Students’ Constructions of Professional Judgement in Teacher Education, Medical Education and Police Education

Abstract

Professional higher education encompasses the development of relational skills and professional judgement, especially in welfare professions where close contact with people is essential, such as policing, teaching and health care. In the current article, using a cross-professional analysis, we explore how students from three different professional education programmes – teacher education, police education and medical education – construct professional judgement in group discussions and interviews. The results show that participants construct professional judgement as a relationship between three different dimensions: personal ethics, educational standards and professional practice. The examples in this article show how students utilise these three different dimensions when discussing professional dilemmas to account for choices that they (would) make as being morally or ethically sound. We argue that these results shed light on the importance of providing students with opportunities to reflect openly on professional judgement in different ways, even though this may not currently be examined or graded in their education. Furthermore, the analysis demonstrates similarities between the three examined programmes, as well as similar student reflections on essential aspects of the professions.

Keywords

• ethics
• higher education
• professional education
• reflective practice
• welfare professions