Professional Practice in Health, Education and the Creative Arts [Paperback]

Society is rapidly changing its expectations of professionals in all arenas. In this book we focus on changing patterns of professional practice in health, education and the creative arts. In each of these areas professional practice care is undergoing major reform in a complex and rapidly changing environment.

This multi-authored text explores professional practice in four key dimensions: doing, knowing, being and becoming. These concepts have been chosen to represent professional practice as much more than applying learned knowledge in practice situations. The authors present professional practice as a lived and dynamic experience as well as a process, a service for (and with) others, and a way of being and behaving. The text explores the essential unity of knowledge and practice, through discourse, narrative, imagery and critical debate.

This is a book for all those seeking to learn and to improve practice.

List of Contributors.

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Section 1: Introduction: Framing professional practice; Knowing and doing in context; Doing, knowing, being and becoming: The nature of professional practice; Our collaborative inquiry.

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Section 2: Dimensions of professional practice: Practising without certainty: Providing health care in an uncertain world; The meaning(s) of uncertainty in treatment decision making; Finding the fifth player: Artistry in professional practice; Embodying knowledges: Challenging the theory/practice divide; Exploring relationships in health care practice; Technology and the depersonalisation of knowledge and practice; The research-sensitive practitioner; The practice-sensitive researcher.

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Section 3: Journeying on professional practice: Using autobiographical narrative and reflection to link personal and professional#²