Collective Professional Identity Research Articles

Professionsidentitet på tværs

In the paper differences and similarities comparing professional identity in educations for Nurse, Teacher and Bachelor of Nutrition and Health are discussed. Professional identity formation is conceptualized as a fluid and socially negotiated process. There are international studies about professional identity for nurses and teachers, but a lack of comparative studies. The empirical material are group interviews with students and educators analyzed by reflexive thematic analysis. Both groups are asked about the collective professional identity and experiences with external understandings (based on pictures), and the students also about their (pre)professional identity. The analyses show that all three are professions working with empathy in human relations. There are however different stereotypes related to the external understanding of the professions. The student teachers have experienced to a high degree to have to defense their educational choice and position themselves in opposition to the traditional picture of transmissive teaching. The educators and student nurses challenge the picture of a “nice girl”. They refer to the present political focus and refer to the identity as challenged. Bachelor of Nutrition and Health is a new and somewhat diffuse profession. Acting on evidence but also with respect for the individual is formulated as a core.

Who are China's Technical Communicators? A Survey on the State of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Profession

Purpose: This study updates our understanding of the group features of China's technical communication coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research uncovers workplace inequities in the profession by identifying and analyzing a wide range of professional differences in knowledge, skills, experience, practice, performance, benefits, opportunities, challenges, and discoveries. It is more than just a diversity report. We seek to help academics and practitioners across the world develop a basic grasp of China's technical communication, practitioners, and working conditions from a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) perspective. Method: We designed a four-part survey with 50 questions to examine DEI variables in several areas such as demographics, professional activities, career development, and challenges and problems. A total of 259 technical communicators from a target population of about 1,200 responded to our questionnaire. Results: Diversity is an intrinsic feature of China's technical communication because of its short history of professionalization. Practitioners' educational backgrounds, language ability, job titles, affiliated departments, working activities and deliverables, and so on all exhibit diversity. Because of the lack of DEI initiatives, many participants reported structural inequalities in their career development. Conclusion: The DEI situation in the field of China's technical communication is incarnated as a collective professional identity crisis in practitioners. This identity crisis has historical, societal, organizational, individual, and environmental reasons. To tackle it, we propose inclusive development as an effective DEI initiative.

Navigating the third space: the online community mentoring program

Professional and academic staff with a focus on learning and technology are both increasingly present in Australasian universities and seen as vitally important in the delivery of high-quality learning experiences. These professional staff often have titles such as learning designers, technology integrators, educational designers and similar. Yet their precise position and role within higher education, and indeed, the requisite skills and knowledge required to successfully perform these roles often remains vague, especially for academic staff with whom they work. These roles became even more important during the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic (McIntosh & Nutt, 2022). These staff often work in what is described as the “third space” (Whitchurch, 2008), a hybridized zone that requires an understanding of different types of learning programs, and ways in which these can be delivered most effectively in a virtual environment (Zellweger, Moser & Bachmann, 2010). In this way, they are boundary crossers (Watermeyer, Crick & Knight, 2021) between the academic and professional spaces, required to work within both, but belonging to neither. This can often contribute to feelings of professional isolation amongst these staff, as well as a lack of clarity about career progression. Mentoring is recognised as an avenue for welcoming new members of the profession. It combines more experienced members with less experienced members and takes the form of regular meetings to discuss challenges and opportunities (Bean & Hyers, 2014; Donelly & Mcsweeney, 2010). The online variant is hardly new, although it has grown significantly during the pandemic (Joseph, Lahiri-Roy & Bunn, 2022). It offers advantages in terms of reach and scalability to participants, although there are potential weaknesses, too. Traditionally, mentoring is an activity that takes place between one mentor and one protégé. However, group mentoring is on the increase. This presentation reports on how a group approach taken in a community mentoring program (CMP) comprised of five staff from different universities (three mentors and two mentees) provided an avenue for third space staff to share their experiences with each other in order to begin formulating a collective professional identity. Group mentoring allowed a greater diversity of experiences and ideas, which in turn contributed to a greater feeling of ‘being in it together’. The CMP became a space for the exploration and discussion of different roles within higher education, as well as the sharing of common experiences, successes and frustrations. Our reflections may inspire you to create a similar opportunity within your own institutions, or through the ASCILITE Mentoring Program.

Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s–1910s by Alison Moulds

Reviewed by: Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s–1910s by Alison Moulds Kristin E. Kondrlik (bio) Alison Moulds, Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s–1910s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. xiv + 288, $119.99/£89.99 hard-cover. In the Victorian era, reform legislation, pressure to professionalize, divisions between consultants and general practitioners, and a flood of women into the medical profession destabilized physicians’ collective professional identity. Building on her previous work on the Victorian medical press, Alison Moulds’s Medical Identities and Print Culture, 1830s–1910s maps how physicians negotiated this uncertainty. Moulds argues that medical professionals were active producers and consumers of print culture, serving as “editors, contributors, correspondents, readers, authors, and reviewers” (4). They used these roles to shape and understand the identity of physician. In discussing five groups—young doctors, metropolitan physicians, country doctors, medical women, and colonial practitioners— Moulds employs a rich interdisciplinary approach adopted from cultural and social histories of medicine, the history of the professions, and literary and periodical studies. Moulds first addresses representations of young physicians and draws on a diverse textual corpus: fiction by Arthur Conan Doyle and Samuel Warren, advice manuals by practicing physicians, and articles and [End Page 297] correspondence in medical journals including the Lancet and British Medical Journal (BMJ). She argues that texts about and for young physicians provided warnings about the difficulties they would face, including financial hardship, connecting with patients, establishing relationships with colleagues, and navigating medical ethics. Moulds illuminates how, through the representation of this figure, print culture also illustrated conflicts consuming Victorian medical practice, such as poverty, professional squabbling, disagreements about medical training, and stiff competition in an overrun marketplace. Thus, she argues, literary texts, advice literature, and medical periodicals all contributed to the young doctor’s identity and that of the profession more broadly. Moulds then turns to metropolitan physicians. Engaging popular and professional texts, Moulds first highlights representations of elite physicians in London, who “were often portrayed as technically brilliant but morally ambivalent and even villainous” (94). She contrasts these figures with representations of metropolitan physicians serving the poor and undesirable. While the medical establishment sometimes derided work among these groups, Moulds argues that physicians serving such populations were frequently represented as self-sacrificing and noble, “elevating [them] above the perceived indignities of [their] work” (107). Thus, representations of metropolitan physicians were “bifurcated” between the elite and non-elite (107). Periodical scholars will be interested in how Moulds painstakingly traces the founding of metropolitan journals such as the Lancet and the Medical Circular as well as the relocation of provincial journals such as the Provincial Medical and Surgical Journal (later the BMJ) to London, which contributed to London’s increasing status as an international center of medical knowledge. Metropolitan practitioners were often compared to country doctors, the focus of the next chapter. Moulds cautions readers, however, that country and city doctors did not form a perfect binary. Rather, in contrast to stereotypes of country doctors as lazy, backwards, or disconnected, Victorian writers described complex interactions between provincial physicians, patients, and their communities. Professional journals and literary representations reveal distinct challenges for provincial doctors, including competition, prescription fees, rivalries, complex class and gender issues in patient treatment, and community gossip. Moulds argues that medical periodicals especially served as “textual space[s] through which the country practitioner’s identity was constructed and his professional networks were formed” (118). Of interest in this chapter for periodical scholars is Moulds’s in-depth discussion of the Medical Circular and Medical Miscellany (later Provincial Medical Journal), which provided country doctors with cutting-edge research while recognizing the busy realities of their practices. [End Page 298] Moulds turns from regional distinctions to medical women in the next chapter. She argues that, unlike male practitioners, the identity of “medical women” was defined by alterity with “physicians.” First, Moulds highlights how debates about medical women’s status evolved in the Victorian era. In medical journals, debate around these figures was shaped by editorial choices and generic features, such as correspondence and news columns, leading articles, and reprinted debates from professional societies. She notes how campaigners for and opponents of medical women used these genres to negotiate their place...

Collective professional role identity in the age of artificial intelligence

AbstractThe increasing use of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) may be harmful to professions and occupations. Professional role identity can be damaged as AI takes the place of people across a broad range of professional tasks. Past studies have focused on individual-level identity, yet collective-level professional role identity remains largely unstudied. In addition, identity studies have developed two separate explanations for identity shifts: one relying on professionals’ interpretation of technology and one relying on institutional logics. It is thus unclear whether and how the interpretation of technology and institutional logics coexist in a shifting identity. To address these gaps, I studied how collective-level professional role identity is being affected by AI among audit professionals in Japan. My research consisted of a textual analysis of professional publications from 2009 to 2018 and 42 interviews with Japan's national professional association and the ‘Big Four’ firm auditors. My analysis shows that a new collective professional role identity was constructed with six identity themes reflecting six interpretations of technology. These identity themes enacted a new constellation of managerial and professional logics that framed the audit profession’s future positively. This study expands our knowledge about professional role identity by showing the value of an in-depth analysis of the content of collective identity, the missing link between the interpretation of technology and institutional logics and the importance of collective identity as a guiding principle for professions. This research also helps advance hybridity literature, as well as the emerging scholarly conversation about AI and professions.

