Sara MacLean – @SaraBBMac
University of Stirling

Professional associations such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC), General Teaching Council (GTC) and the British Medical Association (BMA) have issued directives on the use of social media that professionals need to observe to retain good standing. While these policies have progressively loosened over time, they still represent the risk adverse environment of professional practice. Social media, on the other hand, is an area usually characterised by the “move fast and break things” approach where experimentation and innovation are emphasised. Hence the cautious, ethics-driven approach of professional practice and the rapid, experimental approach to social media practices are often at odds which leaves educating professionals for a networked society replete with paradoxes and tensions. This piece of research investigates these dynamics in final year students on three professional courses in two professions (social work and nursing). In exploring with the students dilemmas and practices associated with digital professionalism, the research draws out the networks found within these tensions and explore how HE professional education can address them in practice.

Theoretical Approach: The research will employ a relational method focusing on the assemblage of professional boundaries in online social spaces. It seeks to shed light on to the “the precarious mechanics of organisation” (Law, 1992 p.389). Therefore, it will inquire about what is invited and what is excluded in the boundary practices of digital professionalism. Moreover, utilising Elias (1978), the research will seek to explore how professionalism is interconnected in this time of technological change.

Methodology: Undertaking a comparative, cross-professional design, data was gathered from semi-structured interviews that incorporated discussions based on vignettes of professional dilemmas and an activity of digital footprint tracing to help understand how the participants both understand the boundaries as well as negotiate them in their current practice. Interviews ranged from 2.5 hours to 5 hours in length sometimes split over two sessions. Furthermore, dialogue groups were undertaken in the professional courses which utilised visual and, at times, multimodal methods.

Findings: The research is just entering the formal data analysis stage at time of submission so results discussed here are at best descriptive and preliminary. Context was important to most participants in discussing professional dilemmas with straightforward discussions rare. A number of participants also discussed frustration between maintaining an online presence and professionalism. Current analysis is investigating how students self-regulate and the ties impacting this process.

Relevance: By understanding how professionalism and professional boundaries are being negotiated by students transitioning to employment, this research seeks to open up these concepts so that we can better prepare students for a networked world.

References

Elias, N. (1978). The history of manners: The civilizing process, Vol. 1. New York: Pantheon.

Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor-network: Ordering, strategy, and heterogeneity. Systems practice, 5(4), 379-393.