Carving out the territory for educating the deliberate professional

Abstract

In this early part of the twenty-first century, we are witnessing dramatic changes to the university education landscape. Student cohorts are increasingly more diverse and globally mobile, the advent of technology-mediated learning and teaching is changing the way we used to teach and learn, the demands for their greater economic relevance together with stronger graduate employability are knowingly, or not, separating universities’ dual obligations of education for competent technicians and education for moral professionals. Together, these neoliberal developments threaten to erode the socially responsible pedagogical project of university education. In this chapter, the authors explore what might be required of university education to produce professionals for a society that is increasingly complex and rapidly changing. What does it take for students to engage with the complexities, ambiguities, diversity and uncertainties of emerging professional practices? Opportunities are identified that allow learners and educators to take ownership of and some sense of control over their emerging practice within uncertain and rapidly changing times. An argument is presented for a pedagogy of deliberateness: A new learning and teaching framework for university education, in general, and workplace learning, in particular. This new concept offers a framework to redress the imbalance from technical, instrumental learning towards moral, autonomous, democratic and consequential learning that produces not only competent technicians, but also educates deliberate professionals who are thoughtful, courageous and morally responsible actors who strive to improve the way things are.