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Abstract

Community service-learning (CSL) has been referred to as a “pedagogy for citizenship,” as it enhances ethical behavior and social responsibility among student participants. It represents a pedagogical and philosophical approach that promotes experiential learning by incorporating intentional course-based lessons with service in the community. Despite the numerous studies outlining the benefits of CSL initiatives, there is a dearth of research on how CSL courses can impact students already in the “helping professions.” More specifically, there is very little research on the benefits of CSL in social work field education courses. For this study, the researchers found that developing a CSL practicum led to a substantive shift in professional understanding for the students who participated in a CSL learning opportunity. Although the traditional and CSL groups began their practicum experiences believing the primary role of a social worker was to build and maintain healthy relationships with service users, the CSL group saw their primary role switch from a “micro practice” to a “macro practice” worker. CSL offers social work education additional unique opportunities to support the development of student's social work core values, knowledge, and skills.

Keywords

community service-learning CSL pedagogy experiential education social work social work practica

Community service-learning (CSL) has been referred to as a “pedagogy for citizenship” (Deeley, 2010; Mendel-Reyes, 1998), as it enhances ethical behavior and social responsibility among student participants (Calvert, 2011). It represents a pedagogical and philosophical approach that promotes experiential learning by incorporating intentional course-based lessons with service in the community (Calvert & Montemayor, 2018). For these reasons, postsecondary educational programs such as the ones found in Business, Science, or the Arts have utilized CSL pedagogy with their students. The benefits of CSL courses can include student graduates being more likely to volunteer, better-informed voters, and better parents (Basinger & Bartholomew, 2006). Generally, these graduates recognize themselves as citizens of a larger social fabric which includes social problems. What the authors of this paper began to wonder is, if CSL courses are meant to improve the civic responsibility and ethical behavior of students in postsecondary educational programs, what unique learning outcomes might these courses achieve for students who are engaged in “helping” professions, and whose professional identities are already meant to be linked to civic responsibility and ethical behavior?

Despite the numerous studies outlining the benefits of CSL initiatives (Bringle & Hatcher, 1999, 2009; Brundiers et al., 2011; Calvert, 2011, 2012; de Janasz & Whiting, 2009; Einfeld & Collins, 2008; Giles & Eyler, 1994; Lester et al., 2005; Pless et al., 2011; Primavera, 1999; Rama et al., 2000; Sheil & Bahk, 2010), there is a dearth of research on how CSL courses can impact students already in the “helping professions.” More specifically, there is very little research on the benefits of CSL in social work field education courses (Charles & Dharamsi, 2010; Charles et al., 2014; Charles et al., 2011). Experience in the field is a fundamental component of social work education. In conjunction with classroom learning, the field experience aims to facilitate the development of professional identity. It is the space where students transition from trainee to professional (Charles et al., 2014).

The development of professional identity is important in the field of social work because the way in which a person understands her or his practice informs how they will practice (Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006). Professional identity, considered a very complicated construct, is defined as “a product of biography, personal choices, and social circumstances through which professionals begin to test and accept the traditions and obligations of a profession” (Feen-Calligan, 2005). While a professional designation is something that is assigned, identity is often negotiated. Identity encompasses the fluid process through which a sense of self is shaped during the interface between the individual and wider societal structures and systems (Rutherford, 1990). As such, two of the authors, who are social work educators, decided to design and test a CSL curriculum specific to social work practicum to help better understand how this approach to field education might impact the professional identity of social work students.

Experiential Learning in Social Work

Although theoretical knowledge alone can influence the lens through which social work students view oppression, Charles et al. (2014) suggest that a student's professional identity, in the context of practice theories, does not take its true shape unless combined with field-level practice. This combination of theory and practice is developed through student practicums, applying classroom knowledge in practical settings directed by experienced social work professionals. Student practicums are integrated into social work educational curriculums to prepare emerging professionals for a variety of scenarios presented within the field (Sarid et al., 2009), and often comprise up to 40 percent of their total educational experience (Charles et al., 2014). The belief is these experiential programs assist students to integrate professional theoretical knowledge with real-life situations, to produce skilled, competent, and confident professionals.

