Examining the Place of Emotions, Affect, and Regulation in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

Social work students are tasked with learning the meta and procedural competencies required of the profession while facing their own emotional responses to vulnerable populations and managing clients’ difficult experiences. Social work educators can support students in exploring, understanding, and learning to tolerate, regulate, and manage their emotional responses in preparation for practice. Neuroscience provides a foundation to discuss the role of emotions in social work education. A multipronged approach to teaching and learning emotion regulation for social work students is presented. Experiential learning, mindfulness and embodied practice, simulation and role playing, and practicum learning are discussed as methods to enhance social work students’ emotion regulation capacities in preparation for practice. Considerations for educators and implications for research are discussed.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Karen M. Sewell

Karen M. Sewell is instructor and research coordinator at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto.