Pedagogical Principles for the Professions: Promoting a Self-Regulatory Approach

• In Event: 52.083 - Roundtable Session 19
  In Roundtable Session: 52.083-10 - From Challenges to Opportunities: Pedagogical Principles for the Next Generation of Educating Professionals

Abstract

Within the professions, learners have to cope with the multifarious demands placed on them as they navigate, make sense of, and participate in academic and professional learning contexts. The development of learners’ self-regulatory skills (to include cognitive, metacognitive, and emotional regulation) (Vermunt, 1996) is essential in supporting learners’ self-management of their own learning and responsibility to others as part of individual and collective endeavour.
To support the development of self-regulatory practice within the professions a research-informed inclusive participatory pedagogical framework to support learning within the professions will be outlined. This framework emphasizes a holistic approach to learning and teaching; it is based on an integrative theoretical framework drawing on constructivist (Hatzipanagos & Warburton, 2009), socio-cultural (Gipps, 2002), socio-critical (Butin, 2005) theoretical frameworks and it has been used successfully in medical and teacher education contexts (Authors 2015a). This framework highlights the importance of making the principles underpinning professional educational practice explicit.
Using a critical and inclusive pedagogical approach within the professions, the importance of the following principles are highlighted:
• Pedagogies should be research-informed and evidence-based in drawing on the best ways to develop specific disciplinary knowledge and skills (Authors 2015a).
• Emphasis should be placed on the development of critical reflection and reflexivity skills in order to consider professional identity development (Dvir & Avissar, 2013). Exploration of values and beliefs are central to the notion of critical professional identity.
• The centrality of the learner in the process (Newcombe & Stieff, 2012).
• Recognition of the unique starting points of learners (Wong & Nunan, 2011)
• Emphasis should be on the transformative potential of learning (Mezirow, 2000) through encouragement of autonomous professional development and personal responsibility in learning.
• The relational dimension of learning should be prioritised in order to support learners to develop sensitivity to the contexts in which they are working (Higgs & Titchen, 2001).
• Deep approaches to learning and practice within the discipline(s) should be made explicit. As part of this, clarifying the requirements of the discipline is essential. In placing emphasis on understanding, the focus should be on core concepts and threshold concepts (those likely to prove problematic to learners).
• In supporting student resilience in learning persistence and adaptability should be promoted.
• To support transfer and adaptation of ideas the tacit nature of knowledge needs to be made explicit to learners (Grossman et al., 2009).
• Assessment should be authentic and prepare learners to be able to manage current and future requirements of the discipline in practice (Authors, 2015b; Lombardi, 2007).
• Feedback should be sustainable (Boud, 2000) in enabling learners’ to self-evaluate and self-monitor their own performance (Eva & Regehr, 2011).
Using this inclusive framework an example will be provided of how these principles can been enacted in practice through the use of a model to promote resilience in learning within professional learning contexts. The model as demonstrated in Figure 1 considers the self, the pedagogy, and the self in context.

Author

• Carol Evans, University of Southampton