Towards Professional Wisdom


Book Description

People professions - such as social work, teaching, nursing, ministry and counselling - are at heart ethical or moral enterprises. Much recent theorizing has been concerned to show that effective professional deliberation and judgement cannot be reduced either to technical rationality or to simple obedience to general occupational procedures or prescriptions. Professional judgement would seem to require the development of a distinctive mode of practical (ethical) reflection or 'wisdom' - perhaps along the lines of Aristotle's 'phronesis' or practical wisdom. Reflection is required to address such key professional concerns as: What is the impact of official prescription and regulation on professional judgement? How should conflicts of professional judgement and public/political accountability be resolved? How might one reconcile tensions between universal justice and equality and particular client need? What is the role of emotion and/or affect in 'people professional' practice? This ground-breaking work addresses, in a thoroughly multidisciplinary way, the central question of the nature of professional judgement and deliberation that has recently come to the fore in the academic literature of profession and professionalism. It proposes a marked shift - in theory, practice and policy-making - away from technical-rational approaches to professional decision-making in favour of reflection and deliberation informed by responsible moral judgement. This reflects a significant progressive trend in this literature by taking practical wisdom, rather than technical rationality, to lie at the heart of professional judgement. It is unique in bringing together key authors from different professional fields to address the issue of professional wisdom in a cross-professional and multidisciplinary way.




Towards Professional Wisdom


Book Description

People professions - such as social work, teaching, nursing, ministry and counselling - are at heart ethical or moral enterprises. Much recent theorizing has been concerned to show that effective professional deliberation and judgement cannot be reduced either to technical rationality or to simple obedience to general occupational procedures or prescriptions. Professional judgement would seem to require the development of a distinctive mode of practical (ethical) reflection or 'wisdom' - perhaps along the lines of Aristotle's 'phronesis' or practical wisdom. Reflection is required to address such key professional concerns as: What is the impact of official prescription and regulation on professional judgement? How should conflicts of professional judgment and public/political accountability be resolved? How might one reconcile tensions between universal justice and equality and particular client need? What is the role of emotion and/or affect in 'people professional' practice? This ground-breaking work addresses, in a thoroughly multidisciplinary way, the central question of the nature of professional judgement and deliberation that has recently come to the fore in the academic literature of profession and professionalism. It proposes a marked shift - in theory, practice and policy-making - away from technical-rational approaches to professional decision-making in favour of reflection and deliberation informed by responsible moral judgement. This reflects a significant progressive trend in this literature by taking practical wisdom, rather than technical rationality, to lie at the heart of professional judgement. It is unique in bringing together key authors from different professional fields to address the issue of professional wisdom in a cross-professional and multidisciplinary way.




Practice Wisdom


Book Description

Practice wisdom is needed because the challenges people face in life, work and society are not simple and require more than knowledge, actions and decision making capabilities. In professional practice wisdom enhances people’s capacity to succeed and evolve and to assist their clients in achieving positive, relevant and satisfying outcomes. Practice Wisdom: Values and Interpretations brings diverse views and interpretations to an exploration of what wisdom in professional practice means and can become: academically, practically and inspirationally. The authors reflect on core dimensions of practice wisdom like ethics, mindfulness, moral virtue, particularisation and metacognition. The chapter authors tackle the trials that practice wisdom seekers encounter including the demand for resilience, perseverance, finding credibility and humility in practice wisdom, and linking wisdom into evidence for sound professional decision making. Readers are invited to consider what the place of practice wisdom encompasses in pursuing good practice outcomes amidst the turmoil and pressure of professional practice today. Do the imperatives of evidence-based practice and accountability leave enough space for wise practice or is wisdom seen by modern practice worlds as unnecessary, antiquated, unrealistic and redundant? Without a doubt these questions are answered positively in this book in support of the place and value of practice wisdom in professional practice today.




Phronesis as Professional Knowledge


Book Description

Phronesis is the Aristotelian notion of practical wisdom. In this collected series, phronesis is explored as an alternate way of considering professional knowledge. In the present context dominated by technical rationalities and instrumentalist approaches, a re-examination of the concept of phronesis offers a fundamental re-visioning of the educational aims in professional schools and continuing professional education programs. This book originated from a conversation amongst an interdisciplinary group of scholars from education, health, philosophy, and sociology, who share concerns that something of fundamental importance – of moral signi?cance – is missing from the vision of what it means to be a professional. The contributors consider the ways in which phronesis offers a generative possibility for reconsidering the professional knowledge of practitioners. The question at the centre of this inquiry is: “If we take phronesis seriously as an organising framework for professional knowledge, what are the implications for professional education and practice?” A multiplicity of understandings emerge as to what is meant by phronesis and how it might be reinterpreted, understood, applied, and extended in a world radically different to that of the progenitor of the term, Aristotle. For those concerned with professional life this is a conversation not to be missed.