Despite a substantial focus on practical learning in social work education, the lines between volunteerism (emphasis on service), field education (emphasis on student learning), and CSL (equal emphasis on learning and service) are still quite blurred, primarily because researchers have used the terms imprecisely (Plummer et al., 2008). Within social work practica, Morton (1995) described the fundamental differences best by breaking the practical learning into two categories, charity (traditional) or project-based (CSL) models.

Charity Models (Traditional Practica)

Early social work education in the nineteenth century consisted of fieldwork in charity organizations. Students learned social work by apprenticeship; that is, learning by doing (Royse et al., 2016). The apprenticeship model evolved into formal training in schools of social work where theory and practice were seen as equally important. This type of experiential learning usually involves students being “chosen” by an agency, placed in a direct practice setting, and asked to work as an apprentice, or full-time (unpaid) employee. Direct supervision would be provided, but little input on the design of the field placement would be asked for by the student. The pros are that this model provides organizations with the volunteers they often need. In addition, these placements involve fewer resources and time from the supervisor, student, and faculty liaison. The cons of this approach are it makes limited claims about the impact on the people involved. The decision-making process is generally closed, and there is little if any attempt to understand the cause of the problem, or the intervention chosen to “cure” it (Morton, 1995).

Project-Based Models (Community Service-Learning)

Like traditional practica, CSL opportunities in social work also involve a great deal of hands-on experience. However, the experiences are focused on a pedagogy in which service to the community is the primary focus. The students, instructor, and community collaborate to determine the nature of the work to be completed. All three stakeholders work together to accomplish the determined goals (Feen-Calligan, 2005). Project models focus on defining problems and their solutions and implementing well-conceived plans for achieving those solutions. The defining feature of this model is the negotiation and development of partnership between the organization, student, and faculty liaison. Students are involved in both front-line and project-based work within the agency. The project is defined by the agency, but further refined by the student and faculty liaison to ensure that, in addition to meeting the agency's needs, it also meets the student's learning abilities and program outcomes. The pros of this approach are it engages the student in a reciprocal learning relationship, stretches the understanding of client “problems,” and encourages critical thinking and creativity in students (Calvert, 2011; Morton, 1995). The cons associated with this approach are that it requires a significant investment of time, resources, and energy from the agency, student, and faculty liaison.

Course Design

Although both traditional practica and CSL potentially have a great deal to offer students in the way of professional identity development, how they might uniquely contribute is still not well known. As such, the authors developed a new field curriculum and studied the impact to better understand how both traditional practica and CSL shapes the professional identity of undergraduate social work students.

Having good connections within the field education community was key to creating the CSL practicum course. The Principal Investigator, who at the time of the study was an associate professor in the social work program, and the co-principal investigator, who was an associate professor and the social work field coordinator, worked together to identify and contact agencies that had offered some macro-level opportunities for students in the past. Twelve agency executive directors or program managers were contacted to discuss the possibility of taking social work students for CSL projects. Agency supervisors were informed on the overall CSL mandate and typical delivery model. In the end, seven CSL placements were secured for nine second-year students. Two of the placements included students working in dyads and the remaining seven students worked on their own. The CSL projects were initially conceived by the agency staff, and then students were invited to sign up for these practicum opportunities if the work appealed to them. The projects included students working on creating group workshops, community-based research projects, and social innovation projects. Once the students were confirmed for an agency project, they were encouraged to work with the agency supervisor to outline their personal education goals and adjust the project as needed to ensure both the agency and the student goals were going to be met.

To ensure the CSL course was as similar as it could be to the more traditional practica being offered that term, the seminars for this course were organized in the same manner as the other practicum seminars being offered. This involved meeting bi-weekly for 3-hours with the university faculty supervisor, debriefing the experiential components of the project work, and reflecting on how the work was aligned, or not, with the Canadian Social Work Principles of Practice. Students were also asked to use journals to critically reflect on how the project work they were undertaking might be understood in relation to their specific professional values and principles of practice. Specifically, students were asked to critically reflect on how their CSL work did, or did not, encourage “respect for the inherent dignity and worth of persons,” “pursuit of social justice,” “service to humanity,” “integrity in professional practice,” and “competence in professional practice” (Canadian Social Work). Typically, the Canadian Association of Social Work guidelines are used for front-line work. However, the descriptions provided in the guidelines allowed the students and instructor an opportunity to re-consider and re-define “good” social work practice as it related to their CSL work.

