The Body In Professional Practice Learning And Education

The body matters, in practice. How then might we think about the body in our work in and on professional practice, learning and education? What value is there in realising and articulating the notion of the professional practitioner as crucially embodied? Beyond that, what of conceiving of the professional practice field itself as a living corporate body? How is the body implicated in understanding and researching professional practice, learning and education? Body/Practice is an extensive volume dedicated to exploring these and related questions, philosophically and empirically. It constitutes a rare but much needed reframing of scholarship relating to professional practice and its relation with professional learning and professional education more generally. It takes bodies seriously, developing theoretical frameworks, offering detailed analyses from empirical studies, and opening up questions of representation. The book is organized into four parts: I. ‘Introducing the Body in Professional Practice, Learning and Education’; II. ‘Thinking with the Body in Professional Practice’; III. ‘The Body in Question in Health Professional Education and Practice’; IV. ‘Concluding Reflections’. It brings together researchers from a range of disciplinary and professional practice fields, including particular reference to Health and Education. Across fifteen chapters, the authors explore a broad range of issues and challenges with regard to corporeality, practice theory and philosophy, and professional education, providing an innovative, coherent and richly informed account of what it means to bring the body back in, with regard to professional education and beyond.

This book explores important questions about the relationship between professional practice and learning, and implications of this for how we understand professional expertise. Focusing on work accomplished through partnerships between practitioners and parents with young children, the book explores how connectedness in action is a fluid, evolving accomplishment, with four essential dimensions: times, spaces, bodies, and things. Within a broader sociomaterial perspective, the analysis draws on practice theory and philosophy, bringing different schools of thought into productive contact, including the work of Schatzki, Gherardi, and recent developments in cultural historical activity theory. The book takes a bold view, suggesting practices and learning are entwined but distinctive phenomena. A clear and novel framework is developed, based on this idea. The argument goes further by demonstrating how new, coproductive relationships between professionals and clients can intensify the pedagogic nature of professional work, and showing how professionals can support others’ learning when the knowledge they are working with, and sense of what is to be learned, are uncertain, incomplete, and fragile.

Understanding and researching professional practice is crucial both to enhancing the quality of professional learning and to improving professional education more generally. Yet professional practice remains something that is little known, theoretically and philosophically, despite a longstanding interest in what might be called the meta-field of professional practice, learning and education. The contributors to this book, drawn from fields such as education, allied health, psychology and business, explore different aspects of practice in the professions, professionalism, and research. This includes engaging with the burgeoning literature on practice theory and philosophy, including the increasingly influential neo-Aristotelian tradition, and taking account of growing interest in practice thinking across contemporary scholarship. It considers issues such as the primacy of practice, the nature of professional judgement, the role of ‘experience’, ethics, context, and the practitioner standpoint. As such, it raises important and timely questions about practice ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies, and also praxis and politics. This is especially needed in a context otherwise increasingly organised by neoliberalism, economic rationality, anxious managerialism, and what some see as a general drive towards de-professionalisation and new nuances and intensities of regulation.

This book draws attention to the ways in which an awareness of, and sensitivity to, embodiment can enlighten educational practices. It explores discourses from a range of thinkers, including Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, Bakhtin, Haraway and Ahmed to name a few. The book argues that attention to embodiment can help us to reimagine the goals of education in ways that fit more coherently with human concerns and that offer the chance to provide education that is more holistic and grounded in our corporeality. Theories of embodiment can be used to modify education at the level of curriculum and at the level of pedagogy. This can help us design educational interventions that fit more naturally with how humans are inclined to learn and thus make educational experiences more meaningful. Attention to embodiment allows us to appreciate the extent to which the body appropriates a professional practice and the extent to which a professional practice appropriates the body of the learner. It shows how greater sensitivity to the body can enliven and enlighten our educational practices, especially in professional education.

