The following article is taken from an Italian research entitled Identity, awareness and sense of belonging . It explains in a simple and effective way what exactly professional identity is. It seems to me a good starting point to know the meaning of these two words (professional-identity) and all the dynamics that intervene so that this area of our life, work, is lived in the best possible way and consequently, with the best results.
Happy reading!
Self-representation can be broken down into two components: personal and social.
The first relates to that set of characteristics that the individual thinks he possesses (aptitudes, abilities, attitudes, potential) and is built on the basis of personal experience filtered through subjective interpretative schemes.
The second, the it derives from the awareness of belonging to a specific social group and the value weight it attributes to it within a complex social structure; the professional identity is therefore a significant component of it .
It is through these complex processes, strongly intertwined with relational dynamics, that self-esteem, the perception of self-efficacy and the locus of control, essential elements in determining our behaviors and expectations, are formed.
The professional choice and the relative training path is certainly a central aspect of an individual’s “self-construction”.
It is a choice in which the rational plan is strongly intertwined with the more unaware of feelings of identity, imaginary representations of the future job and related intimate personal expectations.
Professional identity (IP) is a becoming, a dynamic process of elaboration and re-elaboration of experiences that involves both the person and the context. It is configured as an evolutionary system that develops over time and categorizes an individual as a member of a specific profession. Professional identity includes:
- understanding of roles and responsibilities;
- the sense of satisfaction and pride in the chosen field;
- the presentation and image of the profession
Therefore according to Brott and Myers having a low IP can affect the quality of work.
Professional identity is mainly built through a self-directed path, which implies the person’s ability to continually redefine himself by integrating different dimensions, even at times in conflict with each other and which derive from the multi-belonging that he will always experience. more in the course of one’s working life.
No longer only anchored to the specific organizational context or to the specific role, the PI draws nourishment from the vocations and aptitudes of the subject, from his ability to abandon what is useless from the past more and rework what can be useful , by its ability to self-development and continuous self-learning.
Once the uncertainty has been accepted and metabolized, the person will increasingly seek in the communities of practice and on the web the references they need.
–>After “What is Personal Identity” you read Read on for topics related