Who we are, what we do, and how we add value: The role of the genetic counseling 'philosophy of practice' statement in a changing time.

As genetics and genomics are integrated into health care and non-genetic health professionals deliver aspects of genetic counseling, it is increasingly important for genetic counselors to be able to define who we are, what we do, and how we add value to client interactions, both on an individual and professional basis. In this paper, we argue that to understand ourselves as individual practitioners and as a profession, we each need to reflect on, write, and constantly review our own philosophy of practice. A philosophy of practice is a dynamic, personal, and reflective statement or narrative that captures the core ideas, values, and beliefs of the individual about their chosen profession, including concrete examples of what this involves in practice. Here, we consider the nature, purpose, and relevance of a philosophy of genetic counseling practice, drawing on examples from professions such as teaching and nursing, where the exercise of writing a philosophy of practice is more established. We demonstrate how and why we have introduced writing a philosophy of practice into our Master of Genetic Counseling program at University of Technology Sydney and consider the possibilities for introducing such practice into professional registration or certification processes. Finally, we offer our own philosophy of genetic counseling practice as an example. As the roles and scope of practice for genetic counselors expand and diversify, it is increasingly important to understand, own, and retain our core values and principles as individual practitioners and as a profession. Ensuring client-centered practice remains at the heart of genetic health care is vital. We encourage all genetic counselors to write, publish, and share their philosophy of practice, adding to our collective professional identity in this time of change and opportunity.

A lion in a matchbox: Artistic identity and cracking the professional code in American higher education

Abstract This article is an analysis of the culture of academic professionalism of art programmes in American universities. In the Gilded Age, American universities underwent significant reforms that transformed them in to centres for professional education in Medicine, Law, social work, and other professions, including the visual arts. College art was transformed during these years. Guided by theory set forth by Burton Bledstein, the article decodes this new culture with concepts of time spent in practice and training, the specialized spaces (for art this meant studios and classrooms), and words (the discourse, terminology and language that distinguishes professionals from their clientele). These concepts help embody a collective professional identity of people with boundaries to regulate the social experience art faculty and students in a new, and at times troubled modern culture of professionalism.

Art as the practice of freedom: Critical alliances and professional identities within art librarianship

This article explores issues of developing individual and collective professional identities within art librarianship, with an emphasis on art librarians’ relationship to art and art-making. By having more honest conversations around what art does, what artists do and how they function in society, we can challenge deeply held assumptions about art librarianship; in particular, that our work is somehow removed from the political and social contexts in which we perform it. Through critical interventions within our profession we can develop a better understanding and definition of our relationship to art and artists in order to situate ourselves within current art practices. We can then build impactful relationships and social justice-oriented solidarity with creative practitioners and artists who are actively challenging structural oppression and promoting social justice through their work.

Contesting early childhood professional identities: A cross-national discussion

In this collective article, the authors explore constructions of early childhood practitioners and how they disconnect and reconnect in a global neo-liberal education policy context. The contributions to the conversation provide windows into shifting professional identities across five national contexts: New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, Australia and Denmark. The authors ask who benefits from the notion of distinct professional identities, linked to early childhood education as locally and culturally embedded practice. They conceptualize teachers’ shifting subjectivities, drawing on Kristeva’s philosophical conception of identity as constantly in construction, open and evolving. Arguments for the urgency to counter the global uniformity machine, streamlined curricula, standardized assessment and deprofessionalization are not new. However, the authors wonder whether these arguments are missing something. Does our localized and highly contextualized identity construction enable ‘divide and rule’ politics by global agents such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Bank and international corporations? The authors’ (preliminary) answer is to build individual and collective professional identities that are grounded in diverse local contexts and in a broader transnational professional (political) consciousness and collective voice.

IDENTITY OF PROFESSIONAL GROUPS PROVIDING PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP: A LITERATURE REVIEW

Providing high quality mental health services is one of the key objectives for national governments declared by WHO, where professional groups providing psychological help play an important role. Confusion among the professional groups in the field poses difficulties both for the professionals and service users. The paper aims to review the studies focused on the identity of professional groups providig psychological help with a special emphasis on used methodological approaches. In the first section of the paper concepts used in the relevant studies are discussed, proposing collective professional identity as the most appropriate theoretical idea to ground the future research in the given field. The second section of this paper analyses the methodological approaches applied in mentioned studies. Collective identity of professionals is conceived by the sholars in given field as a multidimensional concept which is studied both quantitatively and qualitatively. Thus far quantitative research methods are more common, but benefits of qualitative research in the future are also stressed. The results of literature review will serve as the theoretical background for studying professional groups providing psychological help in Latvia.

