Promoting professional learning: integrating experiences in university and practice settings

Abstract

Currently, there is a growing interest in considering how best to assist the learning for professional occupations across universities worldwide. This interest is arising from the increased emphasis within higher education institutions on programs that aim to prepare students for specific occupational outcomes usually for the professions, and growing expectations that these graduates will be job-ready and able to engage in and move smoothly into effectively practising their profession (e.g., (Department of Innovation Universities and Skills, 2008), (Universities Australia, 2008). Consequently, today, university graduates are increasingly expected to possess the capacities to make a smooth transition into effective professional practice. All of this requires educational programs that can develop occupationally specific forms of conceptual, procedural and dispositional capacities that comprise the canonical knowledge of the occupation, something of an understanding about the particular manifestation of that knowledge needed to meet the situational requirements of the circumstances in which they will practice, as well as a set of capacities associated with being self-directed in their learning, working both independently and interdependently, and adopting a reflexively critical capacity that will permit them to monitor, evaluate and improve practice across working life.