Being an Expert Professional Practitioner

Chapter 1: Introducing the resourceful practitionerChapter 2: Expertise: the relational turnChapter 3: Knowledge work at practice boundariesChapter 4: Relational agency: working with other practitionersChapter 5: Working relationally with clientsChapter 6: Being a professionalChapter 7: Working upstreamChapter 8: Researching the relational in practices

This is a groundbreaking book for two main reasons in that it develops new perspectives on expertise and agency. The thinking was forged through a long term engagement with research which has examined professional learning and systems development and functioning in the public sector in the UK. This work drew attention to the multiprofessional nature of new and emerging forms of professional work and the need for professionals to develop new and relational forms of expertise. The development of an understanding and appreciation of the capabilities and priorities of other professional service providers has become a major imperative in modern welfare services. This book argues for, and illustrates, the building of common knowledge that stretches across boundaries and  in turn mediates the exercise of relational agency . In short this book announces the need for an enhanced form of professionalism which has major implications for professional work and learning as well as training. It is well written and accessible to a wide audience. It is, without doubt, a major contribution. It sheds new light on a field which is in danger of instrumental codification rather than, as this book does with such elegance, promotes an understanding of complexity and subtlety of the ways in which new forms of work emerge.Harry Daniels, University of Bath