Abstract
Professional practice can be conceptualised holistically, and in fact during the 1990s the ‘Australian model’ of integrated or holistic competence emerged empirically. This piece outlines that story, and then develops a more rigorous conceptual analysis of what it is to make competent practical judgements, through inferences, in context-specific and accountable ways (such as to one’s peer group of professionals, or to the public). Current research interest in the Schonian swamp-like messiness of judgements (e.g. in clinical medicine) is drawn upon to advance a new epistemology of practice, which takes seriously the ‘know how’ of real work situations, as the basis for a revival of Aristotelianphronesis.
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Part 2 of this paper is based on Beckett (2004). Quotations are data from a UTS project on professionals’ workplace learning, directed by Paul Hager and David Beckett (2000-1).