<p>The purpose of this study was to get a better understanding of how newly graduated social workers within the elderly care and the need assessment sector forms a professional identity through a focus on their experience of the socialization process.</p><p>The main questions concerned how work place culture socialized the newly graduated social worker in respect of her or his professional identity.</p><p>The study’s theoretical underpinning lies in Symbolic Interactionism. We have combined focus group interviews with follow-up personal interviews with the aim of deepening to our understanding of the socialization process of social workers and what it means for their professional identities.</p><p>Three main results were generated. First, that a well planned introduction and the teams’ significance to the formation of professional identity were shown to be important. Second that a needs assessment organization with a controlled and standardized professional role were noted to be too restrictive as they allowed little possibility for the new social worker to shape their own ways of working. This was particularly the case where new social workers were unclear about how to go about their work assignment. These results also showed that relation building and dialogue with clients was underemphasised and taken for granted.</p>

There is considerable concern regarding the adequacy of rural health services in New Zealand, with much attention having been paid to issues of recruitment and retention of rural general practitioners. Rhetoric of 'crisis' is often utilised to raise political awareness of the problematic, but in fact, rural general practitioner recruitment and retention has been documented for about a hundred years. For about the same length of time nurses have been providing primary health care services in rural and remote places, often working alone. Using the notion of nurses as a 'stop-gap' in the provision of rural primary health care until problems with recruitment and retention of rural general practitioners are addressed, is a rhetorical device that facilitates the under analysis of the role nurses play and the contribution that they make. The longstanding practice of rural primary care nursing in its various guises over the last century challenges the notion of nursing as a stop-gap.Any investigation of health care in the contemporary moment needs to take account of the influence of biomedical dominance, an increasingly litigious mentality in relation to health care, a shifting focus towards primary rather than secondary health care, and the positioning and re-positioning of health professionals within the neo-liberal state. The very existence of nurses working as the first point of contact in the health care system, with success over time in so far as they do not provoke undue litigation, and appear to deliver an appropriate service must raise questions about who can claim the right to be a primary health care provider. Based on qualitative research conducted in New Zealand and the Western Isles with rural primary care nurses and Family Health Nurses respectively, this thesis explores the ways that nurses construct flexible generalist professional identities that challenge traditional inter and intra-professional boundaries. In the New Zealand case, rural primary care nurses negotiate the boundaries between nursing and medicine, those within nursing itself, and also those between nursing a paramedic work. Nurses perform this boundary work by negotiating self-governing 'appropriate' and 'safe' professional identities. In the Western Isles case, the introduction of the newly developed role of Family Health Nurse serves to highlight the problematic nature of inserting an ostensibly generalist nursing role beyond the rural.

The main purpose of this thesis is to deepen the current understanding of how the teacher self is constructed. Specifically, the study intends to integrate into this understanding the way in which language personal, professional, and student teacher identities inform this process. A special emphasis is placed on the role that language teachers’ life histories play on the construction of teacher selves. Narrative research constitutes the research design for this thesis project since I strongly believe that selves are narratively constructed through stories. This study is focused on the storied self (Chase, 2005) that is co-constructed between the researcher and narrator that reveals how personal, professional, and student teacher identities resist and interact with discursive environments in order to create and recreate a language teacher’s self. Life histories constitute the source of data collection in this study. This facilitated the construction of a broader understanding of how six language teachers’ personal, professional, and student teacher identities are shaped throughout a lifetime and the way these impact the formation of the teacher self. The results suggest that language teachers’ selves are in close relation to emotions. Language teachers negotiate their identities and emotions in order to make sense of the different sets of values that the social context presents to them. This in turn leads them to create/recreate their own teacher selves that serve as sources of agency that generates new sets of social/moral rules or stagnation that leads to the preservation of the current status quo. The thesis concludes by providing a series of suggestions tailored to the needs of the teaching context where this research took place with the purpose of fostering a continuous engagement with individual actors and socio-cultural factors that motivate transformation through reflection.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how beginning teachers' personal teacher efficacy (the abbreviation PTE for personal teacher efficacy) and the organizational health of school (the abbreviation OHI for the organizational health of school) influence teachers' professional identity (the abbreviation PI for professional identity). The participants were 125 middle school teachers from China. They completed online surveys that measured these three variables and some demographics such as gender, salary and school size. The results revealed that there were significant correlations between the OHI and PI, PTE and PI, and OHI and PTE. Except for gender and salary, there was no statistically significant difference in PI between groups of different school size, educational background, type of teaching job, and years of teaching experience. The findings also indicated that OHI mediated the relationship between PTE and PI. Furthermore, a multiple linear regression model was used to predict teachers' PI based on OHI, PTE, and gender. Finally, a statistically significant difference was found on role values (subscale of teachers' professional identity) between tension group (high PTE while low OHI or low PTE while high OHI) and non-tension group (PTE and OHI are at the same level). These findings depict the interactions between PTE and OHI and its influence on PI of Chinese middle school's beginning teachers. The researcher also proposes the next question for further research and makes some practical suggestions for educational policy makers, schools, and individual teachers to improve their PI.

