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Abstract
Social work education in China has expanded rapidly since it was reintroduced in 1988. This has led to a growing body of English language literature on the development of social work education in China. However, thus far, this literature lacks an empirical foundation and little research on students' perspectives has been done. To fill this gap, this paper reports on a qualitative study of a group of graduating social work students (n = 32) from four social work programmes in Jinan, the provincial capital of the Shandong Province. Three major findings are reported. Firstly, the students liken their social work learning experience to a roller coaster ride with many ups and downs. Secondly, the cultural compatibility of western social work in China has not yet been conclusively established, while an ‘indigenized’ social work needs to be compatible with Chinese family values, referred to as ‘familism’ in direct Chinese to English translation, and with the dominant socialist political ideology. Thirdly, the future of social work is bright given increasing government support for its development.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Professor Mel Gray for her comments and suggestions for this paper.
Notes
1. To prevent losing the original meaning, some key Chinese terms are used in this paper and the closest English interpretation is provided in parentheses.
2. We use the term western only to simplify the discussion. The authors would like to acknowledge that both conceptually and empirically, there are many ways of practising social work and diverse discourses of what social work is in developed countries.