Coherence and transition. Meaningful connections and challenging transitions in social work

ABSTRACT

Coherence between theory and practice, and transition between education and the profession are central challenges in social work and social worker education. This article analyzes how students and professional social workers within a Norwegian social work education establish such connections and how this changes in the transition between education and the profession. The study is inspired by Aaron Antonovsky’s concept, sense of coherence, and is based on qualitative data from focus group interviews with students, and with social workers after one year, and after five years in the profession. The analysis shows three different patterns for establishing meaningful connections. For students, notions of competence requirements in the profession create practice anxiety and an instrumental approach to coherence. For newly graduated social workers, this changes radically to understanding theory as a source for reflection on practice, and that the more instrumental connections can be developed within various occupational positions. The more experienced social workers describe the sense of coherence more as an individual development of personal competence. Finally, these empirical results are used to discuss challenges for social work as an ‘practice-based profession and an academic discipline’, and implications for social work education.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• education
• theory
• practice
• coherence
• transition

Introduction

This article analyzes and discusses how students and professional practitioners establish meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work, and how this changes in the transition between education and professional practice. The study is located in Norway, so that Norwegian education in social work and welfare services are the context within which the analysis must be understood. The social work education in Norway is a three-year bachelor’s degree, with the possibility of further specialization to a master’s degree. There has traditionally been a close link between education and Norwegian welfare policy, so that most social workers in Norway relatively easily being employed in various parts of public welfare services. This also means that social work education in Norway may to a greater extent have been oriented towards the services it is educated for, than social work understood as a separate autonomous discipline.

The analysis is based on a qualitative study with data from three focus group interviews; one group of students in their last academic year, one group of social workers after one year in the profession, and one group of social workers after five years. This provides an opportunity to analyze the question of establishing meaningful connections through a developmental perspective, with a particular focus on significant transitions.

The transition from education to practice is probably the most important transition in professional educations. This transition is often described as problematic, and is variously referred to as a mismatch, a gap or as a practice shock (Al-Ma’seb et al., 2015; Geirdal et al., 2019). The question of meaningful connections in this study is inspired by Aaron Antonovsky’s (1987) concept of sense of coherence. The understanding of transition is inspired by a basic recognition that human development cannot be understood as a continuous and linear process, but is characterized by phases and divisions. There is something that ends, and something that begins. And there is something that is before, and there is something that is after.

Aim and research question

The aim with this study is to highlight different strategies for establishing meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work within a Norwegian context, and then discuss particular characteristics and challenges for education and social work as a discipline. Social work is described as a very complex subject (Banks, 2001; Healy, 2014). At the same time, there is an increased ambition to define the subject as a discipline. The latest global definition describes social work as an ‘practice-based profession and an academic discipline’ (International Association of Schools of Social Work [IASSW], 2014). This expresses both an ambition to formulate a clearer theoretical knowledge base and a stronger connection between theory and practice. We also see a trend where specific competence requirements in various services, often supported by governmental documents, should define the content of the education (Hansen et al., 2015). This contrast is conceptualized in the sociology of professions as a distinction between a professionalization from within and a professionalization from above (Evetts, 2003; Smeby & Sutphen, 2015). Based on this, the discussion make an analytical distinction between education in social work as a discipline and education for social work as a position. And through this, show how different emphasis on these two dimensions also has an impact on the opportunity to establish meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work.

This article analyzes the following research questions:

1. To what extent, and in what way, do students and professional practitioners establish meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work?

2. Does this change in the transition from education to professional practice in social work? If so, how?

And based on the empirical analysis, the article discuss:

1. What specific challenges for social work as a discipline and education are illuminated through this analysis, and what implications may this have for the development of social work education.

Theoretical approach and previous research

Sense of Coherence

Antonovsky’s (1987) Sense of Coherence was not a concept developed to analyze educational programs, or the relationship between education and professional practice. His theory was based on studies of health, where he wanted to shift the focus from disease to the question of what creates good health. He called this salutogenesis, where the opportunity to establish meaningful connections in life situations, both through being able to comprehend and be able to manage, challenges we are exposed to, is central. Sense of Coherence became the central concept for such meaningful connections. Over the last decades the term has also been widely used for studies of education (Smeby & Sutphen, 2015; Tatto, 1996). This is especially true for studies where both the connection between theory and practice, and between education and profession, are central. Antonovsky’s point of departure is that meaningful connection is not something that exists in itself, it must be created. The term emphasizes the importance of establishing meaningful connections between conditions that contain tensions. Smedby and Heggen (2014) state that ‘coherence may be an appropriate way to bring into focus on the complexity of the meaningful interrelationships between theory and practice’ (p. 72). Sense of coherence is thus not something that can be discovered, it is an active process where the connections are created from a multitude of different element. This means that the term may be particularly well suited for analyzing the relationship between theory and practice in social work, where the academic framework is rather poorly defined.