Heart!


Book Description

This inspiring book presents the concept of a heartprint -- the distinctive impression that an educator's heart leaves on students and colleagues during his or her professional career. For teachers, understand how teacher motivation, teacher-student relationships, and collaborative teaching all affect your self-efficacy, career, and professional development. For school leaders and administrators, discover your impact on staff, students, and school culture as you progress in your career and gain perspective on creating sustainable change. Examine the 5 HEART aspects of your professional life: Happiness: a passion for teaching, a purpose, and a desire to positively impact education Engagement: teacher motivation, energy, and effort necessary to impact student learning Alliances: relationships, collaborative teaching, and teacher support Risk: vision-focused risk taking to create sustainable change in schools Thought: the knowledge and professional development integral to advancing your career Discover Your Answer to the Question "Why Teach" and Advance Your Career in Education: Reflect on your journey and the personal and professional qualities of the teacher or leader you want to be. Discover your distinctive heartprint on your students and colleagues, and decide what the qualities of a good teacher are for you. Gain personal development plan ideas and inspirational insights from Dr. Kanold as well as dozens of thought leaders and researchers. Connect your professional life to each chapter and reconnect to the emotion, passion, energy, growth, and collaborative intimacy expected when joining the teaching profession. Build collective teacher efficacy and academic optimism by using the resource as a book study for professional development. Contents: Part 1: H Is for Happiness Chapter 1: The Happiness Dilemma Chapter 2: The Happiness-Passion Connection Chapter 3: What's Love Got to Do With It? Chapter 4: Got Compassion? Check! Chapter 5: Wanted--Persons of Positive Character and Hope Chapter 6: The Joy-Gratitude-Stability Connection Chapter 7: Why Should We Weep? Final Thoughts: The World Happiness Report Part 2: E Is for Engagement Chapter 8: Gallup Says--Full Engagement Not Ahead Chapter 9: Getting Engaged! Chapter 10: It's Energy, Not Time Chapter 11: Name That Energy Quadrant Chapter 12: Avoid the Quadrant III Drift Chapter 13: Quadrant II Time Required Chapter 14: Grit--Deliberate Daily Practice Final Thoughts: The MTXE Perspective Part 3: A Is for Alliances Chapter 15: The Primary Purposes of Collaboration Chapter 16: PLCs--Serving the Greater Good Chapter 17: Oh, the Inequity Places We'll Go! Chapter 18: Reduce Our Professional Noise Chapter 19: Relational Intelligence Required Chapter 20: What Are Those Black Boxes? Chapter 21: Celebration--Making Above and Beyond the Norm the Norm Final Thoughts: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success Part 4: R Is for Risk Chapter 22: What's in a Goal? Chapter 23: Shared Purpose--Each and Every Child Can Learn Chapter 24: Results or Persons? Chapter 25: The Risk-Vision Dependency Chapter 26: Build Trust the Millennial Way Chapter 27: Fixed or Growth Mindset? Chapter 28: Warning--Entropy Ahead! Final Thoughts: A Sense of Urgency Part 5: T Is for Thought Chapter 29: Your Great Adventure! Chapter 30: Your Voice of Wisdom Chapter 31: Clean Up the Climate Chapter 32: Become a Feedback Fanatic Chapter 33: Yours, Mine, and Ours Final Thoughts: Hold the Mayo!




