Building bridges between Europe and China to strengthen social work field education: preliminary findings from Guangdong Province

ABSTRACT

Social work education has extended globally and has developed in China at an unprecedented speed. Serious attention must be paid to how the global spread of social work education interacts with developments in China. This study describes and assesses an international collaboration in field education between six European and Chinese universities using multiple data sources in Guangdong Province. Trust, disciplinary unity and local participation in the collaboration generated good practices in developing Chinese field education, including linking and preparing universities and agencies from developed and less developed areas, implementing a well-defined learning process with a competence-based perspective and training supervisors through training the trainers. Moreover, positive outcomes of this project were identified, including high satisfaction by both students and supervisors and increasing levels of supervisors’ self-efficacy and students’ competencies. In future, international collaboration should focus more on the issue of indigenisation.

社会工作教育已向全球扩展, 并在中国以前所未有的速度发展。社会工作教育的全球传播与其在中国的发展互动值得学者的注意。通过使用广东省的多个数据源, 本研究描述和评估了六所欧洲和中国大学在实习教育方面的国际合作。信任、学科共识和本土参与促成了发展中国实习教育的良好实践, 包括:连结和培训发达和欠发达地区的大学和机构; 依靠能力为本的视角明确一个清晰定义的学习过程; 以及通过“培训培训者”的方式来培养督导。此外, 该国际合作项目还产生积极的效果, 包括学生和督导较高的满意度, 督导自我效能感以及学生专业能力的不断提高。未来, 国际合作项目需要更加关注本土化的问题。

KEYWORDS:

• Competence
• field education
• international social work
• social work in China
• supervision

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the contribution of other project members: Prof. Sibin Wang and Porf. Fengzhi Ma from the Peking University; Prof. Bainian Shi from the China Youth University of Political Studies; Prof. Juha Hämäläinen, Prof. Timo Toikko and Ms. Minchun Ryhänen from the University of Eastern Finland; Prof. Steven Shardlow from the University of Keele; Prof. Brian Littlechild, Dr. Echo Yeung and Dr. Julia Warrener from the University of Hertfordshire; Dr. Jörgen Lundälv from the University of Gothenburg; Prof. Donghui Gu, Prof. Fang Zhao and Prof. Honglin Chen from the Fudan University; Dr. Jingzhen Du and Dr. Xiaoshan Huang from the Nanjing Normal University; Prof. Rui Tao from the Jiaying University; Ms. Lu Wang from the Wenxin Social Services Centre; Mr. Liang Lin from the Chunnuan Social Services Centre; Ms. Yanqiong Zhou from the Shenzhen Social Work College; Mr. Yonggen He from the Zhuhai City Polytechnic; Ms. Jianling Liang from the Wuyi University; Mr. Mingbo Liu from the Maoming Polytechnic; Ms. Minyi Chen from the Qichuang Social Work Service Centre; Ms. Xinni Xie from the Guangdong University of Technology; Mr. Xingli Liang from the Sunny Family Services Centre; Ms. Mi Kang from the Shaoguan University.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The BUIBRI project [585758-EPP-1-2017-l-FI-EPPKA2-CBHE-JP] as described in this study was sponsored by the Erasmus+ Programme, European Commission.