Tidigare forskning visar att äldreomsorgspersonal kämpar med två typer av logiker: en ekonomisk logik och en omsorgslogik. Även om båda logikerna behövs för att skapa god omsorg så utmanar de varandra. Dessa utmaningar kommer till uttryck i omsorgspraktiken där personalen ställs in för val och måste göra prioriteringar. Denna avhandling syftar till att förstå hur äldreomsorgspersonal beskriver att de arbetar för att finna balans mellan logikerna och hur de rättfärdigar sina prioriteringar i omsorgen om de äldre personerna. Frågeställningen för avhandlingen är att ta reda på hur personal och enhetschef vid ett kommunalt äldreboende förstår och hanterar interaktionen mellan de två logiker som styr omsorgsarbetet för att främja de äldre personernas välbefinnande. Syftet innehåller tre delsyften: 1) att analysera personalens erfarenheter av och meningsskapande kring de äldre personernas välbefinnande och deras reflektioner kring det omsorgsarbete de utför, 2) att belysa och problematiserade logiker som styr omsorgsarbetet samt 3) att analysera hur personalen rättfärdigar sina prioriteringar i rådande kontext och hur deras förklarbarhet påverkar deras professionella identiteter. Målet är att bidra med socialvetenskaplig kunskap om de överväganden personal gör när de ställs inför att göra prioriteringar i äldreomsorgens praktik. Material samlades in genom 12 individuella intervjuer med personal vid ett kommunalt äldreboende, en intervju med personalens enhetschef och en uppföljande gruppintervju med tre personer ur personalgruppen. Materialet analyserades med tre analysmetoder: fenomenologisk analys, reflexiv analys och positioneringsanalys. Resultatet visar att personalen definierar de äldre personernas välbefinnande som ett behov av att känna sig existentiellt berörd. Denna känsla av existentiell beröring delas in i tre delar: känsla av valfrihet, känsla av njutning och känsla av närhet till någon eller något. Arbetet för att uppnå detta välbefinnande beskrivs innebära ett balanserande av tre tvetydigheter: att vilja värna om de äldre personernas valfrihet och samtidigt hantera institutionella begränsningar, de äldre personernas behov av aktivering å ena sidan och att de inte behöver aktiveras å andra sidan samt att förstå de äldre personernas behov av rutiner samtidigt som det är svårt att veta vilka behov de har. Tvetydigheterna kontextualiserades och de två logikerna som styr omsorgsarbetet analyserades. Analysen visar att enhetschefen skapar en hybrid av den ekonomiska logiken och omsorgslogiken; ekonomi är omsorg och vice versa. Denna hybrid möter motstånd från personalen som skiljer på de båda logikerna genom att tala om ”vård och det där andra”. Personalen upplever att den ekonomiska logiken begränsar deras möjligheter att utföra omsorg i linje med omsorgslogiken. Motsättningar mellan de båda logikerna leder till prioriteringar som rättfärdigas av personalen i syfte att behålla de professionella identiteterna. Den teoretiska analysen bygger på teorier om institutionella logiker, förklarbarhet ochprofessionell identitet. Analyserna visar vikten av att väcka dialog mellan enhetschefer och personal där de diskuterar innebörder av olika värdeord som används på politisk nivå. Sådana diskussioner skulle kunna bidra till mindre motstånd och en högre överensstämmelse mellan verksamhetsmål och praktik. Avhandlingen visar även vikten av att förstå logiker som vertikala istället för horisontellt uppdelade. Alltså, att styrande verksamhetslogiker existerar uppifrån och ned i verksamheter (från politisk nivå till chefsnivå och till praktisk nivå) och att de inte kan delas in i exempelvis en professionslogik och en styrningslogik. Den senare synen kan bidra till potentiella missförstånd eftersom det gör att konflikter kan tolkas existera mellan personal och chef, medan de egentligen existerar mellan olika motstridiga värderingssystem. Slutsatsen är att de båda logikerna behövs för att stödja äldre personers välbefinnande. Ibland är logikerna samspelta och ibland är de i konflikt med varandra. När logikerna ställs mot varandra är det av vikt att komma ihåg att