1. American Social Work Education
Current and Future Challenges and Opportunities

2. Major Themes Competency Based Education Global Perspective
Research Imperatives
Technology and Social Work Education

3. Competency Based Education
Council on Social Work Education and New Standards for Accreditation.
Shift from program goals and objectives focus to competency based education.
Definition of competency based education.
Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) approved new standards for accreditation of schools of social work in 2008.
This shift in focus requires schools to shift from focusing on the achievement of program goals and objectives to students’ achievement of certain competencies.
This change in focus reflects similar foci of other professional schools in the United states (e.g. medicine, nursing, and education).
According to CSWE, the definition of competency-based education is an outcome performance approach to curriculum design. Competencies are measurable practice behaviors that are comprised of the following:
knowledge, values, and skills; and
The goal of the outcome approach is to demonstrate the integration and application of the competencies in practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.

4. Competency Based Education
Ten Core Competencies for Bachelor and Masters Degree Programs.
Identify as a professional social worker and conduct oneself accordingly.
Apply social work ethical principles to guide professional practice.
Apply critical thinking to inform and communicate professional judgments.
1. Identifying as a professional social worker includes:
advocating for client access to the services of social work;
• practicing personal reflection and self-correction to assure continual professional development;
• attending to professional roles and boundaries;
• demonstrating professional demeanor in behavior, appearance, and communication;
• engaging in career-long learning; and
• using supervision and consultation.
2. Applying social work ethical principles involves:
• recognizing and managing personal values in a way that allows professional values to guide practice;
• making ethical decisions by applying standards of the National Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and, as applicable, the International Federation of Social Workers/International Association of Schools of Social Work Ethics in Social Work statement of Principles;
• tolerate ambiguity in resolving ethical conflicts; and
• apply strategies of ethical reasoning to arrive at principled decisions.
3. Applying critical thinking includes:
• distinguishing, appraising, and integrating multiple sources of knowledge, including research-based knowledge, and practice wisdom;
• analyzing models of assessment, prevention, intervention, and evaluation; and
• demonstrating effective oral and written communication in working with individuals, families, groups, organizations, communities, and colleagues.

5. Competency Based Education
Engage diversity and difference in practice.
Advance human rights and social and economic justice.
Engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research.
4. Engaging in diversity and difference in practice means:
• recognizing the extent to which a culture’s structures and values may oppress, marginalize, alienate, or create or enhance privilege and power;
• gaining sufficient self-awareness to eliminate the influence of personal biases and values in working with diverse groups;
• recognizing and communicating their understanding of the importance of difference in shaping life experiences; and
• viewing themselves as learners and engage those with whom they work as informants.
5. In order to advance human rights and social and economic justice student needs to be engaged in:
• understanding the forms and mechanisms of oppression and discrimination;
• advocating for human rights and social and economic justice; and
• engaging in practices that advance social and economic justice.
6. Engaging in research-informed practice and practice-informed research means:
• using practice experience to inform scientific inquiry and
• using research evidence to inform practice.

6. Competency Based Education
Apply knowledge of human behavior and the social environment.
Engage in policy practice to advance social and economic well-being and to deliver effective social work services.
Respond to contexts that shape practice.
Engage, assess, intervene, and evaluate with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
7. Applying human behavior knowledge and the social environment refers to:
• utilizing conceptual frameworks to guide the processes of assessment, intervention, and evaluation; and
• critiquing and applying knowledge to understand person and environment.
8.. Engaging in policy practice to promote social and social economic well-being and to deliver effective services includes:
• analyzing, formulating, and advocating for policies that advance social well-being; and
• collaborating with colleagues and clients for effective policy action.
9. Responding to contexts that shapes practice relates to:
• continuously discovering, appraising, and attending to changing locales, populations, scientific and technological developments, and emerging societal trends to provide relevant services; and
• providing leadership in promoting sustainable changes in service delivery and practice to improve the quality of social services.
10. Engaging, assessing, intervening and evaluating social work practice infers that:
Professional practice involves the dynamic and interactive processes of engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation at multiple levels.
Social workers have the knowledge and skills to practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Practice knowledge that includes:
substantively and affectively prepare for action with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities;
using empathy and other interpersonal skills;
collecting, organizing, and interpreting client data;
assessing client strengths and limitations;
developing a mutually agreed-on focus of work and desired outcomes.
identifying, analyzing, and implementing evidence-based interventions designed to achieve client goals;
using research and technological advances;
helping clients resolve problems;
negotiating, mediating, and advocating for clients; and
facilitating transitions and endings;
evaluating program outcomes and practice effectiveness;
developing, analyzing, advocating, and providing leadership for policies and services; and
promoting social and economic justice.

