Professionalism Amid Emotional Taboos

While commonplace, emotions such as shame, disgust, anger and regret can be painful and embarrassing to experience. These taboo emotions create an added burden for social workers and other professionals who are dedicated to ideals of service, empathy, and advocacy. In this workshop, Professors Strom and Sicora will present the emotional elements evident in their respective research on moral distress, moral courage, reflexive practice and professional mistakes. Participants will have to opportunity to discuss the research findings and consider resources to embrace and address volatile or proscribed emotions.

Objectives: At the conclusion of this session participants will

1. Be familiar with emotional taboos in professional practice, particularly in the helping professions.

2. Apply the scholarship on taboo emotions to cases or personal experiences

3. Understand and envision resources for acceptance and management of difficult emotions.

Program details: 60 minutes, live/synchronous webinar, 1 hour of CE

Bios

Alessandro Sicora, PhD, is associate professor at the University of Trento (Italy) where he teaches at the Social Work BA and MA levels. Currently he serves as Chair of the European Social Work Research Association. He is a Marie Curie Fellow, Research Associate of the Department of Social Work, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His main research interests include methods of social work, reflexive practice, professional mistakes, intuition and emotions in social work, social planning, and comparative social policy. His more recent publications address aggressions against social workers, shame and other emotions and social work.

Kimberly Strom, PhD, LISW is the Smith P. Theimann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Professional Practice at the University of North Carolina (USA) School of Social Work and Director of the University’s Office of Ethics and Policy. She is an internationally recognized scholar on moral courage, ethics, leadership, and social work education and has provided training and technical assistance globally and throughout the U.S. She represents North America on the Ethics Commission of the International Federation of Social Work.

References

Gupta, S., & Bhal, K. T. (2021). Fear of Retaliation And Reporting Wrongdoing: The Impact Of Moral Courage And Ethical Leadership. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2021, No. 1, p. 14357).

Kohn, S. M. (2015). For the greater good: The moral courage of whistleblowers. In Moral courage in organizations: Doing the right thing at work (pp. 84-98). Routledge.

Sicora A. et al. (2021), Using intuition in social work decision making, European Journal of Social Work, 24:5, 772-7      87, https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2021.1918066

Sicora, A. (2022). Emotions in Social Work Education: Tools and Opportunities, Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 14(1), 151-168. DOI: 10.14658/pupj-ijse-2022-1-9 (open access: https://ijse.padovauniversitypress.it/system/files/papers/IJSE-2022-1-9.pdf)

Sicora, A. (2020). Shame, mistakes and reflective practice in social work. In E. Frost, V. Magyar-Haas, H. Schoneville, & A.

Sicora, A. (eds) Shame and Social Work: Theory, Reflexivity and Practice (pp. 187 - 204). Bristol: Policy Press. ISBN 978-1-4473-4406-3 hardback; ISBN 978-1-4473-4409-4 ePub; ISBN 978-1-4473-4407-0 ePDF

Sicora, A. (2017) Reflective practice and learning from mistakes in social work, Bristol: Policy Press, ISBN: 978-1447325222