Research Design

The researchers asked the question; how do a CSL practica influence the emerging professional identity of social work students when compared to traditional social work practica?

Participant Recruitment

After receiving ethics approval, a convenience sampling method was used to recruit student participants for this study. Specifically, one section of students participating in a traditional social work practica (n = 10) was compared with a section of students participating in a CSL practica (n = 9). The principal investigator, who has expertise in CSL, taught the CSL group, and the co-principal investigator, who has expertise in traditional field placements, taught the traditional practica group.

Data Collection

A mixed methods approach was used to collect the data for this study. Namely, a qualitative pre/post questionnaire developed by Dall’Alba and Sandberg (2006), well-recognized researchers in professional identity development, was administered to students during their first practicum seminar in the form of a critical reflective journal, before beginning their placement. Only two questions were given to the students before the start of their practicum: (1) provide an example of a situation that they believe is central to the work of a social worker and (2) give a concrete situation in a social worker's daily work that they believe can be difficult to deal with. The same questionnaire was administered 14 weeks later at their final practicum seminar. The seminar groups were identical in that the students followed the same curricular seminar model. The only differences between the two groups were the focus on the field experiences for the students.

Because a number of researchers (Fortune & Abramson, 1993; Fortune et al., 1985; Fortune et al., 2001; Kerson, 2014; Knight, 2001) have found that the quality of field supervision is significantly important to the overall effectiveness of a field placement, all student participants were given the “Quality of Field Instruction” scale (Fortune et al., 2001) to measure the quality of supervision they felt they received in their placements. This scale includes 11 statements about the field supervisor's behavior. Participants were asked to rate each item from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (Fortune & Abramson, 1993). Specifically, it includes questions about their availability, trustworthiness, enjoyment of teaching, and level of support provided. In addition, the scale evaluates how well a student feels the supervisor encouraged the expression of ideas, participation in designing learning experiences, participation in evaluating progress, and making connections between current learning and what would be done next.

Data Analysis

The Constant Comparison Model of data analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data. This process involved the two researchers reading the pre and post experience reflective journal responses, from both the CSL and traditional practica. Together the researchers then identified important phrases, patterns, and themes, and isolated the emergent patterns, commonalities, and differences between the participant groups (Neale, 2016). The quantitative data were analyzed using a simple t-test to compare the level of field instruction (agency supervision) satisfaction between the two practica groups.

Findings

Overall, there were no significant differences found in the traditional pre- and post-test practicum student groups. However, there was a change in the CSL group. Specifically, the authors found the following impacts on professional identity in the traditional and CSL groups.

Traditional Practicum Group: Pre-Practicum Beliefs

Before beginning the placements, a majority of the participants in the traditional practicum group described a social worker as a “relationship-builder” and an “advocate.” Expressly, several students discussed the importance of building a trusting relationship with their client and finding a balance between the role of helper and agent of social control.

Relationship-Builder: This social work role was understood by the traditional practicum group as ensuring they showed respect and dignity for their client and promoted a caring, trustworthy, and safe work environment. As Participant A observed, “[social work] is creating safe spaces for meeting clients where they are at. It is about being versatile, genuine and empathic.”

Advocate: The concept of advocacy emerged as central to the work of a social worker. Before commencing their field placement, participants in the traditional practicum group declared that to be an advocate required a student to be passionate and invested in affecting change at the social issue level. As one student reflected:
PARTICIPANT B. Social workers do not have the ability to solve an individual's problems. They have the ability to give individuals the tools that they need to solve their problems on their own, or to help advocate in support of their clients’ decisions they make.

In addition, the students in this group highlighted that it is important in their role as a social worker to listen to the client's concerns and provide support for their needs by assuming different roles. Students also highlighted the need to adhere to the social work code of ethics when making ethical decisions for the well-being of the client.

When asked to consider some of the challenges that might exist for social workers, participants in the traditional social work practicum identified one theme, namely “inability to affect change.” This inability was believed to be due to aggressive clients and a lack of resources.

