Full text aan te vragen bij auteurs. This article describes the results of qualitative research into the moral issues faced by social work professionals working in projects targeted at teenage mothers. The research is part of the tradition of empirical and practice-driven ethics. The main questions were: How does morality become visible in the social services for teenage mothers and how do social workers deal with the moral dimension of their work? (How) can education, training and peer review offer space for moral reflection? Interviews and group meetings ('focus groups') were held to answer these questions. Nineteen professionals (front-line professionals as well as professionals in executive roles) participated in the research. The findings describe the moral issues and the moral actions of professionals and the organizational context respectively. The results reveal that the everyday practice of social work professionals can raise complex issues inherent to their work and that there is often no explicit reflection on the moral dimension of these issues. The authors argue that there needs to be greater focus on the complexity of moral issues and elaborate on three dimensions of this complexity.
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Most higher education alumni work in professional fields, making higher education responsible for the provision of high-quality professionalism throughout society. However, higher education does not yet fulfil its role as a provider of methodologies for the renewal of professionalism. In this lecture, Didi Griffioen outlines the characteristics of professionalism, asserting that current methodologies for the continuous renewal of different elements of professionalism are lacking. By positioning itself as provider of these methodologies, higher education can play a more relevant role in society while also contributing to its own professional renewal and innovativeness.
Narrative research is an appropriate method for studying the constructs and sensemaking of moral courage. Moral courage or speaking up by professionals is needed for maintaining ethical checks and balances in organizations. Personal narratives give the researcher and the researched increased understanding of real-life individual and implicit behavior that encourages moral action by professionals. By reflecting on reasons for morally courageous actions, prototypes and implicit patterns become clearer. These insights fit the focus of a sensemaking-intuitive approach as most current approach to ethical decision-making. Insights from individual narratives can encourage and strengthen the professional in performing his or her much needed ethical role in the organization.
