ABSTRACT
This article discusses social work educators’ perception of the challenges for social work education in India. Literature on social work education, including the curriculum, practice and pedagogy, provided the framework for the study. The study reported on the results of qualitative interviews conducted with 33 social work educators across five schools of social work located in three metropolitan cities in India ‒ New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The study finds that there are four major challenges for social work education in India: (i) the problem of definition; (ii) the lack of a regulatory framework; (iii) diversity among the schools; (iv) the lack of professional identity.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Professor Haruhiko Sakaguchi and Professor Tomoyuki Chaya for their comments and suggestions for the initial draft of this paper
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Rajendra Baikady
Rajendra Baikady is a Social Work educator and researcher. He is the winner of Golda Meir Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (2019-2020) and Confucius Studies Understanding China Fellowship (Post-Doctoral Research) at Shandong University Peoples Republic of China (2018-2019). Baikady was one among the 20 selected candidates for the Short Term Research Award (STRA) by the Ministry of Education, Government of Taiwan and conducted research at National Chengchi University Taiwan during June- July 2018. Dr. Baikady was awarded the prestigious INLAKS foundation Research Travel Grant 2015 and Indian Council of Social Science Research, Collect Data Abroad Scholarship- 2015 for conducting his research at Shandong University, China. His most recent books (co-edited) are- Social Welfare Policies and Programmes in South Asia (Routledge), Building Sustainable Communities-Civil Society Response in South Asia (Palgrave Macmillan) and Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Work Education (Palgrave Macmillan). He is co-editing the Journal Special issue of ‘Social Work and Society’ (to be published in 2020). Presently he is at Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem Israel and conducting research under the supervision of Prof John Gal. In addition to this Dr. Baikady is also affiliated to the Department of Social work, School of Humanities, University of Johannesburg, South Africa as Senior Research Associate.
Sheng-Li Cheng
Sheng-Li Cheng is a professor in the Department of Social Work, School of Philosophy and Social Development, Shandong University, People’s Republic of China, and has been in post-graduate teaching for more than 25 years. He has carried out research projects funded by international agencies such as UNESCO, Washington University in St. Louis in the US, the University of British Columbia in Canada and Taiwan Dongwu University. He was a visiting professor for many international university departments. He has six books, 37 research articles (in both English and Chinese) and five international projects to his credit. His areas of work are urban poverty and social assistance, social policy and social welfare, social psychology, family, children and youth.
R. M. Channaveer
R. M. Channaveer is an associate professor and the head of the Department of Social Work, Central University of Karnataka, India. For the last 17 years, he has been engaged in post-graduate teaching, has carried on research projects funded by regional and national-level agencies, and has published 30 research papers in journals. He is known for his innovative community-based interventions, initiatives and actions. His area of work is social development, international social work, community-based rehabilitation and social entrepreneurship.