Inability to Affect Change – Aggressive Clients: Most students in this group expressed concerns that physically aggressive clients would intimidate them and felt this would be stressful. In addition to physical aggression, students stated verbal aggression, which was defined as being given negative comments from clients, would be equally as stressful. As one student stated:
PARTICIPANT A. I believe that a situation that would be extremely difficult for a social worker to deal with is when it comes to clients that are aggressive, who generalize social workers as a completely negative force and have no desire to move forward in their life. What I believe it comes down to is when they have no desire to move forward in their life, and their behaviours that may vary are a result of that. I think that this becomes difficult for a social worker to continue working with individuals because their walls and expectations have become so unrealistically high.

Participants also stated they would find it difficult to work with clients in what they consider to be hopeless situations where the client refused to make changes and decided to stay in life-threatening situations.

Inability to Affect Change - Lack of Resources: Several pre-field placement students identified the lack of resources available for clients as something they would find very difficult to deal with. More precisely, participants were concerned with the possibility of lacking resources, a lack of funding to support necessary services, and the possibility of clients presenting complex life issues that required more specialized services.

CSL Group: Pre-Practicum Beliefs

Like the traditional practicum group, when the participants in the CSL group were asked to describe their understanding of “social work” at the beginning of their placements, a majority described the role as “advocates” or “allies.”

Advocate: Participants in this group described a number of scenarios that involved working with, rather than for, an individual, family, or community. As one participant described, central to the work of a social worker is the ability to respond to and assist someone who is in need.
PARTICIPANT M. This does not mean that the social worker has to solve the problem, but essentially a social worker should be prepared to join another person on their journey of finding help and improving their lives. An example of this would be if a person needed assistance with a bill and contacted the social worker, and then the worker would then join the person in their search for resources. It is not necessarily what the social worker helps them with or how the social worker assists the person, but rather that the social worker has allied and ‘teamed up’ with the person which is central to social work.

Unlike the traditional practicum group, there was no other cohesive understanding of the social work role. Instead, in addition to seeing social work as “advocacy,” a few participants in this group described the role as the problems associated with the field, such as “homelessness,” “addiction,” and “child welfare.” Others described the role as quite complex, requiring flexibility and adaptability. Still, others described it as a highly value-based and ethical role that could be construed as quite self-less.

Before beginning their CSL placements, participants in this group identified two themes about the possible challenges associated with the role of a social worker. Specifically, the participants identified “boundary issues” and “a lack of resources” as the two main challenges.

Boundary Issues: A majority of the participants discussed their concerns around boundary crossings, as they related to triggers and biases that may emerge when working with individuals. This challenge of working closely with clients in a genuine manner, but not so close that you lose yourself in the work was also identified as the greatest risk to burn out. As Participant N noted, “[w]hile having empathy is important, having too much empathy does not benefit the client or the working relationship. This ultimately could result in burnout.”

Another challenge that was identified, and could easily lead to burnout, was a lack of resources. Similar to the traditional practicum group, these participants also discussed how frustrating it might be to try and work with individuals who were eager for assistance and then be unable to find resources to support them in their goals. The inability to secure resources could easily lead to a loss of hope for both the worker and the client.

Traditional Group: Post-Practicum Beliefs

There appeared to be very little change in their understanding of social work at the completion of their field placement experience. Students in the traditional practicum group reemphasized that building a relationship with their clients and being an advocate remained central to their work as social workers.

Relationship-Builder: Participants reiterated relationship building with their clients. This process included meeting the client where they are at and staying connected to clients through their ups and downs as the necessary components to build a relationship with clients. In addition to building a relationship with clients, students described the process of establishing a partnership that also included professional boundaries to ensure safety was maintained for everyone.

Advocate: Participants further defined the role of an advocate as the process of entering into a collaborative problem-solving process with clients to assist them in accessing resources. Students identified the differences in their personal values and that the values and policies of the agency may challenge their ability to effectively advocate on the client's behalf. Despite this, students confirmed that their role in ensuring the client's safety and access to resources is the goal.

Post field placement students in the traditional group once again identified “inability to affect change” due to challenging clients and a lack of resources, as the greatest challenge for social workers. Specifically, these challenges were attributed to difficult clients and a lack of resources.

