The purpose of Encyclopedia of Professionalization is to discuss the current challenges facing professionalization and, by exploring major research traditions, to clarify the meanings associated with this concept and the various phenomena it encompasses.
Three major notions of professionalization are examined: the manufacturing of professions in pursuit of autonomy, the rise of professionalisms embodying notions of a job well done, and the construction of renewed professionalities at the very heart of work situations and training systems.
Table of Contents
Introduction XIII
Didier DEMAZIÈRE and Richard WITTORSKI
Part 1 Professionalization, the Manufacturing of Professions 1
Chapter 1 Professionalization, Practical Wisdom and Vulnerabilities 3
Florent CHAMPY
1.1 Introduction 3
1.2 Classic professionalization theories 4
1.2.1 The functionalist theory 4
1.2.2 The interactionist critique 6
1.2.3 Andrew Abbott’s theory 9
1.3 The protection of professions with prudential practice 12
1.3.1 The fragilities of practical wisdom and the theory of professionalization 12
1.3.2 The professionalization of American medicine 15
1.3.3 Medicine and doctors according to Osler 16
1.3.4 The “social case work” according to Mary Richmond 17
1.3.5 Professionalization theories and historical facts 19
1.4 Objectivity, professionalism metamorphoses and vulnerabilities 20
1.4.1 The end of the golden age for professions 20
1.4.2 Organizational professionalism, new public management and practical wisdom 21
1.4.3 The stubborn mirage of the scientificity of practices 26
1.4.4 Mobilizations and challenges to professionality 28
1.5 Conclusion 30
1.6 References 31
Chapter 2 Professionalization: The Mystery of Boundaries 37
Didier DEMAZIÈRE
2.1 Professionalization as the selection of professions 39
2.1.1 Professionalization for all? 40
2.1.2 Is there a professions perimeter? 44
2.1.3 At a distance from the arrival point: professional groups 48
2.2 Professionalization as friction at the boundaries 50
2.2.1 Tensions around professionalization 51
2.2.2 The risks of deprofessionalization? 57
2.2.3 Professional groups as professionalizations 60
2.3 Conclusion 63
2.4 References 64
Part 2 Professionalization, the Rise of Professionalisms 73
Chapter 3 New Requirements and Standards at Work: Driving Forces and Limitations to the Recomposition of Professional Autonomy and Responsibility 75
Arnaud MIAS
3.1 Greater autonomy in the face of increasing work requirements? 79
3.2 Project, network and trust: new labor standards? 84
3.2.1 Professionals threatened by project management 85
3.2.2 The promises of the Agile method put to the test by employee commitment 88
3.3 Professionalization or standardization? New forms of work standardization 90
3.3.1 Quality management, between standardization and individual responsibilization 90
3.3.2 Lean management, an exacerbation of the tensions associated with the standardizing ambition 93
3.4 New Public Management: work standardization for public employees? 95
3.5 Experimenting with new forms of labor governance 98
3.5.1 The “liberated” company: a disruptive proposal? 99
3.5.2 What regulation of autonomy at work? The example of lean 100
3.5.3 The problematic engineering of discussion spaces 102
3.6 Conclusion 104
3.7 References 106
Chapter 4 Struggles Over the Definition of a “Job Well Done” 113
Valérie BOUSSARD
4.1 The definition of a job well done, the cornerstone of professionalism 115
4.1.1 The rules of the art 116
4.1.2 The professional ethos 117
4.1.3 Boundaries and hierarchies 118
4.2 A job well done, determined by the professionals themselves 121
4.2.1 Rules of the art learned through professional socialization 121
4.2.2 Rules of the art developed by the profession itself 122
4.2.3 Sanctions for “poorly done” work 124
4.2.4 A definition of a job well done which addresses audiences 127
4.3 When the definition of a job well done escapes professionals 129
4.3.1 Prescription of a job well done, by the state 129
4.3.2 Prescription of a job well done, by management 132
4.3.3 Prescription of a job well done, by users 135
4.4 Struggles around the definition of a job well done 137
4.4.1 Institutional struggles 138
4.4.2 Pragmatic struggles 140
4.5 Conclusion 142
4.6 References 143
Chapter 5 Professionalization as an Object of Tensions between Institutional, Collective and Individual Logics 149
Mokhtar KADDOURI
5.1 The ambiguous status of the term professionalization: between camouflage and the revelation of tensions between and within the configurations of actors 150
5.2 Professionalization as a configuration of actors engaged in interdependent and tensional dynamics: illustration of configurations of actors in tension around a professionalization scheme 152
5.2.1 The context of the professionalization project 153
5.2.2 Actors in tension around the professionalization scheme 154
5.3 Conflicting relationships and reconfigurations of variable actors around the professionalization scheme 158
5.3.1 Some characteristics of the relationships between and within the categories of actors 159
5.3.2 Multiple logics in tension 161
5.4 Professionalization as the production of skills and of professional identities 162
5.4.1 Professionalization as an institutional offer of skills and identities 163
5.4.2 Professionalization as a claim to skills and collective professional identity 163
5.4.3 Professionalization as a factory of skills and an individual professional identity 163
5.5 Conclusion 165
5.5.1 Professionalization as a tensional combination of interdependent actor logics 166
