Education for Social Work

Readings in Social Work, Volume 4

Eileen Younghusband

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032059471
• eBook ISBN: 9781000456608
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social Work

Some outstanding contributions to a better understanding of the issues of education for social work have been brought together in this volume, originally published in 1968. Because of the wide relevance of the subject these articles should be valuable not only to social work educators and field supervisors in many different parts of the world, but to others concerned with professional education. Today it can be enjoyed in its historical context.

1 Building The Curriculum: The Foundation For Professional Competence*

Eileen Blackey

To be concerned with curricula in social work education presupposes that social workers understand and accept the premises which underlie our existence as a profession. We share with other professions certain distinguishing attributes which Ernest Greenwood identifies succincdy as (i) a systematic body of theory; (2) the authority of professional competence; (3) the sanctions bestowed by our communities; (4) a code of ethics and (5) a professional culture.¹ Inherent in these attributes are what Alfred J. Kahn identifies for the social work profession as goals, values, beliefs, apparatus, techniques and the chief method or methods of intervention employed by the professional at a given time.² These then are characteristics which provide a fraternity of activity and concern for social workers everywhere, though the operational aspects of this professional framework will and should vary with individual countries.

To bring a subject of this magnitude within manageable bounds, it is essential that we examine and agree upon a number of premises reflecting today’s realities which offer us a common frame of reference for undertaking the educational tasks ahead of us.

There are four main points which provide guidance in the examination of curriculum building. The first three are in the nature of assumptions which in my opinion should underlie consideration of the subject The fourth deals with the subject itself—the curriculum:

1. Social work as an area of professional practice functions within the larger context of the field of social welfare and therefore both its practice and its education must take cognizance of this broader concern.

^* Paper given by Dr Eileen Blackey at the 13th International Congress of Schools of Social Work, Washington D.C., August 31-September 3,1966. Published in International Social Work, January, 1967. ¹ Ernest Greenwood, ‘Attributes of a Profession’, Social Work, New York, Vol II, No. y July 1957. ² Alfred J. Kahn, The Function of Social Work’, Issues in American Social Work, Edited by Alfred J. Kahn, Columbia University Press, 1959.

2. The development of social work practice, and consequently of social work education, though generally adhering to a universal professional framework, must take place within the political, social, economic and cultural patterns and values of the particular country and must be related to the needs, priorities and resources of that country. In this connection, social work must devise ways of determining these characteristics and conditions as prerequisite to defining the objectives of practice and education in a country.

3. Education for the tasks of social work must take into account the need to prepare for the performance of a range of different functions and for the practice of social work at a number of different levels of responsibility. This in turn requires attention to the development of differentiated training programmes, to the educational levels at which various educational programmes are to be undertaken, and to the educational background of the students who apply.

4. Social work education has by now reached a certain degree of universality in its development of curricula, at the same time that it is expressing a healthy resistance to standardization of curricula around the world. The profession’s ability to meet current challenges will depend in no small way on whether social work educators can undertake the formulation of educational programmes in harmony with the previous three assumptions and can acquire the competence and ‘know-how’ essential to the building of curricula which will achieve the objectives of the profession and remain responsive to change.

The three assumptions need some elaboration in relation to their influence on the building of curricula.

That social work is an integral part of the larger field of social welfare is an assumption which meets with varying degrees of acceptability depending on the country. For many decades, the role of social welfare in the United States was seen as related to what Wilensky and Lebaux call the ‘residual’ radier than the ‘institutional’ conception of social welfare. The tendency, Alfred Kahn points out, for social work in the United States to base its practice on ‘individual or group adjustive or therapeutic services’ strengthened the image of the profession as one concerned primarily if not solely with ‘promoting adjustments to, or functioning within, social institutions’, thus ignoring, Kahn continues, ‘the substantial historical evidence that the nature and specific function of social work (and thus the methods of social workers) must, in fact, reflect the given, changing social situation.’¹ In this latter context, social welfare provisions and programmes are conceived of as an essential and integral part of modern society and as essential to the society’s basic institutional arrangements, a point of view which is basic to the goals of social work.

¹ Ibdi

In emerging nations where tradition has not yet taken hold, there is greater recognition of the role of social welfare in national development and more widespread acceptance of social welfare as a permanent institutional structure designed to assist in the rapid changes imposed by political independence, economic growth, industrialization and the break-up of customary patterns and value systems.

