A Pilot Study Evaluating Students' Interest in International Social Work Education

International social work (ISW) has gained traction across the USA with a number of schools taking the lead in promoting the values of social work through exchange programs, service learning, and volunteerism. The internalization of campus through the proactive action of institutions to incorporate global perspectives into teaching, learning, and research in order to build intercultural competence among students, faculty, and staff has received little attention. This paper assesses the level of interest of social work students at a large urban university in the southwestern USA in embracing ISW and how they conceptualized their learning needs. Using a self-administered web-based survey offered to a total of 1,500 social work students with 18% respondent rate, the research determined through a chi-square test that students in Bachelor of Social Work, Master of Social Work, and PhD programs had a significant difference in preferences in areas of interests (χ² = 153, p ≤ 0.000). Overall, students demonstrated interest in direct practice (74.3%) and community and administrative practice (16.6%). Students also differed in their level of interest in participating in international exchange programs (χ² = 9.6, p = 0.047). Discussions address specific and unique interests categorized broadly as ‘globalized social worker,’ ‘humanitarian social worker,’ and ‘policy social worker,’ each of which requires specific skillsets and advanced behavior skills.     

A Model for Developing International Student Exchanges

This paper presents a model of international student exchanges that considers the needs and expectations of both host and guest country. It draws on the literature on international social work in addition to the experiences of the authors, who have taught social work courses abroad and conducted numerous service projects in the Caribbean Islands. One author has been placing social work students in international field practica for the past 10 years.

This model of developing and maintaining international student exchanges suggests that communication is at the core of successful international work. The process of developing the exchanges should include the following communication steps for both host and guest nation: (1) establish a feedback loop with potential participants; (2) gain an overview of the other country; (3) provide orientation at micro, mezzo and macro levels; (4) identify gains; (5) consider costs; (6) clarify expectations; and (7) establish roles for the student, field liaison, and field supervisor. The aim is to enhance the quality of the experience for all by utilizing a strengths‐based approach. The model emphasizes long‐term relationships, mutual respect for diversity and commitment to reciprocity at all stages. Finally, the model presents principles that serve to maintain relationships internationally. Examples from the authors' experiences are presented throughout to illustrate the process.     

Localising Social Work: Lessons Learnt from a Community Based Intervention amongst the Bedouin in Jordan

This paper presents an example of local social work practice in Jordan in the health field. It draws on a research study on Bedouin health in the North Eastern Badia. The project developed, implemented and evaluated a training intervention developed in partnership with a range of providers for improving local social work practice. Evaluation methods used included a pre and post test, focus group discussions and students' field notes. Findings revealed the significance of promoting culturally competent practice to respond to local health and social needs. Students and practice assessors agreed that the training interventions were an effective way to implement theory into local practice in relation to Bedouin society. This training intervention is an example of developing local social work practice as a way of responding critically to social inequalities.     

Child protection: An unreflective practice

This paper highlights the need for social work education to focus on the ideological, cultural and organisational influences that shape practitioner perspectives and determine case careers, particularly in the area of child protection. Using the findings from a case study on the processing of child abuse referrals made to a social work team in Ireland's largest health board region, this paper illustrates the dissonance between the 'official' child protection discourse and the complexities and dilemmas of everyday practice. It also highlights practitioners' apparent lack of awareness of the dynamics that determine the way in which decisions and assessments are reached. The need to encourage and facilitate social workers' use of theory as a means of addressing these complex areas is endorsed, and implications for educational programmes are discussed.     

Social policy and social work in the voluntary sector: the case of Ukraine

Over a decade has passed since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This major political change has had profound effects on how social welfare is delivered in countries in transition from communism. Using material derived from the author's involvement in social work education projects in Ukraine, this article examines the changing relationship between statutory social welfare provider agencies and the burgeoning voluntary sector. A confusing and rapidly changing picture has emerged. Some prominent themes likely to shape future directions are identified, particularly the imperative to ensure that social work education continues to be sensitive to local political and cultural contexts, rather than relying on importing Western solutions.     

Building School,Family, and Community Partnerships: Developing a Theoretical Framework

School, family, and community partnerships are among the suite of strategies advocated for improved school outcomes in which social workers can play a valuable role. Such partnerships are complex to implement in practice and there is little systematic research to guide the practitioner. This study evaluated an early intervention partnership program involving school, family, community, and philanthropic partners implemented in two primary schools in rural Victoria, Australia. The findings highlighted challenges in the process of evaluation and program implementation and in the opportunities this provided to identify key enabling factors. These involved having: a shared vision and aims; democratic governance; a supportive policy and organisational environment including external funding; workers with skills and clear roles; activities for project momentum; and ongoing review and evaluation. These factors can be used by social workers and others working with schools as a valuable conceptual framework to facilitate school, family, and community partnership processes.     

