Description
Today’s relentless economic, cultural, and technological changes threaten to make curricula in professional schools obsolete before students complete their programs. How can professional education adapt and keep pace with changing expectations? What should be the priorities for change in professional education as we move into the next century? Educating Professionals is a comprehensive examination of how to educate professionals for practice in the twenty-first century – and how that education needs to be different from the way it is today. In thirteen original chapters, the authors identify the social and political forces that will affect the roles of professionals and change the definitions of professional skill. They explain how professional schools can meet the changing requirements of practice. And they show how educating professionals for the future will ultimately require stronger bonds between educational systems and our systems of practice – including more accurate measures of competence, a more integrated system of continuing professional education, and a broader view of faculty scholarship. The authors show, for example, how liberal learning – traditionally thought to be solely a concern of undergraduate curricula – is critical to effective professional education and describe how liberal learning goals can be adapted for and assessed in specific professional curricula. They describe how the subject of professional ethics can indeed be taught and learned, and provide specific practical advice on the critical task of teaching problem solving. And they offer a range of key principles and strategies for supporting fundamental change in professional education.
