Conceptions of knowledge, professionalism and contemporary problems in some professional academic subcultures

Abstract

ABSTRACT The paper reports some results of a longitudinal interview investigation on the general and specific effects of higher education on the way some central phenomena are conceptualised by students of medicine, business administration and engineering. There is evidence that different types of professional education nourish different conceptions about what constitute important problems in the different areas. There is a tendency for business administrators to ‘decontextualise˚s their conceptions of what make up important problems in the economic life, i.e. to abandon the more politically oriented issues about the global and/or national distribution of material welfare in favour of a more efficiency-oriented perspective. The development goes in the opposite direction among students of engineering who tend to emphasise the social and environment consequences of technological development. The three groups also have qualitatively different conceptions about the relationship between their formal education and the requirements encountered in working life. The physicians report on a lack of priorities in their education, i.e. there is no hierarchical structure in the knowledge provided in medical education, which demands that they make this selection retroactively against the background of experience of clinical work. The engineers have a feeling of being underutilised in the sense that only a minor proportion of their competence and skill is required in working life. The business administrators appear to experience a mismatch between the content of their education and the tasks they meet on their jobs. There is also a difference between those in each of the subject groups regarding their conceptions about the nature of learning and knowledge. In general there is as well a tendency to apply the specific perspective that emerges within a certain profession when describing the development and problems in other areas.