Professionalism and the auto/biographical imagination

Auto/biographical narrative imagination provides a meaningful contribution to the development and understanding of positive dynamics in professional life, and learning and processes of realizing a satisfying professionalism, if never quite in conditions of our own choosing. Auto/biography involves the capability to draw, reflexively and symbolically, on our own biographies to help illuminate the lives of others. There are clusters of young researchers exercising the auto/biographical imagination in new aesthetically satisfying and interdisciplinary ways, bringing renewed promise for the future. A common finding among them is that professionalism encompasses deeply personal dimensions in a complex conscious and unconscious, cognitive and emotional relational dynamic. Professional lives have become more complex in a world where notions of professionalism are deeply contested. The imperatives of care and prudence in professional life are compromised by regimes of regulation and accountability as well as evidence-based practice.