Professionalism interrupted? Professionalism’s challenges to local knowledge in New Zealand counselling

Abstract

In 2009, the New Zealand Association of Counsellors applied for statutory registration under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act (2003). Contrary to the possible unification of members, this move exposed divisions within the New Zealand Association of Counsellors and threatened to undermine advances to incorporate culturally sensitive practices into the association’s policies. This article suggests that attempts to professionalize counselling in New Zealand require the complementary use of two potentially conflicting forms of professionalism: organizational professionalism (represented in the need to raise counselling membership standards for registration), and occupational professionalism (represented in the form of resistance to a process that will exclude some members because their traditional ways of working and local knowledge may not be accepted by a registration board). At stake is a form of local knowledge, Māori theories of wellbeing and ways of working, that has been incorporated into the New Zealand Association of Counsellors’ policies but which may not be accepted as essential to the protocols of statutory registration. As a case study, this highlights that in a postcolonial society, both organizational and occupational professionalism are required to negotiate occupational change and both are interrupted when local knowledge is seen as a centrally important value.