What is it about?
This study evaluates role-playing as a pre-practicum preparatory activity for foundation year MSW students. The study was conducted in Alberta, Canada. Roe-playing, held within a safe learning environment, was demonstrated to be an effective method to address student's pre-practicum anxiety and contribute to the normalization of student's apprehension about practicum. Role-playing also facilitated conversations about power dynamics in the student-field instructor relationship and the importance of communication between students and field instructors.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that incorporating a role-playing activity as part of pre-practicum orientation for foundation year MSW students facilitates communication among students, field instructors and faculty regarding roles, responsibilities. terminology, expectations, accountability, ethics and the practicum learning agreement. Social work education programs can tailor pre-practicum role-playing activities to their unique contexts and student needs as a strategy to support better practicum preparation.
Perspectives
Writing this article was a great pleasure for the co-authors who are all dedicated to social work field education and seeing our students succeed in practicum. More than anything else, and if nothing else, we hope that this article is thought-provoking and informative for other social work field educators and social work education programs who are designing pre-practicum orientations for MSW students.
Amy Fulton
University of Calgary
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Role-Playing: A Strategy for Practicum Preparation for Foundation Year MSW Students, Journal of Teaching in Social Work, March 2019, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/08841233.2019.1576573.
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