Self-reflexive Student Research and its Implications for Social Work Education

This paper presents a thematic analysis of postgraduate social work student research on refugee and migrant experiences in Aotearoa New Zealand, collected in the last decade from one university social work programme. The focus is on the ways in which students located themselves in relation to their research, which explored diverse facets of refugee and migrant experience and was invariably connected in some way to their own experiences. Students not only learnt to conduct qualitative research, but also found that having been drawn to locate themselves within it for ethical reasons, their self-reflexive stance had enabled greater personal learning and in some cases, healing. This added greatly to their professional development and through the collation of their research reports it can be shown that for students, locating themselves in relation to their research may be a worthwhile part of learning to be a professional social worker.     

Special issue: Training and Education for Residential Child Care

This paper begins by locating the (controversial) removal of the ‘minimum age at qualification’ regulation in 2003 within the context of wider changes occurring within social work education and the social work profession. This is followed by a report of a small scale exploratory study designed to gather data regarding the experiences of younger students within one undergraduate qualifying programme. The data are then discussed in relation to literature from within social work and allied disciplines in order to consider themes such as ‘identity’, ‘othering’ and ‘recognition’. It is suggested from data gathered during this project that although the gates to social work education have now been opened more widely to school leaving students, they have in effect become social work's new ‘non-traditional’ students and in some cases, inclusion is experienced as partial rather than complete. A discussion of the implications for further research as well as teaching, learning and group process issues on professional programmes concludes this paper.

The initial phase of the research for this paper was funded by an HEA SWAP ‘small projects’ grant.     

Learning for the Twenty-First Century: Maximising Learning Transfer from Learning and Development Activity

This article builds on the learning gathered from the evaluation of a Scotland-wide child protection training programme. Based on Kirkpatrick's four-level framework, the study aimed to evaluate the impact of the learning programme on the practice of participants in the workplace. The study prompted the authors to examine the literature on maximising learning transfer across a range of occupations. This literature is discussed in the light of the findings from the evaluation and the experience of the authors in designing and implementing continuous professional development programmes in social services.

The practice of inspection, monitoring and audit seems to have impacted negatively on staff's willingness to participate in data collection, and coupled with what appeared to be confusion about data protection legislation, the perceived burden of audit and inspection has significant implications for research and evaluation activity.

Suggestions are made for the future design, delivery and evaluation of learning and development activity, and the role of managers is explored in relation to their responsibility for preparation, support and follow-up of workplace learning.     

The Journey Around My PhD: Pitfalls,Insights and Diamonds

Embarking on postgraduate research involves making a transition from practitioner to researcher. While there is a well established body of knowledge to address research methodology, it is presented in a fashion that suggests the research process is straightforward and linear and fails to offer insights into the ways postgraduate students construct their researcher identities. This paper will draw on the authors' experiences as PhD students and highlight what was learned about the research process from involvement in a research project. The paper will highlight some of the challenges of undertaking postgraduate research as well as some of the insights gained.     

Gearing Up for Personalisation: Training Activities Commissioned in the English Pilot Individual Budgets Sites 2006–2008

The transformation of social care in England is taking place though changes affording greater choice and control for people using services. Individual budgets were one key element of these changes and were piloted in 13 local authorities in 2006–2008. This article reports on interviews with training leads in these local authorities that took place in 2008 as part of an independent evaluation of the individual budget pilots. The aims of the interviews were to explore the role of training as part of the processes of transformation, the use of resources and establishment of training strategies within the local authority. Participants revealed that the subject of training was acquiring higher profile within their authorities, although uncertainties remain about the extent of local authority responsibilities for training. Within local authorities, training resources were yet to be determined and models of training were not fully developed. The article concludes that training will remain a central issue when implementing personalised social care services and that models of training for such changes should be shared and evaluated over the long term.     

Messages to Social Work Education: What Makes Social Workers Continue and Cope in Child Welfare?

This article examines the positive elements which make social workers continue their career with a focus on statutory child welfare. Such analysis is needed, as existing research tends to highlight stress, exhaustion and career break-up issues. The empirical data consist of focus groups of 28 social workers and a questionnaire addressed to 56 professionals in child welfare in two Finnish urban municipalities. The focus groups were targeted at novice, expert and veteran social workers. The analysis presents organisational, person-related and client-work-related positive elements from the point of view of social workers. The results highlight that social work in child welfare may be experienced as being rewarding and professionally challenging. The positive elements vary among novice, expert and veteran social workers, with the latter especially viewing their work as independent expert work with major opportunities to make a change in children's lives. Commitment to care of children is one of the key motivating factors. The study suggests that social work education should recognise that the subjective motivation to do social work may change during one's career and that social work may be simultaneously both stressful and rewarding. Students should learn how to balance these aspects of their work.     

Professional Socialization and Social Work Values: Who Are We Teaching?

Despite the centrality of values to professional socialization, the social work literature lacks an extensive exploration of the readiness of students to be socialized into the profession and taught the theoretical framework and skills for ethical decision making. This study explored the relationship between age, academic class standing, and identity development. Results indicated that the Identity Achievement status occurs later than traditional university years and correlates with age but not with academic class standing. Important implications for teaching social work values, ethical decision making, and the significance of a liberal arts foundation are discussed.     

Social Workers as Boundary Spanners: Reframing our Professional Identity for Interprofessional Practice

One of the more difficult tasks for social work educators is socializing students into a professional identity. Social identity theory provides a lens to consider what is needed for a social work identity that will continue to be salient for students as they move into practice. Framing social workers as boundary spanners might offer students a professional identity that is congruent with core values, reflects what social workers do and places less emphasis on old debates about the profession. It also positions students well for work in the increasingly interprofessional realms of health and social care. I consider how social workers are well equipped to meet the demand created by ‘joined-up working’ for people with boundary-spanning expertise. Seeing ourselves as boundary spanners is one way to reconcile our professional and interprofessional identities, thereby increasing the chances that our students will continue to identify as social workers when they move into interprofessional practice.     

Preparation for practice: embedding the development of professional identity within social work curriculum

Newly qualified social workers often enter challenging interdisciplinary settings where they need to be able to clearly articulate a distinctive professional identity. To prepare for these realities, this paper discusses how the development of professional identity has become increasingly central to qualifying social work curriculum at an Australian university. Preparation for social work practice has long been the focus of research in a number of countries, with a significant emphasis on knowledge and skill acquisition, rather than on the development of an overarching professional identity that is also underpinned by shared values and sense of professional purpose and expectations. Against this backdrop, the paper describes initial changes that have been made within core social work courses to progressively embed the development of professional identity more consciously across their studies, to be better prepared for contemporary challenges in the workplace. It is concluded that further changes are needed to fully transform the curriculum, and that the impacts of these changes be systematically evaluated in relation to preparedness for practice.     

从社会工作视角看我国临终关怀团队的建设路径

当前我国的临终关怀护理团队呈现以护理人员为主,社会工作者严重缺失的特点。通过借鉴美国卡罗莱那州临终关怀建设的先进经验,提出我国临终关怀团队建设的本土化路径,认为:应围绕医护专业和社会工作专业两条主线,在社会工作专业中增设临终护理课程,在护理专业中融入社会工作模块,培养交叉学科背景下的专业临终关怀人才。