Challenges, Opportunities and Innovations in Social Work Field Education

Dr Ronnie Egan is Associate Professor of Field Education in Social Work at RMIT University. She has specialised in research about supervision and practice for social workers and students, published widely in these areas and has extensive and active networks in the human service sector. Her relationships with the field span her career as a practitioner and academic, and this has enabled the development of innovative ways of understanding and facilitating the nexus between universities and the community. She chairs the National Field Education Network. Dr Nicole Hill is a lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of Melbourne. Her position is dually focused on coordinating the Master of Social Work and strengthening the research profile of Field Education. In October 2019 she was appointed as Chair of the National Field Education Network (NFEN) and as the Field Education representative on the Australian and New Zealand Social Work and Welfare Education and Research (ANZSWWER). She has a strong clinical history in acute and crisis health and mental health work and continues the work of her doctoral studies in the field of suicide prevention. Dr Wendy Rollins is Senior Lecturer in social work at Victoria University, Melbourne. Wendy has extensive social work practice experience in a wide range of government and non-government settings in Victoria, Queensland and the ACT. Her teaching and research interests are in social work education, in particular, field education and in the relationship focus of social work practice that has resulted in publication. Wendy is a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers, Australian and New Zealand Social Work and Welfare Education and Research and a founding member of National Field Education Network.

1. Outlining the Context: Australian Social Work Field Education. 2. Australian Field Education in the International Context. 3. Field Education Stakeholders: Untangling the Rhetoric from the Reality. 4. Regulating Field Education: Challenges and Prospects. 5. Pedagogies Informing Social Work Field Education. 6. Integrating Cultural Responsiveness into Social Work Field Education Curriculum: Lessons from the Community. 7. Preparing Students for Field Education Using Simulation-Based Learning. 8. Fit, Suitable or Ready? Taking a Strengths Approach to Student Transition to Placement. 9. The Contribution of Field Education towards Professional Capability. 10. Assessment in Field Education: Capability, Competence and Contradictions. 11. Conceptualising the Liaison Role. 12. Collaboration in Social Work Field Education. 13. Thinking Outside the Square: The Quality and Sustainability of Alternative Placement Models. 14. The Value of Community-Academic-Partnerships in Field Education. 15. Reinvigorating Fields of Practice Through Placement Innovation. 16. Collaborating for the Future of Field Education.