Publication details
Social Work Practice Education and its Responses to the Covid-19 Pandemic in Europe: A Qualitative Comparison of Twelve Countries
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Roman Balaz presented findings of the study co-authored with Christian Spatscheck (Hochschule Bremen, Germany) and Henglien Lisa Chen (University of Sussex, England). The study aims to explore the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on social work practice/field education across 12 countries in Europe. Practice/field education in social work is essential for supporting the professional socialization of social work students (Barretti, 2004; Miller, 2013) into social work professionals (IASSW/IFSW, 2020). As such, forms of practice education largely depend on the institutionalization of the social work profession in particular countries. A variety of diverse political and societal responses to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic have had relevant impacts on the conduct of the social work education around Europe, particularly on practice education in social work. Hence, we strived to understand how (i) practice education is established in diverse European countries, (ii) the Covid-19 outbreak has impacted practice education, and (iii) what lessons can be learned from diverse responses of practice education to the Covid-19 pandemic. We worked with social work academics from the 12 countries to co-produce expert reports from each country. Then, we applied methods of content analysis and the limit type methodology to further analyze the reports. Limit types enable the description of extreme points on the boundary of the constructed phenomenon. However, our analysis could catch various trends between the extreme points of the identified phenomena. In our findings, we have described an array of the country-specific (i) conditions and characteristics of practice education, (ii) effects of Covid-19 responses on practice education, and (iii) inspiring examples for innovation in practice education in social work. |