Cultural context of professional identity formation: a perspective of health profession educators in Botswana

In Botswana, the phrase “ motho ke motho ka batho—“ I am because you are” is culturally a way of life and core to who we are as a people. As Batswana, our relationships and the evolution of our individual and collective identities are built on this key concept of Botho/Ubuntu . For us, Botho dictates that one does not merely “become” but “becomes with” in relation to identity formation, and by extension, professional identity formation (PIF). In this paper, the authors share their perspectives on professional identity formation (PIF) for health professions educators in the context of scarce African and non-Western epistemologies in the literature. The authors' guiding question and focus is: are the existing models/frameworks of PIF contextually relevant? If not, how can they be enriched and contextualized? This is one of the key tensions in the PIF discourse. The authors contend that contextualizing PIF efforts must integrate holistic cultural lenses and local ontologies into the current PIF models. We illustrate how leveraging indigenous knowledge frameworks encapsulated in the Botho belief system could contextualize existing PIF frameworks using a model we have termed, “ Mabogo Dinku ”. The phrase Mabogo Dinku is derived from a prominent Setswana proverb, “ mabogo dinku a a thebana ”, meaning, working together towards a common goal. The model is in a pictorial form and highlights the interconnectivity between the different frameworks. The model suggests that if any of the frameworks are misapplied the whole Botho belief system weakens and so too the concept of “becoming with”.