Teaching Globalization to Social Work Students: In and Out of the Classroom

This paper was part of qualitative research that sought to explore motivations of Masters-level students (n = 53) in taking an elective course in international social work at a large public university in the Southeastern US. A review of the literature includes the foundational aspects of globalization and its relationship with social work education. Through content analysis, results show comportment of students' stated motivations for taking the course and the contemporaneous literature on globalization. Themes expressed are the historical context of globalization, concern about global inequalities, and the varying impacts of globalization around the world. Discussion is directed towards exploring ways of effectively infusing globalization content in the social work curricula.     

When social work students meet workers with mental-health lived-experience: a case study

Current social work education in India reflects globalization priorities and tendencies of neo-colonialism that emulate curriculum priorities and duplicate content developed in countries like the USA. Social work education as implemented by countries like the USA, has limited success in transnational training of social workers and their ability to address emerging social problems and deep rooted structural imbalances within non-USA social contexts. Yet, the concept of the world being an emerging global village is used to justify and reaffirm the colonial goals of universal education and pedagogies within social work and its application to starkly different contexts, such as India. This paper argues against the imperialist nature of social work education through examples from social work syllabi from Indian schools of social work. Secondly, this paper examines the role of academic collaborations and international organizations in addressing the challenges in curriculum development. Finally, through an example from a Curriculum Development Project undertaken in a sub-Saharan African country by one of the authors, the paper demonstrates ways of generating more local content for curricula that would create culturally sensitive social services.     

Placement Educators’ Experiences and Perspectives of Supervising International Social Work Students in Australia

International social work students in Australia have reported difficulties in finding quality placement opportunities and dealing with issues such as language and cultural barriers. While placement issues have been mostly investigated from a student perspective, this study explores the experiences and perspectives of placement educators towards supervising international social work students. It draws on an online survey of 83 placement educators working for an Australian university. The majority of placement educators reported that they supervised international students differently to domestic students. These differences were negatively framed as challenges involving students’ language competence, their understanding of cultural norms, and knowledge of Australian welfare systems. This framing implies that cultural and linguistic differences between international students and placement educators are viewed in terms of student deficiency rather than as a positive opportunity for mutual learning and professional development.     

Distance education and international social work education

As a result of the development of new communication technology, distance education has become a rapidly growing area over the last few decades. Market and commercial pressures are major factors in its developing impact. Distance education has also been applied to social work education. Because it is a small field it may be both positively and negatively affected. Social work education requires face-to-face communication training. Educators need to respond to the limitations of distance education technologies and processes to provide for cultural and linguistic diversity, through openness to joint work across different cultures, anti-standardisation and -discrimination, reflexivity, user control and resources, and cultural and language translation.     

The quest for a universal social work: some issues and implications

What debates and issues are involved in moves to generalise about social work across the globe? This paper attempts to examine some of these major debates and, in so doing, to suggest some directions for a flexible approach. Crucial to these debates are several tensions around the issues of Westernisation, localisation and indigenisation in social work. It is also important to seek clarity around the complexities of international social work. The political implications involved in these movements are discussed and possible approaches to finding a flexible framework which allows for differences yet provides for accountability, responsiveness and connectivity are suggested.     

Exploring the Educational Experience of a Social Work Student with a Disability: A Narrative

Social work educators seem to have mixed feelings about the development of open and distance learning in Britain and the USA. Open and distance learning has tended to be marginalised. It has been compared unfavourably to campus based programmes, but there has been a lack of research on this topic in the United Kingdom. However, research in the USA indicates that open and distance learning social work students have a high degree of satisfaction with teaching and learning approaches compared with those on campus based programmes, while student outcomes and level of achievement have been at least comparable to those on ‘traditional’ programmes.

Some criticisms of open and distance learning in the UK are examined. These include narrow, mass produced, ‘assembly line’, mechanistic, isolating, individualistic approaches. Advantages of open and distance learning in the UK are considered, such as well organised teaching packs, flexibility and individual choice in pace, time and place of learning with especially good learning opportunities for mature women with family commitments. Improvements are advocated, centred around developing more opportunities to rehearse and develop practice skills, encouraging more divergent, critical thinkers operating from a more pluralistic knowledge base and the empowerment of students in collectives.     

Social Work Students' Changing Perceptions of Social Problems After a Year of Community Intervention

This paper aims to throw light on the emotional and cognitive processes of students within social change-oriented field work as they develop over a year, as described through a projective and phenomenological art medium drawn and discussed at the beginning and at the end of the year. The literature on social work points to a discrepancy between the cognitive structural explanations of social problems that are taught to social work students, and their tendency to prefer focusing on individual rather than on societal levels of intervention. The aim of this examination of the students' processes over the year is to increase our understanding of the students' experience and understanding of their social change mission, so as to better prepare them for the challenges it entails, and to see where they get ‘lost’. Findings from this paper point to the gradual internalization of social change as a complex process, combined with the reframing of this complexity into tangible results.     

