Redland Papers, Autumn 1996 pp1-8

The debate between whether professional practitioners should be 'educated' or 'trained' has been intensified by recent Governmental intervention in some professional fields. However, it is a potentially sterile debate, particularly when conducted within a framework which is fundamentally positivistic. One way in which it can be transcended is to replace the technical-rational world-view of traditional education and training with one which respects the individuality and uniqueness of knowing and learning. By supporting processes - such as reflecting, enquiring and creating - which enable practice and theory to be developed and redeveloped, learners can be assisted to develop here-and-now skills alongside more transcendent understandings which enable contextual location and a critical and creative level of ongoing development.

Recent years have seen the gradual emergence of a wide-ranging debate on whether professional development is about education or training. In the UK, tensions can be observed between on the one hand a desire to broaden out initial professional development and encourage a more thoughtful form of practice, as exemplified in teacher education and management education, and on the other a move towards more pragmatic forms of development, often in the workplace and to predefined standards of competence (see for instance Hall & Millard 1994). The debate is sometimes framed in economic, political or social terms, but for the purposes of this article it is sufficient to recognise that there can be tensions between the needs to develop basically proficient practitioners quickly but at the same time promote a more transcendent and independent form of professionalism.

As a consultant and practitioner in learning and development with roots in both education and training, I have a personal interest and involvement in this issue. In this article, my aim is to identify some of the key premises underlying the debate, and then reframe them in order to transcend it and point a way forward.

The structure of the education-training debate is essentially the same at all levels, from early-years education through to higher education and the development of people for and at work. Applying it to the development of learning professionals, this is neatly apparent: for as Fish (1995) points out in the context of teacher development, "... offering would-be professionals a set of clear-cut routines and behaviours, and pre-packaged content which requires only an efficient means of delivery ... in turn makes assumptions that teaching and learning are relatively simple interactions in which the practitioner gives out and pupils take in" (p38). My purpose here is however to examine the debate principally in the context of professional development, although keeping in mind this wider context.

A useful way of looking at the debate is to consider the position of each side in simple terms, and then identify the tension between them. A traditional educational model of professional development typically stresses knowledge, understanding and theory, and the ability to use them to analyse situations and create solutions to problems. It is pitched at a level which is broader than the immediate demands of practice, and ideally develops abilities which give the developing practitioner flexibility and choice, and which are still relevant when practice moves on; it provides principles from which specific abilities can be developed in context. A training model on the other hand aims to enable the practitioner to operate proficiently in the here-and-now situation, and concerns itself more with immediate skill and competence, which can be updated through further training as demands change. In principle there should be no reason why both models cannot be combined in a single approach, but in practice there is an underlying tension between the behaviourally based perspective of the training model, and the more cognitive one of the educational approach. Essentially, from a training standpoint, knowledge underpins and supports skill and competence, and is therefore secondary to it; but from an educational view, knowledge and understanding are primary as they provide flexibility and choice and therefore enable skill and competence to be redeveloped and recontextualised as needs and contexts change and the practitioner moves forward.

Given these divergent perspectives, any combined approach is revealed as a potentially uneasy compromise. However, the debate itself is often framed within a set of self-sealing assumptions, and it is only when these are questioned and overturned that resolution is possible.

Three key assumptions which need to be challenged are these:

First, the debate is embedded in a positivistic or technical-rational framework, even if some of the arguments which take place around it have a more interpretive dimension. Basically, it assumes a one-way relationship in which knowledge is used to develop skill which is then applied in practice. This neatly positions education, which develops knowledge and understanding, further up the hierarchy but also makes it more detached from (and therefore from the opposing viewpoint, less relevant to) practice, while training, which develops skill, is placed at a more grounded or applied level which directly informs the practitioner's work (but lacks the depth which enables adaptability and internally-generated change).

Secondly, and related to the first assumption, theory is assumed to be detached from practice and even to exist in a somewhat vague relationship with it. Indeed, this distinction is such a part of everyday speech that it hardly needs further elaboration; 'theoretical' and 'practical' are rarely taken as being anything other than opposites, despite Kurt Lewin's assertion that there is nothing so practical as a good theory (Lewin, 1946). Again, the relationship is viewed as one-way with theory informing practice through the mediation of applied knowledge and technique; practice only legitimately creates new theory when it has been thoroughly researched, objectified and codified.

Thirdly, there is the assumption that it is education and training which are important, rather than learning and development. An obvious point perhaps, but in naming things we attach to them assumptions implicit in our readings of the names themselves, and both words have at their root a presupposition of passivity, that learners need to be led rather than allowed to lead.

Perhaps the easiest assumption to start with is that concerning 'education' and 'training' themselves. A simple device perhaps, but if these labels are abandoned in favour of what learners actually need to do - learn and develop - then there will at least be less temptation to wander from the real issue of how to conceptualise and support learning and development than what to call it. Clearly, this doesn't move towards clarifying how this learning and developing might take place or how best to support it, but it does reduce the potential for dogmatic limitations.

