Professional Self-images Research Articles

FUTURE PSYCHOLOGISTS’ SELF-ATTITUDE AS A FACTOR OF PROFESSIONAL SELF-DEVELOPMENT

The peculiarities of future psychologists’ self-attitudes are considered as an important factor in their professional self-development. Self-attitude is a certain stable feeling towards e personal Self, which contains a number of specific modalities (measurements) that differ both in emotional tone, experience, as well as in the semantic sense of the corresponding attitude to oneself. The structure of self-attitude is described; it is represented by the emotional component (self-perception) and the self-estimating component. The basic functions of self-attitude are revealed: self-reflection, self-expression and self-realization, preservation of internal stability and continuity of Self, self-regulation and self-control, psychological protection, and intra-communications. The experimental study included the following methods: questionnaire on self-attitude of V.V. Stolin and S.R. Pantylieiev; self-actualization test of E. Shostrom; author's technique of indirect measurement of self-assessments to determine a character of the respondents' emotional and appraisal attitude towards their own professional self-images; D. Campbell’s Self-Concept Clarity Scale. It is experimentally proved that future psychologists’ self-attitude is characterized mainly by an average level of self-acceptance, self-management, openness, self-confidence. The future psychologists imagine their personality, character and activities mostly with respect and sympathy; they are interested in personal Self, have a sense of the value of their own personality. They are characterized by increased reflection, deep penetration into oneself, awareness on their own difficulties, adequate self-images and absence of suppression. Sometimes, the future psychologists are characterized by their self-concept rigidity, fixation, and the reluctance to change oneself against the background of a general positive attitude towards oneself. Some students are characterized by self-accusation, readiness to blame themselves for their failures or drawbacks, lack of sympathy for themselves. &nbsp

The market and the military profession: competition and change in the case of Sweden

ABSTRACTThe rise of private military and security companies (PMSCs) challenges our notion of military professionals. PMSCs bring new claims to professional status and legitimacy outside military institutions and represent an increasing diffusion of - and competition over - military and security expertise. In light of this development, understanding the formation of professional identities in military and private security organisations is as an important undertaking. This paper contributes to this endeavour by analysing professional self-images in the Swedish Armed Forces and how these relate to PMSCs. The study is based on data collected from official documents, semi-structured interviews and a small-scale survey among senior military officers. Focusing on military understandings of PMSCs and contractors, the analysis provides much-needed insight into relational aspects of professional identity formation outside the US context. Furthermore, it points to discrepancies in organisational and group levels in understandings of commercial security actors, and paves the way for future research.

Fixed Narratives and Entangled Categorizations: Educational Problematizations in Times of Politicized and Stratified Migration

Western European migration and citizenship regimes have undergone profound transformations over the past decades. The massive politicization and stratification of migration are key features of these dynamics. Focusing on the case of Germany, this article investigates how these developments affect logics of educational practice. It is argued that teachers, faced with increasingly complex and uncertain situations, systematically draw on categories that combine political and educational logics. These “entangled categories” do hardly allow to unravel the complex configurations currently at stake at the intersection of migration and education. A secondary analysis of TIMSS-2015 data is performed to substantiate the article’s core hypothesis: these forms of categorization have crystallized into patterns of educational problematization that couple perceptions of educational challenges, professional self-images, and didactic approaches. These fixed narratives disproportionally affect migrant children from underprivileged social backgrounds. They hence have important implications both for our understanding of educational inequalities in times of politicized and stratified migration and for furthering professional reflexivity.

Professionalization in Teacher Education As an Interorganizational Learning Challenge

Cultural and social changes, new administrative regulations and curricular reforms have had a significant impact on the work and professional self-image of future teachers in many European countries involved in the Bologna Process. This constellation gives rise to new challenges for established routines, practices and identities of the organizations involved in teacher education. This article deals with processes of professionalization in teacher education and presents new forms of interorganizational cooperation between schools, universities, education authorities and extracurricular agencies. Three case studies from Germany and Austria clearly demonstrate that different organizational cultures as well as different professional self-images meet in cooperative environments. The goal of the article is to analyse systematically the various interorganizational learning challenges in the field of teacher education.

The Other Stance: Conflicting Professional Self-Images and Perceptions of the Other Profession Among Finnish PR Professionals and Journalists

Abstract Public relations (PR) professionals and journalists act as builders of societies’ communication atmospheres, and their inter-relationships are of importance. The aim of the present study is to describe and compare PR professionals’ and journalists’ professional self-images and perceptions of the other group's profession in Finland. The study is part of the ProfCom project and makes use of the project's Finnish quantitative questionnaire data. The results indicate clear perception differences. PR professionals identify themselves with bond- and trust-building objectives, whereas journalists perceive marketing and financial goals as the main objectives of PR professionals. Journalists identify themselves with information sharing, criticism and service roles, whereas PR professionals perceive opinion sharing, advising and informing about scandals as the main objectives of journalists. In addition, the study indicates a need for further research on the underlying reasons for conflicting perceptions and the effects of the developing Internet communication arena on relationships between professionals.

