Teachers in the Education for Professional Social Work

Abstract

The central objective of every professional education is to incorporate knowledge and values into professional discipline to achieve a level of competence required for professional practices. A most significant feature of professional education is that it is always a response to society’s demands. The social work profession is not an exception. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the existing education of professional social work on the scale of demands and needs of contemporary society.

In the process of evaluation of education of professional social work, we should consider three dimensions, i.e. why train? what to train? and how to train? In social work, we can find good literature on the question of ‘What to teach?’. This paper emphasises the concept of ‘Why to train?’ and ‘How to train?’

To answer, ‘Why to train?’ this paper delineates philosophical analysis of social work. However, to deal with ‘How’, this paper highlights its centre, i.e., Teacher in Social Work Education or Social Work Educator. In the part of ‘How’, this paper will explain the importance of teachers in the pedagogy of social work and portray the contemporary state of social work educators based on findings of unstructured interviews of educators. Further, based on philosophical analysis, it will discuss the prerequisites and roles of social work educators to make social work pedagogy more effective and efficient.