What does it mean to be a professional in education and in other sectors where education is a focus? How can professional development techniques be implemented in a variety of settings to the best effect? Over the last decade, many shifts in individual professional identity and sector requirements in education have been evident. This book engages with current debates and presents a new model - critical professional development - involving several new concepts which are mapped clearly to practice and covering the necessary techniques and approaches. Key organizational challenges and possibilities in implementation are highlighted. In outlining the new model, the book discusses the theories and perspectives of critical professional development, from educational policy to practice. Case studies from a range of education sectors convey unique and richly textured examples of successful professional practice, providing strong links between teaching and learning and professional development, with approaches that can be widely adopted and applied in different settings. *** The text as a whole is starkly realistic, scholarly, and pragmatic rather than idealistic. As the authors concede, the definition of critical professionalism does not contain any original components; however, it is original in its holistic and practical conceptualization of professionalism in higher education...The theory proposed in this volume has wide applicability, and is worthwhile in the fields of theology and religion." - Reflective Teaching, Wabash Center, June 2015 [Subject: Educational Studies, Professional Development]

Put into action, instructional frameworks help teachers locate their current level of fluency, focus on the key dimensions of professional judgment, and take their practice to the next level. Discover how to accelerate teacher growth by taking the “insider’s view” of practice, articulating key dimensions of professional judgment to create clear growth pathways for teachers at every level of fluency. Teacher leaders, administrators, and instructional coaches will gain a replicable process for: Identifying the most promising areas of focus Drafting and piloting an initial framework Getting input and feedback from teachers Articulating a vision for exemplary practice Building momentum and overcoming resistance to change Contents: Introduction Part 1: What Are Instructional Frameworks? Chapter 1: Defining and Developing Instructional Frameworks Chapter 2: Making Shared Expectations More Specific Chapter 3: Instructional Frameworks in Action—Case Studies Part 2: How to Develop Instructional Frameworks Chapter 4: Choose a Focus Chapter 5: Bounding Your Improvement Focus Chapter 6: Identifying Key Components Chapter 7: Articulating Levels of Fluency Chapter 8: Getting Started and Getting Input Part 3: Instructional Frameworks in Action Chapter 9: Using Instructional Frameworks for Teacher Growth Chapter 10: Broader Applications for Instructional Frameworks Chapter 11: Supporting Organization-Level Initiatives With Instructional Frameworks Conclusion: Coming Full Circle Appendix A-Q References and Resources Index

This book was written to help people understand and transform education and professional practice. It presents and extends the theory of practice architectures, and offers a contemporary account of what practices are composed of and how practices shape and are shaped by the arrangements with which they are enmeshed in sites of practice. Through its empirically-based case chapters, the book demonstrates how the theory of practice architectures can be used as a theoretical, analytical, and transformational resource to generate insights that have important implications for practice, theory, policy, and research in education and professional practice. These insights relate to how practices are shaped by arrangements (and other practices) present in specific sites of practice, including early childhood education settings, schools, adult education, and workplaces. They also relate to how practices create distinctive intersubjective spaces, so that people encounter one another in particular ways (a) in particular semantic spaces, (b) that are realised in particular locations and durations in physical space-time, and (c) in particular social spaces. By applying such insights, readers can work towards changing practices by transforming the practice architectures that make them possible.

Developing an understanding of professional practice is essential for anyone training to teach in the further education and skills sector. This go-to guide will give you a clear understanding of the major topics covered in the mandatory Wider Professional Practice and Development unit of the Level 5 Diploma in Education and Training, and more broadly explores the value of professionalism to all aspects of further education. Key coverage includes: · Understanding learners and attitudes to learning · How to do action research · Professional observation and development · Making sense of education policy · Teacher expectations · Challenges to equality and diversity · The inclusive curriculum These topics are discussed within a wider political and socio-economic context, and are supported by insightful case studies and activities. This is essential for anyone studying the Diploma in Education and Training, and recommended reading for related courses in the further education and skills sector.