Learning to Be – At Work

Abstract

When professionals learn what it is to be a professional, they are already involved in a reflexive and reflective process which brings daily challenges to their sense of Self. In asking how doctors think, Montgomery (How doctors think: clinical judgement and the practice of medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006) unearths an Aristotelian phronesis – a practical wisdom – which drives increasingly efficacious judgments, in clinical cases. This chapter will explore the conceptual basis for such workplace experiences, analysing their emergent quality, their perceptual intensity (‘paying attention’ as Luntley, a Wittgensteinian, puts it), their reliance on embodiment, and, throughout, their holism (following Dewey). Thus, the chapter will establish a solid conceptual basis for ontological and epistemological relationality, such that our professional identities can be both found in, and developed by, meaningful workplace learning. We learn to be, by doing