Norah Hosken

A fundamental rethink of practice learning in social work education

Abstract A common response to the need to place increasing numbers of social work students in field education or practice learning placements has been to broaden the range of organisations in which placements are sought. While this strategy has provided many beneficial learning opportunities for students, it has not been sufficient in tackling ongoing difficulties in locating work-integrated learning opportunities for social work students. We argue that new approaches to finding placement opportunities will require a fundamental rethink as to how student placements are understood. This paper introduces an innovative project which started with a consideration of learning opportunities and built a structure to facilitate these, rather than rely on organisational availability to host students on placements.

Practices of exclusion and injustices within social work education

Abstract Despite being a major influence, there are few studies investigating the impact of accreditation on the social justice remit of social work education. This article is guided by two questions: What are the social justice responsibilities of professional associations regulating social work education via accreditation? and What contribution can institutional ethnography make to understanding and change in this area? Drawing on a data-subset from a larger institutional ethnography, selected narratives of two informants, a social work student and a social work lecturer, are discussed. These narratives reveal how key documents of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) used to re-accredit social work courses influence how the study and work of the informants happens. Analysis of the narratives and documents bring the textually organised process of the re-accreditation of social work programmes into view. While this article reports on an Australian context, the issues raised concerning social injustice, epistemological equity and the implicit curriculum are relevant for social work education across many parts of the world. The contribution of this article is to recommend institutional ethnography as a research approach to generate understanding and transformation of organisations with social justice objectives, to redress exclusion and injustice.

Developing and enacting an ethical framework and method for cross-cultural researchi

Cautionary ‘anticipatory’ ethical consideration and practice is essential in developing and implementing a research project involving ethnography and, more so, auto-ethnography (Tolich, 2010, p. 1600), particularly one that includes crosscultural elements. Anticipatory means that ethnographers and auto-ethnographers should, among other procedures, usually gain informed consent before gathering and publishing data that can affect themselves and other people. This chapter reports on the continuing development of an ethical framework that underpins a current qualitative research project, Searching for Recognition and Social Justice in Tertiary Education. The project aims to place at its lived heart daily, enacted and active respect for the different and similar world views, culture and standpoints of its three main informants.