In the research literature on coherence and education, there are in particular three dimensions of the concept that are included in the analyzes (Heggen et al., 2015). Biographical coherence focuses on the connection between the student’s experiences before education and the content of the education. This can be both personal experience or previous work experience and education. Program coherence is about the opportunity to create meaningful connections between different elements of the educational program, whether it is the connection between different concepts and theories or different teaching activities such as theory education, skills training and practice placement. Finally, transitional coherence looks at the connection between the education program and further learning after graduation. On the basis of the research questions in this study, transitional coherence will be the core concept of the analysis, although the other two dimensions will be closely related to this in the understanding of a professional qualification in social work.

Transition from education to practice

The transition from education to professional practice is often described, as mentioned in the introduction, as a definite shift in development. At the same time, there has also been a focus in educational research on making education and professional practice as similar as possible, thus arguing for the connection between education and practice as a more continuous development. Practice-near teaching and problem-based learning (PBL) are approaches that are based on the idea of a high degree of equality between education and practice (Heggen et al., 2015). Although the concept of coherence is also oriented towards connection, it is not the similarity and consistency between education and professional practice that is at the center. The essence of the concept of coherence is, as mentioned, the experience of coherence in conditions that can both contain differences and tensions. Such a use of the concept is closely related to Donald Schön’s (1983) concept of the reflective practitioner. Another inspiring contribution, specifically related to social work, is Jan Fook’s method of critical reflection (Fook & Gardner, 2007).

It is the way the connection between theory and practice is described in different phases that is the core of the data material, where the focus is not primarily a synchronous description of what characterizes the learning process in the present phase they are in now, but a diachronic description of how this phase is formed by the notions of other phases. Students’ perceptions of what is expected of them in the profession may form their sense of coherence in the education program. And the experience of connection in professional practice can be filtered through the notions of what they bring with them from education, or the opposite that the sense of coherence in the education program is filtered through their experience as a professional social worker. The research questions can thus be concretized into the following analytical questions: How does the notion of competence requirements in professional social work contribute to forming the sense of coherence between theory and practice among students in education? And, how does the notion of education contribute to forming the sense of coherence between theory and practice among professional social workers? And finally, how does professional experience contribute to forming the sense of coherence in the education they have completed?

Previous research

Over the past decades, much research has been published on coherence in professional education and practice, not least in teacher education (Grossman et al., 2008; Hammerness, 2013). Additionally, several studies have included other professional education such as nursing and social work education, often from a comparative perspective. From Vocational to Professional Education, an anthology edited by Smeby and Sutphen (2015) is a key contribution. Questions about the program coherence, particularly the way competence requirements in the vocational field can and should form the education program, have been extensively explored (Heggen & Smeby, 2012). Biographical coherence and transitional coherence are less explored. Smedby and Heggen (2014) have also included these forms of coherence where a longitudinal approach also appears to be particularly fruitful (Heggen et al., 2015). The studies show that all three forms have an impact on the sense of coherence between theory and practice in these professions. Studies with an exclusive focus on social work and studies based on qualitative data material are not evident in the literature.

Research focusing on preparing students for practice, both in education and after graduation, is also a relevant background for the analysis here (Moorhead et al., 2019). A core issue in this research is education’s contribution to form a professional identity. The study presented in the article here is inspired by cooperation within a transnational research network originating from European Conference of Social Work Research (ECSWR) with participants from England, Ireland, Italy and Norway. Our studies have a common thematic approach to ‘Preparation for social work practice in contemporary societies’. Although our countries have different educational programs and welfare policies, we also found common challenges, especially the tension between an autonomous development of social work education from within and governing from outside (Laidlaw et al., 2020). Parts of the data material from focus groups 1 and 2 were included in this transnational study, but the analysis had a different focus.

