Structure of the course critical social work

Introduction

In this course the main objective is to create awareness about the necessity for social workers to have a broad perspective on the situations/problems they work with, taking into account the whole context. But we also want them to discover methods and practices to help them to take action on an meso (organization) and macro (community, society, policymakers) level. Students can construct their own knowledge and methods by reading literature, doing an interview with a social worker in their own country and exchanging ideas with students of other countries. By reflecting on this material, they can integrate it into an own way of working.

Week 1

First students have to get used to the its learning platform and the tools we want to use. Because exchanging ideas and reflection take a central place in this course we want to be sure they can make a presentation of themselves in their e-portfolio, start a theme discussion, make a blog and be a follower in the blog of fellow students. For all this tools we will make little exercises. For example I will ask them to start a theme discussion on a actual subject related to social work in their country. Other students can reply on this.

Week 2

Before I give readings or a screen lecture, I want to challenge students to reflect on their ideas and attitude on critical social work. I want to use two means. The international definition on social work and a trigger on human rights. After the course, they can look back to this start and point out where they have made any change. Besides this reflection on own ideas and attitudes, students reflect upon the way critical social work has a place in their own country – in social work practice and social work education. This exchange of ideas and practices can open a new horizon for the students.

Week 3 an 4

What is critical social work?
In this week I want to give some theoretical input. The reading of chapter 1 form Jan Fooks book and the article ‘social work as a moral and political practice’ can give input. Students can make a reflection in their blog about what they read and what they learn about this. Students give comment to each other in week 4. At the end they must have three good questions to talk about with a social worker in their country. This questions each have a different point of view.

Week 5

We show a case of a youngster that has problems in his family and needs help. The social worker thinks he needs a specific treatment, but the boy has to wait for six months before he can have this treatment. Meanwhile, there are a lot of problems with his family and school. There are also problems with neighbors.
This is not the first time the social worker has a situation that needs help and no help is available. Students start a discussion about this case.

Week 6

Critical reflection as a base for critical social work. Students read the specific chapters in Jan Fooks book and make and exercise. This exercise is about a situation that happened in the past week. In their blog, students give their experiences with this exercise. They also make clear how critical reflection is related to critical social work.

Week 7

Critical social work in practice? In this week, students contact a social worker and do an interview with the three questions they have made the week before. They give a short summary of the interview (headlines) and reflect on what they have learned.

Week 8

In this week we take the point of view from the clients/target groups of social work. There are readings about participation and empowerment.

Week 9

Students have to find an article, situation, issue that relates to a problem social workers can be involved in. For example: increasing poverty, increasing drug abuse, migration, not enough services available, accessibility of services, a social work service that doesn’t reach the people they should reach …).
There is in this week a screen lecture : how to create awareness on a social or organizational problem. It is a model that gives the different steps you have to consider when you want to create awareness in your organization our with policymakers. It is way to work on change. It can be used for small action, like putting up a discussion in the team up to a real social action.

Week 10 and 11

Students work out a paper on their chosen theme of week 8, using the model they got in the screen lecture.

In week 10 students give feedback to each othter.

Week “12

Students work on their final assignment and give a presentation and have a discussion on their theme.

Trigger Critical Social Work

Here you find my trigger for the course Critical Social Work.

I give some questions realted to this trigger. Students are suposed to reflect on what they see and compare the issue 'human rights' between the different countries, including the how it is related to social work.

What do you see and hear in this video presentation?
What do you know about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
Do you think this is important for social workers? Why? Why not?
Can you discribe situations, problems or discussions concerning human rights in your country?
Do you know any of the persons on the last slide? Are there persons in your country known as activists for human rights?
Can these persons or human rights in general, inspire you as a futur social worker? In which way?

After seen the screen lecture of Anne Karin, one of the things I miss the most in working on this trigger is the input of other countries. I found it difficult to have an idea how the issue 'human rights' is being emphasized in your courses. So any input is certainly welcome

Giving feedback - Receiving Feedback

In this blog I will reflect on my experiences with giving and receiving feedback.

Giving feedback

As I told already in Bergen, in our University College, we discuss and reflect very much about giving feedback on students. So it is not new to me. What is new to me is to do this in a virtual learning environment. First I want to say that our virtero meeting was a good start for this process. Although I was late with my feedback, after this meeting I thought about Alexanders course and tried to connect this with my own experiences as a student (long ago) and experiences of my own practice. So an advantage for me, in giving written feedback, is that I have time to reflect on this before I make the remarks I want to make. Then I tried to give the feedback, with the principles in mind we got in our course. Because I have a strong belief that growth can only be reached with a positive approach, it is not so difficult for me to start with the positive things. Although I must say that in this case, the fact that  Alexanders curriculum plan was already very clear, made this much easier. One of the things I know I have to be aware of in giving feedback is not to fill in the answers myself, but just ask the right questions and let the student search for the answers he wants to give on this.

