Individual Professional Identity Research Articles

Idealism and ambiguity: encountering professional socialization in an emerging profession

ABSTRACT This collaborative autoethnography explores the professional socialization experiences of three former primary-role academic advisors within the context of academic advising as an emerging profession. Two main themes emerged from the collaborative dialogue and analysis: 1) the tension between individual professional identity and the identity of organizations in an emerging field, characterized by ambiguity and idealism; and 2) the role of reflection in gaining conscious awareness and navigating this tension. The study highlights the potential of reflective practice in shaping professional identity, managing transitions, and fostering critical self-awareness and empowerment. Engaging in reflective practices allows advisors to bridge personal beliefs with professional ethics, cultivate a sense of community and cultural responsiveness, and develop a more coherent and authentic professional identity. The findings emphasize the importance of integrating reflective practice into professional development programs to support advisors in navigating the complexities of their roles and adapting to evolving professional landscapes. Institutions are encouraged to facilitate reflective practice through structured opportunities, supervision, and peer discussions to promote continuous growth and excellence in academic advising.

What facilitates a sense of belonging amongst Australian teachers?

ABSTRACT Objective Enhancing a sense of belonging among teachers could be key to mitigating global teacher shortages. This study aimed to investigate teachers' sense of belonging in the Australian educational context. Method A sample of 3,206 teachers answered a survey with open-ended questions that were analysed using thematic analysis. Results The analysis identified six key themes influencing teachers' sense of belonging: Interpersonal relationships (peer relationships, student and parent relationships); Support and collaboration (providing and receiving support; team dynamics and collaborative efforts); Professional and personal growth (influence and contribution to society, professional learning opportunities, individual professional identity and characteristics); Institutional factors (leadership support, positive school environment, employment stability), Motivators (teaching passion, acknowledgment and appreciation); and External networks (engagement in professional networks). Conclusions The findings provide insights into strategies for enhancing teacher belonging, with potential implications for improving retention and addressing teacher shortages.

Professional Identity as an Analytic Lens for Principal Learning in Contexts of Transformation

Purpose: Many efforts for educational transformation involve fundamentally new visions of the principal's role. This article examines the potential of an analytic framework for understanding principal learning in such contexts. An adaptation of an analytic approach to studying teacher learning, the framework examines learning as individual professional identity development situated within shifts in local definitions of competence for the role of the principal. Research Approach: Grounded in a sociocultural perspective, the analytic framework is designed for analysis of (a) how individuals develop new professional identities, and (b) how such learning is situated in contexts of shifting, local narratives and expectations about professional roles, responsibilities, and competence. The use of the analytic framework is illustrated through qualitative analysis of a case of a district effort to support four elementary principals to develop fundamentally different leadership practice specific to participation in teacher professional development. Findings: Illustrative findings reveal the gradual and complex development of principal role identities specific to the emerging expectations for practice. For the first part of the year, principals demonstrated evidence of enacting new practice out of compliance. As the year progressed, the analysis indicated that principals began to identify with new expectations for practice and shift their underlying conceptions of student and teacher learning. Implications: The analytic framework has methodological implications for how principal learning for the transformation of practice is conceptualized, studied, and supported in local contexts.

Professionalism in small group learning between face-to-face and virtual settings: a mixed-methods study.

To explore whether and how preclinical medical students changed perceptions and behaviors related to professionalism in small group learning activities from face-to-face to virtual during the pandemic. The study used a mixed-methods sequential research design. We first retrospectively examined quantitative data from 101 medical students who completed mandatory peer evaluation surveys assessing professional behaviors of small group members in two courses (one face-to-face, the other online). Differences between student perceptions in two settings were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Findings from the quantitative stage were probed further using focus groups at the qualitative stage. Six focus groups (n = 27) were conducted using purposeful sampling. Interviews were transcribed and inductive thematic coding was used to identify emerging themes. We found a significant decrease in perceptions of punctuality and attendance in the virtual setting compared to face-to-face learning (Z=-6.211, p<.001), despite lower expectations of their peers in online learning. Five major themes emerged from the qualitative data: punctuality/participation, camera usage, dress code/conversational style, multitasking, and engagement/accountability. Participants showed sensitivity when conceptualizing professional conduct, indicating the dynamic process of professional identity formation at the early stage of their career. Results show that students' perceptions of professionalism become contextualized, significantly influenced by the background of the virtual learning environment. Intentional communication about professionalism within specific sociocultural and educational contexts is vital for individual professional identity formation. These findings support of the importance of considering context when educational programs develop curricula and establish expectations related to professionalism.

