Educating for Professional Identity Development

Abstract

In preparing students for their role in their respective communities, vocational and professional education should provide for learning experiences that acculturate them to become the new and bona fide practitioners. In addition to acquiring pre-requisite knowledge and skills, the graduates need to have adequately integrated their learning and internalized the values and norms of practice to think, speak and act like the professionals (Buyx, Maxwell, & Schone-Seifert, 2008; Cooke, Irby, & O'Brien, 2010; Dall'Alba, 2009; Monrouxe, 2010; Sheppard, Macatangay, Colby, & Sullivan, 2009; Sullivan, Colby, Wegner, Bond, & Shulman, 2007). For the transformation to take place more successfully, students have to be supported to understand their developing identities: in making sense of their experiences to relate to who they are, and who they might become as the professionals (Monrouxe, 2010). When explicit support for the development of their professional identity is not designed or provided for, students may inadvertently be influenced by the informal or hidden curriculum that can run counter to the desired outcomes of professional education (Haidet & Stein, 2006; Lempp & Seale, 2004; Monrouxe, 2010). The informal or hidden curriculum refer to the “influences that are implicit rules to survive at an institution such as customs, rituals and taken for granted aspects” (Lempp & Seale, 2004, p. 770). To address the professional identity development of students in vocational or professional education, these fundamental questions need to be considered: What is professional identity? What factors contribute to its development? How can the students be supported in the development of their professional identity? The aim of Chapter 1 is to give an overview of what the literature has to say about these. This chapter will also include a description and explanation about the significance of the educational context of the four research studies in this thesis, and the research questions these studies have been executed to answer.