Professional socialisation is a key aspect of social work pre-qualifying training and the final practice placement has long been viewed as one of the most crucial elements of social work training, in enabling students to transfer learning on the course into practice (Parker, 2007). Whilst there has been substantial research into how students develop their skills in social work education, very few studies have focused upon the student’s development of professional identity and the process of professional socialisation (Valutis, Rubin and Bell, 2012). This study explores this gap, particularly the impact of the placement supervisor and agency context upon the student’s development of professional identity. An autobiographical style and social constructionist approach is employed by the author, alongside the use of a theoretical lens which incorporates Bourdieu’s (1993) work, particularly the concept of ‘Habitus’, Jenkins’ (2008) use of three orders concerning ‘Social Identity’, and the work of Lave and Holland (2001) regarding ‘History in Person’. The data was generated from semi-structured interviews with final year postgraduate students and placement supervisors. These narratives were analysed through the use of grounded theory (Charmaz, 2014). The findings of this study contributes four main areas to the understanding of how professional identity is developed. Firstly, the importance of prior and current personal experiences in the development of professional identity, especially first-hand service user experience. Secondly the value of informal reflective spaces to discuss identity, particularly with peers. Thirdly the significance of the student establishing a reciprocal relationship with their placement supervisor. Finally, the impact of the agency/placement environment upon the student and their supervisor in supporting this process of professional socialisation. Further research of a longitudinal nature is proposed by the author, to include a wider range of students and supervisors in order to build upon this understanding of professional identity development and how to best support the professional socialisation process.

The social work has change from a voluntary dedication to an established profession. Social work is a profession in constant change and development. This study is about how social work has changed over time and how these changes have affected social workers professional practice. Our study highlights the changes in Sweden in the last 30 years. Our study is a qualitative study with an individual perspective and was conducted through semi-structured interviews with social workers over 55 years old. The results were consequently analyzed by using organizational theory, new institutonalism, professionalism and specialization. The result showed mainly three changes. These changes were digitization, streamlining and specialization. The result showed that these changes have contributed to both positive and negative consequences. Some of the consequences are; less client contact, high workload and more administrative work. The social work is changing as society develops. The result also shows that the professional identity is complex and associated to many other things. The disadvantage of the social worker's professional profession is the complexity, because social workers are a professional group with broad knowledge who can work in many different fields, which means that a professional identity can be  difficult to create.

L'éducation spécialisée est traversée, depuis une dizaine d'années, par de profondes mutations institutionnelles. Les éducateurs spécialisés, qui en sont des acteurs parmi d'autres, ont tendance à leur imputer les effets de la « crise identitaire » qui gagnerait leur profession. Nous démontrons, pour notre part, que celle-ci est surtout la résurgence d'une disjonction originelle entre leur identité pour soi et leur identité pour autrui. Plus qu'une déprofessionnalisation, nous soutenons la thèse selon laquelle les éducateurs spécialisés, sous l'effet des changements à l'œuvre, sont confrontés aux limites de leur professionnalisation historiquement inachevée. Nous montrons ainsi que nos enquêtés jouent de leur autonomie, se saisissant des opportunités offertes par ces mutations institutionnelles, pour réduire les brouillages originels de leur identité sociale et professionnelle. Il reste que l'enjeu identitaire n'est pas un objet de négociation ordinaire puisqu'il engage des conceptions professionnelles, la perception de son utilité sociale et, plus fondamentalement encore, l'image de soi. Présentant les caractéristiques majeures de l'éducation spécialisée et des mutations systémiques en cours, nous exposons, dans notre première partie, les fondements de notre problématique de recherche. Dans la seconde, nous dévoilons les dynamiques de négociation institutionnelles et organisationnelles dans lesquelles sont engagés nos interviewés au sein de leurs établissements ou services. Enfin, dans notre troisième partie, nous démontrons que les dynamiques identitaires de nos enquêtés participent de la recomposition des pratiques et de la profession d'éducateur spécialisé elle-même. / In the last ten years, the field of special education has undergone profound institutional changes. The special education teachers, who are among the actors of this field, would tend to attribute the effects of the « identity crisis » that could be encroaching on their profession to these changes. We shall demonstrate that this crisis is essentially the re-emergence of what is first a disjunction between their personal identity and their virtual identity. In our thesis, we shall defend the idea that, rather than a de-professionalization, special education teachers, under the influence of on-going changes, are confronted with the limitations of their historically incomplete professionalization. We shall thus show that our interviewees use their personal autonomy to seize opportunities proffered by these institutional changes, to reduce the gap between their personal and virtual identity. Nevertheless, identity is not a matter of ordinary negotiation as it involves professional conceptions, perception of one's social utility, and even more fundamentally, one's self-image. With an introduction to the main features of the field of special education and the on-going system changes, we shall outline the basis of our research analysis in the first part. In the second part, we shall reveal the dynamics of institutional and organisational negotiation that our interviewees are involved in, in their respective institutions or service centres. Finally in our third part, we shall show that the identity-based dynamics of our interviewees play a role in reconstructing practices and the job of special education teacher itself.