Method and data material

Design and participants

As mentioned in the introduction, the data material for this study is based on interviews in three different focus groups. A total of 14 people participated; five in groups 1 and 3, and four in group 2. Three of the participants were men, one in each group. This means that a majority of women participated, which corresponds well with the gender distribution among social work students and practitioners’. All participants were students or graduates of the same educational institution, and the same educational program. There have been very few changes in the content of the study program for groups 3 and 2, and what group 1 is now undergoing. So although this is a cohort study, it can also be understood to some extent in a longitudinal development perspective. Participants were recruited through an open invitation via email. For those who had completed their education, there was a selection criterion that they should also be working as social workers, and that a varied range of professional practices were represented in the groups. Self-recruited participation is likely to inform some characteristics of those who chose to participate. It is reasonable to assume that the participants have a high degree of dedication to, and identification with, social work, which may also mean that these participants are largely concerned with the coherence within social work and social work education (Heggen & Terum, 2013).

Interview, data material and analysis

The focus group interviews were led by me, in collaboration with one of my colleagues. We are both employed by the same educational program that participants were completing or had completed. The interviews were semi-structured through an interview guide where the themes were designed on the basis of the three forms of coherence described above; biographical, program and transitional. Each sequence started with an open-ended question, and continued with more specific follow-up questions. The specific questions were adapted to the three different groups. The focus in the groups varied, and there was a defined difference between the interviews with the students and the professional social workers. Each interview lasted approx. two hours. The conversations were audio and visually recorded, the latter only for practical reasons in order to connect different statement to the right person. The interviews were transcribed in their entirety, giving detailed data material of approx. 90 A4 pages.

The interviews were analyzed thematically (Johannesen et al., 2018). Through repeated reviewing of interview material, key points were identified and given different codes. Subsequently, different codes were collected and categorized as different themes, with a particular focus on how the relationship between different themes was described. The description of the transition and the connection between education and profession became the most central themes in all focus groups.

Using focus groups has many benefits, but also some challenges (Linhorst, 2002; Morgan, 2001). The rationale for choosing focus groups in this study was that we wanted participants to share their experiences and, through this, help to both nuance and deepen their opinions. The conversations in the groups alternated between different sequences, some in which the participants answered the same questions in turn, and some in which the participants responded to each other’s opinions. In all the groups there were some themes and narratives that became clearer than others. Such an in-depth focus is a strength of the focus group method, but it can also be one of the challenges. A group discussion will contain a difference in power and influence, which means that the central narrative can also reduce the variation in different opinions.

Consent and ethics

All participants received an information letter about the study, that they participated on the basis of an explicit consent and with the opportunity to withdraw from the study anytime they wanted. All personally identifiable information was anonymized and the project was approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD, 08.10.2018). Possible ethical conflicts were considered, in particular the possibility of a role conflict in relation to the participants who were still our students. In order to raise awareness and reduce this, it was stated in the introduction to the interview that the study had no evaluative purpose of our educational program.

Results

In this section, key themes in the three focus groups are analyzed and summarized in three different patterns for establishing meaningful connections.

‘Can still be terrified.’ Students in the last academic year

The participants in this focus group are students in the fifth semester of a three-year bachelor’s program. The students were in practice placement throughout the fourth semester. The following statements express a common experience in the group:

“ … I can still be terrified and think that yes, in June, in a way, I should theoretically be ready to have the responsibility all alone. [… .] And then I think that you shouldn’t take it easy that you are responsible for people’s lives, roughly”.

There are many meaningful elements in these statements. The students are now back on campus after a long experience from practice placement, and they see that the time when they will be graduates is moving closer. Practice placement appears to be a very important element in education, not least as a contribution to creating meaningful connections between theory and practice. But it also contributes to something quite different, namely to deepen an experience of limitless requirement for competence in social work, and a recognition of social workers’ enormous responsibility. They do not have this responsibility as students in practice placement, but the frame of reference for this experience is the notion of themselves as a fully educated social worker. The dynamics of these statements are thus the tension between the recognition of the social worker’s enormous responsibility and their own rather limited competence.

This tension can also be linked to an experience of social work education which is clearly expressed: ‘We learn that everything is connected’. It is thus difficult to distinguish the different elements of education from each other. The interview reveals a practical operationalization of theory and practice. Theory includes everything that students learn at the educational institution, whether it is specific theories, values, methods or skills. And practice is all that social workers do outside education, including the practice placement. This means that the question of coherence between theory and practice is in fact a question of the connection between education and practice. And on this point there is no difference between the students and the other two groups. This makes identifying program coherence challenging. Everything is connected, but how is very difficult to see. One participant used the term ‘porridge’, but gave it a more positive meaning than is often associated with that word: ‘I feel that throughout the semesters you learn to see the whole person [… .] for example, if you work with an addict, you’re really working on so much more, because it’s not just that.’ It is in many ways the holistic view of social work as was formulated in its time by Mary Richmond (1917), Man in Situation, which is both expressed and creates challenges here.

