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Practice Guidance

Being a practice educatorAuthor: Hilary Lawson

Updated Date: 27 August 2014

Publication Date: September 2011

Photo: Monkey Business/Fotolia

Contents Being a practice educator – is it worth the hassle? What training is required? What is a practice educator? What’s in it for me?

Social work agencies as learning organisations What do practice educators do? Can I offer the right placement for a student? What will the social work student be like? Planning an induction programme Conclusion References

Being a practice educator – is it worth the hassle?In the summer months there are a great many social workers who have been qualified for about three years who develop a nervous tick. It’s a flinching movement which stems from a constant ducking and diving from repeated requests from exasperated training and development staff trying to supply the local universities and higher education institutes (HEIs) with a reasonable clutch of good quality placements for the new social work students. As local authority cutbacks pile pressure from many different sources on social workers, having a student can seem just one more hassle that they can do without.

But, it might be worth thinking about both the advantages as well as the challenges of taking on a student before saying no. Supervising a student can precipitate a re-engagement with the aims and values of social work, be an opportunity to brush up on new and forgotten knowledge, and thrust the social worker into a position of being able to inform the old guard and shape the new arrivals. It can refresh commitment to your work and raise the morale and self-esteem of worn out social workers. Taking students also has wider benefits to the organisation as a whole, and has been shown to have a positive effect on both recruitment and retention of staff (Davies and Connolly, 1994).

What training is required?The quality of practice placements is a crucial part of good social work education which in turn leads to high standards in the social work profession. Work by the Social Work Reform Board, and then The College of Social Work, resulted in a practice educator framework in 2012 called the practice educator professional standards (PEPS) (currently hosted by BASW). They have been designed to ensure standardisation of quality and qualification of all those involved in the practice education of social work students.

Taking on a student now requires specific training which is, in many local authorities, linked to career development and promotion. There is an expectation that those responsible for the practice education of social work students are themselves registered social workers, and indeed on final placements only practice educators who are registered social workers and who have the necessary training and

experience can be given the responsibility of recommending a pass or fail leading to the professional qualification of the student.

Training for practice education is now in two stages. It is expected that social workers who have not supervised a student before will enrol on practice educator stage one training (either at the local HEI or in-house) and will take on either a first year student or, if the student is in their final placement, the stage one practice educator will require support from another, more experienced practice educator. For a social worker to take full responsibility for a final year placement they need to be working towards their stage two qualification. In this way, students in their final placement before qualifying are guaranteed to have an experienced and qualified practice educator. The changes also mean that no social worker should suddenly find themselves with sole responsibility for a final year student without either having cut their teeth on a first year placement or without the support and involvement of another more experienced practice educator. At last the importance of training and support for the novice practice educator has been recognised. It has also ensured that the skills necessary to support another’s learning and development through understanding theories of adult learning, reflective supervision and how to make fair and transparent assessments are widely percolated through the organisation.

What is a practice educator?The name given to the person whose main role it is to help the social work student develop practice skills, knowledge and values has changed as thinking about practice education has evolved. The common term before 1989 was “social work supervisor”. The student was expected to learn about social work practice through observing their supervisor’s work, and being guided through a small caseload of whatever presented itself during the six months or so the student was on placement.

With the introduction of a clearer set of guidelines concerning what the student should learn on placement – the “competency schedule” – social work supervisors had to be much more proactive in choosing suitable and wide-ranging pieces of work for their students.

In the early 1990s the practice teacher award was introduced by CCETSW (the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work). Social workers wanting to supervise students were encouraged to enrol on these new courses where theories of adult learning and teaching, as well as the skills of good supervision, were taught. The term “practice teacher”, with the concomitant emphasis on both teaching and assessing the competence of students on placement, came to replace the term “social work supervisor”.

Ten years later the practice teacher award proved to be a victim of its own success. The pool of practice teacher award holders was not increasing because many of the practice teachers used the qualification and training to take up management positions (Walker et al, 2008). There was therefore an insufficient number of practice teachers available to cope with the demand of social work students, particularly after

the Department of Health (2002) reforms to the qualifying social work programmes increased the number of days each student needed to be out on placement.

Kearney (2003) wrote in a position paper for the Social Care Institute for Excellence (Scie) at this time that no longer was the responsibility for shaping the new workforce to rest on individuals’ shoulders, but that all social workers should play their part. There would, however, be a need for named individuals who would assess whether students’ work attained sufficient standard to pass the placement – the “practice assessor”. This term, although still used, has never been widely popular as it failed to capture the different elements of managing, teaching and assessing learning that are involved in the role. With the introduction of the PEPS there has been a welcome recognition of the complexity and breadth of the role, conveyed in the term which will now be used, practice educator.

Whether the role is shared with another social worker (or possibly another professional in a first year placement), the one responsible for the day-to-day management of the placement is called the practice supervisor.

Indeed, there is often more than one professional with a leading role in a social work student placement. A common configuration is both an “on-site” and an “off-site” professional sharing the responsibility for the student’s learning. The on-site practice supervisor will work in the same team as the student, and the off-site practice educator might work in another office or be an independent practice educator. As well as where a social worker is new to practice education, a social worker might also decide to opt for this scenario if, for example, they work part-time, or are concerned that they don’t have sufficient time to do justice to the role on their own, or because they feel more confident sharing the role with a colleague.

Some students have placements which straddle different sites with a practice educator/supervisor in each. It is very important that all those involved in placements where there is more than one practice educator/supervisor are clear about roles and tasks. For this reason, there is usually an agreement that there will be a practice educator who has the main responsibility for assessment of the student, and then a practice supervisor who might be involved in the more day-to-day organisation of the placement. Such configurations can be flexible and need thinking through with the team and also the staff involved in placement co-ordination both in the agency and the HEI.

What’s in it for me?“It’s like a breath of fresh air having a student! I start to think about why I’m doing the things the way I am, and whether there’s another way.”

“It forces me to read up on things I keep meaning to but never get round to doing until the student comes along and I get prodded into action!”

(Comments from practice educators attending a Skills for Care conference).

Teaching is a skilled and challenging activity, and the rewards are enormous. There is huge satisfaction from helping a new and uncertain student develop into a capable and confident professional. There are many parallels between being a good social worker and being a good teacher, and although social workers can feel anxious about taking on a teaching role, when teaching is reframed as facilitating learning with the practice educator helping the student make meaning and connections with both known and new knowledge, then some of the parallels emerge. Indeed, one of the most influential humanist psychotherapists, Carl Rogers, wrote about student centred learning as much as client-centred therapy. He wrote that students learn when the facilitator acts as a catalyst for reflection and self discovery.

Teaching social work practice is an opportunity to revisit and read up on theories, ideas and research. Students are encouraged to be both participants and observers while on placement, asking questions to render the “ordinary extraordinary”. This often provokes the team to ask themselves why things are done the way they are and whether there is a better way. As well as stimulating reflection, students are often also in the position of being able to take on some small-scale project which can inform decisions about, for example, some aspect of service delivery. In these ways the benefits to the team can be enormous.

A particularly enjoyable aspect of the role of practice educator or practice supervisor is being a gateway to the profession for the student. The professional capabilities framework (PCF) focuses on the development of the professional identity of the student and the practice educator has a significant part to play in this. It is as if they are responsible for inducting the student into the social work tribe, helping them to understand not just important social work values and ethics, but also the implicit and unwritten rules, the “how things are done around here” which Wenger (1998:47) has called “the subtle cues, untold rules of thumb…underlying assumptions, and shared world views” of a community of practice.

Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on situational learning captures well the position of the student who at first is sitting nervously on the edge of the team/agency (“peripheral participation”). It is the practice educator who has the main responsibility for gradually helping the student find their way through the different cultural practices to take a more central place within the work community.

In my work with new practice educators it is often not long before the fear of theory is raised. As social work students make the transition to qualified social workers, it is common for the explicit articulation of theory and research which informs their work to fade away. Use of this knowledge becomes implicit rather than explicit as they move from being a novice student to a proficient social worker, and it is for this reason that practice educators sometimes find working with theory initially challenging.

