Education for the Professions in Times of Change

Book excerpt: The eminent Harvard educationalist Howard Garner writes a preface to the Place Model within his Good Project Blog which provides a preface to this timely book. Professional is a slippery term, open to willful abuse, misuse and misunderstanding – as evidenced by the ways in which this chameleon term can be used as both a compliment and an insult. In this book academics from a range of professional fields deconstruct ‘professional’ and reimagine professionals in an age of rapid change where professionals are both increasingly in demand and frequently under threat. Several deploy the lens of Clarke’s Place Model to examine professions including teaching, midwifery, social work, journalism, and optometry. Some papers are empirical and some are based around using the Place Model as a thought experiment. All turn a critical eye on professionals and all find them to be, like all humans, neither devils nor divines (Maya Angelou), but at their best a combination of two indispensable characteristics, trustworthiness and expertise.