Who is the "self" in self-aware: Professional self-awareness from a critical theory perspective
Issue Date
1999-12Author
Kondrat, Mary Ellen
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Professional self-awareness is widely considered a necessary condition for competent social
work practice. Alternate prescriptions for self-awareness rely implicitly on varying definitions
of what it means to be a "self" and what it means to be "aware." I will review three approaches
to professional self-awareness conventionally adopted in the literature: (a) simple
conscious awareness (awareness o f whatever is being experienced), (b) reflective awareness
(awareness of a self who is experiencing something), and (c) reflexive awareness (the self's
awareness of how his or her awareness is constituted in direct experience). Strengths and
limitations of these three epistemological approaches are discussed. An alternate framework,
based on Anthony Giddens's "structuration theory," is developed and advanced as
a more macro-level and less exclusively psychological understanding of practitioner selfawareness.
The article concludes with illustrations from practice.
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Citation
Kondrat, M. E.(1999). Who is the self in self-aware: Professional self-awareness from a critical theory perspective, Social Service Review, 73(4), pp.451-477. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/514441
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