Abstract
As I have discussed drawing on the insights offered by psychology is unavoidable in any attempt to articulate an interdisciplinary perspective on professional reproduction that encompasses and connects the ‘social’ and ‘pedagogical’ processes of socialisation and enculturation. The difficulty is not with holding a psychological discussion but with the assumption that psychology is a science of individuals. This ‘individualist’ presumption results in the charge of reductionism being leveled at social theories that discuss or draw on psychology. The criticism is that such social theories place to much weight on individuals and their psychology at the expense of social and cultural context. However, in fact, there is little reason to assume psychology is necessarily individualist in any reductive sense and many ‘psychological’ perspectives recognize the importance of the social dimension, particularly with regard to learning, development, socio-cultural practices and, increasingly, the nature of the mind.
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Notes
- 1.
Although I am reminded of Irwin’s distinction between General Practice and hospital medicine this is a somewhat misleading perspective. Encouraging medical students to see patients as, simply, problems to be solved is approximately as helpful as seeing the ethical dilemma in the same way.
- 2.
The reader should recall that the account of development in play in this work is that of the participationists (see Sect. 1.2: Acquisition and Participation. In this view development does not suggest the internal transformation of people as much as it suggests a change in their practices, their forms of doing. Thus, contra the standard presumptions of developmental psychology, it proceeds across the life course.
- 3.
This is the most widely used translation but it has also been called the zone of ‘next’ or ‘potential’ development. The zone of next development is used relatively rarely as it indicates a linear and overly prescribed notion of development more consistent with a Piagetian perspective. In contrast a potential development may never occur whilst a proximal space may not ever become occupied, indeed other changes (developments) might come about that remove a previously potential psychological development from proximity.
- 4.
It is worth, briefly, noting what it means to consider students each other’s ‘more capable’ peers in this context. It is not simply that a more advanced or competent student can lead other students to have new insights or make new connections that they have already achieved. Students are taught together because together they can develop in ways that they could not achieve on their own. The case at hand, medical ethics, collective discussion amongst peers can lead to an increased development, an increased competence, in medical ethical reflection on the part of individuals. Groups can dialogically bootstrap the (monological) individuals that constituted them. Furthermore, individuals can attempt to go beyond their own monological perspective by engaging others either directly or indirectly, through the media of materials such as text-books, published articles or any other forum for ethical discussion. As adults and experienced or practiced learners medical students can, to a degree, guide and direct their own development. I think this is particularly true in the case of moral and ethical development that attends medical education as, after all, they are mature individuals indicating that, in our broader perspective on moral functioning, engage with, and not simply judge, the moral situations that confront them.
- 5.
This paradox, the attempt to produce individuals whose moral perspective is emancipated from those who have instructed them, is found throughout moral education (Peters 1963).
- 6.
Belief here is not used in the loose sense of ‘what people imagine, rather than know, to be true,’ something which usually refers to factually unsupported beliefs in Father Christmas, say. Here belief refers, in the philosophical sense, to ‘what people think or know’ which includes factually supported or logically reasoned knowledge such as biomedical or medical ethical knowing. In philosophical terms knowledge is a species of belief.
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Emmerich, N. (2013). Medical Ethics Education from a Socio-Cultural Perspective. In: Medical Ethics Education: An Interdisciplinary and Social Theoretical Perspective. SpringerBriefs in Ethics. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00485-3_5
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