This thesis presents an ethnographic investigation of teachers’ peer-to-peer engagement in online social spaces, using the concept of teachers’ professional identity as a framework to shape and focus the study. Using Religious Education (RE) as a strong example of the wider phenomenon of teachers’ online engagement, three online social spaces (the Times Educational Supplement’s RE Forum, the National Association of Teachers of RE Facebook Page, and the Save RE Facebook Group) were investigated as case studies. A year was spent in these spaces with digital ethnographic research taking place simultaneously in each one. Data gathering primarily took the form of participant observations, in depth analysis of time-based sampled text (three 8-week samples from each space), online and offline narrative based interviews and, to a lesser extent, questionnaires, elite interviews and analysis of grey literature. The study finds that engagement in the online social spaces offered teachers opportunities to perform and construct their professional identities across a variety of topics ranging from local practical concerns to national political issues. In more practical topics the spaces could often be observed as acting as communities of practice in which professional learning took place and identities were constructed, with such online professional development influencing offline classroom practice. However, engaging across this spectrum of topics afforded users a broad conception of what it means to be a teacher, where professional identity was understood as going beyond classroom practice and integrating engagement with subject-wide, political and policy related issues at a national level. Such engagement provided many users with a feeling of belonging to a national community of peers, which, alongside political activism initiated in online interaction and meaning making debates concerning the future and identity of the subject, provided teachers with feelings of empowerment and a sense of ownership of their subject. However, the study found that teachers’ online engagement took place within structures embedded in the online social spaces that influenced and shaped engagement and the ways in which users’ professional identities were performed and constructed. These structures were linked with the design and technical affordances of the spaces, the agendas of the parent organisations that provided the spaces, and the discourses that dominated the spaces. These aspects of the spaces provided a structure that limited engagement, content and available online identity positions while additionally projecting ideal identity positions, distinctive in each space. These ideal identity positions had a constructive influence over many users who aspired to these ideals, often gaining confidence through expressing such socially validated ideals or feeling inadequate when failing to perform such ideal identity positions. Thus, this study finds a complex relationship between agency linked with active online identity performance and the constructive influence of embedded structures that contributed to the shaping of users’ engagement and their understandings of themselves as professionals and their subject.