den ekonomiska logiken är lika förhandlingsbar som omsorgslogiken. De två logikerna existerar i samspel och om deras motstridigheter inte belyses finns risk att omsorgspraktiken inte stödjer de äldre personernas välbefinnande. / This dissertation aims at contributing to social scientific knowledge about prevailing prioritizations in eldercare practice by looking at an economic and a caring logic, and how these logics are overlapping, contradictory or come in conflict with each other. A more concrete aim is to understand how the personnel describe their work with or for balance between the logics and their justifications prioritizations made in the care of older persons. The research question is: How do personnel and care unit manager at a public nursing home understand and handle the two logics that govern care work for facilitating wellbeing of the residents. The aim and research question led to three sub-aims: 1) to analyze the personnel’s experiences of and meaning making about the care work they carry out, 2) to illuminate and problematize the two logics above, and 3) to analyze how the personnel justify their prioritizations in prevailing context, and how their accountability have an effect on their professional identities. Empirical material was gathered through 13 individual interviews with care personnel and their care unit manager at a public nursing home in Sweden. These interviews were complemented by a group interview. The material was analyzed by the use of three methods: phenomenology (Paper I and II), reflexive analysis (Paper III), and a positioning analysis (Paper IV). Paper I found that the personnel understands the residents’ well-being as being characterized by feeling of being existentially touched. This essence is constituted by feeling freedom of choice, pleasure, and closeness to someone or something. In Paper II, the work for facilitating this kind of wellbeing was characterized by three ambiguities: (i) freedom of choice for the older persons vs. institutional constraints, (ii) the residents' need for activation vs. wanting not to be activated, and (iii) the residents' need for routine vs. the eldercarers' not being able to know what the residents need. Paper III showed that the care unit manager created a hybrid of the two logics (economy is care and vice versa) and that the personnel oppose this hybrid. The opposition is shaped as the personnel divides their work in care and “those other things”. These findings showed how interaction between the logics expresses itself in practice and that it is the personnel who has to handle contradictions between the logics in their everyday care work. The positioning analysis in Paper IV had three levels. The first level showed how the carers align with their peers and that they find the organizational frame, within which they have agency, changed due to increased workload. This change led to an order of priorities. The second level showed that the carers relate to three aspects when making accounts: the care itself, the older persons, and the media. The third level showed that the carers share a view of administration, cleaning, serving meals, and filling up supplies, as not being parts of caring. The dissertation’s theoretical framework focused on theories on logics, accountability, and professional identity. The conclusion is that both logics are needed in order to facilitate the well-being of the older persons. The relationships between the two logics are not always clear and if their contradictions are not illuminated, there is a risk for a care practice that does not facilitate the well-being of their residents. An important theoretical contribution is that logics of activities should be understood vertically (form political, through management, and down to the level of practice) instead of horizontally. The practical implications emphasize the importance of supporting the personnel’s professional identity on the one hand, and discussing the logics on the other. By understanding differences between definitions on management-level and practice level, a homogeneity can be reached.