7. Competency Based Education
Advanced Curriculum of Masters Programs.
Field Education as Signature Pedagogy.
Assessment of Student Achievement of Competencies.
1. Advanced practitioners are capable to do the following:
refining and advancing the quality of social work practice and that of the larger social work profession;
practicing in an area of specialization, advanced practitioners assess, intervene, and evaluate to promote human and social well-being;
tailoring actions to the circumstances at hand;
using the discrimination learned through experience and self-improvement;
incorporating all of the core competencies in advanced practice through modifying knowledge and practice behaviors specific to a specific form of practice.
2. Signature pedagogy represents the central form of instruction and learning in which a profession socializes its students to perform the role of practitioner. In social work, the signature pedagogy is field education. The intent of field education is to do the following:
connecting the theoretical and conceptual contribution of the classroom with the practical world of the practice setting;
contributing to the development of the requisite competencies of professional practice;
systematically designing, supervising, coordinating, and evaluating students’ progress related the achievement of program competencies.
3. Assessing students’ achievement of their competencies are derived from specific formative evaluation in particular courses through out the curriculum, in their internships, and via summative evaluation through a variety of assessment avenues (capstone course, tests, theses etc.). These various assessments are determined by the programs and no particular types of assessment are required by the accreditation body.

8. Global Perspective
Preparation for Practice Within a Global Perspective.
Differential Frameworks for Understanding and Intervening with Diverse Individuals, Families, and Communities.
Advocating for Local, National, and Global Economic and Social Justice.
Globalization is affecting all societies, industrialized and newly developing industrial countries, including economic, demographic, political and cultural dimensions.
Although migration has been a reality of humans for centuries, presently the world is experiencing is at the highest rate of people migrating that it has ever been in human history.
Most societies today are confronting major economic, social and cultural issues related to the influx of these populations and struggling with developing societal structures and processes to manage effectively these changes and to be able to integrate various new populations into the fabric of the society while at the same time maintaining some sense of continuity as a culture.
Societies are facing many challenges relative to the provision of social services that are appropriate to the diverse values, beliefs, and customs of immigrant communities, as well as the processes of assimilation and acculturation, which may or may not be the desires of the immigrants or their receiving society.
It is imperative that students understand the global dimensions relative to the following:
understand the various conditions that underlie the of decision to migrate;
the culture, beliefs, values, family structures, and patterns of interaction etc; and
appreciate the personal, interpersonal, and communal thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the lived experience of immigrants;
3. It is further important that students develop the cultural competencies required to engage and intervene in the lives of these populations.
This expectation necessitates that students utilize diverse theories of understanding and practice that are culturally a “good fit” with the particular immigrant group to which they are providing services.
Students need to conceptualize and implement practices that include advocating for specific kinds of services that are appropriate for particular population.
4. In addition, it is important for them to understand and develop strategies for influencing policies at the local, national, and international levels related to issues of globalization and immigration. In other words, they need to be able to conceptualize and function in these various levels of society and the world as a whole.

9. Global Perspective
.Student Internships with Immigrant Communities, International Internship Sites, and Immersion Programs.
The Institute for Migration and International Social Work.
Universities International, Collaborative Relationships
Loyola University Chicago School of Social Work has increased its international focus for its students in several different ways.
Offer courses related to assessing and intervening with and behalf of immigrant populations.
Migration, Social Justice, and Human Rights;
Migration Dynamics and U.S. Social Policy
Social Work Practice with Refugees and Immigrants
International course co-taught with Italian universities at the Loyola University Chicago John Felice Rome Center (Calabria, Catholic University in Milan, La Sapienza, Parma, Trieste, and University of Milan)
International video courses with Lithuania university (Vytautas Magnus University)
Social Work Practice in Global, Cross Cultural; and
Social Work Research—Qualitative Methodology
The number and variety of international internships continues to develop within the school such as:
Ghana
Israel
Italy
Kenya
South Africa
Immersion programs include:
India
China
2. The Institute for Migration and International Social Work.
Established within the School of Social Work in 2008.
Several social work faculty and other professors from other disciplines are associated with the institute and participate in the following:
engage in scholarship, research, and obtaining grants from foundations and governmental bodies.
training of undergraduate, masters and doctoral students.
3. International collaborative relationships are being explored and developed in various countries.
These collaborations offer potentially student and faculty exchanges and research projects.
The countries include:
Japan
Korea
Lithuania
Mexico