Difficult Clients: Several participants identified the challenges associated with attempting to enforce boundaries with clients who had difficult personalities. Similar to the pre-field placement findings, participants identified negative client comments as stressful. At the completion of their practicum placements, the traditional group of participants confirmed it was hard not to personalize negative comments from clients. Students also discussed the challenges of dealing with clients, who despite the student and agency workers’ best efforts, remained in unhealthy relationships and circumstances. The participants felt that the clients who did remain in these relationships created barriers between themselves and the social worker.

Lack of Resources: Post field placement, the traditional practicum students expressed frustration with the difficulty in navigating the public welfare system to access services for clients. Participants acknowledged that activities such as assisting clients with access to basic needs services, like housing, improves a client's life, promotes independence, and are a major factor in overcoming poverty. The services were identified as difficult to find or provide.
PARTICIPANT G. The systems that our clients deal with are often part of what we as social workers have to deal with as well and they can be very challenging. I think what is even more challenging is having to tell our clients that we cannot really do much more than they can as social workers because of barriers. This is a daily challenge as a social worker trying to advocate for our clients and I think that it is important to reach out for help when we are stuck because you never know who may have another way or idea to navigate through the system.

Students also began to see a lack of resources as a barrier to being a true advocate.

CSL Practicum Group: Post-Practicum Beliefs

Unlike the traditional practicum participants, this group saw a fairly substantial shift in their understanding of social work. Specifically, these participants shifted their view of social work as advocacy work to “macro practice.”

Macro Practice: Participants identified “social work” as being part of a team or a community. The work involved building off of others’ differences and similarities. It also involved working to change the systems and practices of organizations to affect meaningful change. For several of the participants, the understanding that social work could be meaningful and rewarding when not done at the individual level was quite novel and surprising. As one participant noted:
PARTICIPANT P. Before beginning this practicum, I believed that the central work of social work was to see change within a client's life and work alongside them in the moment of trouble. However, I have found that there is also great reward in being able to change a policy or develop a program that will benefit many different people. I have enjoyed looking at social work from this different lens and look forward to applying it to my practice later on. An example of this is creating and evaluating the development of a social enterprise within the agency I am not at. This process involved research and meeting with experienced social entrepreneurs. I learned that by creating a recycling social enterprise for the community would not only benefit the environment but also create space for mentorship of those with [this disorder]. This program has the ability to influence many people rather than just one individual.

Inability to Affect Change – Organizational Challenges: Similar to the traditional practicum group findings, the CSL group also felt an “inability to affect change” would be one of the greatest challenges to the work. However, while the traditional group felt challenged by individual behavior, the CSL group stated most of the challenges lay at the organizational level. More specifically, these participants felt the inability to affect change was due to the amount of time that much of this type of work takes to make an impact, and the unhealthy or unsupportive agency environments that can exist in the field. As Participant O reflected, “this could be disheartening, discouraging, and lead to burnout. This type of social work requires a different type of energy and commitment.”
PARTICIPANT P. Macro-level practice has the ability to influence many people but takes much longer to see the results of the worker's work. This is difficult for me, as I am a task orientated person…

The realization that organizations can be fallible was new and valuable learning for many of the participants in the CSL group.

PARTICIPANT R. In social work there is only so much that we can do, and we always need to abide by certain laws that may at times be restricting. I learned that many charity organizations in Alberta that are registered aren’t allowed to do radical advocacy which is at many times necessary in order to bring about significant change. It is so easy to feel discouraged knowing that when you came into the profession in the first place you hoped to make significant changes and when the realization hits you that we are bound by certain laws and restrictions it could make our dreams and visions for the future seem impossible to reach. However, I was able to learn that rather than allowing these problems to build up and ultimately develop into burnout later on in the profession it is important to relate with each other and share with one other these important issues.

It is clear the participants of this group began to understand how their work and role might be negatively impacted due to their inability to affect change within their own organization. The agency environment is the place where the stage for change is set.

