The fieldwork practicum: A risky business?
The fieldwork practicum is considered to be central to the student social workers integration of theory and practice (Regehr, Regehr, Leeson & Fusco, 2002; Knight, 2001). International fieldwork literature suggests that the minimum instructional qualification for a fieldwork educator is a master of social work (Knight, 2001; Abramson & Fortune, 1990). This presupposes that the fieldwork educator is clinically, academically and culturally competent and shares a body of knowledge with the student. However in the current New Zealand context this cannot be assumed. Several factors contribute to this situation:
•unfavourable media attention in regards to social work practice has contributed to reduced student recruitment to the profession and consequent employment of unqualified staff.
•workload pressure, lack of agency support and/or additional remuneration for the fieldwork educator role contributes to difficulty of recruitment for this task.
•placements of students in agencies peripheral to social work is coupled with the constraint above.
•continuing education is not always seen as necessary either by the social workers themselves or the employing agency.
These factors make fieldwork education vulnerable to mediocrity, lack of standardisation and poor quality control (Slocombe, 1993). In order to redress this situation we have developed a structured workbook designed to optimise student learning in the fieldwork practicum by providing scaffolded pathways between theory and practice. The goal of the workbook is to stimulate practitioners, educators and students:
• to be critically reflective practitioners in these days of bureaucratically defined social work practice.
•to make linkages between theory and practice.
•to facilitate processes that enable students to see the effects of social change on the client environment.••••