The unexpected outcomes of critical professional learning

The ability to study in a more autonomous and independent way is one of the key student competencies promoted by government-sponsored initiatives such as the Improving Student Learning Project and Enterprise in Higher Education. These initiatives seem to be driven by, among other things, the ever-present concern for improved productivity, the influence of educational psychology, and the technicist concerns of government policy (Furlong and Maynard, 1995). This chapter reports on a study of small-scale innovation in the context of a course designed to provide a post-experience, professional qualification in community and youth work. Critical professional learning describes both the intended style of learning and its purposes. The chapter identifies the assumptions that underpin the development, briefly describing the course, the research methodology and relevant parts of the research results, and discusses the findings in the light of appropriate educational theory. We focus on the element of the research results which identified some specific difficulties experienced by students; we discuss these as the interesting, but unexpected, consequences of the learning innovations.