And the Conclusion for Now Is …?

Abstract

The conclusion reminds us that claims to professional status are contested as never before. The twenty-first century has seen the widespread questioning by scholars and the laity, of expert systems and their foundationalist epistemologies. This kind of knowledge is now seen as only one way of languaging the world. Professional narratives must now compete with and accommodate local narratives in order to better serve these clients. What emerges is that becoming a professional is not about developing and maintaining an isolated, rugged individual approach to professional practice – this is the traditional professional, the movie professional. The very contexts of practice are also constantly becoming other and here the sociality of becoming a professional is manifest in the development of different work practices, such as, temporary, democratic teams composed of a range of practitioners some of whom would earlier not have been regarded as professionals. Becoming a professional is a lifelong iterative process.