As I approach the end of my three and a half years in this program, I wish to share some reflections based on my academic and personal experiences as well as take a look at social work education more broadly and present some ideas for what it could be.
The recurring theme of the past few years for me has been frustration. I have been frustrated as I found myself too many times in discussions with my peers in which there was more interest in providing the “right” answers to an exact list of questions rather than a desire to truly explore the issues these questions raised. I have been frustrated and baffled as I simultaneously felt completely overwhelmed with the amount of work dumped on me while also feeling that very little was expected academically or intellectually. I often felt there was not enough opportunity for in-depth exploration of the content being presented. I began every semester excited about the possibilities of what I might learn from my classmates and professors, and ended many of them quite disillusioned with my experience and resigned to just trying to get by.
Despite this, my time in the program was interspersed with wonderful experiences involving supportive peers and fantastic professors. In fact, I had what I can only describe as an intellectual and spiritual awakening facilitated by a course I took with Jeff Singer on homelessness and housing policy. The course involved extremely challenging content that forced me to quickly acquire technical knowledge of complex programs paired with readings that explored the theoretical and ideological foundations of society. It was only by being challenged this way that my mind began to open. I found myself in the library reading about housing policy, the financial system and economic theory and it hit me that I actually understood what I was reading and was able to assimilate it into a cohesive narrative that was all at once shocking, horrifying and liberating.
In this process, I discovered that I was capable of much more than the world had led me to believe. This was extremely significant for me, as past personal experiences with abusive relationships and trauma had made me believe that I was mistaken about the world I thought was available to me—that my ambitions were far-fetched and my ideas impractical. I became angry that I had wasted so much of my life until this point not doing the work I was capable of because of these false beliefs and began to see that they were being reinforced not only in my personal life, but also in my academic experience.
Low academic expectations paired with strictly prescribed requirements and limited program flexibility send the message that we are not capable of excellence and lack the capacity for true intellectual curiosity and discovery. Instead of cultivating a student body that is critical and inquisitive, the program structure makes us feel as though we are being pushed through a production line. We then function that way in classes, merely fulfilling requirements rather than being actively engaged in the direction of our education. I watched my peers and professors unsuccessfully fight this tendency over and over, and have come to believe that we are in need of a fundamental reorientation of social work education.
To properly critique social work education, we must first define social work. In my view, the only way to capture the full scope of social work practice would be to define it as the pursuit of human well-being. Social work does not involve any one particular method of practice but rather seeks to prioritize human well-being in all processes. This is why there is such an amazing diversity of career options for social workers and why so many dual-degree programs are absolutely relevant.
Much of the format of social work education has been developed based on a desire to establish social work as a technical profession—as an end unto itself rather than an accessory to other work. But is there really a particular set of techniques for the pursuit of human well-being?
We approach our education as if the question of what constitutes human well-being has already been answered, is obvious and widely agreed upon, and can be inserted wherever necessary with sufficient effort and superior tactics. However, this is not true. Much more nuanced exploration of this foundational question is necessary, as is a deeper understanding of the political and economic systems in which we operate in order to conscientiously practice social work. It feels as though our methods-based education has skipped several fundamental steps.
In addition, the concurrent model of coursework and field placement makes it impossible to fully commit to one or the other. Especially during the first-year placement, students are being dropped into the experience before they have adequately explored its context and implications, led by volunteer instructors who have been trained mainly as practitioners rather than educators. While field is idealized as a place to learn the application of theory, in reality, it often serves to normalize a dysfunctional system. Students are not adequately prepared for the experience and are not provided the proper space to examine that experience critically. Being placed in an outside agency under the supervision of that agency gives the field placement the power to create the worker it wants rather than giving the student the power to explore and learn.
These are not just problems at our school, but in social work education more broadly due to the CSWE’s requirements for social work program accreditation and common practices among schools of social work.
Imagine with me for a moment some alternative possibilities:
Instead of choosing from a list of specialization tracks, we could utilize a thesis model and base students’ course of study on a thesis topic that has been developed under the supervision of a faculty member. To have a course approved, students would discuss its applicability with their advisor. This would give students much more freedom to explore the topics and practice areas that are appropriate for their interests and, in doing so, enhance their engagement with course materials. We already have a structure set up for independent study courses, which could be used as the format for a thesis advising program.
We could spend time studying the philosophy, ethics and history of social work during the foundation year and de-prioritize methods courses. We could also focus more time on studying the development and theoretical underpinnings of clinical work and psychology, as well as those of our political institutions. This would encourage us to be more conscientious practitioners. While social work’s prioritization of practice-based knowledge is well-intentioned, I believe that we have lost too much of the theoretical exploration that would inform a productive, contextualized, practice-based experience.
Lastly, field education needs to be conducted by educators not as secondary contacts, but as direct instructors. This would be a major overhaul of the field education system, but it is perhaps the most important change that needs to be made. To more fully explore the breadth of possibilities in social work practice, foundation-year students could complete a series of field rotations in intentionally diverse practice settings. For example, one public agency, one school setting, one hospital setting and one community-based organization. All settings would provide both clinical and macro opportunities for either practice or observation. Because of the nature of clinical relationships, it may be that students would need to do more observations rather than beginning relationships that would be cut short, though students cut off relationships prematurely at yearlong placements as well, so that dynamic would not be new to the program. The second-year placement structure would not change, except that the placement process would have to be delayed until after the spring semester of the foundation year, giving students experience at all four foundation field rotations before they decide on an advanced placement.
In our obsession with the technique and methods of social work practice, much of its imaginative and radical potential has gone unfulfilled. But there is no reason we have to continue doing anything the same way it has been done in the past. There is no God of Social Work deciding what constitutes social work and how we should be educated or one all-powerful organization whose mandates must be followed and can never change. Every person or organization has only as much power as is given by those who follow them. Let’s re-imagine social work education and use it to enhance the potential of all social workers.