The Social Work Experience: An Introduction To ...
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Earn your Master of Social Work (MSW) online from the Howard University School of Social. Choose the Traditional MSW track, designed for students who are new to the field of social work; or the Advanced Standing MSW track, designed for students who hold a Bachelor of Social Work. Community, Administration and Policy (CAP) and Direct Practice concentrations are available.
Aspiring clinical social workers can earn their Master of Social Work degree online from Simmons University in as few as 12 months. The program prepares students to pursue employment in direct practice settings nationwide. Students may choose from two certificates: Trauma Practice or Mental Health Practice.
The MSW@USC, the online Master of Social Work from top-ranked USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, is designed for aspiring social work leaders. Students gain clinical skills in virtual and in-person field education and will choose a department of study in either adult mental health, children and families, or social change.
The Master of Social Work (MSW) online program from Baylor University is accredited by the Council on Social Work Education, enabling aspiring social work professionals to serve and empower vulnerable populations worldwide. Students will learn the skills and theories necessary to make meaningful, informed change and be challenged to think about the ethical integration of faith and social work practice. The MSW online program can be completed in as few as 12 months. GRE scores are not required to apply.
Complete the Master of Social Work online program at Baylor University in as few as 12 months. Serve populations in Texas and around the world while ethically integrating faith and social work practice. No GRE required.
While there are many different areas of social work practice, there are two primary areas of focus in the field: clinical and macro. There are many career paths in both clinical and macro roles, and both types of social workers make a difference in the world, but they do so in different ways.
Clinical social work refers to social work roles that revolve around assisting individuals (also called direct services). This usually involves working with clients, and could be in a variety of settings including community organizations, therapy, schools, children and family services, and programs and resources that help with housing and other needs.
Instead of focusing on the small-scale work of social work practice with individuals, macro social work emphasizes the large-scale efforts of advocacy, social justice and public policy. Macro social workers use their passion for social justice and their knowledge of social work theories and practice to work for improvements in social service programs and social policies. Common roles in macro social work can include community organizers, policy analysts, and legislative advocates.
The job of a social worker is often considered both rewarding and emotionally taxing. Having strong interpersonal skills, exercising empathy, and being an effective communicator, listener and critical thinker, are important aspects of the job.
While field education has been designated the signature pedagogy of the social work curriculum, students often have exposure to social welfare agencies long before practicum semester(s). Despite the number of social work programs that utilize volunteering to help students better understand the social work profession, little is known about the effects of volunteering on academic measures as well as the student. This study (N=67) found that volunteering has considerable positive benefits for the implicit curriculum through socializing the student, providing a real world context, and embodying the professional value of service.
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE, 2015) has designated field education as the signature pedagogy of social work education. Experiential learning within social welfare agencies and settings provides a capstone experience for students allowing integration of curriculum and providing evidence-informed knowledge of the connection between the curriculum and a real life context (Bradley, et al., 2015). However, many social work students are completing service hours long before entering the capstone practicums; Schelbe, Petracchi, and Weaver (2014) found that 80% of responding accredited BASW programs (N=202) required service learning in addition to field practicums.
However, students also participate in less formal service through volunteering. Students may volunteer on their own or at the recommendation of an advisor or faculty member without the expectation that the service is associated with a specific course. A key aspect to differentiating service learning from volunteering is the role of service learning in the classroom (Harrington, 2016). Whereas volunteering may have no specific role in the course curriculum, inherent in service learning is the class required reflection with peers and faculty that helps to generate learning and deepen understanding of the influence of engagement in learning (Ash & Clayton, 2009). One example of discrepancies in course expectations for service is the introductory course to the social work profession. Most programs have an introductory course and many require service hours; how those hours are integrated into the course content may vary. Some programs apply course discussion and reflection while others utilize the hours to augment exposure to social welfare agencies without course integration, thus differentiating between service learning and volunteering.
The idea of volunteering is often introduced early to social work students, yet there is little information regarding the role of volunteering within social work curriculum. Service is a professional value and helps the student gain understanding and awareness of the professional self. In addition, service through volunteering can heighten exposure to diversity, challenge existing beliefs about diversity, and aid in the development of cultural competency (Jones, 2011; Maccio, 2011; Simons & Cleary, 2006). Volunteering provides exposure to different life situations and needs, and becomes transformative for the student by connecting learning with doing (Celio, Durlak, & Dymnicki, 2011). In particular, exposure through volunteering can provide a sense of competence for the student who is learning to become a practitioner in the competency-based social work profession (Rocha, 2000).
After obtaining Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, a survey was sent out via email listserve to all undergraduate and graduate social work students at a large public university in the Midwest. Sixty-nine of the 328 students responded to the online survey. After eliminating two responses due to missing data, the sample size for this survey was 67 (21 undergraduate and 46 graduate students), resulting in a 21% response rate.
In response to an open-ended question about how volunteering has affected their academic success, a number of themes emerged. The most common response related to obtaining real world experience. Other responses focused on career benefits of volunteering: networking, resume building, helping guide career decisions, and keeping focused on why they entered social work. Course related benefits were also reported by students: serving as a break from studying, studying while volunteering, serving as topics for class papers and projects, and volunteering as part of a class requirement. Some responses indicated that volunteering raised or maintained their social awareness.
Overwhelmingly, the reason that social work students volunteer is to meet a need in the community. Because of this ability to identify and meet the needs of communities, in many ways the volunteer experience is socializing students into the social work profession. As a professional social worker, service is expected and part of a value orientation; as a student, service helps gain understanding and awareness of the professional self. By participating in agencies that are connected to the social work profession, over 76% of the responding students felt their service was directly related to their social work degree.
There are some limitations of this study that are important to point out. First, our sample consists of students enrolled at only one university. It is likely that the social work student population at this large, public, Midwestern university differs from those at smaller, private institutions. There may also be regional differences in the number of social work students that volunteer and the subsequent influence on academics. Second, caution should be exercised when generalizing our findings due to our small sample size. Further, our low survey response rate may have resulted in sampling bias, as well as precluding the ability to examine potential subgroup differences (e.g., by student level).
Despite known limitations, there are a number of strengths. Field experience is prized in the social work profession and required by all accredited programs. However, many programs also require time in social service agencies prior to that field practicum (Schelbe et al., 2014) and little is known in the literature about the influence of that volunteer time on the social work student. This study contributes to the literature by examining the perceived influence that volunteering has on the social work student and the academic influences of volunteering while enrolled in a social work program.Future Implications
While much is known about the strength of the field practicum in anchoring the social work curriculum, little is known about the volunteer experience for social work students and the way that volunteering facilitates preparation of students for field experiences and eventual social work practice. Many students are encouraged to volunteer through social work student organizations and by advisors and faculty instructors. There appears to be no significant academic detriment for the time invested in volunteering but there are multiple associated benefits. Volunteering helps socialize students into the social work profession, aids students in transformative learning where classroom learning is applied in real life contexts, and establishes and promotes the professional value of service as a social work practitioner. All of these implicit curriculum assets validate the use of volunteering as a means to support social work education. 59ce067264
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