Helping others or a rewarding career? Investigating student motivations to train as social workers in England

Abstract

Understanding why people want to be social workers is important both for developing social work education and for the profession as a whole. This article presents evidence about the motivations of students enrolled on social work degree programmes in England and draws on data from 3000 responses of three successive intakes of students responding to six online surveys and 26 focus group interviews involving 168 students from nine different social work programmes in six case study sites. The article locates these data in the context of earlier studies of social workers’ motivations, the changing policy context and the changes introduced by the new degree. Similar to previous studies, the current analysis shows that altruistic motivations dominated, but students were also influenced by career issues and the day-to-day aspects of social work. The data highlight continuities with the former qualification in social work in the UK (the DipSW) and provide evidence that the introduction of the social work degree has not dramatically changed the underlying motivations of social work students. Understanding student motivations is important in terms of recruitment to social work qualifying programmes and subsequent retention within the profession. Social work educators and employers need to pay attention to the consequences of mismatches between motivations and expectations about what professional practice involves

‘Life is about choices, but external factors often affect outcomes’: social work students’ reasoning about the origins of social problems

“…Since we have a different sample to Gilligan, we do not contest his findings; our results do, however, present reason to reconsider his interpretation. Our study agrees with the results of Stevens et al (2012),…”

“…Students' desire to 'help others' does not preclude, but is rather generally organised by, awareness of inequality and structural constraints. In this regard our findings align with those of Stevens et al (2012). Surveying 3000 current social work students using six online surveys, and conducting 26 focus group interviews.…”

“…Whatever the expressed primary motivation, like other research on student motivations (e.g. Christie and Kruk 1998;Gilligan 2007;Stevens et al 2012), we found that almost all responses included clear statements about a desire to help others to achieve their potential or to enable people to improve their lives in some way.…”

“…These reflections led us to privilege the anonymity of participants in the research. For example, since the large majority of the two cohorts were white women from the local area between the ages of 19 and 28, we decided not to ask demographic questions in order to help preserve the anonymity of those who did not have this profile and might otherwise be identifiable (Stevens et al 2012, with a much larger sample, have conducted such demographic analysis; see also D'Cruz et al 2002). Student responses to the questionnaire were received anonymously in two piles, one for each cohort, and marked with a number to facilitate analysis.…”

The roles of life course resources on social work minority students’ educational aspirations

“…The social work profession has been historically linked to a set of values including altruism-a social behaviour that is motivated by the unselfish goal to improve the welfare of others at the expense of self-interest (Levy, 1973;Stevens et al, 2012). For instance, it is not uncommon for social workers to encounter clients with a broad range of social difficulties such as poverty, mental illness, disabilities, unemployment, interpersonal problems and occupational stress.…”