Improving Social Work Education in Vietnam Through International Cooperation: The ‘Social Work Education Enhancement Program’

This paper describes an initiative to improve social work education in Vietnam through a three-year international collaborative, including US Aid for International Development, San José State University, eight universities in Vietnam, Vietnam's government ministries, and Cisco Systems, Inc. The social work profession was officially recognized by the Vietnamese government in 2010. Despite the rapid expansion of social work education programs, there are significant limitations in the universities' ability to provide social work education. The goal of the Social Work Education Enhancement Program (SWEEP) is to strengthen the capacity of Vietnam's undergraduate social work programs to deliver quality education and prepare trained, job-ready social workers. The SWEEP project aims to improve the administration of social work education, the professional capacity of faculty, social work curriculum, and networking technology to enable centers for excellence in learning and scholarship. To ensure that the SWEEP team targeted training and technical assistance activities that were culturally congruent, a comprehensive needs assessment and frequent mid-course evaluations were conducted, showing many shared and unique contextual issues facing universities. The collaborative process of developing social work education which fits the local context can be replicated in other countries that are in the early stages of social work development.     

‘Why is This Not Social Work?’ The Contribution of ‘Non-Traditional’ Placements in Preparing Social Work Students for Practice

This article reports on the findings of two evaluations of a major charity's learning from providing ‘non-traditional’ social work placements with young people at risk of social exclusion. The article challenges the terminology of ‘non-traditional’ and ‘non-social work’ placements and examines the potential of these placements in the current social work curriculum and in the light of the recommendations of the Social Work Task Force and directions from the Social Work Reform Board. In particular, the article highlights the ability of such placements to help prepare students for their ‘statutory placement’ in relation to formal assessment, legal literacy, and risk awareness and safeguarding. Overall, it is argued that the time is ripe to champion the creative use of such placements for HEIs, delivery partners, social work students and, most importantly, for service users.     

Making Feminist Sense out of ‘Charlie Wilson's War’

Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Mike Nichols's film about the womanizing Congressman who engineered black funds for the CIA's proxy war in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, is historically misleading but highly instructive, because in packaging dominant American masculine identity and war politics as popular entertainment for post-9/11 audiences, it reveals the sexed and gendered ‘politics of the visual’ in global affairs. This intertextual study of ‘Charlie Wilson's war’ as movie, constructed history and legacy examines Wilson as a prime exhibit of a needy masculinity that, like the film's emasculated CIA, bulks itself up through surrogate military selves. It also analyses modes of the imaginary and specularity in brother-bonding with the mujahidin, tracks the proxy system's loops of masculine identity-and-war-making between Stateside and South Asia in the post-Vietnam 1980s and interrogates the dynamics of imperial ‘un-seeing’ in this campaign and its long aftermath. While US proxy wars proliferate worldwide, the lack of useable political memory about the ground truths of ‘Charlie's war’ continues to matter because America's second ‘good’ war in Afghanistan, bound to the first by gendered causal links, has re-empowered the forces that still menace women's rights and lives.     

Making Critical Minds: Nurturing ‘Not‐Knowing’ in Students of Health and Social Care

The two authors have been involved in developing teaching and learning resources that can be used with students undertaking a whole range of health and social care courses. The aims of this development work included the fostering of critical thinking skills and of inter professional learning. In this Ideas in Action paper we share both some of the thinking behind our work and several of the learning activities that we have utilized with our students.     

Social Work and Sustainable Social Development: Teaching and Learning Strategies for ‘Green Social Work’ Curriculum

It is increasingly recognized that social work has a vital role to play in shaping effective responses to environmental degradation, climate change and disasters. Innovative teaching and learning strategies can be used to facilitate understanding of complex, interrelated and systemic social, economic and environmental challenges. This article shares the development and design of a new social work course entitled ‘Social work and sustainable social development’. Teaching methods and strategies are provided including individual and group mind maps, case studies and presentations, guest speakers and evaluation methods. Implications for social work education and the profession are discussed in order to build capacity to address environmental justice and sustainability.     

Social Work Students ‘Juggling’ Field Placement

Field education is widely acknowledged as a central component of social work education. However, it requires a substantial commitment of time and energy from students which can present challenges to students who have multiple responsibilities. Based on a literature review conducted in preparation for doctoral research into social work student experience of juggling multiple roles and responsibilities with field placement, this article summarises what is known about the challenges they face and what helps them to complete placement. The findings have implications for students, schools of social work and field placement agencies. Further research should provide guidance for professional social work bodies, schools of social work, field educators and students.     

