ABSTRACT
This chapter critically explores the process of the socialisation of midwives through their experience of midwifery education, with reference to narrative research exploring student midwives' learning journals within a bachelor of midwifery programme. The research was comprised a narrative analysis of learning journals, which are kept for the entire three years of the programme. The chapter, and the research included in it, starts from the understanding, therefore, that people, and especially those engaged in education or personal/professional development, 'are all creatively engaged in process of identity formation and transformation by attending to stories. Everybody lives stories, all the time, and everybody attends to the stories of others'. This can be related to narrative identity emergence as a product of social roles that are forcibly imposed on the students in order to achieve their goal of becoming a midwife. The chapter suggests a means of addressing the perceived challenges of current cultural norms within midwifery practice.