“There really is a lot of shared understanding, but there are also differences”: identity configurations in science communicators' professional identity

Science communication is a relatively new field of practice, shaped by a diverse group of professional science communicators and the way they make sense of their work. A distinguishing feature of these professional science communicators is the organisational context they work in. Based on a typology from an organisational theory framework, this study explores the perspectives of 15 German science communicators through qualitative interviews. It seems that while they tend to draw on a common set of building blocks, they use them to construct individual professional identity configurations partly influenced by their organisational context.

Educating for adaptive expertise: case examples along the medical education continuum.

Adaptive expertise represents the combination of both efficient problem-solving for clinical encounters with known solutions, as well as the ability to learn and innovate when faced with a novel challenge. Fostering adaptive expertise requires careful approaches to instructional design to emphasize deeper, more effortful learning. These teaching strategies are time-intensive, effortful, and challenging to implement in health professions education curricula. The authors are educators whose missions encompass the medical education continuum, from undergraduate through to organizational learning. Each has grappled with how to promote adaptive expertise development in their context. They describe themes drawn from educational experiences at these various learner levels to illustrate strategies that may be used to cultivate adaptive expertise.At Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, a restructuring of the medical school curriculum provided multiple opportunities to use specific curricular strategies to foster adaptive expertise development. The advantage for students in terms of future learning had to be rationalized against assessments that are more short-term in nature. In a consortium of emergency medicine residency programs, a diversity of instructional approaches was deployed to foster adaptive expertise within complex clinical learning environments. Here the value of adaptive expertise approaches must be balanced with the efficiency imperative in clinical care. At Mayo Clinic, an existing continuous professional development program was used to orient the entire organization towards an adaptive expertise mindset, with each individual making a contribution to the shift.The different contexts illustrate both the flexibility of the adaptive expertise conceptualization and the need to customize the educational approach to the developmental stage of the learner. In particular, an important benefit of teaching to adaptive expertise is the opportunity to influence individual professional identity formation to ensure that clinicians of the future value deeper, more effortful learning strategies throughout their careers.

109 The Impact of the Patient Role on Medical Student Learning During Peer Simulation

109 The Impact of the Patient Role on Medical Student Learning During Peer Simulation

Role of Emotions in Curating Professional Identity:An interplay of Identity Work and Identity Play

In this study we study the identity formation and sustenance in case of nascent jobs where existing frames, expectations and ideal identities are absent. We conduct a narrative inquiry of thirty three Organ Transplant Coordinators (OTCs) in India. We propose a three staged model of Identity Progression consisting of Identity Probing, Identity Steadying and Identity Advocacy stages as the OTCs enter and sustain in their careers. The stages illustrate the interplay between identity play and identity work, emotional and cognitive salience and sensemaking and sense giving. Our paper contributes to research on the role of emotions in identity work and identity play in several ways. First, we propose that in nascent professions with underdeveloped or equivocal identity, identity play and identity work might not be mutually exclusive. In such situations, we posit that identity play and identity work proceed in a reflective and iterative process thereby creating a unique individual professional identity. Further, we examine the role of emotions in identity play and identity work by exploring the ways in which emotions not only affect identity work but also become an integral part of creating a new identity. Finally, we establish the critical role of context in identity work and identity play. We discuss practical implications for facilitating identity formation and sustenance processes in nascent professions.

Compulsory Interventions Are Challenging the Identity of Psychiatry.

Compulsory interventions severely restrict constitutional rights of the patients. They are exceptional measures only to be considered under strict and clearly defined ethical and juridical conditions. They do confront mental health professionals with difficult questions challenging their individual professional identity as well as the identity of psychiatry in general. This complex field is discussed in reference to the conceptual history of psychiatry, to different contemporary approaches to the notion of autonomy, and to three ethically demanding issues: autonomy and care, psychiatry and society, personhood and interpersonal relations. Engaging open mindedly in these debates may be cumbersome for psychiatry, but will yield a substantial return, particularly regarding its identity and acceptance by society.

