The “real value” of field trips in the early weeks of higher education: the student perspective

The benefits attributed to field trips by science educators are: social development; observation and perception skills; giving meaning to learning; providing first-hand experience and stimulating interest and motivation. Arguably, the “real value” of field work is attributed by students. In this study, 100 first-year students took part in an analysis of the value of a residential field trip. The field trip was a purposeful combination of personal development and academic activities. Pairwise comparison showed that the attributed value score for “Personal and Social Development” was significantly higher than scores for “Provide First-hand Experience” and “Observation and Perception Skills”. The attributed value for “Stimulate Interest and Motivation in the Subject” also scored more highly than “Provide First-hand Experience”, and “Observation and Perception Skills”; “Give meaning to Learning” was significantly higher than that for “Observation and Perception Skills”. In addition, the “educator” was also able to significantly improve students’ scores for “Stimulate Interest and Motivation”. This insight into students’ perceptions of field work recasts our thinking as educators; social capital is a key factor in student persistence and subsequence academic success. Field trips should be considered a valuable addition to retention strategies in a way that is tangible for students themselves.     

The Post-Modern Student

Abstract

The differences between present-day post-modern students and educators from older generations require changes in educational approach, but also challenge post-modern trends. Students' postmodern experiences may lead them to seek individuality among diverse sources of identity, seeing knowledge as a throwaway consumption good, and education promotes flexibility and “edutainment.” However, professional education trains people for structured managerialist organisations and the accumulation of shared professional knowledge. Social work education needs to be reframed as a process of emergence in which educators and students work jointly to create knowledge and identity in their professional area. To operate in an increasingly complex and changing society, students need to create a strong professional identity and learn how to transfer knowledge and values from one situation to another. In this way, social work education connects with the Danish managerial concept of “chaos pilots” in which students are prepared to deal with cultural and social change.     

Roles and Tasks of Field Instructors as Perceived by Chinese Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

From its inception, social work education has consistently embraced the position that field learning is an essential element of professional education. It is through field work that the student has the opportunity to apply knowledge gained in the classroom and to learn the skills necessary for effective social work practice

A study conducted by Fortune et at. (1985) on student satisfaction with field placement revealed that the field instructor or supervisor was a link to student satisfaction with the field practicum. Much has been written on the concept and principles of field education, with discussions on the field instructor's functions in field instruction. However, it seems that such discussions vary greatly in their degree of specificity in spelling out the field instruction tasks. On the other hand, relatively little has been reported on how social work students perceive the roles and tasks of field instructors. It seems obvious that students, with first hand experiences in field work practice, can contribute much to the formulation of knowledge in field instruction

Hence, it is vital and essential to study what social work students actually expect of the roles and behaviors of field instructors as contrast to what is written in the theories of field instruction.

This paper attempts to identify the set of behaviours and tasks perceived by students as important to the work of a field instructor. In the process, it is also envisaged that the “anatomy of field instruction” can be better understood through a clear specification of the activities involved.     

Linking Community,Industry and Tertiary Education Community‐based Student Units in Social Work Education

Professional social work education in Australia requires students to undertake supervised and assessed field practice in addition to theoretical classroom‐based education. Field education placements take place in a wide range of social and community service organisations ‐ often partly funded by these organisations. However, in a climate of economic restraint and cutback, the social and community services sector increasingly looks to education for resources for field education. One solution is the development of student units, especially designed to offer practice‐based experience for students. This paper is motivated by the high value Phillip Institute of Technology places on student units in field education. It addresses the question, “What are student units?”, presents a tentative categorisation of types of social work student units and concludes with a possible framework for evaluation.     

The Hostile Vagina: Reading vaginal discourse in a school health text

This article considers the use of the field of bioethics for those practising sex education. It reviews dominant approaches on the part of bioethics that might be applicable to sex educators and undertakes an evaluation of their relevance to sex education. It considers key ideological objections to dominant bioethical approaches and evaluates the impact they might have on sex educators. From these evaluations, it briefly suggests how practitioners might develop alternative conceptions of ethics for the benefit of their work and their clients.     

Lessons learned in an urban school: Preparing teachers for the educational village

Abstract

The disparities between the education of the rich and poor of this nation will continue to grow until educators are more willing and better prepared to work effectively in a variety of schools operating within a variety of models. Teacher education must prepare new teachers with open minds, willing hearts, and myriad strategies to address the realities, strengths, and critical needs of poor, culturally diverse urban schoolchildren and their families. This article describes an initiative that engages one teacher education program with an innovative urban “full‐service” elementary school in a joint effort to serve children and families and to provide a deeper and broader experience for preservice teachers. Education students complete traditional and nontraditional field work in a full‐service school with an “educational village” mission that extends from preschool to adult education.     

Advancing Doctoral Social Work Education: An Application of the Social-Ecological Framework

Graduates of social work doctoral programs are an integral part of social work education and, as faculty, training of BSW and MSW students. Missing from the literature are theoretical frameworks that advance the study of “what works and for whom” in social work doctoral education. Building upon the existing literature, this article proposes a conceptual framework for enhancing doctoral students’ experiences, as well as doctoral education programs. Specific strategies grounded by this framework are put forward to guide PhD students and educators in advancing doctoral social work education.     