It’s not that they don’t have the knowledge, it’s often that the knowledge has just become “second nature” and requires some prising out. The student will do this soon enough. A good practice educator is a catalyst of learning and by asking questions they provoke the student into making their own links and connections, resulting in better learning than the practice teacher providing answers every time.

Teaching social work students can be exhilarating. Working with potential, being able to see how the student has changed because of the practice educator’s input and skills is a very powerful experience. Practice teachers are instrumental in the shaping of the future of social work, and this can be a major boost to one’s morale and self-esteem.

It is a well-known fact that it is the placements and the practice teachers that students remember long after the qualifying course has ended, and this is a testament to the significance of the experience for both the student and the practice teacher. Practice teachers also report how their own social work practice is sharpened as a consequence of engaging in the scrutiny of another’s practice and concomitant self reflection. Taking on a student is, then, a crucial contributor to a social worker’s own continuing professional development.

Social work agencies as learning organisations“I think it’s not just good for me, I think it’s good for the whole team – we start sharpening up and sharing good practice and learning from each other. I think a student makes a massive contribution to us as a learning organisation.”

(Comment from a practice educator attending a Skills for Care conference).

Key to making placements more manageable is by thinking of them as the responsibility of the team rather than the individual. Although, of course, there needs to be a named practice educator or two directly engaged in the planning, teaching and assessing of each placement, the Practice Learning Taskforce in 2003 summed up the need for a team approach to students on placement by referring to practice learning as “everybody’s business”. Where everyone from senior managers to frontline workers, administrative staff and service users are engaged in the inducting, learning and also evaluation of students, a culture of learning and development pervades the organisation.

Most social work agencies describe themselves as learning organisations. This means something more than a commitment to individuals undergoing regular training and staff development events. It involves structures and systems threading through the organisation which ensure individual learning is fed back to contribute to collective learning. High quality reflective supervision can be one such system. Scie (2006) notes that these structures facilitate the active participation of service users, effective team collaboration and cross-organisational working.

Learning organisations are those in which “distributed leadership” ensures that expertise is mobilised from a wide range of staff throughout the organisation “to innovate and lead” (Keen et al, 2009). The practice teacher is in a pivotal position to contribute to the collective learning through his or her engagement with the processes inherent in teaching of deconstructing and scrutinising practice. It can raise the social worker’s sense of power as they become more involved in this

ongoing reflexive learning and development of the organisation. It can be experienced as permission to get involved more actively in the shaping of service delivery (Keen, 2009).

What do practice educators do?Social work students need to be provided with work which enables them to provide evidence against a set of professional standards for social work. From 2012, these standards were encompassed within the professional capabilities framework (PCF). The PCF will be written out in key document for the practice educator, usually found in the handbook provided by the student’s social work programme. The PCF provides a framework of essential knowledge and skills required of an effective practitioner to work in a planned and collaborative way with service users, managing risk and crises and making informed decisions.

It is the practice educator’s, or practice supervisor’s, role to secure a range of work for which the student can have some responsibility and demonstrate the necessary skills, knowledge and values. There is a separate set of indicators for students on a first placement and for those on a final placement. Indeed, the PCF provides a “cradle to grave” set of indicators which represent the standard and level of work expected of social workers at each stage of their social work career.

In this way, the PCF is a continuing professional development (CPD) tool which will be with the social worker far beyond their days of initial training and it is up to the practice educator to develop the student’s commitment to CPD. It also highlights the need for all social workers to take responsibility for the development of the profession as a whole, not just one’s own individual development. This is the focus of the final, but key, domain of the PCF, number nine: professional leadership – take responsibility for the professional learning and development of others through supervision, mentoring, assessing, research, teaching, leadership and management.

Walker et al write (2008:2) that: “The task of the practice assessor is to enable the student to integrate theory and evidence-based practice into day-to-day work, to help the student explore their values, and to address issues of anti-oppressive and anti-discriminatory practice. They will provide ‘formal’ supervision of the student.”

However, as with social work more generally, the how is often more crucial than the what. Being a practice educator is a relationship-based activity. A successful practice educator or practice supervisor must work on the relationship between them and their student if maximum learning is to occur. As Simmonds (2010:215) notes with reference to supervision, “relationships and relating are core” and, when done well, result in “people feeling understood and supported”.

Social work students must experience being understood and supported not just so that they can work through the anxiety that is generated both by learning generally and learning about social work practice more specifically. They must also experience this so that they can then go on to provide understanding and support for their

clients. The PCF emphasises the practice educator’s role in providing reflective supervision to help the student understand how to build emotional resilience, and to develop critically reflective practice including the importance of self-evaluation and the role of the service user’s feedback in self reflection.

One of the first exercises new practice educators are asked to do on courses designed to equip them for the task of practice education is to reflect on their own experiences of their student practice placement. This is to enable them to critically analyse how they were supervised by their practice teacher and to make decisions about what they liked and what wasn’t so helpful about their practice teacher’s style.

However, the exercise also encourages qualified social workers to get in touch again with how it felt to be a student. Those of us who have worked with social work students over many years are by now familiar with the enormous shock students report when first faced with the reality of grinding poverty, difficult decisions to be made about adults’ and children’s safety and resource shortages and restraints. Placements can leave students distressed, deflated and demoralised.

As uncertainty is an integral part of the social work activity, the student’s anxiety is quickly mobilised. The process of learning, too, can be threatening and anxiety-provoking, particularly when learning involves changes to the “most important resource for …clients”, the social work student themselves (Humphrey, 2011). Learning for social work can indeed be transformative, with all the excitement but also the pain and challenge that brings with it.

Can I offer the right placement for a student?As workplaces become more and more specialised, this is indeed a critical question. Teams which focus solely on complex child protection cases may feel concerned that the work is too challenging for students. Other teams may feel that there isn’t the variety of social work tasks. The PEPS now differentiate between the learning required on a first placement and that on a final placement. For example, the final placement must provide opportunities for the student to engage in statutory duties.

The PCF offers a broad, integrated account of what students need to know and do and, crucially, the emphasis on capability rather than competence stresses how the student puts these various elements together in their work. The PCF provides a useful tool for guiding thought and discussion about whether teams can provide all the necessary learning opportunities for students.

If there are some areas the team is unable to guarantee the student will be able to work in, then collaboration with other teams, or agencies with which the team has regular contact may be able to offer a short placement within a placement or piece of work so that the student gains the variety and range of work needed. This has the added advantage of facilitating networks and inter-agency collaborations.

What will the social work student be like?This is one of the first questions social workers ask themselves on hearing that they have been allocated a student. On a course I teach for new practice educators we spend a few minutes having a “no-holds barred” discussion about the kinds of students the practice educators are secretly hoping will not be knocking on the office door on the first day of the placement.

This invariably raises comments such as: “I think I may well feel intimidated if they were on the Masters programme because my own qualification is at diploma level”, or: “I hope they aren’t much older than me”. Such revelations provoke an interesting exploration of power relations in the practice teaching-student relationship. Some practice educators admit to feeling more comfortable with a particular gender or ethnicity. Another common response refers to the increasing numbers of young students since the two-year Diploma in Social Work was replaced by the degree in 2002, resulting in more students entering the course straight from school. Although research has shown such students do just as well on qualifying courses as their older peers, they may need help framing answers to questions from service users such as: “Well, what do you know about anything?”

Humphrey, drawing on statistics published in 2008, writes that 80% of social work students are female, 34% are aged 18 to 25, and 34% are 35+. A fifth of students are from black and minority ethnic groups and 10 per cent of students declare a disability, the most common being dyslexia (Humphrey 2011:20 citing ESWDET, 2008). She also discusses the many different reasons people choose to study social work: these might entail being motivated by experiencing adversity and becoming a service user themselves or having taken on carer roles in the past (or present).

Another category of social work student is those who have experienced or witnessed injustice which has inspired a desire to help and challenge discriminatory structures. It is worth the practice educator finding out from their student what motivated their choice of career as this can shed light on the way different aspects of the work might impact on the student and their learning. Unresolved traumas might be triggered, there may be over-identification with the client, reluctance to take on the authority in the role and so on.

Planning an induction programmeThe first few weeks of a placement will be time-consuming, but time spent at the beginning of a placement will be time well spent. The student will require an induction into the placement, and planning this will be an opportunity for the practice educator and the team to work together to identify significant policies and procedures (for example, health and safety, lone working), key people in the organisation, administrative and IT systems that need to be put in place and so on.

The induction programme is where the practice educator can signpost the most important part of the work the student will become engaged in. So, the key role supervision plays in effective practice teaching can be modelled by planning in regular sessions informed by ground rules highlighting the importance of shared responsibility for bringing work and issues to the session, focus on reflective practice and so on. If visits and meetings can be organised for students to talk with service users and carers this gives important weight to the service user and carer perspective. There are many texts which offer guidance on what an induction programme should contain (for example, Field et al, 2014; Williams and Rutter, 2010), but it is important to use the time to get to know the student, their needs, their motivation, and their approach to learning.

ConclusionSo, to answer the question: “Is being a practice educator worth the hassle?”, I recently conducted a very unscientific enquiry with a group of 20 practice educators I was teaching who were just coming to the end of their current student placement. Not one said they regretted taking a student. The vast majority said they had learnt a huge amount – about teaching, about practice, about themselves. Most said the experience had been immensely enjoyable and they would be signing up for another student.

What is clear is that being a practice educator facilitates a re-engagement with the profession, a sense that it is possible to shape and inform it, and in this way it can give a social worker a very welcome shot of energy and motivation. Hosting a social work placement can create links between disparate social work and multi-agency teams. It can sharpen up supervisory and reflective practices. It can also of course be challenging and time-consuming, particularly if the student struggles with the work.

Social workers contemplating working with a student for the first time should undertake relevant courses at the local HEI for both instruction and support. Those who have already gained enabling learning or practice teaching credits would be advised to ensure they get support during the student placement by initiating or joining support groups with other practice educators as well as through their regular supervision.

With the current resurgence of interest in the role and quality of practice placements being critical in raising standards in social work education, there has never been a better time to get involved in practice teaching.

References

Davies, M and Connolly, J (1994)‘The Price of Taking Students’Health and Social Care in the Community, Volume 2, Issue 6, pp339-46

Department of Health (2002)Requirements for social work trainingDH

Field, P; Jasper, C and Littler, L (2014)Practice education in social work: achieving professional standardsCritical Publishing

Humphrey, C (2011)Becoming a Social WorkerLondon, Sage

Kearney, P (2003)A framework for supporting and assessing practice learningScie position paper number 2Social Care Institute for Excellence

Keen, S; Gray, I; Parker, J; Galpin, D and Brown, K (2009)Newly Qualified Social Workers: A Handbook for Practice Exeter, Learning Matters

Lave, J and Wenger, E (1991)Situated Learning: Legitimate peripheral participationCambridge University Press

Rogers, C and Freiberg, H J (1994)Freedom to Learn Prentice Hall

Ruch, G (2007)‘Reflective Practice in Contemporary Child-care Social Work: The Role of Containment’British Journal of Social Work, Volume 37, Number 4, pp659–80

Scie (2006)Knowledge about learning organisations

Simmonds, J (2010)‘Relating and Relationships in Supervision: Supportive and Companionable or Dominant and Submissive?’In Ruch, G; Turney, D and Ward, A (eds) Relationship-Based Social WorkLondon, Jessica Kingsley Publishers

The College of Social Work 2012 (revised 2013)Practice educator professional standards

Topps/GSCC (2002)Guidance on the assessment of practice in the workplaceGeneral Social Care Council

Walker, J; Crawford, K and Parker, J (2008)Practice Education in Social Work: A Handbook for Practice teachers, Assessors and EducatorsExeter, Learning Matters

Wenger, E (1998)Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and IdentityCambridge University Press

Williams, S and Rutter L (2010)The Practice Educator’s HandbookExeter, Learning Matters

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