Dealing with the Transsituational Demands of Professional Socialization

Abstract

Insofar as studies of professional socialization have been concerned with the subjective experience of students they have concentrated on students' experience within the confines of their training course. The present paper examines that parallel but often neglected strand in professional socialization: what becoming a professional entails for students within the context of their private lives. An in-depth participant observation study of one cohort of social work students revealed that assuming a professional identity had important consequences for both the self-concept and social lives of students. They were faced with ‘transsituational demands’ – i.e. expectations that they would behave in situations where they were not functioning as social workers in a manner which was nevertheless congruent with their claims to this title. Such reorganization of students' personal hierarchies was both evidenced and accomplished by the ‘frame work’ in which students engaged. Goffman's frame analysis is expanded to include the concept of ‘cross-framing’ in order to explain students' responses to the encroachment of the social-work frame on their everyday world. Although social work as a profession does make extensive demands on the private space of the recruit, it is argued that the analysis developed here can be used to study empirically the internalization of the beliefs associated with any occupational role.