Anatomy as a Model Environment for Acquiring Professional Competencies in Medicine: Experiences at Harvard Medical School

Anatomy education provides students with opportunities to learn structure and function of the human body, to acquire professional competencies such as teamwork, interpersonal skills, self-awareness, and to reflect on and practice medical ethics. The fulfillment of this wide potential can present challenges in courses that are part of an integrated curriculum and shorter than traditional courses. This new reality, together with students' increasing concern about the stresses within medical education, led to efforts at Harvard Medical School to implement practical steps toward an optimal learning environment in anatomy. These were based on core elements of ethical anatomy education and principles of trauma-informed care. Anatomy is conceptualized here as the “first clinical discipline,” with relational interactions between anatomical educators, medical students, and body donors/patients. Essential prerequisites for the implementation of this work were support by the medical school leadership, open partnership between engaged students and faculty, faculty coordination, and peer-teaching. Specific interventions included pre-course faculty development on course philosophy and invitations to students to share their thoughts on anatomy. Student responses were integrated in course introductions, combined with a pre-dissection laboratory visit, an introductory guide, and a module on the history and ethics of anatomy. During the course, team-building activities were scheduled, and self-reflection encouraged, for example, through written exercises, and elective life-body drawing. Students' responses to the interventions were overall positive, but need further evaluation. This first attempt of a systematic implementation of an optimal learning environment in anatomy led to the identification of areas in need of adjustment.     

Bridging Education and Practice With a Competency-Based Learning Contract

ABSTRACT

Field work programs have a substantial responsibility for providing support and gatekeeping functions while ensuring an educational experience that allows students to master the nine holistic, multidimensional social work accreditation competencies. With additional emphasis on field as a “signature pedagogy,” field directors are tasked with finding placements that can support these explicit competencies. Through the utilization of a learning contract that combines the Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards competencies (including component behaviors) students and supervisors can begin to discuss their joint progress on meeting each of these prior to the final evaluation. This process will ensure that students have demonstrated the necessary outcomes to become a generalist social work practitioner.     

Consulting Behaviors and the Role of Computer Consultants in Student Learning and Anxiety

Abstract

As computer applications are added to social work, educators are increasingly likely to encounter computer anxiety. This form of anxiety has been well-documented in the literature, including warnings that students attracted to fields that are “people professions” such as social work may be especially prone to problems.

This qualitative study used a naturalistic approach to observe and describe the behaviors and activities of computer consultants that seemed to have an effect on student anxiety. Analysis of the results indicated that some behaviors of consultants may actually have increased student feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, while others appeared to be quite helpful.     

Peddling Poverty for Profit: Elements of Oppression in Ruby Payne's Framework

Ruby Payne, CEO of aha! Process, Inc., and author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty (2005), has become one of the most influential figures in the U.S. public education milieu. Payne's framework, built largely upon understanding the “culture” of poverty, instructs educators on the values and mindsets poor students carry into the classroom as well as how to help them develop middle-class values and culture. But despite Payne's popularity, scholars and activists representing a wide variety of disciplines, from critical theory to mathematics education, have been highly critical of her work. In this essay I synthesize the existing critiques, dividing them into “eight elements of oppression” in Payne's work. I then offer a vision for a more authentic framework—one for authenticating anti-poverty education.     

Repertoire of practice: Reconceptualizing instructor competency in contemporary adventure education

Abstract

Historically, adventure educators have used the metaphor of hard and soft skills to understand their practice: hard skills representing technical competencies, and soft skills representing interpersonal competencies. In light of current research and in the face of increasingly complex varieties of adventure practice, the categorization of skills into “hard” or “soft” may obscure important aspects of experiential learning and limit the development of an effective pedagogy for adventure education. This paper interrogates the hard/soft metaphor from various perspectives and offers “repertoire of practice” (Wenger, 1998) as a possible framework to further discuss instruction and learning in contemporary adventure education. ‘What we have learned to see something as, becomes in turn, the guide to our outward practical activity’. (Wartofsky, 1979, p. 207)     

Leading Jewish Educators of Blessed Memory

The popular image connoted by the term “Jewish education” is the teaching-learning process in the classroom of an all day school, yeshiva, and afternoon school. The students are typically children of elementary school age. As the image expands, it includes adolescents in the high school, college students in special courses, and adults in synagogue-sponsored adult education courses. Jewish education for professionals in Jewish communal service agencies has not been part of the public's perception of Jewish education. To be sure, the professional's primary concern is helping clients with their problems and his knowledge base is primarily geared toward that objective. The “Jewish” component in the preparation for professional practice has not been a primary concern of Jewish educators.     