‘Pegs to hang it on’ is a metaphor that is widely used in this interview. The following statement clearly states:

“When you’ve experienced something, you have some pegs to hang the theory on, which makes the theory easier to understand when you can see it connected to something.”

No one in this interview said that theory can be the pegs which practice experiences can be hung on. The opposite is the case, practice experiences are pegs that help to understand theory. Or it is rather a lack of experience that is the main problem in establishing meaningful connections between theory and practice. ‘I should have been a little older before I started. Now I am very grateful that I got to practice placement where I got, but I should have had a little more experience’. This illustrates two key aspects of ‘experience-pegs’. First, they are very concerned with what is conceptualize as biographical coherence. The participants believe they should have had more education, more work experience, and not least, more life experience, before starting social work education. Secondly, the perceived quality of practice training is an important source of sense of coherence. The practice placement in the fourth semester is described as a crucial transition in the study, as a marker of what is before and what is after. However, the discussion of practice placement in this group contains many ambivalences. There should have been ‘several periods of placement’, but they must not be shorter. There should have been ‘more practice in education’, but not ‘less theory’. And practice should have been earlier in education, but ‘I wish I had learned more before I got into practice placement’. One participant summarized the ambivalences as follows: ‘The only thing is that I think there is too little of everything’.

It is reasonable to interpret many of the viewpoints and ambivalences expressed in this group in light of the tensions described above. It is the notion of what is required of them after the transition to the profession that governs the experience of coherence within education. It also becomes clear that there is a certain type of connection they feel they need now before they finish their education. The following sequence illustrates this well:

“We want to know how to use the knowledge when we enter the profession. Because we are stuck a bit like this in a way”.

Interviewer:

‘Like, how to do it’?

“Yes. What will be our task at all”.

What is requested here then is much more concrete knowledge of what social workers do, often within the wide range of the positions and within many different services. The main pattern expressed in this focus group then becomes a rather instrumental approach to coherence in the transition between education and profession.

‘Oh my God, how much I can do!’ Social workers after one year in profession

In qualitative analysis you sometimes find statements where you immediately think that this expresses the essence of the topic you want to highlight. The following is one such example:

“I think a social worker can go straight to work after graduation and discover after a few months: Oh my God, how much I can do! And that feeling I think the social worker can get after 10 and 20 years too. That one constantly surprises oneself with, oh my god I can do that. “

This statement is in many ways an expression of a central focus throughout this interview with social workers after one year in the profession, and it describes a version of reality that is radically different from students in the fifth semester. So how can we understand this? It is not reasonable to understand this as a result of a competence development during the first year as a professional social worker. Then it is more reasonable to examine whether it is an expression of another way of describing coherence in social work as a subject, and not least a description of the transition from education to the profession, seen from another position.

Much of the discussion in this group was about the experiences they had from education and the reflections they made about this from a retrospective perspective. Here there are many commonalities between their description and that of the students, not least when it comes to the challenge of making connections between different elements. ‘Puzzle’ is a central metaphor in this group:

“It’s still puzzle pieces […]. And that’s exactly what the challenges are. To be able to put together the different puzzle pieces from the specific individual, to find out where are we really ending up then? What will be the picture in the end? “

Here, too, the issue and the challenge is the holistic view of social work. It is the idea that social workers work with individuals in a social and societal context that is expressed. Being able to see such relationships is described as a challenging puzzle. But if we interpret the metaphor in concrete terms, it is also an expression of an optimistic view that if one manages to place the puzzle pieces right, it is possible to create a coherent picture. Like the students, the participants here are not very specific about how they operationalize theory. However, there is another description of what they can use theory for. ‘I think we see things a little more in context. […] We look a little more behind, what is behind this behavior’. The key terms here are to ‘see things in context’ and what is ‘behind’. There are no statements in this interview that say that specific theories are used to address specific practices. Theory is described as a way of seeing people and as a way of meeting people. ‘Things are not always as you think you see it. […] So you have to meet every single person with an open eye’. We see that this statement also implicitly interweaves a theoretical approach and a value-oriented position. It is often emphasized as one of the core characteristics, that social work is a value-based discipline (IASSW, 2014).

