The present study aimed to gain further insights into how visiting international social work students and their hosts from different cultures learn about each others' social services, culture, and personal values. Six Israeli students and 8 Indian students have written narratives and reflections on their experiences in the international encounter…

This paper examines a developing model for building an international social work placement that meets the needs of the host agency and community first. The paper addresses the challenges for social work departments to develop a strong learning environment while also keeping primary the needs of the host community and agency.

At Massey University, New Zealand, the Moodle program was introduced as an institutional innovation to support and enhance teaching and learning. Within the social work field education program Moodle has been embraced as an opportunity to creatively advance current educational practices. The development of a meta-site for field education enables…

For decades, group work scholars have described a discrepancy between student preparation for group work practice and opportunities to work with groups in the field practicum and professional practice. Educators in related disciplines such as counseling and psychology have expressed similar concerns. This article reports findings of a study of MSW…

There is a universal demand for well-prepared professionals in all disciplines, and society has entrusted professional schools with the task of preparing such individuals (Ralph, Walker, and Wimmer, 2008). Within this context, field or clinical instructors and university faculty have an academic and professional responsibility to teach, supervise,…

According to R. Wayne ("Legal Guidelines for Dismissing Students Because of Poor Performance in the Field," 2004), there is a widely accepted assumption in social work education that field placement provides the best opportunity to evaluate students' goodness-of-fit with the profession and is therefore used to weed out unsuitable…

This article explores a faculty-facilitated consultation group that was created for MSW students in an academic setting as a response to the paucity of group work supervision and training available in many field placements. This study considers the context in which training occurs, the impact of systemic and professional factors, which includes…

Military children encounter unique stressors that can affect their social and emotional well-being. These challenges can serve as a risk to the military child's successful academic performance. This study fills a much-needed research gap by examining the training and implementation of a public school-based intervention, Families OverComing Under…

Seventeen social educator students were taught to analyze their work activity by means of a Vygotsky-inspired method, drawing on Engeström's notion of an activity system. The method aimed at increasing the consciousness of the students of the structure of work activity system. The participants wrote two accounts of their field-work practice…

The prevalence of suicide suggests social workers will encounter clients at risk for suicide, but research shows social workers receive little to no training on suicide and suicide prevention and feel unprepared to work effectively with clients at risk. Baseline results from a randomized intervention study of the Question, Persuade, and Refer…

This article describes the use of social work field placements in a private practice setting to prepare MSW students for clinical work. The authors used "autoethnography", which is personal narrative that explores the writer's experience of life, to describe interpersonal and contextual characteristics, as well as procedures implemented to conduct…

Social work doctoral programs are not adequately preparing students to educate future clinical practitioners. Social work is predominantly a practice profession. Social work's PhD programs must continue the education of excellent researchers while also educating for excellence in practice, teaching, field liaison, and the supervision of practice.…

This article examines how a baccalaureate program initiated an introductory field experience in an attempt to improve 2 frequently identified impediments to quality field experiences, namely the lack of a complete generalist practice experience and the lack of opportunities for integration of theory into practice. The key components to this…

Objective: This study focused on interrelationships among supervisor attachment, supervisory working alliance, and supervision-related affect, plus the moderating effect of a field instructor training. Method: The researchers employed a pretest-posttest follow-up design of 100 randomly assigned field instructors and 64 students in two…

Incorporating material on professional self-care into social work course content is valuable to the education of neophyte social work practitioners. This article presents a review of the literature on professional burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and compassion fatigue, including the risk factors associated with the experience of these…