personal construct psychology || a personal construct theory view of professional identity

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A Personal Construct TheoryView of Professional IdentityJULIE ELLIS

The aim of this chapter is to highlight how a Professional Identity could bedescribed in Personal Construct Theory (PCT) terms. The focus is on itsapplication to help in the understanding of the processes involved in formingand maintaining a Professional Identity, particularly, for the 60 nurse parti-cipants of a study on Professional Identity.

THE STUDY

This study was undertaken with 60 nurses (30 first year students and 30expert nurses with an average job experience of 15 years), in which reper-tory grids were used to collect data on participants’ constructions of theirprofessional selves.

The analysis used to identify groups of professional identity was complexand resulted in a Professional Identity Orientation for each participant in thestudy. Data included in this Professional Identity Orientation included:

• Proportion of Variance on the first component in the Principal ComponentsAnalysis,

• Proportion of variance of every construct,• Correlations between constructs, specifically significant relationships

between the construct Caring/Not caring and other constructs elicited,

Personal Construct Psychology: New Ideas. Edited by Peter Caputi, Heather Foster and Linda L.Viney. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Personal Construct Psychology Edited by Peter Caputi, Heather Foster and Linda L. Viney

Copyright 0 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd,

• Standard Euclidean distances between elements, particularly focussing onthe similarity or dissimilarity between elements, such as Self as a Nurse,and Ideal Self as a Nurse.

• Cosines between constructs and elements, indicating association of con-structs and elements. To describe the elements, the three constructs withthe highest cosines were used (Ellis, 2000).

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY ORIENTATION

Content analysis of the Professional Identity Orientation for each participanttherefore, did not simply categorise construct poles but included the aboveinformation, and the aim was to identify themes represented by this groupof nurses and to represent equilibrium between the idiographic and the nomothetic approaches to understanding human nature (Allport, 1961, inShaughnessy & Zechmeister, 1994).

THE TYPES OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Six types of professional identity were identified: an “immature” identity thatoccurred mainly in the students’ group, a “patient-oriented” professionalidentity (with more students than experts sharing this professional identity),an achievement-oriented identity (more experts than students), a conflict-oriented identity, a social justice-oriented professional identity and a bal-anced professional identity (with only experts in the last three groups – seeTable 12.1).

PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

CONSTRUING A PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

How do people construe or anticipate their future professional selves? Thisquestion could be asked of young people who are attempting to decide on acareer, as well as professionals who are or should be contemplating changesto their professional roles. For some people, the choice of a career is madeearly in life, and this provides opportunities for anticipation and construingof how the role might be. Information may be gleaned from family andfriends, from books, newspapers and television. Therefore, slowly, an anti-cipatory position is built up. For these people, undertaking studies in theirchosen role or commencing in the work place means facing the task of

152 PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY: NEW IDEAS

having their previously developed anticipations confirmed and developingmeans of defending their already existing constructs against the danger ofinvalidation. This implies modifying their construct systems continually asthey encounter new elements of work practices.

This seems to be the case with the patient-oriented group of students, andpossibly also with the few achievement-oriented ones. They have a dis-cernible Professional Identity that may be rooted in earlier (childhood) experiences. However, for others, decisions are made regarding future pro-fessional roles without opportunity for anticipation and construing. Thisoccurs for many reasons and for many people in our society. They then facethe situation where they are forced to start defining constructs and constructsystems while also dealing with the new role or studying for the role.

A PERSONAL CONSTRUCT THEORY VIEW OF PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY 153

Table 12.1 Six types of professional identity of nurses – distribution in the 2groups of nurses

Student Expertnurses nurses

Immature 17 3s: immature, nice, development-focused 9 2p + s: immature 3 –p + s + w: nondescript, undifferentiated 5 1Patient-oriented 11 5p: caring, support 5 1p + s: patient-focussed and open 3 4p + w: integrated 3 –Achievement-oriented 2 7w: achievement, ambition, performance 2 3w + p: holistic ambition – 1w + s: balanced achiever – 3Crisis and conflict – 10s: crisis, conflict, dilemma – 6p + w: conflicting – 2p + w + s: anxious, unhappy – 2Social justice-oriented – 2p: social justice-focused – 2Balanced – 3s: balanced – 1p + w + s: balanced, integrated, mature – 2

S = Self focus; P = People focus; W = Work focus.

