Transforming practice

In our dynamic times professional practitioners face many external pressures which create and demand changes to our work environments and practices. The active (chosen) transformation of practice by practitioners is part of a professional responsibility to continue to provide quality and relevant services, and part of the drive of professions or organisations to retain or enhance their viability in a competitive and accountability-seeking context. This chapter focuses on practice development which involves external facilitation. It addresses the general question of how outside facilitators (academics working in institutions that focus either on practice development or theory development) can relate with practice organisations, so that people in the practice organisation are encouraged and skilled to pursue their own growth patterns and transform their professional practice. A conceptual framework is offered that illustrates the vision of how insider-outside relationships can be designed so that effective, reciprocal relationships are fostered. Four processes that can be used to promote transformation of the practices of those in the practice organisation are described.