Satisfaction with Supervision

At the end of the course, students were asked to complete a survey on their level of satisfaction with the guidance and direction they received from the agency supervisor (Fortune & Abramson). Students rated each item from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Although both groups were satisfied with the level of supervision they received in their fieldwork, the traditional practicum students were found to be somewhat more satisfied with their supervision (6.8), as compared to the CSL group (5). When asked to comment on specific features of the supervision, the traditional group ranked their overall satisfaction with their supervision the highest in (1) role model, (2) trustworthiness, and (3) independence. The CSL group identified satisfaction in somewhat different areas of supervision, such as (1) encourage the expression of ideas, (2) independence, and (3) support and clear feedback to the learner.

The internal consistency of the survey was excellent (alpha = .90 for the first placement and .92 for the second), so the difference in overall satisfaction rate between the two groups is surprising, as there appeared to be a greater transformation in the CSL group. As stated earlier, a number of researchers (Fortune & Abramson, 1993; Fortuneet al., 1985; Fortune et al., 2001; Kerson, 2014; Knight, 2001) have found that the quality of field supervision is significantly important to the overall effectiveness of a field placement. What is not surprising is the areas these two groups found most supportive. Given the independent and creative nature of CSL work, it makes a great deal of sense to value a supervisor who encourages “expression of ideas,” “independence” in their students, and provides “support and clear feedback.”

Limitations

Reliability and validity are not measured in the same way for qualitative research as they are for quantitative. For this project, steps were taken along the way between design and implementation to ensure congruence between the question formulation, literature review, participant recruitment, data collection strategies, and analysis (Morse et al., 2002). However, it is still important to note the study's inherent limitations. As this research involved using a nonprobability sample, the effects of this study will not be generalizable beyond this particular group or school. In addition, given the qualitative nature of the data, direct comparison between the two practica groups could not be exact. Instead, the themes around professional identity were the focus of comparison, using reflection journals in the seminars and qualitative pre and post questions to identity the unique learning outcomes of each group's practica experience.

Discussion

Developing a CSL practicum led to a substantive shift in professional understanding for the students who participated in this learning opportunity. Although the traditional and CSL groups began their practicum experiences believing the primary role of a social worker was to build and maintain healthy relationships with service users, the CSL group saw their primary role switch from a “micro practice” to a “macro practice” worker. Micro practice is defined as “functional learning and personal competence” focused on individual client experiences, whereas macro practice influences “learning to work with the physical, social, economic, political, and cultural conditions impacting on children and families” (Hafford-Letchfield et al., 2018). The CSL group of students started to understand social work as being community-, policy-, and agency-driven. More precisely, although the CSL group was also concerned with being able to affect change, their understandings of the challenges shifted from individual client concerns to the inability to affect change due to challenges within institutions and government systems that have unsupportive and unhealthy policies and practices.

Although the field of social work needs individuals with macro social work skills, it remains a neglected practice subgroup (Deal et al., 2007). As such, many US studies have found social work students have difficulty demonstrating mastery of macro practice skills (Butler & Coleman, 1997; Koerin et al., 2000; Miller et al., 2008; Nandan & Scott, 2011; Weiss et al., 2004a, 2004b). The focus on change at the individual level is common in Western nations. Countries like Canada have seen public policy shifts from social care to a greater focus on individualism. These shifts further distance social workers from a community-centered model (Hafford-Letchfield et al., 2018).

Despite calls to focus more on community development and advocacy, there are those who believe that the field of social work has lost sight of its historical mission. Namely, the impact of an increasingly conservative political environment has led to social workers focusing more on individualistic solutions to social problems by providing psychotherapeutic services, rather than working with less privileged populations in their communities (Bliss, 2015; Specht & Courtney, 1995). As such, today there is very little opportunity for social workers to “do” macro practice in Canada and other Western nations (Bliss, 2015).

In addition, it would seem that much of the idealism many students have as they enter the social work program diminishes with their time in these programs (Hafford-Letchfield et al., 2018). More specifically, social work students tend to become increasingly conservative by the time they graduate (Bogo et al., 2011; Weiss et al., 2004a, 2004b). Social work educators are at least partly at fault for this trend by not being more proactive in developing curriculum and field opportunities that instill an advocacy ethic (Bliss, 2015). Unfortunately, there has been little guidance available for professors wanting to develop field courses beyond the traditional model.