The student nurses in this study were 18–20 years old and had been students for only 8 months. They had selected nursing as a career, but knewvery little about it. They were more interested in enjoying themselves andhaving a good time. However, they would eventually spend many weeks inthe hospital environment where they were expected to be able to construethat environment and many of the things that are happening therein. It isprobable that they faced many anxious moments during these times in thehospital. “Anxiety is the recognition that one is inescapably confronted withevents to which one’s constructs do not adequately apply. It is the recogni-tion that the events with which one is confronted lie outside the range ofconvenience of one’s construct system” (Kelly, 1991, p. 366).

It is possible that some of these students found the anxiety too much tobear, and left. Kelly (1991) proposes that the Fragmentation and ModulationCorollaries, “taken together, assume that one can tolerate some incompat-ibility, but not too much” (p. 366).

From a PCT perspective, anxiety is neither good nor bad. It does “repres-ent an awareness that one’s construct system does not apply to the events athand. It is, therefore, a precondition for making revisions” (Kelly, 1991, p.367). But this does not mean that the more anxious a person, the more theperson is likely to make an effective revision of constructs. A person can beso anxious that they “rush about” and cannot concentrate on reconstruing.

CONSTRUCTION OF A PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Not all people working successfully in a professional environment share thesame Professional Identity. As their personalities and their ways of copingwith the demands of work are different, they may develop different ways ofconstruing themselves professionally. Sometimes this may result in differentcareer choices within the same profession.

It would normally be expected that a person working in a professional rolefor a number of years would have developed a useful construct system thathelps him or her deal with his or her role on a day to day basis. They wouldnormally have had the opportunity to anticipate most events that occur intheir work role. Their construct systems would or should help them deal withthe difficult situation encountered by developing ways of dealing with themby “construing their replications” (Kelly, 1991, p. 35). They do this by usingprevious experiences to make sense of and develop ways of dealing withnew events that are similar to past events. It would then be expected that aseach person tests out their expectations of their professional role, then thoseanticipations will be either validated or invalidated. If the anticipations arevalidated, then there will be a strengthening of the anticipation and the


constructs concerned. If the anticipations are invalidated, the person willneed to modify those predictions and constructions. In this way, severalanticipations may be appropriate in each event, and the person will havedeveloped ways of responding to the various outcomes of the event. Eachperson will choose those constructs and construct poles that are most mean-ingful for them and help them to anticipate future events. For example, likethe outcome of their responses to and decisions made about professionalactivities.

The choice made by the person will maximise the degree to which theirprofessional world can be predicted. Each person has some essential reasonfor the choices made, and the critical choice is made on the basis that it pro-vides the greatest possibility of extension or definition of the system in anongoing movement towards personally-relevant meaning. For extension tooccur, the choice made allows further construing to take place, that is, aperson’s choices are open to revision. By definition, the choice made allowsthe system as it already exists to be confirmed. The problem is that this maynot always happen for nurses. If they have not really developed a useful Pro-fessional Identity construct system, then they will have to rely on their per-sonal construct system, which is more than likely to conflict with theirprofessional role. The opposite could also be true. A person whose personalidentity is closely linked to their professional identity construct system willmake life choices that validate his or her professional role rather than his orher personal role in life.

In the study there were several different ways of developing a specificform of Professional Identity: Patient Orientation Achievement Orientation,Social Justice Orientation and a balanced-integrated Professional Identity(that included aspects of work, other people and self) that each nurse wouldconsider worked for them.

FAILURE IN RE-CONSTRUING THE PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Many people are closed to different or new constructions. This is probablynot rare. It could occur when a role has to undergo changes or when a personis faced with invalidation, but keeps the old construction systems anyway.For example, for academics, universities are being run like private busi-nesses. They are expected to change their constructs about their professionalworlds. For nurses, they are faced with huge financial cuts to the healthsystem, and are therefore, expected to do things differently. New events,experiences or people should be able to be described by a person’s existingconstructs. If their superordinate constructs are impermeable, they will beunable to subsume new constructs, and in the case of invalidation of


predictions/anticipations they will be unable to modify those predictions orreconstrue the experience. So if nurses construe nursing as a caring activity,with plenty of time for patients, then they may not be able to reconstrue thehospital environment of today, that is focussed on short hospital stays, andtechnical care.