Such countries have much to offer to more highly developed, complex societies in which social welfare and social work have too often permitted themselves to be diverted from the mainstream of national, economic and social problems, and the accompanying national and local planning essential to their resolution. In the United States, the most regrettable example of this has been the unwitting disengagement over the past few decades of a large segment of the social work profession from the problems growing out of alienation and powerlessness among the poor and the culturally deprived.

There can be no question in any country of the responsibility which social work has for making itself an effective force in bringing about maximum realization of human and social goals, individually and collectively. This premise dictates that social work education and practice must therefore concern themselves with the processes of social planning and development, with social institutions and their organization, with the positive and negative effects of social change and with the making of social policy, in addition to our professional concern for individuals and their special problems and needs.

The premise that social work practice and education must develop indigenously within a country and in close proximity to its conditions and needs, is not a new one and I am sure there is general agreement as to its validity. What we have not yet succeeded in doing, however, is to effect ways of securing the data and materials on which judgments can be made as to what the nature of social work education should be in any one country at a particular time, and of developing professional antennae which will keep us tuned in and responsive to changes occurring in the society so that they may be reflected in on-going curriculum reviews and re-organization.

One of the first steps in the formulation of a curriculum in a school of social work is the development of overall educational goals and specific curriculum objectives for the programme of study. These cannot be arrived at without knowledge and interpretation of the country’s history and stage of development, its political, economic, social and cultural trends and problems, its priorities and resources. Such understanding cannot be arrived at by osmosis or trial and error. We must devise conscious and systematic approaches to the acquisition of such insights, through data collection, research findings, personal observation, and any other devices at our command in the countries in which we are conducting our educational programmes.

The knowledge and understanding we seek about a society are of two orders: one, the demographic facts, the known resources, the objective observations; the other, the ideological, philosophical, religious bases of the society, the goals the country has set for itself, the value systems operating within groups and for the country as a whole.

In new nations, this task may be at once more difficult and more possible. More difficult because data collection in a standardized and systematic way usually takes place only after other developmental phases have been experienced. More possible, because in the younger nations, history, events, conditions are all more immediately visible, and may therefore offer more ready clues to what the country needs to do in the selection of priorities, the initiation of social services and the preparation of social workers to staff them.

In longer established societies, it is possible, and I think this is the case in North America, that the knowledge accumulated about a country and its conditions through systematic data collection, research and direct experience can be so massive that those who have responsibility for meeting needs and providing services are confronted with an insurmountable task in delineating and extracting die knowledge, trends and facts which should guide us in an on-going evaluation and re-orientation of our practice and education in social work.

Dr de Jongh has pointed out that we must develop better knowledge of the frequency, character and causation of specific social problems, such as poverty, delinquency, prostitution, alcoholism, etc. and gain through research and other devices better understanding of the effects on human beings of certain rules, institutions and procedures which society has devised to deal with these problems.¹

¹ J. F. de Jonen, ‘Schools of Social Work and Social Policy; Old and New Experience’, paper presented at International Congress of Schools Social Work, Athens, Greece, 1964. Published in International Social Work, January 1965.

In countries which have already reached a higher degree of sophistication and complexity in their social organization, the task for social work may be one of revitalization and re-orientation, purposefully finding its way back into the mainstream of national, social and economic policy and change. In newly developing societies those responsible for social work education will need to develop blueprints for studying, even with crude instruments, their societal patterns.

If there is one charge which I feel must be given to our profession, it is that those responsible for social work education in all parts of the globe, must submerge themselves in the life of their own societies, must feel viscerally, as well as know intellectually, what the human and social aspirations and needs of their people are; and accept the challenge of working creatively and courageously at devising and inventing approaches which will not only be effective in their own countries but will serve as an inspiration to each of us in our search for solutions.

The social work manpower situation throughout the world requires that we look at more than one route to social work education and that we consider the preparation of social workers at a number of different levels and for a range of different responsibilities. This idea is not a new one. It is reinforced in the literature over and over again, and more particularly in the recent documents prepared by the United Nations.

Any differentiated approach to training must of course be accompanied by a differential approach to the tasks to be performed and to the relationship which exists between and among levels of training and practice. To achieve its purpose, such differentiation must also be related to the deployment of the highly trained and skilled personnel in key places of leadership where their impact on the total social welfare scene can be maximized.

This question of the preparation of social workers differentially for a variety of tasks and at different levels of difficulty is one which is confronting both developing and more developed countries. The ever-increasing shortages in social work personnel demand that the profession begin to differentiate responsibilities and tasks which can be performed by people with different types and levels of training. This is a task in which the experiences of developing countries can contribute new insights and point new directions for all countries.

