Abstract
The introduction explores the twenty-first-century professional world. This is a world in which individual professionals and the professions collectively are engaged in iterative becoming as they respond to the challenges of globalization, new managerialism, multiculturalism and deprofessionalisation. The author illustrates responses to these challengers by using examples from engineering, social work, nursing, teaching and medicine. What is evident is that once taken-for-granted, notions of the superiority of the Anglo-American professional ideal grounded in an exclusive knowledge-base or the service ideal and altruism are no longer tenable in an age of a better educated client base and increased public accountability. Nor are claims to professional status any longer restricted to the traditional professions such as doctors, lawyers and newer professionals such as teachers and nurses. It seems that neither the professions nor professional workplaces in the twenty-first century are what they once were.
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Scanlon, L. (2011). Introduction. In: Scanlon, L. (eds) “Becoming” a Professional. Lifelong Learning Book Series, vol 16. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9_0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1378-9_0
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