Receiving feedback

I found it very good that Mark pointed out that for him 'critical social work' was not clear. Howerver I was a little bit surprised he was not aware of the international definition of social work. This is really important for me, because as Marks says, student might know this either. He reflects about this and that is good. What I miss in the feedback is, even when Mark finds the curriculum plan good, he might give some reflection what for him makes this clear or logical.

Also this week

As I say in the theme discussion, I was at a very good congres in Leuven. The Keynote speakers Prof. Dr. Lena Dominelli and Prof. Dr. Idit Weiss were really inspiring. I can recommand to you to read something of them. And for me, the content is also useful for my own course. 

Up to our own course

This week I had to deal two important aspects of the course.

First I had to make some adjustments on the curriculum plan. The Vitero session was for me very important. The input I got was so good, that suddenly it became very clear to me how I should go on. Before this, I struggled with some ideas, but I couldn’t match this ideas into a whole. Especially because I want to make this course as a real community of learning. The more I am into this e-pedagogy course, the more I am impressed about the way you have thought about this en put all this theories in practice. I am really enthusiastic about this.
Last week we had a meeting. I am part of this meeting, because I am responsable for a part of our curriculum. Jan Agten asked me to do a proposition to make it possible to have some students in VIRCAMP next year. It is not easy in our curriculum to plan 15 ECTS. But, because I am very enthusiastic about the experiences I had until now, I could convince everyone of the importance to have some students into the project. This had been more difficult when I had to do this, without the experiences and the readings I had because I am in this course now.

The rest of the week I read a lot about critical reflection. It is very interesting material. Critical reflection, as a basis competence, before any action whatever on social change, is an interesting starting point for my course. And the exercices in the book of Jan Fook are very easy to integrate in my e-course.

Meanwhile, I keep thinking about a good trigger. I know already that I want to do something about human rights and I have some ideas. But first I want to read and look t the material in our course, to work this out in a good way.

Here you find also a link to my curriculum plan.

Working and reading about course development and feedback on feedback

In the past week I tried to read as much as possible. On this moment I am still working on my curriculum plan. I hope I can finish this tomorrow.
The first text I read was that from Chin en Williams. The way they look at e-learning from the point of view of a holistic learning environment is very clear. It seems to me that when you can look at your course design each time from one of the six learning environments they describe, you‘ve got a course that differentiates to the different needs of each student involved. It gives me a very good structure when I have to evaluate my own e-learning course. For me, this article was the best I read.

After reading the article from Kupper en Wulfften, I have been thinking on one specific sentence about assessment. They put forward that you have to look at behavior, because it predicts future behavior. But I think that a very important part of assessment is the reflection of the participant on his behavior., because this tells us something more about attitudes, believes, values… When assessment on competences would only focus on behavior, it would be difficult to integrate this in an e-learning course. But reflection in e-learning on the own and fellow students work, thoughts … works very well, as I see being now in a course myself.

In this blog we also should give some feedback on the feedback of task 4.
I think you gave us a very constructive feedback. In this way I am encouraged  to improve my work.
I was surprised to see that ‘networking’ was already so early mentioned in literature. When I started as a social worker in 1986, in Belgium nobody spoke about this, certainly not in casework. Nowadays everyone is focused in establishing a formal and informal network around a client. It even seems a ‘hype’ here in social work.
What also came up to my mind, while reading the feedback, was about always search for arguments in literature and research. I know that I have to work on this. I have 17 years of practice and by reading and doing I have some ideas about things and I write this down, without looking back to the original frameworks… I have integrated this in my daily work. For example the general definition about learning. I simply wrote this down, because with my experience and what I heard and read during the past years, I came to this. It is nothing special and certainly you find some arguments in literature to support this.

On this moment I am even in doubt whether it will be possible for me to be a good assessor in Virclass, because I am not so good in this. It makes me a bit unsure.

I wonder also how you think about 'practice based evidence' versus 'evidence based practice'. Because for me both are important, one more part of the metaphor of ‘acquisition’, the other one of ‘participation’. Like Anna Sfard says, it is also about values. Knowledge is power and as you say, these arguments give us power to reach something at our Univeristy College. But can we also give some place for experience? I hope you understand my point, because it is difficult for me to explain in English, with the correct nuances.

Finally I want to say something about my course. It seems that nobody understands what I mean with ‘signalling’. I found some texts where this word is used in the way I see it, but I can’t find it in a dictionary. So what I mean is that a part of ‘structural social work’ and a task for a social worker is always picking up ‘signals’ or 'aspects' in a case that seems to be a more fundamental problem in more cases. When it is so, a social worker can set up different actions to do something with this 'signals'. In my course I would like to have some exchange between students in different countries about methods and instruments social workers use. But I also want to know how social workers deal with this signals. Because I see , in certain work contexts in Belgium, social workers just keep on working with the specific case and have giving up giving signals to policymakers in the organization or the government.

So I wil end this blog, because it seems a little bit long. Hope you understand what I mean. I am really interested in your comment.