5.5.2 Resistance to professionalization as a factor asserting our professionalism and claiming identity 167
5.6 References 168
Part 3 Professionalization, the Construction of Professionalities 171
Chapter 6 Apprenticeship in Education and in Training: Foundation for Adult Training, Professionalization Analyzer of Educational Paths and Pedagogic Figure 173
Philippe MAUBANT
6.1 Contexts and conditions for the emergence of apprenticeship programs in education and in training 174
6.1.1 Apprenticeship through the prism of everyday life 174
6.1.2 Apprenticeship and its ambitions to master spaces and times 175
6.1.3 Apprenticeship, environments and situations 175
6.1.4 Three major philosophical debates echo three major questions posed to apprenticeship programs 176
6.1.5 The ambitions of apprenticeship 179
6.2 The apprenticeship pedagogy(ies): foundations, conceptions and uses 184
6.2.1 From the learning pedagogies to the apprenticeship pedagogies 184
6.2.2 Images, words and forms of apprenticeship pedagogies 186
6.2.3 From learning models to apprenticeship pedagogic configurations 187
6.2.4 Analytical theories of the work activity: new perspectives for thinking about an apprenticeship pedagogy 188
6.3 Conclusion: apprenticeship, stage director of professionalization paths and critical friend of life paths 189
6.4 References 191
Chapter 7 The Relationships Between Professionalization and the Work Situation: Professional Challenges and Social Relationships 201
Sandra ENLART
7.1 The social order at the center 202
7.1.1 When to learn is to obey: compagnons, artisans, workers in history 202
7.1.2 At the end of the war: when to learn is to apply 204
7.1.3 Learning means participating in a professional community in a “peripheral and legitimate” way 205
7.2 The individual at the center 207
7.2.1 The turning point of individualism and the coronation of the employee actor 207
7.2.2 Learning: developing skills and transferring them 208
7.2.3 The digital revolution and the health crisis: learning and working remotely from the organization 210
7.3 Activity at the center 212
7.3.1 WPL and communities of practice: an encompassing theoretical framework 213
7.3.2 Professional didactics: professional activity, at the heart of schemes 214
7.3.3 Empowering environments and feedback from the learning organization 215
7.4 Conclusion 216
7.5 References 217
Chapter 8 Learning in the Workplace: Recurrent and Emerging Conceptions and Practices 223
Stephen BILLETT
8.1 Purposes of learning through work 224
8.2 Utilizing, enriching and augmenting workplace learning experiences 226
8.3 Learning through occupational practice 228
8.4 Supporting, augmenting and guiding learning at work 230
8.5 Promoting and engaging workers’ personal epistemologies 233
8.6 Recurrent and emerging conceptions and practices: learning through work 235
8.7 References 236
Chapter 9 The Activity Analysis Approach in Education and Training Sciences: Challenges, Principles and Perspectives 243
Joris THIEVENAZ
9.1 The intelligibility of relationships between work and learning: a scientific and praxeological challenge 244
9.1.1 A field of research constituting education and training sciences 244
9.1.2 A professional and social challenge 246
9.1.3 A rapprochement between two worlds: work and professional training 247
9.2 The reference in education and training sciences to different theoretical trends or approaches which study the way in which humans act, learn and transform themselves by producing 248
9.2.1 Pioneering work establishing the principles of work analysis in relation to formative and developmental concerns 249
9.2.2 Professional didactics 249
9.2.3 The activity clinic and the psycho-dynamics of work 250
9.2.4 Ergology 251
9.2.5 The course of action 252
9.2.6 The psycho-phenomenological approach to experience 253
9.2.7 Linguistic and interactional approaches 253
9.2.8 The epistemology of activity analysis frameworks 254
9.2.9 A Deweyan approach to experience 254
9.3 Principles which structure and guide research work in education and training sciences 255
9.3.1 The enigmatic nature of work and activities 255
9.3.2 The distinction between task and activity 255
9.3.3 The essential immersion in work spaces 256
9.3.4 Taking into account both the productive and formative dimension of human activity 256
9.3.5 Taking into account the unique and situated character of human activities 257
9.3.6 An intention that is both epistemic and praxeological in the production of knowledge 257
9.3.7 The co-construction of valid knowledge 258
9.3.8 A holistic approach to human action 258
9.4 A micrological mode observation and analysis of human activities in a situation of production of goods and/or services 258
9.4.1 Attention to detail, the silent, the ordinary and the “almost nothing” 259
9.4.2 From the singular to the universal 259
9.5 Conclusion 260
9.6 References 260
Chapter 10 Professionalism and the Auto/Biographical Imagination 265
Linden WEST
10.1 Introduction: auto/biography and professionalism 265
10.2 The central role of the European Society for Research on the Education of Adults (ESREA) 269
10.3 A case in point 270
10.4 Doing “educational biography” 271
10.5 More Canterbury tales 273
10.6 Narrative competence 274
10.7 Travelling south 275
10.8 Imagining the future 277
10.9 Conclusion: a wider world, constraints and new opportunities 280
10.10 References 281
Conclusion: Manufacturing of Professions, Production of Professionalities and Rise of Professionalism: Interdependence and Reciprocal Transformations of Individuals, Collectives, Organizations and Environments 285
Richard WITTORSKI
List of Authors 305
Index 307