‘It's About People and Their Environment’: Student Social Workers' Definitions of Social Work Research

This article considers constructions of social work research from the perspectives of student social workers in New Zealand. There have been many academic discussions of the unique epistemology that can be called social work research but little is known of students and/or practitioner views. Are they interested in social work research? Do they even care about debates on epistemology? Forty-three student social workers considered two questions while attending a social work research methods course: ‘What is social work research?’ and ‘What kind of social work researcher might I be?’. A subset of 18 distance students explored a third question: ‘Should social work research be part of everyday practice or not?’. To answer these questions students provided comments in a short survey, material from their written student assignments and comments from online discussion board activities. The results suggest that student social workers have a preference for social work research that is compatible with their clearly articulated social work value base, and that social work research primarily should benefit the client group with which a social worker is closely linked. Student social workers also recognise the importance of research for their everyday practice, yet at the same time feel there are organisational constraints to this happening.     

The ‘Building Blocks’ of Professional Identity among Social Work Graduates

Based on systems theory, the current study aimed to examine the relationships between the following sets of variables: input variables—satisfaction with supervision, self-differentiation, and sense of coherence; throughput variables—values and empathy; and the output variable—professional identity of BSW students. Questionnaires were completed by 160 social work students who were about to graduate the social work program. Path analysis (The AMOS 5 program) was used to analyze the research model. Satisfaction with supervision was the only input variable that was directly related to professional identity. Of the throughput variables, empathy and personal values were directly related to professional identity, whereas sense of coherence was indirectly related to empathic concern, with social values as a mediator. Practical recommendations are discussed.     

Evaluating a Measure of ‘Social Orientation’ of Chinese Students in Social Work: Developing its Reliability and Validity

This study examines the reliability and validity of a measure of ‘social orientation’ indigenously developed from Chinese students of social work in Hong Kong. By administering two tests with Chinese social work students (n = 293 and n = 304) at associate degree level, the measure achieves strong internal consistency with r>0.75 and test–retest consistency with r>0.63. The instrument also has strong validity by attempting factor analysis of items generated from qualitative data in in‐depth interviews. The development of this indigenous measure of ‘social orientation’ will contribute to an understanding of the authoritarian, relationship and ‘other’ orientation of Chinese social work students. The authors propose that this will be a crucial factor in influencing the response of Chinese students towards different teaching and learning approaches in social work education.     

Experiences of Post‐Qualifying Study in Social Work

This article is based on a research project to explore the experiences of past and current candidates for post‐qualifying awards in social work in England. Also included in the study are the Leads of the post‐qualifying consortia in England. The study used questionnaire survey and nominal group techniques to gather data, which were coded and categorised into themes. The main findings relate to the perceived purposes of post‐qualifying study, motivations for undertaking post‐qualifying study, the factors that sustain and hinder study, the advice that those who have or who are experiencing post‐qualifying study would give to those about to start and future plans and hopes in this area.

Post‐qualifying study is generally valued, especially in relation to the opportunities it provides for professional development. The support of a mentor who has direct experience of the candidate's programme is highly prized, as are clear and consistent guidance from the programme and meaningful study time and workload relief from employers. There are also frustrations for some candidates who do not feel that their post‐qualifying study has stretched them beyond qualifying standards or who experience the teaching as divorced from the realities of daily practice. The appetite for a wider choice of post‐qualifying modules suggests that providers of post‐qualifying study will need to collaborate within and across regions in order to achieve a critical mass of candidates for more specialist or focused learning. The study suggests a need for further research to understand the impact of post‐qualifying study on candidates' social work practice.

The article concludes with two checklists of questions, one for individual candidates and another for agencies and programmes. These questions arise from the findings in the research.     

Examining the ‘Conservative Revolution’: Neoliberalism and Social Work Education

Within social work education, there may be a failure to adequately and critically examine neoliberalism and processes of neoliberalization. In this context, those seeking to grasp the meaning of neoliberalism should be attentive to at least six interconnected components: how we might define neoliberalism in relation to the ‘embedded liberalism’ it endeavoured to supplant or displace; the role of the state within neoliberalism; the concept of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ which illuminates how neoliberalism has constantly aimed to redistribute in favour of the rich; the centrality of insecurity and precariousness; the renewed and retrogressive faith in incarceration and, more broadly, what has been termed the ‘new punitiveness’; and how neoliberalism, in practice, is often at variance with the theory and rhetoric. It will be suggested that contemporary interpretations of neoliberalism by, for example, David Harvey and Pierre Bourdieu—along with the insights of Antonio Gramsci—might aid our understanding during a period of, now perhaps, faltering neoliberalization.     