Pro and cons of e-learning

My work for this week was thinking and writing in our document about the pros and cons of e-learning. Before I go into the content I like to give some thoughts about the chat-experience. Before our e-pedagogy course, I didn’t use MSN very much. I started with it last year, because we had a Turkish student as a guest family and MSN is a nice way to stay in touch with him. In the meanwhile I use it also when I am away from home, to keep contact with my children. For this purpose it is perfect.
When we used it past Tuesday, I had some mixed feelings. First we had some difficulties to start a group chat. When that was okay, we started our work. After a while I asked Alexander to take the lead, just like we have a moderator in Vitero. That was really necessary, because it was difficult to have a ‘logic’ conversation. After that it worked out better. But looking back on this, I think that we made some practical agreements. We also confirmed what was written and divided the tasks. But MSN is not the best tool for a discussion on the content. It might be if you want to discuss one or two specific items. But I was glad I wrote already a big part, before our chat session, so Alexander and Mark were able to give comment on what they could see in the document. For what we did on that moment, I think we needed a lot of time.
Then there is also the experience of writing in Googledocs together. I think that is a good tool. I was already enthusiastic about it when we practiced in the workshop with Jon in Bergen. Now, I still find it a very good tool. In our University College , our students have to make a thesis. They have a theoretic part, that they have to make with a group of 6 students. Now they always put new versions on Blackboard, but sometimes someone else is working in a version too or they are confused about the last good version. So I will ask my group next year to try Googledocs.
When I think about the subject ‘pros and cons of e-learning’, there are two ideas I want to mention here. First, this task helped made clear for me why I should use e-learning for my subject of the course. Every social worker always has to have in mind the ‘structural’ view on the problems and issues he is working with. Exchanging ideas and opinions, build up a network with other professionals, not only social workers, and with other people involved will be more and more important. Our society has new ways of social contacts and computers are a very important part of this. So we, as social workers, have to learn to use this. And just like all the methods we use, here also we have to discover what the best online tools and methods are to reach the goals we want. E-learning, when it is set up like this, not only as a community of knowledge but also as a community of learning, gives a lot of learning opportunities. Besides that there it gives us a good way o exchange ideas, opinions and methods all over the world, what gives us a big richness as a person and professional.
A second idea is that it must be very clear for yourself, your students and your organization why you find it important to use e-learning in a specific course. Distance and intercultural competencies are very important, but I think there are more arguments. On the other hand, this must not become a sort of ‘hype’. Therefore it is good to read some good articles about this, like we did the past weeks, because it deepens your insight in this.

I want to end with this. On Friday I had the presentation of my research about ‘professional secret’ and volunteers in the social and health sector. It was a contract we had with the government and the representatives of the minister and a lot of organizations were present. I worked out this presentation, using Flickr to find good illustrations. I got some compliments, not only on the content, but also on the presentation. Without our workshop in Bergen, it would have been only a text presentation. So, you see , the course helps me also in a few very concrete things I had to do this past week.

Click here for the link to our task pros and cons of e-learning

Back in Belgium, back to the KH Kempen reality

Back in Belgium, it is not so easy to find the time to work on this e-pedagogy course. Although I have planned to work on it, only on days my agenda has a little bit empty space, always some urgent things pop up. Besides that, the weather is so nice that some work in the garden has to be done. In Belgium, you always have to take advantage of the good weather the day it is there, because when it gets bad, it can be a long time before you have some good days.

Nevertheless, I am pleased with the work I have done until now. I read Anna Sfard and David McConnell and I wrote in our document. So, the plans I made, are fulfilled.

The things I read were very interesting. The article of Anna Sfard was not so easy, but I like the way she puts two views in learning in these metaphors. What I have been thinking about is whether you shouldn’t take in account what one must learn. Learning is a broad concept. Is learning how to walk for a child the same as get competencies to have a empowering conversation with a client?McConnell mentions ‘higher –order learning’ and I think that is very important. Sometimes I prefer just someone who gives me the right information, so I can go on so soon as possible. However I remember once I had a new colleague that kept on asking all the things he didn’t knew. Even when we had a good written procedure with all the information in one glance, yet he came to me and asked it. I became a little bit nervous about this. Sometimes I notice this ‘habit’ also with students. It is so easy to ask rather than do an effort and consult the tutorial.

Another idea that came to my mind, while reading McConnell, was that what for me was clear – I want to be a coach as a teacher and facilitate learning processes and not an information-provider – is maybe not so widespread as I thought. And even me as a believer, sometimes like to tell some good stories. In evaluations, students appoint this as very positive, because of my experience in practice. So I think the mixture is the best thing.

The idea of ‘a community of practice’ made me dream. Wouldn’t it be beautiful and powerful when we could make such a community with people in practice and school staff. Not a kind of social network, but a real community. McConnell pointed out the difference between those two very well.

For my own course, the guiding principles in McConnells article are very important. I surely have to keep them in mind. I see a lot of this clearly now, looking to the structure and design of the e-pedagogy course.

So, this is a short reflection on my ‘journey of learning' (McConnell) so far.