New Directions in Social Work Field Education in Canada: Promising, Wise, and Innovative Practices

ABSTRACT

Field education provides students with the opportunity to supplement classroom learning with the hands-on practice needed to be successful after graduation. However, in recent years, field education has encountered several challenges including a changing societal environment, placement scarcity in the face of increased enrollment, and strict guidelines for the provision of adequate supervision. In response to these challenges, semi-structured qualitative interviews with 35 social work field education coordinators, directors, faculty liaisons, field instructors and field supervisors were conducted throughout the prairie region of Canada between July and December of 2020. These interviews were aimed at determining innovative, promising, and wise practices that would address the various challenges in the provision of field education while also providing a pathway forward to the transformation of more sustainable social work field education practices. Findings indicate that there is a need for additional supervision strategies and increased flexibility within field placements, as well as a greater focus on the need for decolonization within the social work field education sphere. The emergence of COVID-19 was also discussed as both an exasperating factor within the current field education system while simultaneously creating an opportunity to reevaluate and restructure current field education practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• field education
• innovation
• promising practices
• wise practices

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author contributions

Vibha Kaushik¹²³⁴⁵, Shannon Klassen³⁴, Julie Drolet¹²³⁴⁵, Christine A. Walsh^{4 1}Study design. ²Data collection. ³Analysis. ⁴Manuscript preparation. ⁵Supervision.

Ethics

This study was approved by University of Calgary’s Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board (Certificate no.: REB19–0901)

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted as part of the Transforming the Field Education Landscape (TFEL) Project and was supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant no.: 795-2019-1003)