive professionalism as an alternative to knowledge management processes for reforming the present evidence-based professions.