Professional Identity. Goal: The student intern will present him/herself in a manner that is consistent with the social work profession. Objective(s): i.e., smaller goals to achieve primary pre-specified goal. Example: Student will manage one client case. Activities: i.e., tasks the student will perform or engage in to meet the objective(s). Example: Student will attend case management meeting(s).
Professional Identity. An individual’s identity relates to a personal and social sense of being. One might have multiple identities related to various aspects of one’s life (gender, nationality, sexuality etc) (Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxx 2004). These identities are developed by individuals in the form of dispositions that occur in response to certain social conditions encountered by the individual. Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx theorised how these dispositions are a product of objective social structures (the field) from which the individual inculcates acquired schemes of perception, thought and actions (habitus) (Bordieu 1984). Subjectively internalising these perceptions develops a sense of identity in the individual (Bottero 2010). Professional identity might therefore describe an individual’s sense of belonging to the professional group, or it might describe the outsider perspective of the professional group when encountering the profession (e.g. a patient or a student nurse entering the profession). To understand professional identity, it is important to explore and define identity in the context of social and occupation roles that are fulfilled by being a part of a professional group. In this chapter, it has been shown how Symbolic Interactionist, Social Identity and Social Constructionist theories led to 3 different ways of conceptualising professional identity. The identity of a profession is closely related to, but remains distinctive from, Occupational identity. Occupational identity is a product of work-role definition and the individual’s sociocultural need to fulfil a role in a functioning society (kielhofner 2007). Furthermore, the purpose of possessing a strong occupational identity is to engender a feeling of occupational success, social adaptation and psychological wellbeing (Xxxxxxxx and Xxxxxxxxx 2011). Occupational Identity might be useful to describe the behaviours and social norms of specific workplace contexts, where the members of the occupation are concentrated into certain organisations. However, its utility becomes uncertain when the workforce is distributed across wider geographical and cultural contexts; as is the case with nursing. Moreover, the term profession might describe certain occupations but many occupations do not meet the criteria of being a profession (XxxXxxxxx 1995:p 2). A profession can be defined in many ways but certain criteria have become commonplace, particularly: the possession of a unique body of knowledge; provision of an altruistic service to societ...
