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Research into the experience of BSc Psychology students and graduates in the graduate transition was carried out to enquire if ontology is central to educational transformation; if professional work experience is important in the process of becoming; and how graduates experience the transition from student to professional. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

In this qualitative longitudinal in-depth interview investigation four one-year work placement students were interviewed twice and five graduates were interviewed at graduation and again two years later. Student transcriptions were analysed thematically and graduate transcriptions received interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Placement students became legitimate participants in professional life. Graduates thought that BSc Psychology should enable a career and were dissatisfied when it did not. Professional psychology dominated career aspiration. Relationships and participation in work communities of practice were highly significant for learning, personal and professional identity and growth.

Ontology may be central to educational transformation in BSc Psychology and is facilitated by integrated work experience. A more vocational focus is also advocated.

The UK Bachelor’s degree in psychology is increasingly concerned with employability however becoming a professional requires acting and being as well as knowledge and skills and Barnett and others have called for higher education to embrace an ontological turn. This is explored in the context of BSc Psychology student experience and reflection on work placements, graduation and early career development.

This paper aims to examine the nature of learning discovered by recent graduates participating in a symphony orchestra‐initiated development program that is designed to nurture them through the transition to becoming professional orchestral musicians.

Using a qualitative case study approach, the authors interviewed developing musicians and professional musician mentors individually and in small groups using a semi‐structured protocol. Interviews were audio‐taped and transcribed. The authors also observed musicians working together in rehearsal and in concert performance and reviewed documents on the development program, the organisation and the Australian performing arts industry.

The findings suggest that learning is better conceptualised as an embodied constructed experience with others in context. What the authors call “guided contextualising” differs from conventional discussions of skill‐based novice learning and mentorship. For musicians, the competency that is being developed is one of learning how to become, forming a sense of identity as broader musical citizens as well as becoming members of more instrumental communities.

The design and structure of the program (and alternatives emerging overseas) suggest possibilities for new collaborations towards “a living curriculum” between higher education and industry.

Rather than “employability”, the concept of “graduateness” for young adults is formative and transformative, a process that involves the seeking of various forms of identity and contextualised learning that transcends self. “Becoming” practitioners together in generative ways enhances fitness for professional practice and develops a commitment to lifelong learning.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of dress codes in professions. Since they can be considered as carriers of both organizational communication and individual identity, they will be central in professions as communities and through the professionalization process. Therefore, we will ask the following question: what is the role of understanding and complying with dress codes in becoming a professional?

The empirical study consists in a series of ethnographic interviews and observations aiming at understanding dress codes' roles and dynamics in financial professions.

Exploring dress codes in three typical professions in finance, we have discovered that they also are mediums of communication within the group, strengthening a certain aesthetic sense of belonging and of presenting the self.

In this, becoming a professional can be understood as an aesthetic experience through which all senses are involved. Considering professions as being also aesthetic communities shifts the focus – or rather enlarges it – toward symbolic, corporeal and sensorial elements.

The purpose of this study was to explore how the migration experiences of international accounting professionals were shaped by colonial structures and how, through their interactions with other professionals, migrants hybridize their professional identities and the profession in Canada.

A post-colonial analysis of the career narratives of international accounting professionals who migrated to Canada.

This paper illustrates how explicit and formal requirements for transformation, as well as the more subtle informal demands of employers and clients, require non-Western professionals to transform personal characteristics in ways that make them more “Canadian” or “professional”. Findings show that mimicry takes many forms, with some professionals becoming “consummate mimics”, while others discuss their transition in ways that highlight resistance (“reluctant mimics”) and the demands that systematically frustrate and exclude many non-Western professionals from full participation in the “global” profession in Canada (“frustrated mimics”).

This paper contributes to the existing scholarly literature on the persistence of colonial structures in shaping the experiences of colonized people even as they migrate in search of better opportunities decades after the colonial structures have been formally dismantled. It builds on Bhabha’s (1994) work illustrating that colonial structures are susceptible to change through action and interaction. We hope this study contributes to social change by providing some insights into how mimicry, resistance and hybridization may disrupt the unreflexive enactment of colonial structures that sustain inequality.

