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This chapter develops a model of professionalism via a synthesis of three extant theories from the sociology of the professions literature. Nine components or conditions of the model are used to trace the historical development of public accountancy through an Early Era from 1850 to 1929 and a Modern Era from 1930 to the mid-1980s. The conclusion is that concerted efforts over an approximate 130 year period were needed for accountancy to achieve elite professional status in the eyes of the U.S. public. The question remaining is if accountants have forgotten the history lessons on what has been required to achieve and sustain elite professional status?

This article is the third in a trilogy of articles that discuss the professionalism (or deprofessionalism) of the accounting profession. The first examines the slow uphill climb of accounting and auditing practice to the level of being recognized as a highly trusted profession. The second examines the stagnation in professionalism leading to deprofessionalization of the accounting profession. This third article looks at the resulting directionless efforts of accounting and auditing firms in the wake of major deprofessionalization events. The interest in this study is the time period immediately following the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 which is described in this paper as the “Post-SOX” history of public accountancy in the United States. During this time period, nearly equally mixed activities of professionalism and deprofessionalism have resulted in a status quo with directionless efforts doing little if anything to reverse decline in professionalism. Public accountants continued to experience conflict with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over independence rules. The large Certified Public Accountant firms generated controversies and squabbles concerning “auditing and consulting,” while at the same time they faced questions regarding the marketing and selling of aggressive tax shelters. In addition, most of the self-regulating aspects of the profession declined dramatically following passage of SOX. While initially both tax fees and audit fees of CPA firms increased during this time period, concerns are again arising as the large CPA firms more recently have renewed the emphasis on advisory services. While revenues have both increased and changed in composition during the post-SOX era, public opinion has maintained a status quo. The post-SOX era has also seen a weakening in the Code of Conduct, providing more liberties for CPAs to maximize self-interest. Meanwhile, the PCAOB faced constitutional challenges, while at the same time the AICPA experienced strong divisions in its membership. To provide some sense to these directionless efforts, this study, similar to the prior two articles in this trilogy, concludes with a summary analysis based on the nine SOCRECELIST criteria, and the question whether public accountants have learned their history lesson.

Maturana and Varela (1980, p. 78f) provided the following definition of autopoiesis: “An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components that produces the components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in the space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network.” This definition shows that for Maturana and Varela, autopoietic systems are systems that define, maintain, and reproduce themselves. The notion of machine that they employ in the definition might seem a bit misleading because we tend to think of machines as mechanistic and nonliving, but Maturana and Varela (e.g., 1987) in later publications have preferred to speak of autopoietic organizations.

To shed light on how gender norms are reproduced in medical training and practice through an exploration of representations of the problem of “work–life balance.” Women physicians and women physician-researchers (WPs/WPRs) in Canada and in the United States experience social and health inequities when compared to their men colleagues. Despite current medical school acceptance parity, upon entering the medical workforce, women work harder than men to succeed within the historically male-dominated structures and value system of the medical profession.

We performed a critical discourse analysis of articles retrieved from academic databases and leading Anglo-American journals that discussed “work–life balance,” to investigate how the discourse contributed to, or challenged, the reproduction of gender norms in medicine.

While the medical literature acknowledges that the social and health inequities experienced by WP/WPR result from discriminatory norms and practices, it neglects to challenge built-in gendered inequities in benchmarks for success in the profession. Instead, proposed solutions require that WP/WPR themselves learn to cope and make better lifestyle choices, including downloading domestic responsibilities on socially disadvantaged – racialized and poor – women. Authors’ gender appears to make no difference.

Our search was limited to the Anglo-American literature, often retrieved articles inaccessible via our university library, excluded informal venues (e.g., blogs), and did not include cases of same-sex couples or interviews of WP/WPR. All these may have challenged components of our argument by revealing more nuanced debates, occurring under different political, cultural, and economic contexts.

While individual choices of WP/WPR are important to the protagonists, to successfully address the very real problem of work–life balance experienced by WP/WPR, patriarchal norms should be challenged, failure to comply with these norms should be rejected as explanations for work–life balance challenges, and norms themselves should become the focus of analysis and intervention.

The medical language used by physicians of both genders normalizes gendered inequities, favoring the success of medical men over women, and reproducing the professional and personal disadvantages experienced by the latter, further burdening socially disadvantaged women.

This chapter examines the significance of the fact that the fundamental outlook of modern religion according to Bellah, is compatible with the description of reality and the system of analytic concepts crystallized by Giddens and Habermas in their analysis of modern society. The conceptual common denominator between these three researchers indicates that Bellah's as well as Giddens’ and Habermas’ thought include an anti-nomological reflexive scientific-educative narrative that reflects a vision of the desired face of human society. A vision calling for the encouragement of continual reflexivity and the personal involvement of the individual in constructing his social reality. This common denominator brings to light a transition in the sociological-theoretical arena – flexing past borders created between theoretical streams in light of the fact that the roots of Bellah's thought lie in the Functionalistic tradition, Giddens’ in the Positivistic tradition and Habermas’ in the neo-Kantian tradition.

This essay addresses the issue of incorporating comparative and international education research into teacher education by addressing how the field of comparative education is defined, the essential skills and knowledges that students must have in order to properly “consume” comparative research, the degree to which teacher education is presently equipped to effectively incorporate comparative research into its programming, and the changes needed to bring comparative research more squarely into the domain of teacher education. I argue that the study of comparative education research necessitates a foundational base, formed through serious and rigorous engagement with core courses in the social sciences and humanities as well as social foundations course in education. I advance that without this base, we run a greater risk of seeing comparative research become appropriated into a technocratic paradigm that governs much of what presently constitutes teacher education. The essay calls for the introduction of comparative education research into teacher education simultaneously with the advancement of the other social foundation courses, along with aggressive advocacy for a broader liberal arts core.

Both the history and the historiography of SI show that multiple “different definitions and boundaries” have been applied to the subject of study (Atkinson & Housley, 2003, p. vii). Yet, despite the commonly agreed-upon understanding of SI's heterogeneity, in practice the institutional and disciplinary core of SI unmistakeably resides in its American heartland. For instance, Reynolds and Herman-Kinney (2003a, 2003b, p. ix) preface their fine Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism by aiming at making it “a fine addition to the sociological literature” (my emphasis). Maines (2001, 2003) himself – the most visible critic of the dissolution of SI – focuses on the growing invisibility of interactionism across American sociological theory and research while Fine (1993) and Sandstrom and Fine (2003, p. 1041) find that the “glorious triumph” of SI is due to its successes in “social psychology, medical sociology, deviance, social problems, collective behavior, cultural studies, media studies, the sociology of emotions, the sociology of art, environmental sociology, race relations, social organization, social movements, and political sociology” – hardly an interdisciplinary outlook.

The focus of this chapter is to compare and contrast two Master of Education programs, one in Louisiana, United States, the other in Ontario, Canada. Our discussion addresses program design including focus of the graduate degree; admission requirements; number of instructor contact hours; nature and dimensions of course content; culminating activities such as e-portfolios, Master's Research Projects, field experiences, internships, and theses; professional and program standards; as well as assessment procedures and accountability requirements. The ongoing pressure to improve our schools in an increasingly competitive global environment has heightened educational standards and expectations as never before (Cowie & Crawford, 2007). In these times of increased accountability and financial strain for publicly funded universities, this analysis of contemporary trends and processes may provide some relevant insight into current practices for those presenting graduate programs.