Identity work: becoming a social work professional

In considering the research on ‘professional identity work’, I find it fruitful to include examples from the broader education literature about students of teaching and medicine.

Of particular relevance for my research questions are studies which examine, from a post-structuralist perspective, how professionals construct their identities in relation to policy discourses.

Analysing curriculum statements about competence, Nicoll and Harrison (2003:33) argue that a post-structuralist approach exposes the ‘working of power through discourse’, revealing how such documents designate what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘professional’

teaching. In a similar way, Soreide (2007) combines post-structural theories about discourse and narrative identity, to analyse official documents which specify the content of the school curriculum. She argues (2007:130-132) that these policies act as ‘public narratives’ which define what teaching is; how teachers ‘should think about themselves as teachers, thus their teacher identities’; and how they ‘experience and carry out their jobs’.

In social work, the degree curriculum, and the standards and principles conveyed by the Codes of Practice, are examples of such public narratives. Others include documents such

as the Social Work Taskforce report (2009:15), which defines ‘what social work should be:

a profession made up of highly skilled, highly qualified practitioners, whose expertise continuously develops throughout their career’. Soreide (2007:140) argues that an implication of public narratives is that entry to qualifying training may be restricted to the

‘right’ kind of students, who already ‘ascribe to certain kinds of identity’. Alternatively, she suggests, teacher education may be designed to ensure that new teachers are equipped to meet policy goals.

Watson’s research (2006:512), also informed by a combination of post-structuralist and narrative theories, considers a broader range of resources that shape teachers’ professional identities. These include professional knowledge and ‘wider socio-cultural contexts’ (used with similar meaning to Soreide’s public narratives). In social work, besides the knowledge transmitted through both curriculum and workplace, I suggest that debates about the

‘identity of the profession’ (O’Neill, 1999; Witkin, 1999; Scheider and Netting, 1999) contribute to these shared resources. Second, Watson argues that the ‘micro-politics’ of the setting (2006:512) also provide identity resources; in the case of social work, it is evident that particular kinds of identity may be available in different practice settings (Dutton and Worsley, 2009; Barnes et al., 2000; Moran et al., 2006). Finally, Watson suggests that personal experience is a further resource for professional identity. Certainly, reflection on personal experience is considered an important pedagogical goal of social work education.

Lindsey’s research (2005:237) found that students’ ‘most significant learning was about themselves’; and argues that this enhanced self-awareness was ‘directly related to examination of their values’. The development of social work values is considered pivotal for professional identity (Lindsey, 2005; Wong and Pearson, 2007); but Lindsey

emphasises the importance of identifying one’s own personal values, and understanding how they interact with professional ones.

In contrast, Lewis (2004) argues that personal experience derived from gender and social class are the most significant factors in constructing professional identity. Drawing on research which suggests that work has gendered meanings, Lewis’ exploration of social workers’ subjective experiences concludes that women evaluate their career according to its compatibility with family life and personal beliefs (religious, political and feminist).

According to Warde (2009:125-128), male social workers are also motivated by personal aspirations; although comparing these two studies it is interesting to note that the men appear to describe their values in more global and abstract terms (a desire to ‘help communities’ and fulfil a sense of social responsibility). In reporting her data, Lewis (2004:400) asks ‘[h]as social work as a predominantly female profession achieved liberation for female members of the profession?’. While this is an interesting question, it is not clear whether the participants were asked to talk about their experiences in this feminist context. Nevertheless, both studies open up possibilities for exploring the meaning of professional identity in relation to personal identity.

From an explicitly post-structuralist perspective, both Soreide and Watson draw attention to the complexity of professional identity: it is not singular but involves multiple selves, activated by different discourses and potentially resulting in conflict. This approach is supported by Lewis’ finding, that the identities of worker and parent were not easily aligned. Equally thought-provoking is research suggesting that social work students in non-western societies struggle to reconcile their cultural, religious and political values with the dominant assumptions underpinning much social work theory (Wong and Pearson, 2007;

Lam et al., 2007). Costello (2004:138-139), investigating professional identity from an ethnographic perspective, argues that ‘there is much about their identities that people cannot articulate’; as a participant observer, Costello found that social work students’ style of dress, and their attempts to either look professional, or to ‘be themselves’ was evidence of ‘the … often painful road to the adoption of a professional identity’. Furthermore, Costello (2004:139) found that ‘the process of incorporating a new professional identity varied for people with different personal identities … [including] gender, race and ethnicity, and religion; class identities’. Finally, identity work takes place in the context of unequal power relationships between students and their teachers. Kaiser (2002:98) argues that the professional identity of medical students is defined as ‘not yet being a doctor’, which places them in an inferior and powerless position. Taking a combined psychoanalytic and post-structuralist approach, Kaiser (2002:103) argues that students’

successful identification as a professional requires a ‘closing off’ of other aspects of personal identity, and a ‘destruction of individuality’. In different ways, these studies draw attention to the potential challenges of constructing a professional identity; the implication for my study is that, in view of the criteria for professional registration, some social work students may find their personal experience a barrier rather than a resource.

Summing up, becoming a professional requires students to do ‘identity work’ which draws on a range of shared and personal discursive resources. The research suggests that social work education plays a central role in developing professional identity; these arguments are sometimes located within a framework of social learning theory (Adams et al., 2005;

Costello, 2004; Wong and Pearson, 2007). This involves a process of socialisation, in which students gradually adopt professional values and norms. Watson (2006:525) suggests that identities develop within a ‘community of practice’; this concept, developed

by Etienne Wenger (1998), has been widely adopted to study workplace and professional learning.