Professional Identities and Societal Discourse: Ethical Pressure and Moral Distress in Welfare Work and Education

This chapter is based on the research project Narratives on Education and Professional Identities (NEPI), a qualitative interview study founded in the methodology Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The study was carried out at two university colleges in Denmark and the data consist of seven interviews with students studying to become welfare professional, i.e. teachers and early childhood educators. This chapter illuminates how professional identities are influenced by societal discourses, notions of prestige, stereotypes, and prejudices about the welfare professions. Based on an in-depth cross-case analysis, the study shows how the informants experience a tension between an inner motivation and an external pressure in relation to their choice of education and profession. The informants have been met with condescending, skeptical, and knowledgeable comments about their choice of education and future profession. These statements – and the prevailing societal discourses that lie beneath them – have caused the informants to doubt their inherent public motivation for welfare professionalism and their core task in serving children and young people.