LACK OF CONSTRUING OF A PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

Some nurses in the study did not seem to have developed a definite Profes-sional Identity construction. This is a more difficult group to understand.How could they have survived on average 20 years in this professional rolewith an immature Professional Identity? It is possible that these nurses werefaced with anxious moments as students and responded by tightening theirconstruing to protect themselves from further anxiety. Some people tightentheir superordinate constructs in the face of imminent anxiety, and “thusmaintain a greater measure of organisation at the lower levels of his system”(Kelly, 1991, p. 367). The problem with this strategy is that the person“blocks the readjustive changes which might follow from being anxious fora while. He does not ‘face his problems’ hence he does not find new solu-tions for them” (Kelly, 1991, p. 367). Maybe the immaturity protects againststress and strain (as a form of denial) – or maybe some people stay naiveand immature all their lives.

SOURCES OF CRISIS AND CONFLICT IN A PROFESSIONALIDENTITY CONSTRUCTION

The following section describes some of the possible sources of crisis andconflict for the nurses who participated in the study.

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

It is important and necessary for persons working in the same professionalrole to construe certain experiences, events and other people in similar ways.This commonality of construing ensures successful and similar outcomes formany professional activities, where people have to either work together orproduce the same outcomes. At the same time, it is also possible for peopleto construe their professional role differently in some ways from their workcolleagues. They might interpret experiences or events differently, allocateimportance and view implications of their actions differently from their colleagues. Obviously, this can result in many difficulties and lack of understanding between workers, including bosses and subordinates. This


interaction with others is very important in the work place. Each personneeds to be able to construe the constructions of others to help them under-stand the other person’s perspective. If workers cannot construe their workcolleagues’ constructions then there are problems between peoples’ inter-personal relationships. This is especially so when superiors make no attemptto construe the constructions of the workers for whom they are responsible.Many misunderstandings occur in work situations due to this lack of inter-action. It can also occur between colleagues and from workers towardsbosses. In circumstances when bosses have moved up through the systemthey are more likely to understand their workers’ constructions, than bosseswho have been brought in from outside a particular system. However, bosseswho move up from the ranks may change their constructs, too, and becomealienated from their former pals. And as workers have not worked as bosses,they can find it difficult to understand the constructions of their bosses.

“SLOT-RATTLING”

As constructs are bipolar, workers use constructs that have most meaning forthem in discriminating pertinent aspects of their professional roles. Thebipolar constructs provide information about the “whole” meaning peoplehave about their professional role. The emergent pole is the aspect that dis-criminates or provides the meaning of their choices or anticipations, but itis always in the context of the inclusion of the contrast or opposite pole,which provides for the person an opposite choice that can be made undercertain circumstances. Like the construct nice/nasty, both poles can be usedwith different people in the workplace. However, whatever pole of the con-struct is played out in the workplace, people have a well organised, hierar-chical plan of anticipations in a construct system which is organised in a waythat will minimise contradictions for them. Therefore, they can be either niceor nasty to different people, and there will be higher order constructs orsuperordinate constructs that give meaning to this apparently contradictingbehaviour. New constructs are not developed, but the person moves alongthe one construct, from one pole to the other.

CORE CONSTRUCTS AND PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY

It is also possible that the main superordinate or core constructs the personholds are not particularly suited to the professional role they have chosen. Itis also possible that there is a contradiction between people’s core constructsand their personal superordinate constructs; or that their personal core con-structs do not match up with the Professional Identity constructions as


