Contemporary Field Social Work: Integrating Field and Classroom Experience

This comprehensive and interactive text rooted in contemporary social work practice provides a lively guide through the curriculum for social work practice learning. Written by three respected social workers with significant teaching, practical, and writing experience, it bridges the gap by offering learning activities that can be worked in both classroom and field settings. Helpful teaching and learning materials for students, field instructors, faculty and staff supervisors can be found throughout, and pointers through the book are useful for group learning as well as for one to one supervision. Topics include ethical dilemmas, multi-cultural practice, evidence and knowledge, making assessments in partnership, making priorities in interventions, working in and with groups and law-informed practice.

Intended Audience

This is an ideal upper-level undergraduate or graduate core text for Social Work Methods, Social Work Practice, or Field Work seminars at both BSW and MSW in departments of social work.

Mark Doel, PhD, MA (Oxon), CQSW is Research Professor of Social Work at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a registered social worker and was in practice for almost twenty years, including two separate years living and working in the US. His research focuses on groupwork, social work practice and practice education and he has an international reputation in these fields.

Professor Doel is widely published. His fifteenth book, Social Work Placements: a traveller′s guide (Routledge) introduces readers to Socialworkland, a travel guide approach to practice learning. Other recent books include: Educating Professionals: practice learning in health and social care (Ashgate, with Shardlow) which explores how students learn their practice in nine different professions, using a virtual local community to bring the professions together; Experiencing Social Work: learning from service users (Sage, with Best) which tells the stories of service users who have had positive experiences of social work and reflects on what we can learn from this; Using Groupwork (Routledge) and The Task-Centred Book (Routledge, with Marsh). He is co-editor of the journal Groupwork and founding co-editor of the journal, Social Policy and Social Work in Transition, published in Republic of Georgia.

Mark directs a 3-year, EU-funded project to develop social work education and research in the republic of Georgia and the Ukraine and he is a consultant with UNICEF and EveryChild. He leads training workshops in practice education and groupwork.

Professor Steven M. Shardlow MA(Oxon), MSc (Oxon), PhD, CQSW, AASW, RSW, FHEA, Professor Shardlow is Foundation holder of the Chair of Social Work at the University of Salford, England, where until recently he was Director of the Institute for Health and Social Care Research. He has held visiting professorial appointments in Norway, Italy, and Hong Kong: Previously, he was Director of a U.K. social work masters professional qualification programme. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Social Work. Previously chairperson of The Association of Teachers of Social Work Education (ATSWE- U.K.), he has worked as a social work practitioner and manager. He is a registered social worker in England and has worked extensively in international social work, through research, consultancy and development work. Current research interests are in the following areas: applied professional ethics; comparative research in social work; evidence-based policy and practice, programme evaluation and research utilisation (particularly in respect of social work with children and families and older people); professional knowledge, socialization and professional education (particularly in respect of field education); welfare and social capital (particularly as a theoretical underpinning for social work). He has published widely in these fields, including fifteen books, and his work has been translated into several languages.

Paul G. Johnson, DSW, LCSW is an Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of Southern Maine. He is a licensed social worker in the State of Maine. Prior to coming to USM, Dr. Johnson worked at Lehman College, CUNY where he was the fieldwork coordinator for the BSW program. For several years, Dr. Johnson was affiliated with Jewish Child Care Association (JCCA) in New York City. His responsibilities included the agency owned Group and Boarding Home Programs. Prior to joining JCCA, Professor Johnson worked for United Cerebral Palsy Association of NYS, where he was a social worker for 42 dual-diagnosed clients in a residential setting. Before coming to the United States in 1986, he worked in a residential social work in England.

At USM, Paul teaches primarily BSW courses including Introduction to Social Work, Introduction to Social Welfare, the Fieldwork Seminar and both sections of the undergraduate research sequence. In 2007, he co-authored With Bruce St. Thomas, Empowering Children through Art and Expression Culturally Sensitive Ways of Healing Trauma and Grief. Over the past several years, he has published twelve referred articles and six non-refereed articles in Community Care. For the past ten years he has been a member of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with Groups. Since 2006, he has been a member of the Steering Committee Caring Across Communities Multilingual Multicultural Center Portland Public Schools: In March 2007 this organization was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant for Mental Health Services for $300,000.