What is professional identity and how do social workers acquire it?

Abstract

For guidance on citations see FAQs.

A Landscape of Intersecting Discourses

“…Concerns raised by the participants about the visibility, value, and place of social work demonstrate the challenging and contested nature of professional identity (Baxter, 2011;Moon, 2017), and how a range of influences converge onto practitioners (Harrison & Healy, 2015), especially within the organizational context (Webb, 2017). The findings also reinforce the socially constructed and discursive nature of professional identity as it is impacted by language (Habermas, 1987), social contexts and relationships (Oliver, 2013;Fook, 2016;Payne, 2006;Wiles, 2017), which in this study included managers and colleagues whose perceptions and stereotypes influenced lived experience of professional identity. The participants discovered that a social work identity did not always sit comfortably alongside the dominant discourses that permeated their organizations and workplace relationships.…”

“…These experiences add weight to calls for coordinated multilevel activities that promote strong social work identities from the individual, to the team, group, professional, and global levels. Professional identity involves individual development and a collective identity (Wiles, 2017), which requires the profession, locally and globally, to consider the multidimensional and interconnected layers that can influence the professional identities of newly qualified social workers. The participants' calls for a strong identity based on leadership and broader action resonate with wider literature (e.g.…”

“…The social construction of professional identity involves complex individual, collective, relational, and environmental processes (Payne, 2006;Wiles, 2017), which can be fluid and contradictory (Fook, 2016;Oliver, 2013). Habermas (1987) emphasized the discursive nature of identity, with language being the vehicle to define ourselves in relationship to others.…”

“…Habermas (1987) emphasized the discursive nature of identity, with language being the vehicle to define ourselves in relationship to others. In social work, Wiles (2017) highlighted how professional identity unfolds within various discourses about professional qualities, collective identity with others, and a sense of individual development. These relational and discursive aspects are maintained in social identity theory, where individuals take on the values, knowledge, skills and norms of their respective professions (Nyström, 2009), which may or may not be regulated (Zikic & Richardson, 2016).…”

Development of interprofessional case discussion series from an interprofessional geriatrics clinic and its influence on professional identity formation

“…The results suggest that students who participate in WIL alongside psychology students came away with a sense of personal identity that was directly reflective of their interprofessional experiences (Bruno & Dell'Aversana, 2018). Wiles (2017) has argued that social work professional identity may be thought of in at least three different ways. Students develop professional identities in regard to professional traits, a collective identity of the profession of social work, and individual differentiation as a professional social worker.…”