Humanizing school psychologists. The construction of a novice school psychologist's model of professional identity

This paper proposes a sociocultural approach to the study of professional identity, highlighting its dialogic, relational, dynamic, discursive and sociohistorically situated nature. From this conceptualization, we analysed the transformation of a novice school psychologist's model of identity during her professional induction, that is, the progressive reconstruction of the meanings with which she characterized her profession. A qualitative and longitudinal case study was designed with this objective in mind. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and analysed through discourse analysis strategies. We concluded that the novice school psychologist progressively de-idealized educational psychologists. This process was facilitated by certain mechanisms such as the explicitation of the psychologists' ontology, embodiment, ventriloquation or acts of recognition. The main limitations of the study were identified and some implications proposed to contribute to the construction of school psychologists' professional identities during their initial training and professional induction.