The Heart of Social Work: Best Practitioners Rise to Challenges in Field Instruction

ABSTRACT

Field, as the “signature pedagogy,” is the heart of social work education. However, field education has encountered challenges both in academia and in agencies that serve as field placements. This study explores the ways in which best practitioners in field instruction—10 field instructors who won the Heart of Social Work Award through the Council on Social Work Education—are rising to the challenges of supervising social work interns. These include (a) teaching a wide variety of skills of assessment and intervention, (b) balancing the teaching of these skills with the encouragement of reflection, (c) teaching interns to connect theory and practice, (d) developing an integrative model of supervision, (e) applying research to practice, (f) showing appropriate support to interns, and (g) upholding the mission of field education in the face of fiscal retrenchment and pressures for accountability. Findings of the study show that field instructors are responding with impressive energy and creativity to these challenges and also suggest the need for greater collaboration between field instructors and schools of social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Agency–school collaboration
• field education
• field institution
• gatekeeping
• social work supervision