Presentation made at ’Higher Education as if the World Mattered’, University of Edinburgh and Society for Research into Higher Education, April 23, 2013.

1. Professional
Education as if
Social Relations
Mattered
’Higher Education as if the
World Mattered’, University of
Edinburgh and Society for
Research into Higher
Education
25th-26th April 2013

2. INTRODUCTION
• The professions are of huge importance to
societies based around the production and
use of knowledge.
• Radical uncertainty leaves particular scope
for exercise of power by professionals that
prioritises:
― the interests of the professionals themselves, especially in
market contexts;
― agenda of governments or regulators.

3. STRUCTURE AND AGENCY
• Attempts by regulators to determine the
scope or nature of professional actions.
• Teaching/curriculum (social structure in the
educational setting) as an influence on
intentional action by an individual (agency).
• Challenges exist in inculcating particular
stances towards professionalism amongst
students on HE programmes.

4. Socio-cultural structures
Concerns → Projects → Practices
Reflexive deliberation
The mediation of structure to agency, after
Archer (2003)

5. SOCIAL RELATIONS AND REFLEXIVITY
• Social relations influence the reflexivity of
those involved (Donati, 2011)
― Ensures a clear focus for concerns, actions, practices, …
• Scope to establish social relations on the
basis of both human and non-human qualities
― Relations involving reciprocal relations between subjects vs
functional/prescribed processes.
― Provides a realistic basis to ground social justice or to
enhance moral conduct.

6. INTEGRATING RELATIONS INTO
PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
• Integrating a relation offers a means to bridge
between subjects with different perspectives.
― Essential for professional practice with a direct function in
relation to others (e.g. as typically with medicine rather than
engineering).
• Incorporating the perspectives of others plays
a key role in the related literature on reflective
practice.
• Introduce relations linking students to:
― clients, client activists, employers, experts, peers, those from
other professions …

7. PLANNING PROVISION
• Provides a focus for the student’s experience
of learning, affecting:
― time-tabled events, facilitation, use of social media,
residential arrangements, …
• Impact on the client or other party considered
in the educational setting
― reflective assignments, joint projects, …
• To what extent is detachment from the client
an important factor?
― working with other’s clients rather than with one’s own.

8. SHIFTING PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
• Provides a basis for specific forms of
professional practice:
― relations shape new ways of thinking, forms of
practice, social organisation, etc. in the subsequent
professional setting.
• Reflexivity will be affected by the actual
relations selected and the context for the
encounter
― affects underlying ideals in play, addressing meta-reflexivity
as well as a professionally-oriented communicative
reflexivity.

9. CONCLUSIONS
• Professional education that takes into
account the notion of a range of goods that
are associated with the stakeholders involved
• A means to refocus professional education on
a more fully human basis.
• Things could be otherwise if social relations
mattered to a greater extent in professional
education and professional practice.

10. REFERENCES
Archer, M. (2003) Structure, agency and the internal conversation.
Cambridge: CUP.
Donati, P. (2011) Relational sociology: a new paradigm for the social
sciences. London: Routledge.
Note: please see the accompanying paper for a full set of references.
See also: Kahn P E (2013) ‘Theorising student engagement in higher
education’, British Educational Research Journal, (available online 7th
October 2013 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/berj.3121/full)