Teaching Social Work Practice: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Three Co-Educators Identifying Key Practice Skills

Overview: Learning social work practice skills is a major goal for students. Three social work co-teachers engaged in a mentoring relationship identified key aspects of teaching practice skills: (1) Teaching best practices, (2) Teaching role, and (3) Teaching practice skills. Implications to enhance content delivery of practice skills are presented.Proposal text:

Background:

Social work students must advance their clinical skills gaining practice competencies (Bogo, et al, 2020; Bragg, et al., 2020). A practice skills class is a learning space to imbue practice wisdom and enhance students’ understanding of relational skills such as reflection, empathy, self-awareness as well as knowledge and skills to apply them (Kourgiantakis et al., 2020). A social work practice instructor carries responsibility to equip students with these skills (Varghese, 2020). However, universities often employ casual teaching staff on short-term university contracts to teach practice units to social work students based on their availability rather than on teaching skills (Clark et al, 2011). Whilst these practitioners can bring wealth of experience and expertise to under-graduate classroom, it cannot be assumed that casual teaching staff have formal training in pedagogical development nor in educational delivery (Webb, et al., 2013).

It is inadequate for social work practice skills to be merely talked about, they must be modelled and practiced (Sheafor & Horejsi, 2008). Knight (2001) proposed using social work practice skills while teaching students, that would normally be used when working with clients to create a positive learning environment and constructive role modelling of social work skills. It is in this context that this paper aims to identify the critical elements of teaching practice skills and to examine the ways in which teaching content is delivered. This paper presents the ‘teaching the teacher’ experience of three social work educators at an Australian university.

Methods:

Creating a Professional Learning Community (PLC) and collaborative autoethnography (Anderson 2006) serve as conceptual frameworks to this inquiry. Three social work educators critically reflected over one semester on their teaching in 4th year practice unit. The data was written reflective logs related to team teaching followed by group discussions. The first phase of data analysis comprised critical readings of the data to derive initial codes followed by line-by-line coding method (Braun & Clarke 2012). An inductive approach was utilized to delve deeper into the themes (Strauss & Corbin, 2014). This was followed by two stages of qualitative analysis – open coding and thematic analysis.

Results:

Key themes emerged from the inductive analysis: (1) Teaching best practices, (2) Teaching role, and (3) Teaching practice skills.

Conclusion/Implications:

• Social work academy needs to bolster teaching skills of casual teaching members. By replicating the clinical supervision model, social work programs can pair permanent more skilled educators with new educators.

• Identifying elements of effectively teaching a social work Practice Skills unit will contribute to a better learning environment and, ultimately, better educational outcomes for students.

Attendees will be able to:

1. Explain how four teaching tools (e.g. role plays, instructor debate, fishbowls, stepping out) were used in teaching practice skills.
2. Discuss two tips (“Ask Me Anything” & “Gems”) enhanced student engagement
3. Differentiate how three teaching roles (e.g. cheerleader, expert, counsellor) support student learning
4. Detail how seven practices skills (e.g. Use of self, Vulnerability, Authenticity, Empathy, Client Respect, Boundaries, Taboo/Challenging conversations) were both modelled and taught to students.