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This book focuses on how teaching may enhance social workers' critical-reflective attitudes and skills as main constituents of their professional identity. In the 21st century, with its repeated global-level crises, social work education is expected to pay particular attention to teaching reflective skills and systems thinking. Crisis states are partly a consequence of focusing more on economic and technological improvements than on human development, welfare, and wellbeing - social work's core concerns. Most attempts at problem-solving lack a systemic, complex approach, social work's traditional strengths.

Editors' and authors' contributions focus on approaches to designing a curriculum for optimal professional identity development, ways to teach critical-reflective attitudes and skills, and the related assessment methods, proposing a curriculum-level framework for programmatic assessment.

The overall structure of the book follows social work's person-in-environment focus. The first few chapters center on the importance of professional identity development and practices in social work education to support the transformative learning experience. Theoretical reflections on practice, analyzing processes of the co-construction of social problems, are followed by a demonstration of how a specific practice - ecosocial work - evolves. Proceeding from the macro-level to service users' life-worlds, authors address key themes emerging in a counselling process. Assets for social workers' identity development involve deepening reconstructions of their personal experiences into a rich professional resource.

Social work has never positioned itself in the traditional ivory tower of academia but strived to establish close connections to practice. The book points out existing but underutilized synergies between education, practice, and research. Social work research is a royal road to build and reconstruct into a solid and appropriate knowledge base for social work practice. The Identity of the Reflective Social Professional: Optimizing Synergies Between Education, Research, and Practice is intended both for teachers and practitioners in social work. Most contributors have substantial experiences both as practitioners and researchers, as well as teachers in social work.