Personal Professionalism of undergraduate students

Professional practice is multifaceted. Students in applied higher education are our future professionals. Therefore they need to develop in a way that they are prepared to function as such at the time of their graduation. This development is as multifaceted as the practice they are educated into. However, the knowledge about this development and how students experience that trajectory is limited and fragmented. The label of professionalism is claimed by those studying identity, professional knowledge and/or professional behavior. Each includes parts of the other, but lack to provide clarity of concept. By introducing the new concept of Personal Professionalism, all three elements - of professional identity, professional knowledge and professional action – are now included as well as positioned as mutually distinct. This provides the opportunity to consider the development of each, as well as to focus on their interaction as part of a students’ personal professionalism.

In this project 40 students of four undergraduate programs of an applied university were followed during their four year degree tracks. They were interviewed annually, conducted a professional problem solving task every other year, and discussed some of their professional work. Based on this data, insight in the development of their personal professionalism is gained.

The findings of this project are presented at conferences and will be published in a book titled Personal professionalism: the development of future professionals (exp. 2026, under contract by Bloomsbury Academic, also published open access).