Defining Professional Practice

I wanted to develop a possible definition of professional practice to support my students. This is my initial thoughts:

Professional Practice might be understood to mean any work that demands a high level of specialist knowledge, that is sustained and developed over time, and which is guided by trans-disciplinary principles and conventions.

Professional practice has grown in importance for both individuals and work organisations in recent years and has several important features. Firstly, individuals value the status they believe that ‘professionalised’ work implies as it mimics some, if not most of the conventions established in the chartered professions. Secondly, the professionalization of occupations has provided a useful anchor in the development of standards of professional behaviour that has raised the expectations of society from workers. Thirdly, in a ‘super-complex’ world, the notion of professional practice has offered the individual worker the means to explore, understand and establish their own set of professional principles and conventions in types of work not previously considered worthy of such status. This has enriched work and made it special for the worker with the resulting benefits to both the worker and recipients of the work.