Professional identity and epistemic stress: complementary medicine in the academy

ABSTRACTComplementary and alternative medicine (CAM) degrees in Australian and British universities have come under attack from sceptics who argue that such courses teach only ‘pseudoscience’. Moreover, CAM academics have themselves been publicly labelled ‘quacks’. Comparatively little is known about this group of health professionals who span the two worlds of CAM practice and academia. How do they navigate between these domains, and how are their collective and individual professional identities constructed? Drawing on 47 semi-structured interviews, this paper explores the professional identities of academics working in three university-based CAM disciplines in Australia and the UK: osteopathy, chiropractic and Chinese medicine. By analysing these individuals’ accounts, and building on prior research on health professions in the academy, the paper contributes to understanding how contests about professionalism and professional knowledge take place against the academic-practice divide. By focussing on a domain where knowledge claims are conspicuously contested, it highlights the salience of navigating ‘epistemic stress’ for both group and individual professional identity.

Socialization of nurses in the Family Health Strategy: contributions to professional identity.

To verify how socialization of nurses in the Family Health Strategy (FHS) influences their professional identity. Exploratory, descriptive research, whose theoretical-methodological framework was dialectical hermeneutics, anchored in the premises of the Sociology of Professions. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 27 nurses from the FHS of the city of São Paulo. The resulting empirical material was subjected to Discourse Analysis. The choice for Nursing was influenced by previous knowledge of the profession and by the affinity with care. Socialization was not limited to what was absorbed, including the search for an individual professional identity and collective sharing. Nursing care is built in daily practice, mobilizing the nurse for an action that includes herself, the relationship with the other and the conditions in which the work is performed, opening the opportunity for identity reconstruction, consistent with the concreteness of the work.

Uncertainty, agency and motivation in graduate design students

Uncertainty, agency and motivation in graduate design students

The Role of Brokers and Social Identities in the Development of Capabilities in Global Virtual Teams

While organizations are increasingly relying on global virtual teams (GVTs) to carry out knowledge intensive activities, the understanding of how GVTs develop capabilities is still limited. We explore how GVTs adapt routines and build capabilities, and the role played by brokers and social identities in this process. We interviewed 49 professionals working in fifteen GVTs based in Europe, India, and US, and operating in IT and engineering consulting companies. Our multi-level grounded model highlights that, while brokers help in the creation of mutual knowledge, they reduce the accuracy of perceptions about distant co-workers. Mutual knowledge, combined with limited accuracy of perceptions, diminishes the need to adapt team routines over time. The negative effect of brokers on the creation of team capabilities is reduced when individual professional identities trigger the search for more accurate perceptions of distant colleagues and clients with the objective of adapting team routines and performing more stimulating work. On top of this, organizational identity further enables the process of adaptation of team routines. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications on the interplay between operational and social processes in GVTs and team capabilities, as well as practical implications for designing and managing GVTs.

Action research: a process for developing professional capacity within a community of practice

Learning within a community of practice is a common approach for competency development in the healthcare field. Despite the strengths of situated learning, hegemony can inhibit learning. This case study illustrates how action research was used to examine and challenge an entrenched training practice within the ultrasound community of practice. The action research process also resulted in an unintentional shift in the professional identities of two co-researchers. This case study examines action research as an existential process and concludes that action research can increase organisational capacity through the development of individual professional identity.

Action research: a process for developing professional capacity within a community of practice

Learning within a community of practice is a common approach for competency development in the healthcare field. Despite the strengths of situated learning, hegemony can inhibit learning. This case study illustrates how action research was used to examine and challenge an entrenched training practice within the ultrasound community of practice. The action research process also resulted in an unintentional shift in the professional identities of two co-researchers. This case study examines action research as an existential process and concludes that action research can increase organisational capacity through the development of individual professional identity.

A Model for Implementing an Evidence-Based Practice in Student Fieldwork Placements: Barriers and Facilitators to the Use of “SBIRT”

ABSTRACTThis article reports on focus group data analysis that was used to understand initial, largely positive outcomes from a university-based initiative to disseminate and implement an evidence-based practice (EBP)—Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment for Substance Use (SBIRT)—into student fieldwork placements, which are usual care social work settings. Focus groups were conducted with three groups of stakeholders involved in the ongoing project: social work department faculty (n = 10), bachelor- and master-level social work students (n = 8), and social work fieldwork instructors (n = 6). Dimensional analysis of the focus group data yielded results indicating that dissemination and implementation of SBIRT was influenced by agency- and school-level factors and perceived fit between the EBP and individual professional identity, intrapersonal characteristics, and timing. The resulting model, developed through the focus group analysis, is offered and shows how these factors interacted and affected training, supervision, and use of the EBP. The model provides social work educational programs and agencies a working tool for diagnosing and proactively addressing barriers and breakdowns in the EBP implementation process. Future research that tests the model as a diagnostic tool and generates knowledge about its influence in developing competent evidence-based practitioners is indicated. Future focus groups in relation to this initiative are needed to better understand these barriers and facilitators in the EBP implementation process and their critical roles in the process of translating SBIRT into standard social work practice.

