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The politics of professionalism: an analysis of competing conceptions of continuing professional education
Ronald M. Cervero, The University of Georgia
Abstract
Contemporary British and North American societies are characterised by a diversity of viewpoints regarding professional practice and the proper place of professions in society. This paper describes and analyses the functionalist, conflict, and critical viewpoints and their implications for the goals of continuing professional education.
The social context of continuing professional education
A number of viewpoints exist on the proper role of the professions in society. Some people remain nearly entirely positive in the evaluation of the professions and see no need to change this relationship in any fundamental way. Others are nearly totally negative and imply, if not state directly, that we would all be better off if the professions would disappear. Many, perhaps most, people find themselves torn between these two perspectives, realising that the professions will probably always exist but seeing a need for a fundamental redirection of their role in society. As members of society, continuing educators also represent these diverse viewpoints about the professions and society. These viewpoints provide a context for thinking about the goals of continuing professional education. Although these viewpoints profoundly affect their work, continuing educators too often do not acknowledge that their practice is based on a particular conception of the role of professions in society. Without this understanding, educators are left without an important tool for making decisions in their daily practice and ultimately for improving their practice.
The various viewpoints about the relationship between the professions and society may be distilled into three fundamentally different conceptions. The functionalist viewpoint has deep roots in social theory and practice and has the greatest number of adherents in continuing professional education today. This viewpoint is generally positive about the place of professions in society in contrast to the conflict viewpoint, which is essentially negative. The critical viewpoint is the most recent to have crystallised and shares with the conflict viewpoint a recognition of the problems inherent in professional practice. However, rather than seeking to eliminate the professions, its adherents wish to restructure the professions in such a way as to minimise their limitations.
Although this analytical framework cannot describe all viewpoints in their full richness and complexity, it is expected that continuing educators are willing to accept this limitation so that the implications for educational practice can be brought into sharper focus. Because these viewpoints involve fundamental values and assumptions about the characteristics of a good society and the best means to achieve such a society it is unreasonable to expect that consensus among continuing educators is possible or even desirable. Nevertheless, a critical analysis of their work with respect to these viewpoints is a necessary element of effective practice. An extended version of this paper is found in the author’s book on continuing professional education[1].
The functionalist viewpoint
Functionalism has been the dominant viewpoint in North American social science for the past several decades. As such, it should not be surprising that its assumptions and tenets have formed the underpinnings for most people’s understandings of the relationship between the professions and the larger society. The functionalist approach posits that the professions are service- or community-oriented occupations applying a systematic body of knowledge to problems that are highly relevant to the central values of society. This approach stresses the functional value of professional activity for the maintenance of an orderly society.
Professional Practice. The key concept in the functionalist viewpoint isexpertise. As described by Schön[2]: ‘...professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique’. The two key assumptions are that practice problems are well-formed and unambiguous and that these problems are solved by the application of scientific knowledge. Thus, professionals are seen as possessing a high degree of specialised expertise to solve well-defined practice problems. The need for well-defined practice problems is crucial because as Moore[3] says: ‘If every problem were in all respects unique, solutions would be at best accidental, and therefore have nothing to do with expert knowledge. What we are suggesting, on the contrary, is that there are sufficient uniformities in problems and in devices for solving them ... professionals ... apply very general principles,standardised knowledge, to concrete problems..’.
Professions and Society. Afunctionalist view of society is characterised by consensus, order, and equilibrium. It is assumed that all groups and interests in society share a set of common values. These values form the basis for a consensus about the ends of professional practice. Existing social structures and institutions must be maintained or changed gradually so as to keep society in equilibrium, thus producing an orderly progression towards a better society. The professions are crucial because they apply their knowledge with an altruistic orientation, rather than in their own self-interest. By being guardians of the central values and institutions of society, there is a compelling logic for expanding the extent of professionalism in society. Barber[4] says: ‘...the community orientation characteristic of professional behaviour are indispensable in our society as we know it and as we want it to be. Indeed, our kind of society can now maintain its fundamental character only by enlarging the scope for professional behaviour’. Barber’s words also illustrate a final important characteristic of the functionalist viewpoint, a strong belief in the goodness of society as it is currently constituted.
Educational Implications. With the ends of professional practice being fixed and unambiguous, continuing education performs the instrumental function of helping professionals provide higher quality service to clients by improving their knowledge, competence, or performance. Continuing education thus becomes a technical process[5]: ‘Increasingly, one needs a planned approach to professional development if one's professional competence is to be maintained or enlarged. Continuing education specialists play a major facilitating role in this endeavour. They may assist in the determination of developmental needs of clients, design programmes in view of expressed needs, and arrange for their implementation’. In this viewpoint, continuing educators: ‘... become ... colleagues of all who work to further the power and the responsibility of the vocation’[6].
The conflict viewpoint
Until the 1960s the professions were understood almost exclusively in a functionalist context. Then, a wide range of critiques began to appear that coalesced into a viewpoint that challenged functionalist understandings. In this view professions are not inherently different from other occupations except for the fact that they have secured a monopoly for their services in the marketplace, thereby achieving a comparatively great amount of income and status for their members. This viewpoint asserts that professions are in conflict with other groups in society for power, status, and money. They use knowledge, skills, and an altruistic orientation as a form of ideology in their quest for these social rewards. Thus, professionalism is seen as an ideology for controlling an occupation rather than an ideal end-state toward which all occupations should aspire for the betterment of society.