10. Research
Increased Expectations of Faculty to Engage in Research and Scholarship Activities.
Importance of Institutional Support within the School/Department and the University
Engaging Undergraduate, Masters, and Doctoral Students Directly in Faculty Research.
Emphasis on Evidenced Based Research
Overall, school work programs across the country continue to increase their expectations for faculty productivity in the areas of research and scholarship.
The School of Social Work at Loyola produced two and a half times the number of manuscripts published either in peer reviewed journals or book chapters last year as compared to three years ago.
Six books were published last year by faculty at the school.
The number of submitted grants has risen dramatically in the last three years.
It is very important that social work programs and the university provide support to faculty in a variety of ways in order for them to realize these increased expectations.
Reduce teaching load through either course relief or “course buy outs” from grant money.
Offer summer stipends to encourage research activities.
Provide monetary resources to support attending professional conferences to present faculty research.
Office of Research Services that provides technical support and training for developing grants.
Post grant award supports are important in order to assist the faculty member in maintaining grant compliance.
Develop standards for annual merit award, as well as tenure and promotion guidelines that reflect the importance of research and scholarship.
many programs are employing rankings of journals in promotion and tenure guidelines.
Some programs are also using number of times a faculty member’s is cited in professional journals.
3. Increasingly, universities are requiring more active involvement of faculty with students in the professors’ research at the undergraduate and masters levels. Doctoral students have historically been involved with faculty research.
Greater emphasis is being placed on Evidenced Based Practice (EBP).
EBP is defined as, “the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of clients”.
EPB is employed through the following processes:
pose specific answerable questions regarding decisions in practice;
Search electronically for the answer;
Critically appraise what is found;
Consider the applicability of the answer to specific client(s);
Jointly with the client(s) select the option best suited based on clients’ values, beliefs, and goals; and
Evaluate outcomes.

11. Technology and Social Work
Role of Technology and Social Work
National Association for Social Workers Standards related to Social Work Practice and Technology.
The growth and role of technology in social work has increased dramatically in the last several years.
Information and data systems are prominent in many social service agencies.
Data analysis is occurring more frequently in social service delivery systems (outcome studies, cost-benefit analysis etc.).
Use of internet in provision to social work services; especially in rural areas.
Challenges to maintaining practice standards led to NASW development of them to assist practitioners in managing this new frontier.
2. National Association for Social Work Standards for Professional Practice
Standard 1. Ethics and Values
social workers providing services via the telephone or other electronic means shall act:
Ethically;
ensure professional competence;
protect clients; and
uphold the values of the profession.
Standard 2. Access
social workers shall have access to technology;
appropriate support systems to ensure competent practice; and
take action to ensure client access to technology.
Standard 3. Cultural Competence and Vulnerable Populations
social workers shall select and develop appropriate online methods, skills, and
techniques that are attuned to their clients’ cultural, bicultural, or marginalized experiences in their environments;
social workers shall have the skills to work with a wide range of people who are culturally different or who may be considered a member of a vulnerable population; and
those whose primary language may not be English.

12. Technology and Social Work
NASW Standards Continued.
Standard 8. Risk Management
social workers providing services through the use of the telephone or other electronic means shall ensure high-quality practices; and
create procedures that are legally sound and ethical to protect clients and safeguard against litigation.
Standard 9. Practice Competencies, Advocacy, and Social Action
social workers shall use technology to inform and mobilize communities about policies that
will benefit individuals and groups; and
seek to provide tools, opportunities, and information so that clients are able to advocate directly for their own interests.
social workers shall advocate for the adoption and use of relevant technologies that will enhance the well-being of communities;
social workers shall keep themselves informed about technology that will advance quality program operations and service delivery;
invest in and maintain such systems; and
establish policies to ensure access, appropriate security, and privacy in agency information systems;
social workers shall strive to become and remain knowledgeable about the dynamics of online relationships;
the advantages and drawbacks of non-face-to-face interactions; and
the ways in which technology-based social work practice can be safely and appropriately conducted;
social workers conducting, evaluating, disseminating, or implementing research using technological approaches shall do so in a manner that ensures ethical credibility and ensures the informed consent of the participant; and
when using or providing supervision and consultation by technological means, social work supervisors and supervisees shall follow the standards that would be applied to a face to-face supervisory relationship and shall be competent in the technologies used.
Standard 10. Continuing Education
Social workers shall adhere to the NASWStandards for Continuing Professional Education;and
follow applicable licensing laws regarding continuing education delivered via electronic means.

13. Technology and Social Work
Increase in Web Based Curriculum
Growth of Online Courses and Degree Programs
Curriculum Development and Delivery
Major changes are occurring in the delivery of education across the country and beyond.
Dramatic increase in number of online and degree programs in recent years.
Students expect more sophisticated use of technological methods in both face to face and online courses.
Greater numbers of schools of social work re offering web enhanced courses, online courses, and degree programs.
2. Developing curriculum for either technologically enhanced, online courses, or degree programs requires faculty to develop both technological and different pedagogical methods for delivering materials.
Universities have web based platforms (e.g. Black Board etc) from which to build courses that interface with technological options.
Identify and integrated external web based resources into courses ( e.g. internet)
Teaching materials need to be organized and delivered in different ways.
Engaging and interacting students and with one another and the professor must be created and maintained through creative venues.
Developing methods for students to engage in “experiential” exercises and develop practice skills requires re-conceptualizing and utilizing alternative resources (e.g. videos, virtual reality web based programs etc.)