“I Thought I Hated Data”: Preparing MSW Students for Data-driven Practice

Social work is an applied profession using a combination of theory, research, and practice to meet the needs of client populations. First-hand experiential learning is central to social work education. Just as students learn clinical skills by interacting with clients in a practice setting, students need a forum to use real data to develop their skills in accessing, understanding, interpreting, and presenting answers to pertinent social work research questions. This paper describes one university's efforts to design and implement coursework opportunities for students to integrate the use of actual data to answer pertinent real-world research and evaluation questions.     

Education for future-oriented citizenship: implications for the education of twenty-first century competencies

Globalization and the knowledge economy have opened up worldwide agendas for national development. Following this is the emphasis on the social dimension, otherwise known as social capital. Much of social capital includes “soft skills” and “twenty-first century skills”, which broadly cover critical, creative and inventive thinking; information, interactive and communication skills; civic literacy, global awareness and cross-cultural skills. Proactively, the Singapore government is preparing for Curriculum 2015, a new curriculum that would develop student attributes, embedded in the “confident person”, “self-directed learner”, “active contributor”, and “concerned citizen”. Significantly, a new curricular initiative, Character and Citizenship Education, emphasizes the integrative nature of citizenship and twenty-first century competencies and has been implemented in all schools in Singapore from 2011. This future-oriented approach to citizenship education emphasizes the significance of individual initiatives and the intellectual capital of citizens. This paper analyses features of this particular approach to citizenship education, and its strengths and significance, which may be viewed as an integrative “total curriculum approach” with a “whole-society” perspective. In addition, the challenges of teaching twenty-first century skills will also be highlighted. This departs from the conventional paradigm of socialization, but to help students develop attributes for a future society to come.     

Strengthening the Signature Pedagogy of Social Work: Conceptualizing Field Coordination as a Negotiated Social Work Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Although field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work, the work of field coordinators appear to remain peripheral to other aspects of social work education, such as coursework and research. In this article, we suggest that field coordination requires a far more complex set of knowledge and skills than merely matching students with placements based on availability and interest. Using critical and relational theories, this article conceptualizes field coordination as a negotiated pedagogy in which the coordinators navigate complex and often competing needs among students, field agencies, and social work practice. In making visible its nuances and intricacies, we suggest that field coordination is a critical relational pedagogy essential to advancing social work education.     

What Can the Study of Genetics Offer to Educators?

This article explores the potential contribution of modern genetic methods and findings to education. It is familiar to hear that the “gene” for this or that behavior has been discovered, or that certain skills are “highly heritable.” Can this help educators? To explore this question, we describe the methods used to relate genetic variation to individual differences in high‐level behaviors such as academic skills and educational achievement. These methods include twin studies and genome‐wide association studies. We address the key question of what genetic data imply about the ability of educators to optimize educational outcomes for children across the range of abilities.     

Professionalization of progress and expertise among teacher educators in Iceland: A Bourdieuean interpretation

This paper considers the use of the conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu to study curriculum reform and the professionalization of teacher educators in Iceland. It argues that it is theoretically productive to interpret professionalism as the production of expert knowledge and learned discourse. The learned discourse of the Icelandic teacher educators and other education reformers, based on child-centered perspectives, developmental psychology, and child-centered curriculum theory, has become their symbolic capital in the field of educational reform. The paper considers to what extent the discourse on teacher professionalism in Iceland in the 1980s has merely occupied the space (social field) wherein education reformers work. It argues that those who have become “professionalized” are first and foremost teacher educators, curriculum development “professionals,” and teacher leaders, and points out that this was possible in an intermediate social space with much room for a creative redefinition of what can count as capital.     

What is meant by “rigour” in evidence-based educational policy and what’s so good about it?

ABSTRACT

Across the evidence-based policy and practice (EBPP) community, including education, randomised controlled trials (RCTS) rank as the most “rigorous” evidence for causal conclusions. This paper argues that that is misleading. Only narrow conclusions about study populations can be warranted with the kind of “rigour” that RCTs excel at. Educators need a great deal more information to predict if a programme will work for their pupils. It is unlikely that that information can be obtained with EBPP-style rigour. So, educators should not be overly optimistic about success with programmes that have been “rigorously” tested. I close with a plea to the EBPP community to take on the job of identifying and vetting the information educators need in practice.     

American Revolution in Mental Health Care Delivery

Abstract

The American health care system is in the midst of unprecedented changes under the name of “managed care,” including preauthorizations for care, cost and outcome accountability, formulary regulations and restrictions, and corporation of multi-professional collaboration. How to prepare practitioners for new responsibilities in such a time of exponential change while preserving professional values and priorities is the rightful concern of mental health educators. This paper identifies and examines some fundamental professional skills as essential criteria for assessing the preparation of social work professionals for the new mental health care environment. They are (1) communication skills, (2) cultural competency, and (3) state-of-the-art treatment. The paper also discusses the manner in which rapid scientific advance, managed-care environments, and changing patterns of practice might test, extend and alter traditional pillars of professional competence. Finally, it is stressed that social work education should prepare professionals to distinguish between constructive and destructive aspects of managed care and should teach the moral imperative to confront harmful practices.