This study extends the literature on professional migration using a postcolonial perspective to empirically examine the lived experience of the colonial encounter and professionals transition their professional identities across borders.

This examination of the higher education landscape now shifts to consider the relationship between the university and the teaching profession. The intention of this chapter is to focus on pre-service teacher education to examine how professional identity and university curriculum have become managed. This chapter will introduce the conception of the scholarly blind eye to illustrate how performativity works in the modernised university and three central arguments are forwarded. Firstly, that pre-service teacher education programs are increasingly managed from outside the university. Secondly, that this represents a significant change to higher education. And thirdly, that higher education is contributing to the reworking of teacher identity.

This chapter draws on a larger study on beginning teachers and on their experiences of becoming a teacher in unprecedented challenging circumstances in Portugal. The aim is to look at the ways in which changes in policy and school context, as well as in personal and professional context, impact teachers’ professional identity over time. Two beginning teachers’ accounts are used to illustrate the key influencing factors that have impacted the development of professional identities. Four main themes emerged: (a) the influence of context, both at a policy and social level and at a school level; (b) the importance of relationships in teaching, particularly with students and colleagues; (c) the emergence of inner tensions resulting from the mismatch between strong beliefs and reality; and (d) the role of emotions in (re)defining teachers’ practice of teaching and teachers’ identity development. The chapter concludes with the discussion of the findings and their implications.

Much research to date on professional transitions has focused on predicting them and then preparing individual practitioners to navigate transitions as sites of struggle. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine, within the context of professional practice and learning, diverse theoretical approaches that are currently prominent in researching transitions and to propose future directions for research.

The paper begins by describing work contexts integral with professional transitions: regulation, governance and accountability; new work structures; and knowledge development. The discussion then examines transitions research in developmental psychology, lifecourse sociology, and career studies. These perspectives are compared critically in terms of questions and approaches, contributions to understanding professional transitions, and limitations.

The implications for educators are a series of critical questions about research and education directed to support transitions in professional learning and work. Future directions and questions for research in professional transitions are suggested in the final section, along with implications for supporting professional learning in these transitions.

The paper is not intended to be comprehensive, but to identify issues for the reader's consideration in thinking about various forms of transition being experienced by professions and professionals. The discussion is theory‐based, exploratory, and indicative, rather than definitive.

Reviews a range of theories, concepts and learning approaches that are relevant to the development of professionals. Goes on to take a look at how professionals actually learn, once they are in practice. The latter is based on empirical research conducted across 20 professions. Reports on the range of experiences and events that practitioners had found particularly formative in helping them become fully competent professionals; this point often not having been reached until long after their formal professional training had ended. An attempt is made to relate the formative experiences reported to particular theoretical approaches to learning. The experiences are classified into a number of general kinds of “learning mechanism” and these are placed within a “taxonomy of informal professional learning methods”. The results of the research should be of use both to professional developers and to individual professionals. They should assist developers in their planning of placements or post‐formal training. They should help individual professionals to maximise their professional learning, by seeking out particular kinds of experience and making the most of those that come their way.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on transition of engineering graduates to work. It asks: “What approaches and enabling activities can organisational induction programs use to support successful transition to practice for new-career engineers?”

The paper is grounded in literature review; it discusses central themes in the literature relating to transition to the workplace for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) graduates. These include: skills required for the workplace; challenging factors in the transition to workplace; and, disciplinary socialisation.

There is a lack of literature that explores the design of workplace induction programs to assist novice engineers transition to professional work. An emerging topic in the literature is educational institution and employing organisation co-production of induction and transition to work programs.

Much of the literature relating to transition to work programs is from higher education rather than from the viewpoint of the workplace. This review contributes to knowledge of transition to work for early-career engineers from the perspective of workplace development programs.