The growth of the aging population has warranted increased training and education to prepare professionals with the specific knowledge needed to best serve older adults. Gerontology, as an academic discipline, provides professionals with the conceptual knowledge and the skills necessary to address the complexities of working with a diverse aging population. Little research has been done of the characteristics of professionals both with and without formal education in gerontology that are working with the aging population. The aim of this study was to investigate the roles of career motivation, job satisfaction, attitudes about aging, career commitment, and professional identity among those working with older adults. An exploration of the characteristics of gerontological professionals has implications for the development of best practice approaches in student and staff recruitment, retention, curriculum design, and training practices. Participants were recruited from volunteers invited from a convenience sample of approximately 7,000 members signed up to receive emails from the Department of Gerontology at a Southeastern University, and a snowball approach with the link to the survey being distributed by various organizations and institutions (e.g., assisted living facilities, Southern Gerontological Society, Therapeutic Recreation Association). Professionals’ age and job satisfaction significantly predicted professional identity. Participants’ career motivation, job satisfaction, and exposure to formal gerontological education (MSE) significantly predicted career commitment. Self-identified professional identity in aging groups did not moderate the relationship between MSE predictors and career commitment. However, aging anxiety mediated the relationship between job satisfaction and career commitment. Finally, age and higher perception of the value of teamwork predicted both level of professional identity and job satisfaction. This study sheds lights on perspectives of professionals working with older adults and highlights areas for future research and training with this population.

The focus of this study was perceptions of professional school counselors' (PSC) graduate preparation in their roles as school counselors. The relationships examined were PSCs' roles and the number of hours completed in the school counselors' graduate programs, PSCs' roles and the level of their professional identity, and PSCs' roles and the number of school counseling specialty courses completed in their school counseling graduate programs. The American School Counselor Association (ASCA, 2005) and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP, 2001) have established standards for school counselors to master in their programs. These standards were used to develop the 30 roles identified in this study. Graduate programs referred to the number of hours PSCs completed in their graduate school counseling programs. Professional identity was defined as the certifications and licensures, the memberships in professional organizations, and the number of professional conferences and workshops PSCs attend. Specialty courses included school counseling courses taken by PSCs in their school counseling graduate programs. PSCs perceived themselves to be somewhat prepared in their overall preparation in their roles as school counselors. Results of the correlations between PSCs' perceptions of their preparation in their roles and the number of hours completed in the school counseling graduate programs, the professional identity of PSCs, and the number of specialty coursed completed were statistically significant but not practically significant. PSCs perceived themselves to need additional preparation in serving students with learning differences, seeking funding sources, and using technology. The factor analysis supported the construct validity of the survey instrument. It validated the roles of PSCs as outlined by ASCA standards (2005) and CACREP standards (2001). The factors included (a) Factor 1, Tasks/Advocacy/Professional Identity, (b) Factor II, Personal/Social/Career, (c) Factor III, Academics, and (d) Factor IV, Cultural/Legal/Ethical Issues. In conclusion, PSCs need additional training in student learning differences, seeking funding sources for school counseling programs, and on-going training in technology. PSCs want the term "educator" to be included in their description of their professional identity. PSCs also want additional specialty courses added to their curricula. They believe that the focus should be on the specialty of school counseling rather than a mental health focus.

Leaders in the counseling field are encouraging practitioners to develop a social justice perspective to counseling to ensure fair and equitable treatment of clients and stress the importance of advocating on behalf of these individuals (Lee, 2007; Lee & Waltz, 1998; Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek, 2003; Lewis & Bradley, 2000). The counseling profession, because it is a relatively young field struggling with its own identity (Chi Sigma Iota, 2005; Eriksen, 1999; Gale & Austin, 2003; Myers & Sweeney, 2004) could also benefit from advocacy. A two-pronged approach of professional advocacy, which is the process of advocating for both clients and the profession is the most effective and comprehensive method. The results of this study were intended to bring greater insight into professional counselors' willingness and ability to advocate on behalf of the profession by identifying their perceptions of activities, knowledge, skills, qualities, importance, need, barriers and support for professional advocacy, and by exploring the relationship between counseling professionals' attitudes toward professional counselor advocacy and their perceived level of conducting professional advocacy activities. Results indicated that professional counselors believe that they participate in professional advocacy activities and that they have the knowledge, skills, and qualities to conduct those professional advocacy activities. They report gaining most knowledge of professional advocacy from publications, then from modeling, then conferences and workshops, then from their master's or doctoral program, and last from websites. They endorsed the importance and need to conduct professional advocacy most due to needing to improve the public and professional image of counselors. Participants indicated the top three barriers to advocating are: not enough time, roadblocks caused by other professionals, and insufficient knowledge of professional advocacy strategies; however generally find support to advocate in colleagues, counselor xi educators, supervisors and professional associations. Knowledge, skill, qualities, importance/need, barriers and support produced positive relationships when correlated to professional advocacy activities meaning that they will be more involved in professional counselor advocacy activities if they endorse these ideas. Additionally, several barriers produced significant, negative relationships with advocacy activities indicating that if they perceive barriers, they are less likely to be involved in those advocacy activities.