We also see that the way theory is described above also contains an implicit comparative aspect. When the word ‘more’ is used, it means more than someone else. Comparison with other professions is an important topic in this focus group. All the participants here work in close collaboration with other professions, and there are also positions where there is often a competition for who is best qualified for the job. In this interview, comparison with nurses is most prominent. ‘They sometimes have more factual answers, while in social work it’s a little more vague’. This is a criticism that is often directed at social workers in competition for positions within today’s welfare services, the competence becomes too vague with few specifics (Author, 2016). But it can also be argued that social work has a poorly developed tradition of articulating what characterizes competence and what makes this valuable. The following statement makes an interesting attempt to articulate what social workers have more of:

“We have had a lot more theory, about social models and all that, than for example, nurses then. […] I notice just that with empowerment, and using reflection. I feel that there is a little extra in our education”.

This statement can be seen in close connection with another that came later in the interview. The question is who should be employed in vacancies:

“But I think they realized they simply needed more social workers. We work a lot with relationships and I think social workers are very good at that. The other things, they can be fixed with ease”.

Through this, the concepts of reflection and relationship emerge as central to the way meaningful connections are established and understood in this focus group. This clearly distinguishes them from the instrumental approach we found in the student group. In particular, two aspects of the concept of reflection are raised in the group. One is the theory view described above: ‘That we see things from multiple perspectives’. The second is a reflection on oneself as a social worker, ‘my own point of view’. The way this is discussed here is close to the understanding that is expressed in Donald Schön (1983) concept of the reflective practitioner. This is a concept that also includes an understanding of relationship by being able to reflect on one’s own position as a professional in relation to others. However, the issue in the analysis here is not a general discussion of reflection and relational competence in social work, but the way this becomes a resource in establishing meaningful connections between education and profession.

There seem to be primarily two moments that support such an approach to establishing meaningful connection in this group. One is the recognition of both a difference and a relationship between generalist- and specialist competence. And the second is a view of competence development. The participants here express a viewpoint that the particular competence requirements that they need in their positions can be learned through the job. Thus, it seems to be recognized that the competence, the holistic view, which they bring from their education is useful in professional practice, and not least that it is a useful basis for the development of more specialized competence. This means that the frightening feeling from lack of competence that we found in the student group is not very prominent in this group. And they also express a developmental perspective on competence. ‘But maturation is perhaps very important in social work’. And as is clearly expressed in the statement that I started the analysis of this focus group interview with, they discover that this can be a lasting process: ‘And that feeling I think social workers can get after 10 and 20 years too’.

‘Finding my own personal voice’. Social workers after five years in the profession

Personal competence was the most central topic of conversation in this focus group interview. The following statement is a clear example:

“There’s something about finding your own voice. Because you can’t just sit there referencing theory. I have to figure out what is natural for me to say. [… .] Then there is one thing I have learned, at least, that you are quickly revealed if you try to be someone else than what you are”.

This expresses a basic experience as a professional social worker, and a learning process that does not primarily have education as a frame of reference. It is a perspective that they missed in education, so this is described as an experience they have gained through their professional practice. Every participants in this group got a job right after graduation, and they have continued to work in the same service until now, although tasks and position within the services have changed. Thus, there have been no defined transitions or changes in their career after graduation.

Much of this interview took a retrospective view on education. Since the participants here had also been students in the same class, the interview was also an opportunity to recall experiences from their education. However, this retrospective view is clearly filtered through their experience as professional social workers. Nevertheless, the description of transitional coherence has many commonalities with the other two groups. The following statement expresses one such common experience:

“It’s something I’ve also been thinking about. When you graduate, and you feel that it is just about everything. And then you meet different jobs with different expectations of what you should be able to do. And what you can do is very general about things”.

The tension between generalist and specialist competence is also a key experience here in the transition from education to profession. ‘Potato’ is a central metaphor in this group:

“I feel like we knew a little bit about everything. A bit potato-like, we fit in everywhere. And we will certainly learn it, it will be fine. It will be alright”.

Interviewer:

“Was it a resource, or a disadvantage?

“I think it’s a resource, yes. And I think I thought so then too. Now the whole job market is open to me. I can do everything”.