The building of curricula in social work education should consist of a set of systematic and disciplined processes. What is frequendy ignored is the fact that these processes require specific knowledge and skills on the part of those responsible for curriculum building if curricula are to be developed and executed effectively. It is important, therefore, that provision be made by the profession to enable educators to become proficient in this activity.

To screen from an increasingly expanding literature on curriculum building in social work that which can suitably fit within the confines of this article is an exceedingly difficult thing to do without making the material seem fragmented and disjointed. Reduced to its simplest terms, it is the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ of social work training with which we are concerned and I shall try to develop my ideas within this general framework.

The ‘why, what and how’ frame of reference which supports social work as a profession, and thereby guides both its practice and education, has been identified as consisting of social work values, social work functions and social work methodology. While there may be universal acceptance of the structural utility of such a professional framework, there is also recognition of the cultural variations which will determine the emphases and implementation of it in individual countries. In this context, it is more accurate to think in terms of ‘curricula’ than ‘the curriculum’.

Nevertheless, the profession cannot be practised nor taught without reference to its constituent parts and their relationship one to the other. Our methods of social work intervention, for example, must grow out of our values and functions. Professional functions must flow from values (the society’s as well as the profession’s), and in turn serve as one of the determinants in the nature of services to be provided and the choice of methods of intervention to be adopted. And undergirding the total professional framework are the values of social work.

Coming to agreement on the values held by the profession is not an easy matter, particularly when they are viewed within a cross-cultural context. Allowing for these differences, however, it is generally agreed that the profession is concerned with two sets of values, each of a different order. One set is people-oriented, the other society-oriented. Our people-oriented values support belief in and concern for (1) the worth, dignity and well-being of the individual, and (2) the integrity and well-being of the group, meaning individuals, family, small groups, and communities, including the world community. The society-oriented values are concerned with (1) progress in economic development towards the realization of more resources for people and (2) the value placed on security in the physical, economic and social spheres as basic to human progress and fulfilment.

The implications of these values for curriculum building are far reaching. They permeate and guide the nature and scope of the content of the curriculum and re-inforce the assumptions that social work is a part of and must be concerned with the broader field of social welfare, and must relate itself to the values of the society in which it exists.

The functions of the profession have generally been historically responsive to societal needs and conditions as they exist in individual countries around the world. Dependent on these needs and conditions, social work functions, as they get translated into services, may encompass a limited or broad range of activities, may emphasize some functions to the exclusion of others at any one time, or may actually be malfunctioning in relation to what the needs and conditions demand.

Social work has experienced considerable shifts over the years in what it conceives of as its functions. In general, there would be agreement on the curative and restorative functions carried by social work, spanning activities from the meeting of mass need to the deployment of all available resources on behalf of the rehabilitation of an individual, family or group. However, today, in addition to these important functions, attention is sharply focused on social work’s role in prevention and social planning. And in connection with these two latter functions, social work has begun to develop its knowledge and practice competence towards more active identification of gaps in services to people, organization of communities towards the provision of services, identification of the impact of social institutions and systems on people and the sharpening of our knowledge and skills in bringing about social change.

What social work sees as its functions at any one point in a country’s development, and what the country itself sees as priorities, will directly affect the emphasis social work education will give to preparing social workers for the social services. At the same time, social work education has a responsibility for anticipating the next steps in a country’s development so as to equip graduates to take a lead in the initiation of services directed towards the meeting of human and social needs at higher levels of realization and social functioning when they can be achieved.

Regardless of the stage of development in a particular society, students should be taught that the functions of social work encompass and permit of a range of activities which may in succession, or simultaneously, give attention to problems requiring curative or restorative treatment; to the preventive aspects of problems; to social reform and to social planning and social policy.

In its development, the methodology of social work has tended to follow the constituencies defined by the profession as individuals, groups and communities, resulting in the formulation of the social work methods, developed almost exclusively by American social work, of social casework, social group work and community organization. Although methodology should flow logically from function and should constitute flexible professional tools for the carrying out of servi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Preface
• Table of Contents
• 1. Building the Curriculum: The Foundation for Professional Competence
• 2. The Small Group in Learning and Teaching
• 3. The Teacher in Education for Social Work
• 4. The Place of Scientific Method in Social Work Education
• 5. A Social Work Approach to Courses in Growth and Behaviour
• 6. The Contribution of Psychoanalysis to Social Work Education
• 7. The Lecture as a Method in Teaching Casework
• 8. Teaching Casework by the Discussion Method
• 9. The Place of Help in Supervision
• 10. The Fieldwork Supervisor as Educator
• 11. Helping Students in Field Practice Identify and Modify Blocks to Learning