What do we know about the professional socialization of our students?

The purpose of this article is to present and characterize the empirical literature that relates to the professional socialization of social work students and then contrast it with some of the early medical and nursing studies in this area. This article argues that unlike the professional socialization studies in medicine, nursing, and other disciplines, which benefit from the findings of qualitative, exploratory research, social work frequently reduces the study of a complex process to attitude and value dimensions, without empirical agreement on what those dimensions are or how to best measure them. The prevailing structural functionalist stance adopted by social work researchers excludes a broader framework by which socializing forces and their interplay could be discovered and identified. Implications and recommendations for social work education are noted.