Examining power politics

Examining power politics in provision of public services

A citizen-based approach to social work encourages user involvement in public policy that involves greater participation in political activity. It emerged in initiatives such as self help, campaigning and community action, a different interpretation of social works and provision of public services. This has brought forward change of power politics in the management of public services where service users’ demands and perceptions are main elements in devising and prioritising the agenda. By encouraging people to engage in active citizenship and political participation, social care professionals become active change agents while at the same time service users enjoy the shift of power.





Reflective logs of social works

The fieldwork placement is recognized as one of the major components of social work education and a major determinant of its quality. A key aspect of the learning process in the fieldwork placement is the exposition of practice encounters to the students’ critical reflection. Given the importance of the process of ‘reflection’ or ‘reflective learning’, a qualitative study based on the reflective logs of social work students was conducted to explore the meaning of social work field education and the learning experiences of social work students during their placement. The study findings revealed that disturbing events experienced by students in their fieldwork were a catalyst to their reflective process. Meanwhile, their undue concern with knowledge and skills application within a circumscribed knowledge frame suggests the dominant influence of scientism and competence-based practice in social work, in which learning outcomes and instrumental and technical reasoning are highly emphasized. Discovery of ‘self’ was also the major premise in the students’ reflection logs, in which a majority of them took their prevailing self-identity as a constant state to be verified in interaction with others in the fieldwork placement. Reflexivity is manifested in asking fundamental questions about assumptions generated by formal and practice theories; it addresses the multiple interrelations between power and knowledge, and acknowledges the inclusion of self in the process of knowledge creation in social work practice. Its realization in social work education requires the social work educators’ reflexive examination of the dynamics that influence the construction of curriculum, which in turn construct our prospective social workers.
Keywords: social work placement, reflection, reflexivity
Source: British Journal of Social Work