The emotional experience of continuing professional development for social workers

Moore, Tanya (2020) The emotional experience of continuing professional development for social workers. Professional Doctorate thesis, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust / University of Essex. Full text available

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Abstract

This study seeks to understand why some social workers seem to connect and engage openly with opportunities for continuing professional development (CPD) while others seem to have a more conflicted relationship with their learning. Using psychoanalytically informed free association narrative interviews with eight social workers, the study explores the participant’s emotional experience of CPD. The data is analysed using an ‘Evolved approach’ (Cooper, 2014) in which it is examined for new ideas and organised into themes. The findings suggest a clear relational dimension to learning for social workers and the researcher offers The Learning Response model as a product of the study. This is a biographical narrative model of the pedagogy of CPD which offers a way of understanding how social worker’s approach to CPD is influenced by the experience of learning facilitation in early life. The model suggests that for some social workers, the script for future engagement with learning is set at this stage and they will repeat their early responses in their adult learning. But the study also identifies apparent compensatory factors and experiences and these seem to enable social workers to rescript their approach to CPD. For all however, the inner emotional voice created from initial experiences remains the same and it is this which replays and shapes social worker’s emotional experience of CPD.

Item Type: Thesis (Professional Doctorate)
Additional Information: Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Essex in collaboration with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust for the award of Professional Doctorate in advanced practice and research: Social work and social care
Uncontrolled Keywords: Professional Doctorate in advanced practice and research: Social work and social care, D55, Continuing Professional Development
Subjects: Social Welfare > Social Welfare Personnel
Social Welfare > Social Work
Department/People: Adult and Forensic Services
Research
URI: https://repository.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/id/eprint/2268

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