Publication details
Reflexivity Development Demonstrated in Examples of Field Placements of Social Work Students
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | The debate over the role and the form of professional field placements in social work has been a heated one ever since the beginning of the field (Davis, 1982; Sibeon, 1982). The crux of the debate has centered on diverging ideas about the aim of field placements in the professional development of social workers. The core question is whether the goal of field placements consists in acquiring certain (measurable) skills or rather in the development of professional judgment. This conflict is currently expressed in the duality of the competency-based and reflexivity-based approaches to student field placements. In the Czech Republic, there has also existed a long-term tension within the debate over the concept of future social workers’ education and field placements, centered on the conflict over whether the practical education of social work students should be based mainly on competency or reflexivity principles, which represent the most pronounced and competing educational discourses in the Czech environment (Navrátilová & Navrátil, 2016). This text argues in favor of the reflexive approach to social workers’ education in general, and specifically in the area of field placements. It also points out the problems caused by insufficient explanation of the reflexive approach and its consequences for education and field placements (Thompson & Pascal, 2012; Thompson & Thompson, 2008). In this text we present an example of applying the reflexive approach to social work student field placements in an academic setting while identifying the barriers that limit the introduction of such an approach in the Czech context. |