So we see here, from the group above, that there is an optimistic belief that it is ‘alright’, and that social work education is a good starting point for meeting specialized competence requirements in various positions. It is nevertheless interesting that there are many sequences in this interview that both nuance this and also express a great deal of humility over the complexity of linking different elements to a meaningful whole in social work. The following sequence describes both a transition and development process:

Interviewer:

‘Did you think you had what you needed in your backpack when you went to work’?

“Absolutely not. I used to say that I spent as much time in profession as I did in education to think: Now I understand. [… .] After 2.5 to 3 years, I knew that now I am confident. Now I stand steady. Now I know what I’m doing. Because before that it was very unsure”.

We see that establishing meaningful connection here is described as a longer and more conflicting process. And it also becomes clear that a sense of coherence is understood as a personal experience. It is about self-confidence, and being able to stand firm as a professional social worker.

In light of that development of personal competence becoming the central theme, it is also interesting how this group discusses the importance of experiences before education, which represents biographical coherence. Most of the participants in the group started their education right after high school. When they think back to their own experiences during education, they formulate the same point of view as in the interview with the students: ‘We should have been older when we started’. However, this is nuanced in several ways in this group. One of the participants studied social work as reeducation, and was older than the others. Here, previous experience was also described as an obstacle: ‘I thought I had so much with me in my backpack, that it was not easy for me to learn something new.’ Even more interesting in this context is how they reflect on this from their position as professional social workers. The following quote describes an experience as a supervisor for new students:

“And many of those who have been just over the age of 20 have in many ways been more reflective, and have had more knowledge of themselves and their limitations, than those who have been older in age. After all, personal suitability means more than age. ”

Again, it is the significance of personal competence that is expressed here. Individual suitability is given much greater importance than age.

We thus see that the main pattern in this focus group interview is that they do not describe coherence as an establishment of meaningful connections between specific theory and their practice. An instrumental perspective is totally absent in this group. And although the concept of social work as a discipline has many similarities to the other interviews, it seems that the theory of social work is less focused after five years than it was after one year in the profession. The development of meaningful connection in social work is now understood as a personal integration process, where it is self-awareness, and the personal expression, which is in focus. The education process is also largely described as a personal formation project, where elements that contributed to their own personal development were considered more important for professional practice than theoretical knowledge.

Summary of findings

The review of these three focus group interviews shows three quite different patterns in the way that meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work are discussed. We see that the students express a rather instrumental approach where the notion of what is expected of them after graduation appears as the governing dynamic. We also see that this radically changes after the transition to the profession, where theory is more widely understood as a tool for reflection on practice, and that the more instrumental connections can be developed through job experience. And finally, we see that social workers with several years of experience describe the opportunity to establish meaningful connections in social work primarily as a development of personal competence. The transition between education and the profession appears to be a radical shift, both in the students’ notion of their future and in the retrospective assessment from professional social workers.

Discussion

The empirical findings in this study raise several important questions for a final discussion. These questions can also be seen in light of other studies outlined above. The first is how we can understand the transition between education and professional practice. The second is what specific characteristics and challenges of social work as a discipline and profession can be addressed. And finally, what possible implications this may have for strengthening a sense of coherence in social worker education.

Prepared and ready

Many studies have described the tension that can be linked to the transition between education and the profession. The term ‘practice shock’ is, as mentioned, often used. The most common understanding of this is that insufficient preparation for the tasks that await them in the profession, create a shocking experience. This experience can have both a practical and a personal dimension, where we can distinguish between a recognition of being adequately prepared and an experience of being ready, a distinction that we developed in our common transnational study (Laidlaw et al., 2020). However, the most prominent finding in the analysis her is that practice shock cannot be limited to an experience that comes after the transition to the profession. Here, it is more reasonable to describe this as a practice anxiety created by a notion of what is required, and the huge responsibilities, in professional social work. We saw that the students expressed an instrumental approach to the sense of coherence in which the notion of lack of transitional coherence also becomes a dynamic that forms their experience of coherence within the education program. Although there is a concrete experience of inadequate preparation expressed in the interview, it is reasonable to interpret the experience of being ‘terrified’ as a personal experience of not feeling ready for professional practice. Here we can use ski jumping, a classic Norwegian sport, as a metaphor. Anyone, whether they have tried or not, understands that launching off a ski jump at 100 km/h can be an anxiety-filled experience. And once you have decided to set out, the time for preparation is over and you have no choice but to be ready to jump. The point is not to say that there are no different degrees of preparation, but that education and professional practice are two different social contexts, and that the transition contains an essential element of ‘jumping in’.