Concluding Thoughts

Within the arena of social work undergraduate education, there appears to be an unspoken guideline that student practicums must follow a “traditional” approach and direct the student's focus on micro-level, face-to-face experiences with client populations (Hunter & Ford, 2010). Practicum directors are less likely to place students in community service-orientated practicums, as they generally do not provide students the direct client experiences that are believed to be an essential component of social work (Hunter & Ford, 2010). This misunderstanding not only leads to an imbalance in the available practicum options but also causes a misconstruction of a student's personal understanding of what it means to be a social worker (Hunter & Ford, 2010).

Social work educators have an important role in preparing future professional social workers to work at both individual service delivery and supporting and promoting social justice initiatives. The field of social work is in need of macro practitioners who truly value the work and are prepared to lead both organizational and community change efforts. As such, there is a clear opportunity for social work educators to explore and develop CSL field courses and practica.

However needed, developing CSL practica to fill a gap cannot be planned and initiated in haste. CSL requires a great deal of early planning to be successful.

As with all CSL projects, adhering to the fundamental principles, namely mutuality and reciprocity, ensures greater student engagement and overall project success. By taking the time to involve students early in the process, educators ensure they can incorporate student ideas into the project, and thereby foster a greater investment and commitment to the project (Johnson, 2010). What is also needed to ensure more positive field education experiences is more development and support for the students. Specifically, students require support negotiating their learning contracts with the agencies, developing, and applying their learning objective, as well as encouragement soliciting consultation with their faculty liaisons. In addition, depending on the nature of the project, some students may require more assistance in understanding the links between the classroom theories and their field experiences (Deal et al., 2007).

When done well, CSL and social work are a likely pair as CSL “fits within the ecological and reflective practitioner conceptual frameworks, supports the core values of service, and is well suited to helping social work students learn” (Bye, 2005). CSL offers social work education additional unique opportunities to support the development of student's social work core values, knowledge, and skills. CSL can also play an important role in the education of social workers through a focus on civic engagement, reflection, and reciprocity which are congruent with social work values of service, social justice, and human dignity (Bye, 2005; Kapp, 2006). By developing CSL projects, social work educators can help fill a critical curricular gap in social work education. Namely, CSL may provide an important tool to help sustain the social work professional identity as one based on community and social justice.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the TransCanada Collaborative Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Inquiry Grant., (grant number Unknown).

ORCID iD

Cynthia J. Gallop

Author Biographies

Cynthia J. Gallop, PhD is an Associate Professor at Mount Royal University in the Department of General Education. Her research focus is in the areas of Participatory Action Research and Hermeneutic inquiry. Her research interest areas include student experiences in post-secondary educational environments, and the impacts of community service-learning on students.

Brian Guthrie, PhD is Professor and Chair of the IRB (Institutional Review Board), City University of Seattle. He has held prior academic appointments as an Associate Professor in Child Studies and Social Work program, Mount Royal University and Associate Faculty Lethbridge College, Child, and Youth Care. His research areas include Social Work Theory and Practice; The Use of Simulation Learning to Evaluate Social Work Practice Competence in Undergraduate Education. In addition, he has published a number of book chapters in the area of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning focusing on transformative learning environments.

Nana Asante, BA (English Hons) is currently a student at the University of Calgary, Faculty of Law. While attending Mount Royal University (MRU), he worked as a Research Assistant on several projects. In his role, he edited and formatted eight community service-learning (CSL) research papers and synthesized overviews for each paper. His research focus has been on the impact of CSL participation on university student development.

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The Impact of Experiential Learning on Professional Identity: Comparing Community Service-Learning to Traditional Practica Pedagogy

Abstract

Keywords

Experiential Learning in Social Work

Charity Models (Traditional Practica)

Project-Based Models (Community Service-Learning)

Course Design

Research Design

Participant Recruitment

Data Collection

Data Analysis

Findings

Traditional Practicum Group: Pre-Practicum Beliefs

CSL Group: Pre-Practicum Beliefs

Traditional Group: Post-Practicum Beliefs

CSL Practicum Group: Post-Practicum Beliefs

Satisfaction with Supervision

Limitations

Discussion

Concluding Thoughts

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biographies

References