Looking Back and Ahead: Reflecting Marion Bogo's Contributions to Social Work Education

Overview: Paying tribute to Marion Bogo’s lifetime contributions to social work education, this panel will (1) review the current empirical literature on field education, (2) present theoretical and empirical support for assessing student competence, (3) and highlight the value of simulation for social work education.Proposal text: In October 2021, social work education communities lost one of the most influential scholars of our time. Marion Bogo, Professor at the University of Toronto Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, dedicated her professional career to advancing social work education. In this proposed panel, will pay tribute to Professor Bogo’s lifetime scholarly contributions to social work education. Reflecting and building on Professor Bogo’s corpus, we will present her groundbreaking work in the following three areas: (1) advancing theory and practice of field education, (2) research-informed social work practice competencies; and (3) simulation-based social work education.

Considered the signature pedagogy of our profession, field education is crucial for socializing social work students to successfully become practitioners committed to serve with integrity (Bogo et al., 2020). With an unwavering dedication to prepare the next generation of social workers, Professor Bogo made significant contributions to field education scholarship through articulating mechanisms to enhance the integration of theory to practice (Bogo et al., 2017), teaching and learning processes (Bogo et al, 2007; Kourgiantakis et al., 2019), and synthesizing the literature on best practices for field education and instruction (Bogo et al., 2020). We will focus on the application of these best practices in field to our current pandemic context, and the innovative global responses.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of Marion Bogo’s stellar academic career was her long-standing advocacy not only for excellent educational practices, but also for high quality assessment of social work students (Bogo et al., 2011). Professor Bogo saw field education as the fundamental core of social work education and the critical site for supporting the development and assessment of social work students (Bogo, 2020). We will highlight Professor Bogo’s work in this area, which became a driving force behind the development of meaningful, authentic and relevant field assessment that incorporates specific, definable, observable skills with higher-order thinking in order to deploy these skills in a holistic and thoughtful manner that adheres to the values of the profession (Bogo, 2018; Bogo, 2020).

Finally, we will highlight Professor Bogo’s groundbreaking work on simulation-based education, which she saw as an vital mechanism that bridges the classroom- and field-based learning and facilitates student assessment (Bogo et al., 2017; Bogo et al., 2021). We will feature Professor Bogo’s key innovations, such as the use of the Objective Structured Clinical Examination (Bogo et al., 2011, 2012), post-simulation reflections (Bogo et al., 2013) and feedback system for students and field educators (Kourgiantakis et al., 2019), all of which are designed to facilitate field learning and competency assessment among students.

Through presenting important advances in field education, competence assessment, and the use of simulation, this tribute panel will highlight the contributions Professor Bogo has made to social work education. A commitment to social work education scholarly efforts, both theoretical and empirical, are needed to prepare future social workers, one more lesson we take away from our relationships with Professor Bogo.