Learning by Caring

Enabling transfer from original learning situations to novel contexts is one of the key goals of all education. This book investigates transfer of learning in an extended training program in pastoral care and counseling in Finland. The participants in the training are hospital chaplains, family counselors, chaplains working in other specialized ministries, parish pastors, and diaconal workers. The outcomes of the training, which focused on the ways students give pastoral care, on their conceptions of pastoral care and on their pastoral-caregiver identities, are discussed in the light of modern theories of learning and transfer, and theories of the development of expertise.