Keywords
Social work education
Identity
Submitted : 2026-06-14
Accepted : 2026-06-29
Published : 2026-07-14
Abstract
Given the problem of expanding scale and a lack of a professional identity in China’s social work education, this paper will explore the systemic generation logic of this issue. According to the social ecosystem theory, this paper proposes that the construction of professional identity is the result of ongoing interactions among people and the macro-, meso-, and micro-systems. Based on interviews with 12 social work students, teachers and practitioners, it has been found that the ambiguous institutional incentives and low social prestige at the macro level, the theory-practice disconnect and weak support networks at the meso level, and the lack of supportive interactions among teachers, students and peers at the micro level are mutually connected and form a vicious circle of “systemic constraints–support fragmentation–identity dissolution.” Therefore, in order to solve this problem, we need to go beyond single-level interventions and coordinate the reconstruction of all three systems (macro, meso, and micro) to cultivate ecological resilience and achieve the connotative development of social work education.
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