Changing or what else? Social Work Practice Education under the Pressure of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Beyond

GUIDI, Riccardo, Monika PUNOVÁ and Christian SPATSCHECK. Changing or what else? Social Work Practice Education under the Pressure of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Beyond. In European Conference of Social Work Education 2023. Diversity and Social Work Education: Building Bridges for Sustainable Futures. EASSW / ISSSP. 2023.

Basic information

• Original name: Changing or what else? Social Work Practice Education under the Pressure of the Covid-19 Pandemic, and Beyond
• Authors: GUIDI, Riccardo, Monika PUNOVÁ and Christian SPATSCHECK.
• Edition: European Conference of Social Work Education 2023. Diversity and Social Work Education: Building Bridges for Sustainable Futures. EASSW / ISSSP. 2023.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50900 5.9 Other social sciences
• Country of publisher: Portugal
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Social Studies
• Keywords in English: Social work; practice education; Covid-19

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has created multiple and long-lasting impacts on our societies. Intertwined with previous social divides and institutional weaknesses, it has increased inequality between social groups in Europe and beyond (Eurofound, 2023, Narayan et al. 2022). It has heavily affected the educational sector, and recent analyses have shown evidence of an upcoming “educational crisis” (Blaskó et al. 2021). Social work practice and education have clearly been affected by the virus transmission, restrictive measures, and their socio-economic consequences. But they have also actively coped with the crisis by experimenting with their strategies and methods (Redondo-Sama et al. 2020, Banks et al. 2020). After the health emergency, some crucial questions remain open: Can we review the experimentations beyond the anecdotes? Which are the crucial characteristics of these initiatives? Do different clusters of new practices exist and what are their outcomes? Do they contribute to the development of educational curricula that promote student resilience? What remains from the experimentations and do they contribute to reshaping current social work? As an introduction to the symposium, this paper recalls the crucial traits of social work during the Covid-19 pandemic. It shows why “practice education” (IASSW-IFSW 2020: 13) can be considered as an exemplary observation point to reflect the mentioned questions. It clarifies the possible benefits and difficulties of comparative approaches and creates a framework for the research activities on “practice education” in Europe in times of the pandemic that are presented in the following papers.