Magister Scientiae (Occupational Therapy) - MSc(OT) / Professional socialisation is a key dimension within the professional development of an occupational therapy practitioner. Professional socialisation in the first year of practice involves a process of change within the individual with regards to knowledge, skills and reasoning. The process further involves the novice’s developmental induction into the culture of the profession and into the practice context. Novice practitioners who are not appropriately supported in their professional socialisation process may become demoralised as practitioners. It is necessary to explore professional socialisation from the perspectives of novice occupational therapy practitioners themselves, in order to generate an understanding of how professional socialisation can be supported in the first year of practice. This is of vital importance otherwise the profession may run the risk of attrition. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore and describe novice occupational therapists’ perceptions and experiences regarding professional socialisation during the first year of practice. A qualitative research approach and exploratory descriptive research design was utilised in the public health system in South Africa. Purposive sampling was utilised to select nine participants for the study. Data collection methods included two semi-structured interviews and a dyad interview discussion which were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed through thematic data analysis. The strategies of member checking, peer review, reflexivity, and an audit trail ensured trustworthiness of the study. Ethics clearance was obtained from the UWC Research Committee. Three themes originated from the findings of this study. The first theme, stepping into the unknown, illustrates a dissonance between the participants’ expectations for practice and the actual realities of practice that they encountered. The second theme, uncovering the occupational therapy culture, highlights power dynamics and inconsistencies within the profession as perceived by the participants. The third theme, becoming a professional, highlights how the participants responded to the challenge of transitioning from student to professional and started to internalise their professional identity. Recommendations to support the professional socialisation of novice therapists in the South African context are made in respect of occupational therapy education, continued professional development, support for novice therapists, transformation in the profession and future research.

The focus of this study is the formation of legal professional identity and the manner and extent to which representations of legal professionals in classroom talk could feature in and be studied as part of this process. Eclipsed for many years by the need to teach students to ‘think like lawyers’, professional identify formation is increasingly acknowledged as a legitimate concern of legal educationalists. This entails expanding the sphere of legal education beyond the cognitive aspects of the discipline of law to encompass inculcation of the purposes and values of the profession but also, more broadly, an appreciation of the forms of power legal professionals exercise, the forms of work they undertake, the relationships they establish and maintain, and the social profile of the profession they advocate for or accept. The study assumes an understanding of legal professional identity formation as a pervasive and implicit process of socialization that occurs irrespective of whether professional identity has been posited as a particular pedagogical object or not. It puts forward the thesis that representations of legal professionals in classroom talk constitute part of the socialization process. It presents a theoretical model for understanding the significance of such representations in processes of identity formation, linking them to an understanding of ‘identity regulation’ that revolves around the concepts ‘role’ and ‘discourse’. It further invokes the resources of critical discourse analysis and, in particular, the work of Van Leeuwen, to develop a set of appropriate analytical codes modeled on key elements of social practice for analyzing representational meanings relating to legal professionals in classroom talk. The development of the codes is undertaken through an iterative process that engages with a complete, verbatim transcription of classroom talk in an introductory six-­‐month course on law at a tertiary institution. The study concludes that a discursive, analytical approach to studying representational meanings relating to legal professionals in classroom talk and, in particular, a micro-­‐discursive point of entry modeled on key elements of social practice, is useful and appropriate for apprehending the richness of the representational meanings. Such an approach allows for a grounded identification of themes that can then be compared to claims made in the literature on legal professionalism and the teaching of legal ethics. It also concludes that because the representation of legal professionals in classroom talk overlaps with the power relations of the classroom, they should be regarded as a significant source of identity regulation and thus used in a manner that is both reflective and constructive.