The development of professional identity and the formation of teams in the Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System's Center of Excellence in Primary Care Education Program (CoEPCE).

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs Connecticut Healthcare System (VACHS) is one of five Centers of Excellence in Primary Care Education (CoEPCE) pilot sites. The overall goal of the CoEPCE program, which is funded by the Office of Academic Affiliations, is to develop and implement innovative approaches for training future health care providers in postgraduate education programs to function effectively in teams to provide exceptional patient care. This longitudinal study employs theoretically grounded qualitative methods to understand the effect of a combined nursing and medical training model on professional identity and team development at the VACHS CoEPCE site. The authors used qualitative approaches to understand trainees' experiences, expectations, and impressions of the program. From September 2011 to August 2012, they conducted 28 interviews of 18 trainees (internal medicine [IM] residents and nurse practitioners [NPs]) and subjected data to three stages of open, iterative coding. Major themes illuminate both the evolution of individual professional identity within both types of trainees and the dynamic process of group identity development. Results suggest that initially IM residents struggled to understand NPs' roles and responsibilities, whereas NP trainees doubted their ability to work alongside physicians. At the end of one academic year, these uncertainties disappeared, and what was originally artificial had transformed into an organic interprofessional team of health providers who shared a strong sense of understanding and trust. This study provides early evidence of successful interprofessional collaboration among NPs and IM residents in a primary care training program.

The Development of Capabilities in Globally Distributed Teams

As organizations increasingly rely on globally distributed teams (GDTs) to carry out knowledge intensive activities, the understanding of how GDTs develop capabilities is still limited. In this study we investigate how GDTs adapt routines and build up capabilities and the interplay between team and organizational capabilities. We collected qualitative data through documents and interviews with fourteen GDTs operating in IT consulting companies, with subgroups located in North America, Europe, India, and South America and we built a grounded model that highlights the role of brokers in the development of team capabilities. While brokers help in the creation of mutual knowledge, their activity reduces the accuracy of perceptions about distant coworkers. Mutual knowledge, combined with a limited accuracy of perceptions, reduces the need to adapt team routines over time. The negative effect of brokers on the creation of team capabilities is reduced when individual professional identities, characterized by values such as visibility and autonomy, trigger the search for more accurate perceptions of distant colleagues and clients with the objective of adapting team routines and gaining more stimulating work, especially when based in locations distant from team clients. Finally, we identified a continuous interplay between team routines and organizational routines in organizations characterized by innovativeness and flexibility as core attributes of their identity. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical and practical implications.

The double uncertainty: Trajectories and professional identity in changing contexts

People do not live in fixed, immutable contexts; neither are their life-trajectories uniform. On the contrary, people experience discontinuities, breaks and transitions at various points in their lives, including their professional lives. The fundamental requirement for a transition is a social and cultural relocation, accompanied by the challenging, reworking or abandoning of former valid identities, routines and representations of reality. The construct of transition can be usefully applied to the study of professional trajectories, by offering a perspective that takes into account the dynamicity and uncertainty imposed by the change in professional practices, not just on the activities that take place in professional contexts, but also on the definition/redefinition/negotiation of individual professional identity. This paper suggests an intrinsic “dual uncertainty” of both the context and the individual during the change processes of professional trajectories. The paper provides a complementary outlook to the points raised in Daniels’ (2011) article on the mutual shaping of human action and institutional settings. Taking Daniels’ approach as a basis, it is possible to broaden the analysis of professional trajectories within rapidly-changing occupational settings, by adopting a perspective that takes into account the inherent open-ended nature of socio-cultural phenomena, the fluidity of living contexts, the permeability of the boundaries within which transitions take place and trajectories evolve, as well as the impact of these aspects on professional identity and on its role in processes of change.

For a sociology of committed professionals: “Art Worlds” in the United States and opposing the war in Iraq

For a sociology of committed professionals: “Art Worlds” in the United States and opposing the war in Iraq