Prospective classroom teachers’ metaphorical images of selves and comparing them to those they have of their elementary and cooperating teachers

Currently, it is strongly suggested that our thought processes are largely metaphorical in nature. Indeed, the metaphors we use not only represent the way we perceive the world and reality but also shape our professional ideas, attitudes, and practices. This study employs metaphor as a means of research to provide insights into the images prospective classroom teachers have of themselves as future teachers (i.e., professional self-images), their elementary teachers (i.e., former classroom teachers), and their cooperating teachers (i.e., supervisors of student teaching practices). Data for this study were gathered through the administration of a Likert-style questionnaire consisting of 20 metaphorical images of “classroom teacher” to 363 exit level elementary teacher education students enrolled in the Faculty of Education of Selcuk University in Turkey during the 2002–2003 academic year. Results indicate that the teacher candidates in this study appear to be less teacher-centered and more student-centered than their both elementary and cooperating teachers. Also, female teacher candidates appear to be less teacher-centered and more student-centered than their male peers. Implications for preservice teacher education and further research are discussed.

Learners, initiators, servants: The self-images of victorian principals in the 1990s

The professional self-images of principals are integrally related to how they perceive and exercise leadership in specific school settings. This study of a balanced sample of male and female leaders from a cross-section of Victorian schools in the late 1990s reveals that there are key variations related to sectorial identity, level and scale of school, institutional histories and even student gender. It supports the development of nuanced theories about leadership and gender that combat essentialist stereotypes which have dominated in past discourse. It also combats simplistic claims based on school level, sector and student gender. The findings carry implications for principal selection and development which require fine-grained discernment by practitioners and theorists in the future.

Wish fulfillment and its discontents.

At this year's Biennale international art exhibition in Venice, Italy, Patricia Piccinini, a Melbourne‐based painter and sculptor, presented sculptures of synthetic life forms (Fig. 1). Entitled ‘The Young Family’, ‘Leather Landscape’ and ‘Still Life with Stem Cells’, her art crosses the species boundaries between humans and other animals. Treading a fine line between the grotesque and the life‐like, Piccinini's art provokes deeply ambivalent emotions in the viewer. Her monstrous, mutant life forms are never repulsive, but also never take possession of our nurturing instincts. Rather, they convey their difference from and likeness to humans with an impressive dignity of their own. The interface between science and society conjured in these creatures, through the imagination of the artist and the impressive range of media she masters, is a superb example of how some of the seemingly intractable questions posed by the life sciences can be addressed: by exposing our ambivalent emotions and provoking further reflection and discussion. Figure 1. The Young Family , by Patricia Piccinini (2002). Silicone, acrylic, human hair and leather. Courtesy of the artist and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Another artist's work at the Biennale also addresses our understanding of humanity. Michal Rovner's projects are carefully choreographed configurations of people who, at first sight, appear to be forming and reforming new patterns. Photographed in black and white, Rovner's art resembles images from the early years of cinematography. The fascination that these ballet‐like arrangements evoke comes from the repetition of movements leading to change, and change leading to new repetitions. Images of the same people are projected as walking along horizontal lines, and bear a strong resemblance to patterns of genome sequencing (Fig. 2). In this artistic play of scale and size, of form and movement, of repetition, replication and change, the artist creates patterns with human figures, transforming them …

The Impossible Role of Teacher Educators in a Changing World

The thesis of this article is that the external demands placed on teacher education at the present time, combined with inherent professional needs of teachers and student teachers, create a nearly impossible situation for teacher educators. The article starts with a brief analysis of some of the external demands and constraints on teacher education: globalization, professionalization, and the call of many experts to teach for understanding. These external demands are exacerbated by teachers’ needs for certainty and control, and the frequent gaps between teachers’ professional self-images and the demands of their teaching contexts also contribute to the complexities of the role of teacher educators. The article concludes with a discussion of the societal implications of the current situation.

Professional Self-Image: A Research Study of Perioperative Nursing Students

Education has the potential to influence the development of professional self-images. Interaction with significant others in an educational setting in perioperative nursing, which is grounded in professional standards and provides significant others who perceive the practice area as a professional one, was hypothesized as having the potential to contribute to the professional self-image of the students. This contribution was confirmed in the significantly increased professional self-image scores measured in the treatment group.

Physician and nurse practitioner: conflict and reward.

Physicians and the nurse practitioners with whom they work face a number of conflicts. Conflicts develop within the individuals as they change their professional self-images. Each doctor-nurse team must develop new ways of working together and must do so against a background of long-standing professional territoriality. Comparable struggles are felt within schools and hospitals. Although governments have supported nurse practitioner programs, they have not yet enacted the fiscal and legal changes to make the role fully viable. Despite these struggles many physicians and nurses have achieved definite rewards. Research is beginning to document important successes, and educational programs are graduating significant numbers of practitioners.

Professional Self-Images and Political Perspectives in the Greek Military

Professional Self-Images and Political Perspectives in the Greek Military

Professional self-images and political perspectives in the Greek military

The contemporary Greek Army officer corps is examined to determine its professional role within the modern Greek political and social structure. The analysis is based on historical materials and formal interviews with 100 active Greek army officers in 1968-69. It was found, contrary to studies of military organization in Western industrialized countries, that the shift from heroic to managerial styles of military leadership had not occurred in Greece. Rather, the modal self-image of the Greek officer was a synthesis of a primitive and indigenous heroic value system with a managerial ethic derived from the contemporary Western model. Social background and military experience characteristics did not differentiate in any marked manner among varying professional self-images. Perspectives of interventionism and the reasons given by the officers for intervening in the political order are examined. Major reasons were the fear of an imminent internal communist takeover, a breakdown in political order and governmental efficiency, and a pervasive social decay in morals and public standards. It was found that levels of military professionalism were not correlated with dispositions to intervene in the political order.

Values, Personal Influence, and Occupational Choice

Values, Personal Influence, and Occupational Choice

The Development of Professional Self-images among Student Nurses

The Development of Professional Self-images among Student Nurses