Between academization and good craftmanship : The physiotherapists' ambition to professionalize in the light of the conductive education challenge

• During the 1990s a debate took place in Sweden concerning Conductive Education. Proponents of this method focused their critique on the role and methods of physiotherapists but this profession was not active in the debate. Instead in the medical profession came out as defenders of habilitations services and methods. Departing from sociology of the professions our objective in this article is to analyse the physiotherapists´ silence in relation to the profession’s position and its relation to the medical profession. The analysis is based on data from interviews with members of habilitation teams, key persons and documents. The relative silence of physiotherapists is found to be related to both interprofessional factors (the subordination under the medical profession paired with a symbiotic relation based on common interests) and intraprofessional ones (the heterogeneity of the physiotherapist profession, their role in teamwork and a change from a specialist to a generalist orientation).

Keyword

Sociology of professions

physiotherapists

conductive education

youth habilitation

paradigmatic subordination

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)