We have seen that the experience of coherence changes radically after the transition from education to profession. What is actually changing is a recognition that being prepared for various tasks and positions in professional practice is a continuous learning process, and that it is possible to establish an experience of being ready without being fully prepared. This seems to be an interactive process where the experience of meaningful connections can occur ‘after a few months’, but it can also be experienced after ‘10 and 20 years’. The relative absence of practice shock that emerges in this study can also be understood in light of the of Norwegian welfare system, characterized by publicly organized services, universal rights and fairly generous benefits. The welfare system as a good ‘safety net’ is often used as a metaphor in relation to users of the welfare services. It is thus conceivable that well-developed welfare services also provide security for newly educated social workers, which makes it less shocking to ‘jump in’ and provides a better opportunity to develop more specialized competence both professionally and personally over time. This has many positive consequences, but it can also contribute to less awareness of the need for a clearer articulation and critical reflection of meaningful connections between theory and practice in social work. Here, further research with a comparative perspective may be useful and necessary.

Challenge for social work

What appears to be a common feature between all three groups is the challenge of describing social work as a discipline. This is about both expressing a reasonably consistent view of what we can include as theories in social work, and importantly, an opportunity to define what type of problems and tasks social work is especially aimed at. In light of this, it is an interesting finding that this does not seem to be clearer for social workers after five years, than after one year, in the profession. Rather, on the contrary, it was the focus group interview after one year that seemed to be able to articulate theories of social work most clearly, and having an idea of the puzzle pieces could turn into a holistic ‘picture in the end’. As mentioned, this could be a random difference that was created based on which theme became the central focus of a group interview. Nevertheless, this is a finding supported by other research on the development of competence in social work. Theoretical updating and reading of professional literature scored low as a source of professional development among social workers, while personal contact with colleagues is more common (Iversen & Heggen, 2015). This means that an articulation of what characterizes social work, and what competences social workers in particular contribute, may become unclear when personal competence becomes the central strategy for establishing meaningful connections. Competence development then becomes a personal development project for the individual social workers, rather than an explicit and common professional discourse.

Implications

The findings of this study have clear implications for several debates on social work education. The most basic is the question of the relationship and the tension between increased academic drift vs. a clearer vocational education (Smeby, 2015). This is a debate that has many different topics such as length of education, research facility, practice placement and HEI autonomy in relation to the vocational field. The discussion about the implications for education her will end with some reflections on the distinction between an emphasis on education in social work vs. education for social work.

Social worker education programs have different durations in different countries. Norway is among the countries with the shortest social worker education, and many different agencies have argued for the need for longer education. The argument for longer education has in particular been that more specialized competence can be realized at the master’s level, and that some services are so complex that longer education is required. This has been particularly related to the need for more expertise within the child welfare service. Both arguments are valid, and longer education would allow for greater depth in different areas of social work. But the core of this argument is a view that education primarily should provide a better preparation for various tasks and positions within specific services. If this argument follows an instrumental approach to coherence between both theory and practice and between education and the profession, then more years of education will probably not be sufficient. The main argument for longer education should be the need for more focus on education in social work as a discipline. The reason for this argument is the recognition that social work is a complex and demanding subject. There is a scope of theoretical perspectives that range from an understanding of individual and relational challenges at a micro level to structural relationships at a macro level. And there are, to a great extent, challenges that require analytical skills to understand the connection and interaction between many different problem areas and a competence to be able to coordinate social work across different services. Thus, it is not a subject that can be limited to analysis and understanding of social problems. Social work competence includes practical skills where meaningful connections between theory and practice can in no way be taken for granted. It requires a considerable degree of reflection and professional maturity.

With a stronger focus on education in social work as a discipline, it is also possible to argue that the tension between increased academic drift and vocational requirements is not a necessary contradiction. However, such tensions often appear as concrete contradictions in education, both in terms of educational content, teaching methods, skills training, research focus and qualification requirements for academic staff. However, the dynamics of this distinction are maintained by the view that social work is primarily a field of application based on theoretical perspectives from other disciplines such as law, psychology and sociology. Thus, the education is primarily an education for social work based on other disciplines. This does not fulfill the intentions of the global definition of social work as ‘practice-based profession and an academic discipline’. My argument on implications for social work education thus concludes that developing a clearer sense of coherence in education and between education and professional practice presupposes a clearer focus on what characterizes social work both as an academic and a practical discipline.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).