The educational gaps of nurses in entrepreneurial roles: An integrative review.

Nurse entrepreneurship remains a foreign concept in education, forcing nurses to turn to graduate degrees in business and finance or otherwise, learn 'as they go'. Before addressing the question 'Why does nursing curricula exclude business content and skill development?', one must evaluate the perceived educational gaps of current nurse entrepreneurs; the purpose of this integrative review. An initial total of 2485 articles was generated in September 2016, of which 15 methodologically-diverse studies, published between 1977 and 2015, were appraised using the QATSSD tool. Perceptions of business-related educational gaps were categorized into 4 leadership skillsets: cognitive, interpersonal, business and strategic. Cognitive skills were further subdivided into self-regulation, professional know-how, and grasping the larger context; Interpersonal skills consisted of networking and selling your services, dealing with contextual resistance, and communicating clearly; Business skills were regrouped into mitigating and managing risk, marketing, financial and operations management; and lastly, Strategic skills were all related to knowing how to start a business. Business mindedness is not readily integrated into our collective professional identity resulting in an exclusion of this content from nursing curricula. To address service gaps, nurses should be introduced to entrepreneurial concepts during initial training with an option of further specialization for those considering a business career.

"Its Influence Taints All": Urban Mathematics Teachers Resisting Performativity through Engagement with the Past

In England, globalisation and neoliberal political agendas have created an environment in which teachers are constantly measured and ranked and subjected to a discourse of marketisation, managerialism and performativity. The effect is to erode their sense of independence and moral authority and to challenge their individual and collective professional and personal identities. The need to understand the current policy environment, to step aside and look on critically, becomes more important even as it becomes more difficult. Many teachers are engaged in re-storying themselves against this audit culture. We argue that it is possible, through excavating the past, to offer current day teachers stories to support this process of re-envisaging what they are, might be and might become in their professional lives. Here we offer a response from a currently serving teacher to the experience of performativity and illustrate some ways in which she is able to mobilise such stories in her resistance to dominant, neo-liberal discourses.

‘Pastoral practices’ for quality improvement in a Kenyan clinical network

We explain social and organisational processes influencing health professionals in a Kenyan clinical network to implement a form of quality improvement (QI) into clinical practice, using the concept of ‘pastoral practices’. Our qualitative empirical case study, conducted in 2015–16, shows the way practices constructing and linking local evidence-based guidelines and data collection processes provided a foundation for QI. Participation in these constructive practices gave network leaders pastoral status to then inscribe use of evidence and data into routine care, through championing, demonstrating, supporting and mentoring, with the support of a constellation of local champions. By arranging network meetings, in which the professional community discussed evidence, data, QI and professionalism, network leaders also facilitated the reconstruction of network members' collective professional identity. This consequently strengthened top-down and lateral accountability and inspection practices, disciplining evidence and audit-based QI in local hospitals. By explaining pastoral practices in this way and setting, we contribute to theory about governmentality in health care and extend Foucauldian analysis of QI, clinical networks and governance into low and middle income health care contexts.

Reconstructing collective professional identity: A case study of a women’s journalist association in the post–second-wave feminist movement in the United States

This study explores the relationship between social movements and professions by focusing on the development of women journalist associations in the post-feminist era in the United States. The analysis focuses on the case of the US-based organization Journalism and Women Symposium (JAWS) using 41 oral history interviews with JAWS members and archival research. The results illustrate how the members of JAWS defined, contested, and negotiated the collective identity of their organization as well as the meaning of women journalists more broadly.

Getting Leopards to Change their Spots: Co-creating a New Professional Role Identity

We investigated how professional role identity change can be accomplished in highly institutionalized contexts characterized by resiliency. We show that the collective professional role identity of...

Teacher educators' collective professional agency and identity – Transforming marginality to strength

This study investigated teacher educators' collective professional agency and identity within an identity coaching programme. The participants in the programme were teacher educators from the field of arts and crafts education. Through a shared process involving increased trust and togetherness, the teacher educators became empowered in terms of their collective identity and agency. The study points to the importance of addressing individual narratives and learning pathways in seeking to understand emergent collective agency and identity in professional contexts. Our theoretical contribution includes an advanced understanding of collective identity and agency, and of their close relationship.