L’éducation et la formation sont des institutions centrales de notre société. Garantes de l’intégration sociale et professionnelle des individus, elles ont aussi été érigées en piliers stratégiques du dynamisme économique dans la « société de la connaissance » (CE, 2000). Pour autant, bien que porteuses des valeurs démocratiques, elles sont le lieu d’observation de nombreuses inégalités, tant en formation initiale que professionnelle. Dans un contexte de précarisation du marché du travail, où le diplôme est nécessaire mais ne semble plus suffire pour assurer une intégration professionnelle stable, l’essor des Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) questionne. À partir d’une enquête mixte longitudinale, cette recherche s’est attachée à répondre à la problématique générale suivante : dans quelle mesure l’égalité formelle d’accès aux MOOC se traduit-elle par une égalité des chances pour les individus de les utiliser, d’y réussir et d’en tirer des bénéfices (objectifs et subjectifs) ? Cette étude des usages sociaux des MOOC et de leurs effets dans les trajectoires individuelles a été réalisée à partir de l’analyse de 5709 réponses d’inscrits au sein de 12 MOOC de France Université Numérique (FUN), réinterrogés un an plus tard (n=1778), et de 32 entretiens. Arguant en faveur d’une reproduction sociale des inégalités d’accès, les résultats montrent que l’égalité formelle d’accès ne suffit pas à une appropriation par tous de ces ressources. Ces usages restent principalement le fait d’individus détenant un capital humain élevé, bénéficiant d’une « insertion professionnelle assurée » (Paugam, 2007[2000]), coutumiers de la formation professionnelle et ayant d’intenses pratiques culturelles. Plus qu’une nouvelle voie d’accès à la formation, les MOOC semblent constituer un moyen supplémentaire, nécessitant des prérequis implicites. Pour autant, la construction d’une typologie d’usage a permis de mettre au jour que les MOOC peuvent constituer, même pour ces derniers, une réelle opportunité de formation. Majoritairement saisis dans un rapport a priori désintéressé de loisirs culturels, ils sont aussi utilisés pour satisfaire des objectifs formatifs variés. Ces six registres d’usage sont par ailleurs plus faiblement déterminés. L’évaluation de la réussite, lorsque les critères de l’achèvement et de la certification sont pertinents, met en évidence, pour ces individus favorisés, une égalité des chances d’y parvenir. Bien que ces usages sociaux n’aient, à court terme, aucun effet objectivable sur les trajectoires socio-professionnelles, ils sont porteurs de bénéfices plus subjectifs. Selon les particularités et la temporalité des « parcours biographiques » (Bourdon, 2010), ils participent au développement des identités personnelles et professionnelles ainsi qu’à une amélioration du vécu de certaines transitions. Loin de concurrencer en France le rôle des diplômes dans les parcours sociaux, les MOOC semblent plutôt en constituer un nouveau halo et participer à l’avènement d’une ère du signalement tout au long de la vie. / Education and vocational training are central institutions in today’s society. They play an important role in guaranteeing people’s social and professional integration. They are also considered strategic pillars of economic growth in “the knowledge society” (CE, 2000). However, despite their basis in democratic values and principles, there are still many inequalities in access and outcomes in both compulsory academic and vocational education. Moreover, because of the increasing flexibility and insecurity of work in the current labor market, a diploma is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for stable employment. In this context, the rise of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) raises questions about their contribution to the educational aims of equality and efficacy. Based on a mixed-methods approach, this thesis addresses the following research problem: To what extent does the formal equality of MOOC give people equal opportunities to use them, succeed in them, and earn tangible and subjective benefits? The analyses are carried out on data collected from 5709 people enrolled in 12 MOOC on the FUN platform, interviewed again one year later (n=1778), and on 32 interviews. Results show that the use of MOOC seems to reproduce social inequalities in educational access. Indeed, the people who enroll already have high levels of human capital and highly stable and qualified employment; furthermore, they are accustomed to professional training and have intense cultural practices. Rather than acting as a new way to access education and training for underserved people, MOOC seem to be a new resource for privileged individuals, and access to them appears to require implicit prerequisites. However, the typology of MOOC uses shows that even for these people, MOOC can be an additional training opportunity. Mainly used for disinterested purposes, such as “edutainment” or cultural interest, they are also real training and educational supports. Nevertheless, these types of uses are not strongly determined. When achievement and certification are used as indicators to assess the success of these social uses, results show no social inequalities in outcomes. However, at least in the short term, participating in a MOOC does not have any tangible impact on professional careers: Rather, their effects are subjective. Considering the “biographical path” of these people (Bourdon, 2010), I find that they use MOOC both to sustain individual and professional identities and to facilitate social transitions. Instead of competing with the role played by diplomas in France, MOOC seem to be a new “halo” of these educational credentials, participating in the development of the need to acquire skills throughout one’s career and reinforcing the trend towards life-long learning.