Practical Wisdom, Leadership and Culture


Book Description

Despite the growing attention towards the importance of practical wisdom in business today, little research has been done about the concept of practical wisdom in the Indigenous, Asian and Middle-Eastern traditions. Contemporary studies of wisdom are dominated by the philosophical traditions of Western thought, which is based on the ancient Greek concepts of wisdom. Much less is known about how practical wisdom, as illuminated by these other traditions, can be implemented in today’s organizational settings. This book thus fills an important gap in understanding wisdom and how it is applied in a poly-cultural world. Wisdom is culturally bound. Wisdom is poly-cultural and interweaves individuality and communality. Practical wisdom is inextricably connected to many needs of contemporary personal and professional life. Moreover, the increasingly growing poly-culturality around the world requires a better understanding of how practical wisdom is understood in different cultures and traditions. Accordingly, there is a need for a) poly-cultural understanding of the concept of wisdom and b) the role of practical wisdom in a world crying out for wisdom. This book underlines the importance of developing a poly-cultural and interdisciplinary understanding of the concept of practical wisdom in today’s complex environment. The book offers significant insight into the implications of the non-Western traditions of wisdom and how such an understanding of the non-Western traditions can help us better and more critically understand and appropriately address new multi-faceted complex emerging phenomena. While the Western traditions offer valuable insight into the implication of wisdom in modern life, an integrated view that brings together the Western and non-Western traditions can provide a more critical and practical insight into how to apply practical wisdom in a contemporary poly-cultural environment.




Practical Wisdom for an Ethical Evaluation Practice


Book Description

This book provides a contemporary and thought-provoking exploration of the concept of practical wisdom--what it is and how it can be incorporated into evaluation practice. It defines what practical wisdom is, explores its roots, where it stands today, what constitutes the "wise" evaluator, and how we can develop sound judgment in an unpredictable and chaotic time. It brings together evaluation thought leaders and practitioners to examine the concept of practical wisdom. The authors’ enlightening essays are interwoven with reflective strands comprised of commentaries, examples, and new ideas added by Hurteau and her colleagues that offer a recursive and intricate pattern of reflection on the topic of practical wisdom. This is a rare book because it moves beyond evaluation methodology to explore how practical wisdom can help us develop new and better solutions for difficult evaluation situations. It will become a standard reference for practitioners, trainers. and teachers of evaluation because it considers the history, ethics, and competencies that underpin practical wisdom, and examines the ways that this untaught skill can be applied, to do, as House says, “the right thing in the special circumstances of performing the job.”




Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education


Book Description

Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education proposes the innovative and holistic Dialogos approach to practical philosophy as a way of facilitating wisdom-oriented pedagogy. The book encourages individual and collective development through dialectical interplays between personal life, philosophical concepts and subject matter. Based on two decades of the author’s reflective pedagogical practice research, this book develops a philosophy of dialogical relationships. It analyses approaches to philosophical practice and suggests facilitation moves and philosophical exercises that can be adapted across educational levels, school subjects and higher education disciplines. Chapters provide examples of transformative philosophical group dialogues and suggest pathways towards multi perspective thinking, mutual understanding and wisdom in culturally diverse contexts. Philosophising the Dialogos Way towards Wisdom in Education can be used as a holistic approach to democracy education, peace education, education for sustainable living and wellbeing. The book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of teacher education, philosophy of education and higher education. It will also appeal to practising professionals such as teachers and teacher educators in secondary and higher education.




Researching Critical Reflection


Book Description

Critical reflection helps professionals to learn directly from their practice experience, so that they can improve their own work in an ongoing and flexible way – something essential in today’s complex and changing organisations. It allows change to be managed in a way which enables individuals to preserve a sense of what is fundamentally important to them as professionals. It is particularly important as it can also help make sense of some fundamental issues, and so also has implications for how we live our lives. However, more systematic research on critical reflection is needed to help us understand what works best for professionals in different settings. This timely work explores how critical reflection is researched, evaluated and used as a research method itself, with the aim of improving how it is taught and practised in a rigorous and transferable way. Developing a more comprehensive and multi-disciplinary view of the current state of critical reflection and the research directions which need to be taken, the book is divided into four parts. It: - Provides an overview of different perspectives on critical reflection and stimulates dialogue between them - Establishes some common platforms from which to develop further research directions - Identifies the major issues in evaluating critical reflection teaching, and main methods for doing so - Contributes to social science methodological innovations by exploring how methods based on critical reflection can be used for researching professional practice - Contains contributions from academics who are internationally known and highly experienced in different aspects of critical reflection. Researching Critical Reflection is an important reference for all students, practitioners, and researchers – including in the areas of education, management, health and social work – who engage with critical reflection to develop their practice.




Kingdom Learning


Book Description

Drawing on the discipline of adult education and his own research into the way people learn, David Heywood explains how churches can become learning communities in which people grow as disciples and find their place in a collaborative pattern of ministry.