Shame and institutional stability – or – change in healthcare

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to help introduce the empirical study of emotion within an institutional framework by examining shame and shaming as drivers of institutional stability and change, respectively. Design/methodology/approach – The author conducted a qualitative study of 101 US print media articles generated by major US news publications and trade magazines from 1999 to 2011 in the wake of the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) 1999 report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. Findings – This study resulted in two major findings. First, this research found that the institutions constituting the collective professional identity of physicians persisted via institutionalized shame inculcated in physicians during their extensive socialization into the medical profession. Potential shame over medical error served to reinforce institutionalized cultures which exacerbated medicine’s problems with error reporting. Second, this study reveals that field-level actors engage in shaming to affect institutional change. This research suggests that the IOM report was in effect a shaming effort directed at physicians and the institutions constituting their collective identity. Research limitations/implications – This study provides some verification of recent theoretical works incorporating emotion into institutional theory and also illustrates how shame can be incorporated into collective identity as an institutional imperative. Originality/value – This study provides a rare empirical investigation of emotion within an institutional framework, and illuminates ways in which the emotion of shame interacts with institutional processes. This research also focusses on collective identity and institutional stability, two topics which are largely ignored by contemporary institutional researchers but are integral aspects of social life.

The making of a glass slipper

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to deploy the concept of the “glass slipper” to unpack the construction of systematic patterns of inclusion and exclusion along the lines of gender, age and class in the emerging, female-dominated profession of psychological counselling in Russia.Design/methodology/approach– The study draws on an analysis of 26 in-depth qualitative interviews with practising counsellors in Russia.Findings– Drawing on the glass slipper concept, the article demonstrates how seemingly neutral discursive “rules” of professional conduct articulated by counsellors create an association between a collective professional identity and the social identities of typical practitioners, making this profession appear most suitable for middle-aged, middle-class women. The findings also show how certain embodied identities – in this case masculinity – may be able to “fit” into a slipper that was not made for them.Originality/value– The paper extends the understanding of the dynamics of inequality patterns in a feminized profession in the Russian context by unveiling previously underexplored patterns of marginalization along the lines of class and age. It also strengthens the collective-associative view of occupational identity and extends the glass slipper concept by exposing the mechanisms of body-work association in this profession and demonstrating that certain identity characteristics may be more universally privileged in the construction of professional identities.

The Role of Facilitation in Technology-Enhanced Learning for Public Employment Services

Public Employment Services (PES) in Europe are authorities that attempt to match supply and demand on the labor market. Rising unemployment in times of crisis and demographic change are among the main challenges with which PES practitioners, as a direct interface between jobseekers and employers, have to deal. They have to support career adaptability of their clients as well as to enhance and transform their own individual and collective professional identities in order to cope successfully with the challenges of a changing labor market. As part of the research project EmployID, we are exploring how to facilitate the learning process of PES practitioners in their professional identity development. The aim of the project is to empower individual PES practitioners, their community and organizations, to engage in transformative practices, using a holistic tool suite combining e-coaching, reflection, MOOCs, networking, analytical and learning support tools. Key to successful professional identity transformation is continuous learning. Individuals may take on the role of facilitators for the learning of others as well as being facilitated by peers, technology and environment.

The Identity Work of Professional Identity: Challenges Constructing “Who Am I?” and “Who are We?”

This symposium showcases recent research projects on professional identity in a wide variety of contexts. We will present fresh insights into the interaction between the two levels of professional identity – the individual “who am I in this profession?” and the collective “who are we as a profession?” We position these struggles within the burgeoning topic of identity work – the “range of activities that individuals engage in to create, present, and sustain personal identities that are congruent with and supportive of the self-concept” (Snow & Anderson, 1987: 1348). Topics addressed herein include how nascent professions struggle at the collective and individual levels to mutually shape identity; how scientists deal with threats to their long-held definitions of professional identity; how individuals respond to ambiguity in their professional identity; and how social relationships affect professional identity, especially in multidisciplinary environments. The contexts in which these phenomena are explored are also diverse and include the emerging profession of health coaches, NASA scientists, chief ethics and compliance officers, and knowledge workers in a multidisciplinary research organization. Overall, the symposium will address these goals: (1) highlighting new findings and theory on each of these topics, with the goal of contributing to richer understanding of the relationship between individual and collective professional identity; (2) comparing and contrasting the identity work challenges of nascent versus longstanding professions; and (3) providing a forum for discussion of the challenges and opportunities of conducting research on professional identity. Ambiguity of Professional Identity – Boon or Burden? The Case of Ethics & Compliance Officers Presenter: Glen E. Kreiner; Pennsylvania State U. Presenter: Niki A. den Nieuwenboer; Santa Clara U. Presenter: Derron Bishop; Pennsylvania State U.