The purpose of this article is to provide information describing the characteristics of a profession. The objective is to present documentation and an educated opinion of how these characteristics may relate to instructional technology and distance education (ITDE). A brief look at the history of ITDE leads us to James Finn and his six…

Adaptive expertise has been promoted as an emerging model of expertise in health professions education in response to the inherent complexities of patient care; however, as the concept increasingly influences the structure of professional training and practice, it creates the potential for misunderstandings of the definition and implications of…

Reasoning, reflective practice, and evidence-based practice are essential skills for occupational therapy practitioners, but it is unclear how these skills are defined in occupational therapy education. We used Delphi methodology to explore educator conceptualizations of clinical reasoning, professional reasoning, reflective practice, and…

Threshold concepts (TCs) are increasingly used in health professions education (HPE) research. TCs are claimed to be conceptual gateways which are often traversed with substantial difficulty. In this paper, we report on a scoping review investigating the following research question: What is the scope and nature of the currently available research…

This article proposes the expansion of the definition and scope of a "profession" to explicitly incorporate issues of ethics, equity, environment and philanthropy to meet the demands of the 21st century. Governing bodies (professional designations, certificates and licensures) that develop and advance fields of study are tasked with…

The assumed impossibility of forming a widely accepted view of social work is explained on the one hand by the contesting nature of social work definitions and on the other by a loss of professional identity since the 1960s. The aim of the article is to elaborate a third explanation based on the hypothesis that social workers adhere to their…

Purpose: Understanding the context of urban agriculture in a rural state is critical for the success of and collaboration between local food actors and other organizations, such as the Cooperative Extension Service. This study aimed to determine a local definition of urban agriculture for Arkansas and investigated the context of urban agriculture…

Purpose: The focus on innovation as a foundational element of enhanced organisational performance has led to the promoting and valuing of greater levels of employee participation in innovation processes. An emergent concept of employee-driven innovation could be argued to have hindered understandings of the creative and transformative nature of…

International curricular redevelopment and quality improvement efforts include integration within and across disciplines as a focal point. Definitions and applications of the term 'integration' vary routinely in health professions education literature, weakening opportunities to enhance our educational practice through collaborative,…

Modern dictionaries define "authoritarian" (which traces back to the French "autoritaire" meaning "imperious") as something characterized by the unquestioning submission to power. Scholars in education borrowed this term from social psychology, where it was used to analyze types of leadership in terms of how they…

There is no denying that the influence and use of technology in relation to teaching and learning increased significantly during the Co-Vid-19 periods of isolation and lockdown. The screen became the classroom; the teacher (and the students), rendered as apparitions of virtuality. Nevertheless, despite the barriers of distance and screen, there…

Journalistic competency is a constitutive element of professional values and practices in journalism. But what constitutes journalistic competency in today's ever-changing media landscape? Existing literature lacks theoretical and empirical understandings of journalistic competency, especially in broadcasting. Drawing on Cheetham and Chivers's…

Through the professionalization process, an occupation transforms into a profession. Although much scholarship has situated academic advising as a professional endeavor, in the past few years, the authors of two papers posited that advising is not a profession, a contention not shared by all within the advising community. Despite much scholarly…

Development of a professional identity may contribute to persistence in an engineering major. Further, perceiving alignment of one's career values to engineering as well as believing that one is enacting engineering during coursework are expected to support identity formation. Using mixed methods approaches, we explored data provided by 186…

Abraham Flexner contended that "something more than a degree or claim" is needed to make a profession. He further asserted that the definitions of a profession require recasting over time. This article critically considers recasting licensing as something more for social work. Analysis of past and present discourse on licensing in social…