Jason Schaub

Surveillance and silence: New considerations in assessing difficult social work placements

Studies to date have highlighted a number of key factors in the assessment of difficult social work placements including the need for adequate professional formation; communication; the changing social work education framework; and the influence of the wider social work context. Factors less widely examined are the perceptions of some practice educators that the assessment of placement students operates in a wider context of surveillance and scrutiny by a range of stakeholders. We argue that such perceptions of surveillance can cause a discursive anxiety for practice educators and can inhibit key developmental conversations between assessor and student. Drawing on interviews with ten practice educators, we examine the tendency of practice educators reflecting on a failed placement to rehearse or even enact those key developmental conversations post hoc, broaching previously unstated or tacit aspects of the placement experience. We argue for the need to create a safe discursive space for these conversations to take place in situ during the challenging placement and suggest that a diminution in perceptions of surveillance and enhanced outcomes for students and practice educators will result.

Projective Identification and the Fear of Failing: Making Sense of Practice Educators' Experiences of Failing Social Work Students in Practice Learning Settings

The study focuses on emotional processes that may arise for practice educators when working with struggling or failing students in practice learning settings. Informed by a thematic review of the literature exploring the phenomenon of ‘failing to fail’, the study draws on two UK qualitative studies that highlighted the emotional distress experienced by practice educators when working with a marginal or failing student. The study draws key examples from these prior studies and argues that the psychoanalytic concept of projective identification offers a plausible and illuminating account of the states of mind experienced and reported by some practice educators in the ‘failing to fail’ dilemma. The notion is proffered as a conceptual framework for practice educators to explore and apply to their own practice as a means of making explicit unconscious states of mind, helping to recognise and rationalise these, thus supporting confidence in making appropriate assessment decisions.