Wendy Couchman

‘Arts and Extremely Dangerous’: Critical Commentary on the Arts in Social Work Education

Social work education has attempted to cross many boundaries as it strives to respond to incessant new demands confronting the profession. These are often in response to changing political socio-economic conditions, new organisational contexts and how to prepare professionals to respond creatively to any new challenges that evolve. Leadership of change in social work education might equally come from a range of unexpected sources if those involved in learning and teaching can be inspired to look outwards and beyond what is normally available. A body of evidence has been developing in social work which shows that crossing boundaries between the social sciences with the arts and humanities can help to communicate service users’ and carers’ experiences more powerfully. As many of the papers in this special edition illustrate, active use of the arts within the process of learning offers the potential to free up those more traditional categories and lenses through which we tend to view service users and carers and their ‘problems’ or ‘issues’. Achieving more genuine and transformative insights and understandings, which depart from more habitual schemas for describing and thinking about social problems, requires an embracing of the diversity of human behaviour, personality and relationships, emotions and feelings, life events and culture, to mention but a few. Foucault’ s (1993) reference to the ‘authoritative gaze’, that objectifies the user of public services and reinforces the power relationship, is a reminder of the ongoing themes and debates about the nature of social work practice and the positive contribution that the arts might make.

A Drama Project about Older People's Intimacy and Sexuality

This paper describes an intergenerational project developed in partnership between a social work degree program and an Older Peoples Theatre group. Bringing together a small group of students, older actors, and film makers, methods from drama and the arts were utilised to explore the topic of intimacy and sexuality in later life. The project produced digital stimulus learning materials. Formal evaluation identified beneficial outcomes for participants highlighting the advantages of older peoples leadership in social work education and the transformative potential of the dramatic learning methods used. Such pedagogical approaches are essential to achieve genuine quality personalized outcomes for older people in contact with care services.

The impact of the arts in social work education: a systematic review

Evidence on the effectiveness of arts-based approaches in professional education has been gathering momentum in the last decade embracing disciplines such as medicine, the allied professions, social work and social care. Key texts have emerged promoting the use of the arts in professional education and there have been some attempts to capture empirical evidence on its value. This paper reports on a systematic review of the current body of knowledge on the impact of the arts in social work education. We introduce the rationale for undertaking a systematic review and the methodology and approach used. We then discuss the three significant themes from our synthesis of the evidence reviewed. These were positioning social work practice through linking micro and macro thinking, the cultivation of leadership beyond verbal reasoning and art as pedagogy. The findings are discussed in the context of what the arts can offer challenges in social work education.

The practice educator as museum guide, art therapist or exhibition curator

Abstract: The use of arts-based approaches in professional education in health and social care has gathered momentum in the last decade and their effectiveness has been well documented. There are helpful models in the education literature that begin to explain how these creative methods work in learning and practice, and that assert the significance of an emotional or affective level of learning. However, the process remains elusive, almost a ‘given’. A more cross-disciplinary analysis of affective learning is needed to guide arts-based methods and more robust evaluation of their use in health and social care education and practice. This paper identifies different roles that can be taken by the practice educator with a review of those theoretical models of affective learning that underpin them to help understand how and why arts-based approaches are effective.