Professional Learning in Changing Contexts

Professionals' judgments and choices shape nearly every part of contemporary life, and society increasingly asks them to answer for what they know and how they act. The terms of that accountability have shifted considerably, driven by market forces, networked forms of organisation, a loss of professional autonomy and public confidence, and management approaches borrowed from the public sector. Researchers have responded by studying the material conditions and everyday processes through which professionals learn, and by asking how that learning affects the wider public.

The chapters examine the particular strains placed on professional learning across several fields, from public school teaching to medicine and the creative industries. Those strains come from revised regulations, new ways of organising work, shifting expectations, and changing views about who holds authority over professional knowledge. The contributors argue that these relations should be understood as sociomaterial networks, in which the decisive moments of professional action and judgment take shape. On this view, learning is not simply something an individual possesses. It involves competing understandings of standards and quality, improvised workarounds, questions of responsibility and agency, and the practices through which knowledge is produced and used.

The volume shows how sociomaterial perspectives can bring into view features of professional learning that are easy to overlook in its often untidy realities. It also proposes new research questions and methods, and suggests fresh approaches to supporting and developing professional education. The book was first published as a special issue of the Journal of Education and Work.