Social Engineering: Is This Really As Bad As It Sounds?

Sociological practice and clinical sociology need to be supplemented by an engineering wing in the discipline. Engineering is, ultimately, the application of general theoretical principles to concrete problems, and there is no reason why sociology cannot also be an engineering discipline. There is nothing inherent in the subject matter of sociology that prevents this engineering orientation from emerging. Rather, the prospects for an engineering approach in sociology depend upon the development of more precise theories, the testing of such theories, and the willingness of practitioners to use theoretical ideas when addressing the problems of clients.     

Self‐Reported Likelihood of Whistleblowing by Social Work Students

This article presents a first study on the professional–ethical dilemma of whistleblowing in social work, and suggests some lines for further research on this topic as well as ways for integrating it in the social work curriculum. The study examines the self‐reported readiness of social work students to blow the whistle, whether internally or externally. Internal disclosure entails reporting the wrongdoing to an authority within the organization. External disclosure entails reporting the offense to an outside agency, such as the police, professional organization, or press. The findings indicate that the students view the acts that are detrimental or cause injustice to the client in a very serious light. In dilemma situations such as these, the students reported a willingness to act. The students also report considerably greater likelihood of whistleblowing internally than externally.     

Evaluating the Impact of Post‐Qualifying Social Work Education

Post‐qualifying awards in social work are well established within the continuing professional development agenda for qualified social workers in the UK. The evaluation of education and training should be an integral part of this agenda because it is important to ensure that programmes continue to meet standards of delivery, are successful in meeting their aims and objectives and are making an impact on practice. However, there is a limited amount of published work on the evaluation of post‐qualifying social work education, with studies often focusing on programme delivery rather than on their impact on practice.

This paper explores evaluative work within the current post‐qualifying social work framework and discusses the results of an evaluation of the Vulnerable Adults and Community Care Practice programme, a specialist post‐qualifying social work education programme run by a UK university, as an example of an evaluation of the impact on practice. The results indicate positive evidence of impact on practice and demonstrate examples of how the programme has had a direct effect on individuals, teams, organisations and on people who use services.     

Responding to a Critique of ‘The Interpersonal Process in Generic Social Work’

The Social Workers Oncology Group is a professional support network, which brings together a group of specialist professionals with a unique knowledge about the psychosocial consequences of a cancer disease. The Group provides professional peer support, as well as providing a forum for the utilisation of research programmes and resource development.     

Preparing for Practice: An Evaluation of an Undergraduate Social Work ‘Preparation for Practice’ Module

The requirement for social work students to undergo assessed preparation prior to undertaking their first practice placement raises key questions about the type of knowledge and experience that is needed for those at the start of their training. This paper shows the need for social work educators to become re‐engaged in debates about the practice–theory relationship and to explore what is meant by an incremental approach to learning. A Preparation for Practice Learning module which was delivered to a cohort of Level 1 undergraduate social work students at a London university is described and evaluated. The paper highlights the key themes which emerged from the evaluation; these include the importance of work shadowing, observational learning and the centrality of critical reflection in aiding students' personal and professional learning. A discussion of its effectiveness in preparing students for their first practice learning experience follows. It concludes by recommending how students' learning in relation to the nature of social work and the skills required to undertake the role effectively might be addressed within the curriculum. Finally, a Preparation for Practice Learning model based on these findings is proposed.     

Social Work Intellectuals in the Twenty‐First Century: Critical Social Theory,Critical Social Work and Public Engagement

Frequently, observation of social work students in ‘live’ work is absent or haphazard. An overview of the key literature examines the need for observation of students during training, explores the strengths and challenges of live supervision and describes a planned process for conducting live supervision. This approach incorporates four phases: collaborative preparation for a session of direct practice; observation of the student's work by a field educator; debriefing and feedback; and the development of a plan for further learning steps. Brief vignettes are used to illustrate the process. The article is enriched by the inclusion of student comments from the evaluations undertaken after live supervision activities.