portrayed by their professional bodies or more senior managers in their workplaces. For example, managers are expecting workers to produce more andmore. For many people, they cannot increase their work output, except byworking longer hours, rather than working faster. Unfortunately, this con-tradicts with their core constructs about family life. Workers whose core constructs are about achievement are likely to put work before family. Theconstruct system does allow for inconsistencies. In a new situation, such asin the work place, new constructs may not be compatible with existing con-structions. However, these inconsistencies can be tolerated as long as thesuperordinate constructs are permeable enough to subsume the inconsistentconstructions. But what is the result for workers whose superordinate con-structs are not permeable enough to subsume the inconsistent constructs? Isthis what happens to the nurses who want to be “caring” in the old sense ofthe word, and because of the time pressures of the job, they do not have timeto give this extra support to the patients? They end up stressed and disillu-sioned about their jobs, rather than attempting to reconstrue the situation.This reconstruction could be on “what a good job I am doing under such dif-ficult circumstances” or “I am still making a very valuable contribution tothe care of my patients”. This reconstruction must also acknowledge the difficulty of change, and the ability to be flexible in the face of change. Allconstructs have a range of situations to which they can be applied. Manyconstructs used in the professional role will be useful for that role only, whileothers will be useful outside the work situation. For example, for nurses, constructs of nursing and self as a nurse may have a limited range of convenience, while constructs of caring will have a much wider range ofconvenience.

CONSTRUING THE CONSTRUCTIONS OF THE NURSES WHOARE IN CRISIS AND CONFLICT

In the study there were ten nurses allocated to the Crisis and Conflict group.The conflicts these nurses were experiencing were on issues such as profes-sional versus personal roles, undertaking a caring role that conflicts with theresultant domination of others, the expected demands of the role, confidencein the role equates with aggressiveness, lack of trust of others in the workplace, lack of competence and fear of job loss and the need to be flexible tobe able to survive in the role and lack of confidence in the role.

I suggest that these nurses could be suffering from the emotion guilt, asdefined by Kelly (1991) as: “Perception of one’s apparent dislodgment fromone’s core role structure constitutes the experience of guilt” (p. 370). On theother hand they could also be suffering from the emotion threat. It is defined


by Kelly (1991) as: “Threat is the awareness of imminent comprehensivechange in one’s core structures” (p. 361). The prospective change must besubstantial. “One is threatened when that which he thought all along mighthappen to his core structure at last looks as if it were about to arrive” (Kelly,1991, p. 361).

Overall, these ten nurses appear to be threatened by a fear of the oppositepoles of their Self as a Nurse and Ideal Self as a Nurse constructs. It wouldappear that they are saying: “I want to be nice, but the opposite pole is notnice”, and I am in conflict about the possibility that I am probably more “notnice” than “nice”; or “I need to be competent or confident or flexible in thisrole, but instead, I am lacking in competence, confidence or flexibility”.

CONCLUSIONS

It is possible that nursing students enter their academic education mainlywith two different construct systems with regard to Professional Identity:One group has a patient oriented focus that complies with the general notionof nurses as carers. This may be helpful for the adoption of a professionalrole but may also produce conflicts with reality as it is here and now. Theother group appears as a kind of “open slate” which may mean that the rolemodels and non-roles models they encounter during their education and clin-ical practice experiences will help them form their Professional Identities.

With expert nurses, there seems to be a tendency to develop different Pro-fessional Identities that probably match core constructs of the individuals.At first glance, it may appear surprising to find a large number of the expertnurses in the conflict group. However, there had been a very turbulent timein nursing in the five years before the data were collected. Many nurses weremade redundant and this resulted in a shortage of nurses. Those whoremained become disillusioned with their role in the Health Care system.

The results imply that it would not be adequate to look at nurses as ahomogeneous group with respect to their understanding of their professionalselves–their Professional Identities. Some manage to allocate themselves toprofessional contexts where they can survive; others do not. Still others maynot have coped at all and left the profession altogether. Unfortunately, theywere not part of this study.

More importantly, it is probable that the six types of Professional Identityfound in this professional group, could also be found in other health profes-sional groups. Four of the groups (Immature, Achievement-oriented, Crisisand conflict and Balanced) could also be found in any professional or non-professional work group. The challenge is in helping people re-construe their


professional identity in such a way as to ensure that they are satisfied withself in the work situation, satisfied with their constructions of their profes-sional identity.

REFERENCES

Ellis, J. (2000). The professional identity of nurses: an empirical investigation of personalconstructions using the Repertory Grid Technique. Unpublished PhD thesis. La Trobe University.

Kelly, G. A. (1955, 1991). The psychology of personal constructs. London: Routledge.Shaughnessy, J. J. & Zechmeister, E. B. (1994). Research methods in psychology 3rd Edition.

New York: McGraw-Hill, International Editions.


personal construct psychology || a personal construct theory view of professional identity

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