The Preparation of Human Service Professionals.

New forms of preparing workers in the human services have the potential of changing and improving those services. A central feature of the new forms of preparation is that they must both be preparatory for the services and be characteristic of them (for example, if the services are participatory in nature, the training should also be so). There is a common cycle in the history of training for doctors, lawyers, social workers, and teachers. Initially, the training of practitioners took place outside the university. Around 1900 there occurred a movement of professional education into the university, with resultant changes in the nature of preparation and practice. Since World War II both of these factors have been seriously questioned, under pressure for new, more responsive service systems. Along with efforts to change the forms of governance of the services, and efforts to bring some of those pressuring for change into the systems as servers, there were changes in the form and substance of training. (Author/MSE)