According to the global definition (IFSW, 2014), social work is a profession. Since the second half of the twentieth century, however, the meaning of professionalism has become blurred and its practices have been criticized fiercely. In order to understand, appreciate and strengthen social work as a profession, a sociological equivalent of positive psychology might be needed. Such a positive sociology (Stebbins, 2009) of professionalism would focus unequivocally on its meaningful and valuable potential. In this respect, Freidson’s (2001) ideal-typical approach of professionalism is quite promising. Its outcome does not fully meet Weber’s (1904, 1913, 1922) criteria for an idealtypical construction, though. This article argues that it is impossible to develop a solid scientific ideal type of professionalism based on a power perspective, as tried by Freidson (2001). A value perspective opens up a more promising approach for strengthening social work as a profession.
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As part of my PhD research, I investigate the factors of student success and the influence of the use of social media by first year students in higher education. For this I use the insights provided by the highly influential and leading integration theory of Tinto and diminished the amount of variables by only using the best predictive ones. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and establishing a more easy to use model for teachers and management. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. Principal component analysis on Facebook usage provided different integration/engagement components, which I coined peer-engagement and knowledge engagement. Both consisted of various purposes of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. To uncover if these latent variables play a significant role in student success or if Facebook is a multi-distracting platform, two models were compared using structural equation modeling with SPSS AMOS; one with and one without the peer-, and knowledge engagement variables. The fit of both models are compared using the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the direct influence and indirect influence of all variables are compared to provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success.
Inmiddels weten we dat veel patiënten geen op onderzoeksresultaten gebaseerde zorg krijgen of zorg krijgen die overbodig of zelfs potentieel schadelijk is. Ondanks deze kennis is minder bekend hoe deze internationaal bestaande kloof tussen onderzoek en de verpleegkundige praktijk te overbruggen is. Gebruikelijke implementatiestrategieën die deze kloof proberen te dichten, zijn vaak gericht op de individuele professional en minder vaak op de sociale omgeving of de context waarin de verpleegkundige werkzaam is. In het proefschrift van Gerda Holleman probeert zij meer inzicht te krijgen in de rol die de context heeft bij het implementeren van evidence-based practice (EBP) in de verpleegkundige praktijk. Ze maakt een onderscheid tussen drie elementen in de sociale context: de professionele verpleegkundige beroepsorganisaties, de verpleegkundige opinieleider (een gerespecteerd persoon in een gezondheidszorgorganisatie die innovatiekennis heeft en gemotiveerd is implementatie tot een succes te maken) en de verpleegkundige teams.
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