Online Education in Social Work,Effectiveness, Benefits,and Challenges: A Scoping Review

ABSTRACT

Online education has long been a controversial issue within the Australian social work community. Although technological advances have improved the quality of teaching substantially, scepticism and disbelief continue to exist. Despite the growing evidence base as to the effectiveness of online teaching, this tends to be overlooked. A scoping review of the literature was conducted to synthesise research conducted on online social work education to identify its effectiveness, potential, and challenges and to show whether online social work education will effectively prepare qualified social workers. This revealed that online education enhanced diversity and equity among social work students and students’ performances and satisfaction were similar for both online and on-campus students. Nevertheless, communication and engagement continue to be a challenge.

IMPLICATIONS

• Decisions on online education should be based on evidence of effectiveness rather than on the assumption that face-to-face teaching is superior.

• Further research is needed to explore effectiveness of online education for different groups of students.

• Employers’ experiences with social work graduates from online courses need further research.

• Academics require support to tailor courses interactively and suitably for online education.

     

Exploring a New Direction for Social Work Education and Training in Nigeria

American and British models of professional social work that have been exported to Africa have been critiqued as unable to address the unique issues and cultural characteristics of the majority of Africans. Such critiques have increased as the social work profession in the Western world has failed to come up with answers to many of its own most vexing social problems. African social work educators are therefore questioning the borrowing of such ‘problematic’ Western social work knowledge. This paper critically reviews the challenges for social work education and training in Nigeria of this Western‐influenced social work legacy that is largely remedial in nature and underpinned by the charity and casework model that locates problems within individuals and their families. Building on recent scholarship, personal experiences of schooling and working in Africa and the West, as well as experiences from collaborating on a project with colleagues in a social work program in a Nigerian university, three issues are put forth that could guide an exploration of a new direction for social work education in Nigeria.     

Creating Cultural Safety as an Aboriginal Teacher in a Class of Non-Aboriginal University Students

ABSTRACT

Creating a culturally safe learning environment is critical for Aboriginal teachers in universities. This paper explores my experience as a new lecturer convening an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social work course at an Australian university. As an Aboriginal woman teaching to a large class of non-Aboriginal students, establishing cultural safety became a priority early on. Through reflecting on my journey from feeling vulnerable at the beginning of the course, to developing a safe and collaborative learning and teaching experience, this paper presents the rare perspective of an Aboriginal academic in the teaching space, and offers practical ways to develop cultural safety in university classrooms.

IMPLICATIONS

• Aboriginal social work teaching academics need to feel culturally safe in the classroom setting to sustain them in their role.

• Engaging non-Aboriginal students to feel safe through collaborative learning enhances the learning and teaching experience for everyone and contributes to cultural safety for Aboriginal academics.

• Aboriginal academics teaching Aboriginal-specific content risk being traumatised through intensive and consistent exposure to traumatic content that may be personal to them.

• Universities need to provide practical support to new teaching academics to best equip and prepare them for the role.

     

Pursued by Excellence: Rewards and the Performance Culture in Higher Education

In the UK, government is both concerned with improving the performance of public services, including higher education, and with ensuring that the public is aware of improvements in services, to convince the public of the effectiveness of the current regime. Success is both an effect of and a dynamic in the process of evaluating performance, and increasingly ‘excellence’ is established as a performance outcome. Drawing on a critical review of relevant theory and research, primarily from the UK, Australia and the USA, and illustrated by the author's experience of winning a National Teaching Fellowship, this paper examines teaching excellence in the context of two recent schemes: the National Teaching Fellowship Scheme and the Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The performance culture in the public sector and the use of excellence as a success criterion are critically analysed. Assumptions about the transfer of excellent practice are explored. Questions about the interaction of competition and equalities issues are raised. The paper ends with arguing that if excellence schemes are to be an established feature of public sector systems, then we must develop strategies to enable them to be implemented equitably, transparently and fit for purpose.     

Developing a researcher-practitioner partnership for the effective evaluation of professional social work training

This paper reports on the development and operationalisation of a partnership between researchers at the Centre for Child Care Research at Queens University, Belfast and the Southern Health and Social Services Board Training Unit to undertake an evaluation of the Children (NI) Order Training Programme. The concept of partnership and its application to researcher-practitioner relationships is discussed. The stages of development of the partnership between the Training Unit and the researchers, and the outcomes achieved from this partnership, are described. The similarities and differences between the partnership approach developed by the CCCR and the SHSSB are highlighted. The potential benefit of this approach for other researchers and practitioners seeking to develop such links is presented.     

Developing a social work curriculum on political conflict: findings from an IASSW-funded project

This paper presents the findings from an innovative project funded by the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and undertaken by an international team of academics investigating the development of a global curriculum for social work in the context of political conflict. Coupled alongside the emerging research and literature on the subject, our small-scale survey findings indicate support for the need for social work educators to address political conflict more systematically within social work curricula at both undergraduate and post-qualifying levels of social work education. This paper illuminates the opportunities for creative pedagogy whilst also examining the threats and challenges permeating the realisation of such initiatives. In this way, the implementation of a proposed curriculum for political conflict is given meaning within the context of IASSW's Global Standards for social work education. Given the exploratory nature of this project, the authors do conclude that further research is warranted in regard to potential curriculum development and suggest using a comparative case study approach with more in-depth qualitative methods as a way to address this.