Professional Identity Differentiation And Career Choice During Social Work Internships

Cultivating and developing the strength of applied social work professionals is an important step in promoting the development of social work in China,and social work internships can play an important role in training social work students to assimilate and internalise their professional values and theoretical knowledge,improve their ability to integrate theory and practice,and promote the formation and development of their professional identity.However,there are some practical obstacles to the formation of students’professional identity and their willingness to choose a career in social work.Using qualitative research methods,the author interviewed 20 social work master’s degree students at H University.The author used social identity theory to analyse the performance of social work students’ professional identity during their internships,the reasons for its formation and its impact on their future career choices.Social work students’ professional identity should be unified in terms of their emotional attitudes and behaviour,but the results of the study show that social work students’professional identity is divided.Their ideational identity is strengthened in terms of social work expertise and values,but their instrumental identity in terms of career choice and personal development is weakened.This differentiation is the result of a combination of favourable and unfavourable factors in the social work internship process.The reflective form of practice,the support of peer groups and supervisors,and the distinctive professional values and technical advantages of social work strengthen the ideological identity of social work students,while the obstacles to identity construction,the mismatch between professional theory and practice,the low autonomy of the social work profession and the lag in professional development limit the construction of students’instrumental identity.The weakening of social work students’ instrumental identity has a greater impact on their future career choices than the strengthening of their ideological identity,so social work students focus more on seeking higher social identity and self-esteem by changing their future career direction,mainly by not wanting to work in traditional social work institutions,preferring to work in the system or pursuing further studies in search of quality employment opportunities.To address the problems of social work students in building their professional identity during their internship,the author believes that not only should social work students pay attention to the enhancement of their personal abilities and cultivation of their interests,but also schools and society should pay attention to the improvement of the social work internship and professional environment to provide social work students with a good learning and practice environment and improve their professional identity.