A Multi‐Program Collaboration in Field Education

Abstract

This paper describes the development of a US-based field education collaboration among three social work programs that includes: field instructor orientation, continuing education for field instructors, an advisory board, a joint website and database, a field instructor manual and selected joint forms. Benefits, challenges, considerations and strategies will be offered for programs that wish to embark on similar projects.

Are MOOCs the next trend in social work?: Implications for practice education

“…The growth of OE in SWE has produced research on the intersection of fieldwork and technology. Researchers found field instructors favorable to Internet tools (Berg-Weger, Rochman, Rosenthal, Sporleder, & Birkenmaier, 2007;Dedman & Palmer, 2011). Likewise, Hash and Tower (2010) confirmed that most social work students do not encounter technological barriers to OE.…”

The challenges in developing cross-national social work curricula

“…Like Brydon et al (2014), our experience has been that short, one-off visits by academic staff are often not enough to get an adequate grasp of social work education and practice issues in another country needed to work on joint curriculum. There is no doubt that the distance between Australia and Europe, and the limited resources for staff travel, hindered the efforts of some institutions in developing relationships with partners on the other continent (Berg-Weger et al, 2007).…”

“…Furthermore, some universities have had to waive or modify existing policies on IPR for the outcomes of the project. Institutional support is necessary for international partnerships (Berg-Weger et al, 2007), and while the university legal office undertook much of this work in my university, the level of university infrastructure to support contract development was much more limited in some of our partner institutions. The lesson for future projects is that one should assume that the administrative arrangements will be a major undertaking, probably considerably in excess of what might one initially imagine these to be.…”

“How do you do it?”: MSW Field Director Survey.

“…Dettlaff and Dietz (2004) conducted focus groups with field instructors to identify their perceived training needs and identified particular areas of knowledge and skills that would be helpful for field instructor training, as well as a preference for a small group format for the training that would allow for the exchange of ideas. Berg-Weger, Rochman, Rosenthal, Sporleder, and Birkenmaier (2007) describe the process of how a group of three social work field programs collaborated to develop and oversee a joint field instructor training program. Although Berg-Weger et al describe a replicable process for developing a field orientation and training program and curriculum, they do not provide that curriculum; other programs following this process would still be required to develop their own curriculum.…”