Practice, learning and change: towards a re-theorisation of professional education

Abstract

This article addresses the question of the implications for professional education of economic, social and political changes that are transforming the boundaries, accountabilities and governance of professional practice. We argue that approaches to professional education that are uni-disciplinary and focused on the individual, cannot prepare students for practising a profession in circumstances requiring transformative change. We pose a conceptual alternative, drawing on practice theory, which, we argue, engages more effectively with the nature of practice in changing circumstances. Our particular concern is to find better ways to understand how learning is situated and embodied in practices and complexly implicated in change and innovation. In developing these new understandings, we draw on material from a case study of practice change in the area of health, to theorise learning as relational and embedded in the practices of an organisation in an intense state of change and becoming.