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Abstract
This paper explores the concept of stereotyping from UK social work students' and educators' perspectives. It discusses findings from an exploration of inter-professional practice with two cohorts of final year social work students in a UK university. The authors adapted a questionnaire to initiate discussion about inter-professional working with BA and MA students participating in a specialist child and family social work module. This paper analyses students' responses to the questionnaire and explores wider issues relating to professional stereotyping and identity, discussing the usefulness of these concepts for social work education and collaborative practice. Results suggest that student social workers held both positive and negative assumptions about specific occupations/professions (such as medicine), and that these acted as a mirror or tool for reflecting back their own views of social work identity/ies. We argue that this pedagogic exercise in identifying stereotypical assumptions about ‘others’ may encourage the building of a positive sense of ‘own’ professional identity. We further suggest that students should be encouraged to construct a core social work identity that is dynamic and responsive to changing contexts.
Notes
[1] A review of progress since the Laming Report (Citation2003).
[2] Stereotype: ‘(fig) make unchangeable, impart monotonous regularity to, fix in all details, formalize’ (Concise Oxford Dictionary).
[3] This concept of tribalism has also been examined in relation to professional identity in higher education (Becher and Trowler, Citation2001).
[4] Based on the Likert scale ratings.
[5] The results were recoded into two groups MA (n = 26) and BA+Mixed (n = 15) for chi square tests.