Professional Practice. The key concept in the conflict viewpoint is power. Professions’ importance in society comes not from their expertise but rather from their ‘power to prescribe’[7]. By being able to define their clients’ problems and to prescribe solutions, professionals can create needs for their services. This viewpoint seeks to explode the mystique of professional expertise as composed of special knowledge and skills. When this expertise is critically analysed, it dissolves: ‘... into empty claims. The professions are vehicles for the pre-emption of socially legitimate knowledge in the interest of social control’.[8]
Professions and Society. Where the functionalist approach sees consensus about the proper ends of society, this second viewpoint assumes there is conflict among various groups in society. Where the functionalist viewpoint stresses the concept of a fluid society open to individual social mobility, the conflict viewpoint sees a system characterised by structured social inequality where different groups are in conflict over a limited amount of social and economic rewards. Professionalisation has primarily an economic function in society in that it is a means to maintain this system of social inequality. Because the backbone of inequality in contemporary capitalist societies is the occupational hierarchy, professionalisation is a powerful means to move up this hierarchy. The process of professionalisation is where: ‘... producers of special services sought to constitute and control a market for their expertise. Because marketable expertise is a crucial element in the structure of modern inequality, professionalisation appears also as a collective assertion of special social status.’[9].
Educational Implications. The competence of professionals is not the problem to which educational solutions must be addressed. Rather, the problem lies in the oppressive system of which professionals are a part. Until the structural conditions that produce professional power are weakened, professionals will maintain their hierarchical relationships with clients. They will continue to be reinforced by their initial training, the institutions in which they work, and even the clients themselves. There are small number of educators in many professions that work collectively to change the fundamental relationship between their profession and society. For example, there are physicians who work to make the provision of health care more equitable and there are teachers who seek to change the role that schools play in the reproduction of existing social relations.
The critical viewpoint
In the past ten years another viewpoint has crystallised in reaction to the functionalist and conflict viewpoints. Where functionalism sees well-defined problems, this new viewpoint assumes that professionals construct the problem from the situation. Where the conflict viewpoint believes each profession possesses a monolithic value orientation so as to secure the largest possible market share, this new viewpoint provides evidence for conflicting value orientations among members of a profession. Because professionals are always making choices about what problems to solve as well as how to solve them, this approach stresses the need for professionals to be critically aware of these choices and their implications.
Professional Practice. The key concept in the critical viewpoint is dialectic. This can be contrasted with the linear application of expertise in the functional viewpoint and the one-way domination of clients by professionals in the conflict approach. Professionals are in transaction or interaction with situations of practice. The ends and means of practice are interconnected like a web. This stands in contrast to the separations and consequent linear relationships between knowing and doing, professional and client, and means and ends implicit in the other two viewpoints. This linear view of professional practice is challenged on two major counts: the notion of a fixed and unambiguous problem and the basis of professional knowledge. In their practice, professionals must construct problems from ambiguous situations. Thus, problem-setting rather than problem-solving is the key to practice. Professionals are in a dialectical relationship with situations characterised by uniqueness, uncertainty, and value conflict. Their knowledge is in the form of: ‘... a repertoire of examples, images, understandings, and actions’[10]. When a professional is trying to make sense of a situation, she sees it as something already present in her repertoire.
Professions and Society. Both the conflict and the functionalist approaches understand professions as homogeneous communities with shared sets of values working toward common ends. Those working out of a conflict framework believe that members of a professional community band together in order to constitute and control a market for their services. Those working out of a functionalist framework believe that professional groups share a common set of knowledge and code of ethics with the purpose of providing high quality service to people and working toward the betterment of society. In contrast, the critical viewpoint sees heterogeneity within the profession. Thus, individuals hold a variety of identities and have different if not conflicting values regarding the ends of practice. As a result, we must speak of the places not the place of professions in society. Professions are: ‘… loose amalgamations of segments pursuing different objectives in different manners and more or less held together under a common name at a particular period in history’[11]. This approach shifts attention away from what professionals have in common such as education, status, and knowledge to how they use these common characteristics for different social purposes.
Educational Implications. The critical viewpoint argues for the abandonment of the idea that there is consensus regarding professional quality. In all professions there are differing, if not conflicting, definitions of quality. As a result, continuing educators are constantly faced with the problem of choosing among differing definitions of professional quality. Every educational programme is a statement of the need for a particular form of technical knowledge and a statement about the proper ends of professional practice. The important educational decisions in the critical approach are who will decide on the content of the programme and on the basis of what criteria.
Necessity for the critical viewpoint
The functionalist approach emphasises the need to be skilled at the technical aspects of the educational process. This is obviously important. However, these technical skills are necessary but not sufficient for effective practice in continuing education. Similarly, the conflict viewpoint raises important questions about the ends of professional practice and the role of professions in society. Yet, here the educational process itself is relegated to a secondary status. Instead, most of the attention is paid to the ‘big picture’ and the ultimate outcome of that process, which is the diminution of professional power. Thus, both viewpoints offer an incomplete approach to effective practice. The critical viewpoint offers a comprehensive basis for educational practice because it recognises the need to deal with the means and the ends of the education process. This viewpoint suggests that continuing educators must understand the ethical and political as well as the technical dimensions of their work. Effective practice requires that educators understand the ends of their work and the best means to reach those ends. They must critically examine these means and ends on a continual basis in order to better understand their role and communicate it to the professionals with whom they work and, ultimately, to society at large.
[1] Cervero, R. M., (1988). Effective practice in continuing professional education. San Francisco: Jo