From Practitioner to Practice Educator: What Supports and What Hinders the Development of Confidence in Teaching and Assessing Student Social Workers?

Abstract

In this article, the authors aim to present and discuss the findings of a Skills for Care funded research project exploring what supports and what hinders practitioners when training to become practice educators, and what support is required for practice educators to remain in this role.

The authors were interested in learning about any impact that changes to social work education may have on training and supporting practice educators.

The research used a survey design gathering core data through questionnaires and supplemented by data gathered through group discussion, Delphi forecasting and interviews. Distribution of the questionnaires was undertaken by practice learning coordinators in four West Midlands Local Authorities and one Independent sector agency working across Wales and the West Midlands. Recipients of the questionnaires were practice assessors and placement supervisors of BA (Hons) Social Work students largely identified by local employers or by having completed practice assessor or placement supervisor training at the University of Wolverhampton in the past three years. In total 42 questionnaires were returned.

The key findings were related to (a) differences between which supports are valued and which are available; (b) differing support needs for different practice educators; (c) different barriers to practice educators; and (d) the relationship between experience and confidence.

Keywords:

• practice education
• practice learning
• professional development

Notes

1. Terminology: in this article we have used the term ‘practice educator’ inclusively to refer to anyone who has an active role in a social work student's practice learning and assessment in the work-place.

The term ‘practice assessor’ has been used to refer to practice educators with a specific responsibility to judge, record and report the competence of the student during and at the end of the practice learning opportunity.

The term ‘placement supervisor’ refers to those practice educators who facilitate students' learning, offer practice supervision and who may contribute to but are not responsible for making a summative (final) assessment of students' competence.

In this article ‘practice teachers’ are practice educators who attained the Award in Practice Teaching under the earlier social work post-qualifying awards framework.

Additionally, whilst acknowledging that the term ‘practice learning opportunity’ properly establishes the focus on students' learning and assessment needs, we have at times referred to ‘placements’ as a shorthand for that specific time when a student is in a workplace for educational purposes.