In the wake of Grenfell and the devastating death of Awaab Ishak due to mould in his home, questions around professionalism in housing aren’t just timely, they’re essential. But raising standards isn’t just about ticking qualification boxes, it’s about ensuring that those on the front line of housing services have the tools that go beyond technical know-how to include emotional and reflective capacity and the ability to respond with empathy, dignity, and understanding.

Our recent open access research, published in Housing and Society, argues that reflective practice must sit at the centre of housing education and professional development. We propose a dedicated “Pyramid of Housing Reflection” model to guide learning journeys and help practitioners critically engage with their own positionality, emotions, power, and the structural inequalities their tenants face:

Drawing on the reflections of housing professionals studying for their postgraduate diploma or MSc at the University of Stirling, our findings are clear: reflection empowers. 

When practitioners are encouraged to explore not only what they do, but why they do it, the results can be transformational. They become more confident, more person-centred, and more ready to stand in solidarity with the people and communities they serve. Our housing students (who are mostly customer-facing housing professionals across the UK) have shown us this so clearly.

Scotland’s housing sector in particular is already leading the way with a bottom-up, values-led approach to professionalism. There’s a strong foundation here - from CIH Scotland’s Professional Commitment to the long-standing support for housing education within our social housing organisations and local authorities. But if we truly want to embed person-centred approaches and prevent the kinds of system challenges we’ve seen in the past, reflection must be systematically built into qualifications, workplace training, and sector culture.

Empathy and solidarity are core professional skills, and reflective housing practitioners are key to a sector that not only provides homes but respects, hears, and supports the people who live in them. Housing education is therefore not only about knowledge and competencies, but also these fundamental values which are at the heart of our housing studies programme at Stirling.

If you are interested to learning more about how our postgraduate housing course at the University of Stirling, please do sign-up for our online taster session aimed at new applicants, which will be held on Thursday 8th May@10am. 

The link to the Eventbrite is here.

You can also contact us with any general queries about our programmes at housingstudies@stir.ac.uk.

Professors Vikki McCall and Kim McKee team on the Housing Studies Postgraduate Diploma/MSc at the University of Stirling. Read the full journal article here.