The second step is to reframe the entire debate in a perspective which is not positivistic or technical- rational in nature, but sees knowledge as being personal to the practitioner-learner (rather than as an external, objectified body) and interacting with practice rather than being applied to it: knowledge informs practice, and is equally generated and reconstructed by it (cf Schön 1983, Fosnot 1989). The result is that the development of knowledge is seen as intimately intertwined with practice rather than done at a remote distance and then applied; in fact, the idea of 'knowledge' as being separable from the knower disappears. Similarly theory; for personal theory is as much developed through practice as it is through reading or listening, and all practice which is not simply mechanical (i.e. based on technique alone) involves the use of theory on the part of the practitioner. In this constructivist perspective there is therefore a cyclic or spiral relationship in which theory and practice interact with each other and have the potential to continually modify each other, rather than existing in a one-way hierarchy.

The key point is that this represents a different underlying philosophy of learning and developing, as opposed to adding a constructivist or reflective practitioner approach into existing models of education or training. To successfully embrace it there must be willingness to set aside the professional syllabus, curriculum or competence framework as the central point for development, and start with the practitioner-learner as the focus for a deep level of learning which develops and enhances practice, but also goes far beyond the immediate practice situation.

To abandon the mainstays of traditional education and training requires a process which is demonstrably rigorous in terms of producing learning which leads to ongoing development, and confidently effective at developing here-and-now performance. If education is to be abandoned, how is open-ended personal and professional development ensured, and if training is abandoned, how can the developing practitioner be helped to become competent and efficient within a reasonable timescale?

I believe the key to this dilemma is provided by a model based on processes which are central to both learning and to professional practice, and which are defined at a sufficiently high logical level to be all-embracing. While other conceptualisations are possible, my preference is to define learning as three intertwined processes: reflecting, enquiring, and creating, or perhaps more formally reflecting on theory and practice, critically enquiring into theory and practice, and creating practice and theory.

These processes can be thought of as meta-abilities at the highest level, for they provide a powerful methodology for creating and continually enhancing effective practice, as well as for exploring horizons and pushing forward personal and conceptual boundaries in a process of lifelong learning. Applying them at a deep, critical and creative level - surfacing and questioning taken-for-granted assumptions, resolving underlying conflicts, engaging between practice and exisiting theories, working with the deep structure or pattern of situations, and creating value-congruent outcomes rather than merely solving problems - provides a methodology of excellence for professional practice and personal growth in any field (cf Schön 1987, Senge 1990, Fritz 1991). Incidentally, it also provides a basis for professional and academic accreditation and rigour which is based on a philosophy of personal theory-practice and practitioner-centredness rather than being premised in the questionable notion of mastering somebody else's knowledge; and in the tradition of interpretive or creative 'Model B' professionality (Lester 1995), it provides the practitioner with a model which transcends the boundaries suggested by academic disciplines and institutional departments, professional bodies, or socially constructed professions.

The process model has at least three major implications for people involved in professional development. First, the primary purpose of support becomes not so much to teach or train, but to facilitate the development of the processes in practical contexts, and facilitate practice and personal and professional growth through reflecting, enquiring and creating. This doesn't proscribe teaching knowledge and skills, but it does mean fostering an approach which is about regarding what is taught as material for enquiry, experimentation and creative synthesis rather than as something which can be taken for granted and simply replicated in routinised practice or regurgitated in a slightly different form in an essay or exam. Obviously, there will be some areas of practice where it is necessary to follow certain rules, for instance for safety or legal reasons, but this doesn't mean that enquiry is to be closed off; to the contrary, redundant or counterproductive rules may be being followed because nobody has thought to question them (cf Stewart 1990).

Secondly, there is a role in guiding the developing practitioner through the initial period of development when some form of structure or map will be appreciated: what range of things are covered in the profession, what standards and ethics are likely to be expected, what are the key theories and sources of information, what skills are needed, and so on. Doing this thoughtfully involves giving support and enabling shortcuts to effectiveness, but at the same time it also means helping the learner to develop enquiring and creative responses rather than unreflective conformance.

Thirdly, there is a role in working with practitioners to help them engage with their own practice and behaviour, and with the context in which it is situated. In my experience this is equally as applicable to experienced practitioners as it is to novices, for a variety of reasons from the presence of the 'blind / undiscovered self' (Huntley 1990) and the tendency to become complacent about familiar situations and absorbed into their deceptions (Argyris 1990), to the the simple benefits of a 'critical friend' with a possibly different perspective and logic.

While some educators and trainers will identify what I am advocating with their models of training or education, and in effect what I describe is no different from what some facilitators of learning do already, there is little here which can be claimed exclusively by either term. This approach to learning and developing is effective in giving practitioners usable skills in the short term, making it capable of meeting the kind of demands for competence and efficiency increasingly made by Governments; but it also facilitates the longer-term person-centred aims associated with more progressive education, and which are essential for sustained, adaptable and creative professionalism. What it does not do is to encourage either unreflective conformance to predefined standards or procedures, or the unquestioning accumulation of knowledge and theory. Rather, it develops a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between theory and practice which fuels both professional excellence and flexibility and lifelong learning and development.

Stan Lester
Stan Lester Developments, Sherwood House, 137 Kingston Road, Taunton TA2 7SR
telephone 01823 333091, email [initial].[lastname]@devmts.demon.co.uk

This article was first published in Redland Papers, a publication of the University of the West of England. Copyright reserved.

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