Het versterken van de professionele identiteit door leren in gemeenschappelijkheid

The manifold, at times contrary demands and developments professionals in care and social work are confronted with, have led to a crisis in professional identity. The authors claim that an inductive strategy is a better strategy than a deductive strategy of knowledge development when the purpose is to strengthen the identity. The former strategy both relates to personal needs, values, knowledge and experience of professionals, ands offers some grip on knowledge development by the professionals themselves. This is illustrated by a learning trajectory that was developed for social workers. Describing this trajectory and presenting an evaluation of the results, the authors conclude that the strategy of professional development does have learning effects, though these are restricted to the individual level and do not involve the organisational level.