Social Media in Social Work Education by Joanne Westwood

Author:Joanne Westwood [Westwood, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781909682573
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Critical Publishing
Published: 2014-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Social work educators have a responsibility from the outset of the professional learning journey to make explicit the need for practitioners to grasp the reality of social work practice, and to understand that the lives of those who access services are often intricate journeys surrounded by uncertainty and change. They need to ensure that practitioners are equipped as well as possible to manage the flux and unpredictability of what they will encounter. Engaging with the book group as a non-threatening and informal teaching space is a creative method of supporting knowledge acquisition through analysis and reflections of a narrative as it evolves. It is within this learning experience that students can begin to safely connect with the actuality of everyday social work practice.

SOCIAL WORK BOOK GROUP: ‘BRINGING LEARNING TO LIFE’

Having established that Social Work Book Groups have a place within social work education and that fictional works are the template for assisting students and practitioners to further understand and reflect upon the multifaceted nature of social work, it is now important to outline the elements of the Social Work Book Group as a teaching method, whether located within a module of learning, a reading group, as an online activity or a private study group; and to highlight their potential to replace, support, or complement some of the more traditional types of delivery in higher education. The construction of a Social Work Book Group within social work education requires some forethought and planning. What is also needed is the ability to consider and balance the overall teaching aims and influencing elements of the process from a systems perspective, to ensure that the session is focussed and results in individual and group level learning.

SOCIAL WORK BOOK GROUP PROCESS

Social Work Book Group (Figure 4.1) being the central tenet of the teaching method acknowledges the context but equally important is the attention paid to the range of learners, the fiction chosen and the environment created; as each one of these elements will impact upon and influence the other.

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