This textbook equips social work students with the tools to develop a social work identity. It provides a critical examination of the knowledge base of social work - from human growth and development to social work research - and explores how a practitioner's own values, principles and experience combine to shape their social work identity and practice alongside this. Linked to a range of core modules on pre-qualifying social work programmes but written also for those practitioners committed to nurturing their own social work identities, this is a must have text from one of social work's most up-and-coming authors that brings together all areas of the classroom and practice curriculum to make learning a novel, creative and interactive process.