The Practice Educators Handbook
The Practice Educators Handbook
5th Edition
- Sarah Williams
- Lynne Rutter
Learning Matters
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Sarah Williams and Lynne Rutter, 2021
First edition published 2010
Second edition published 2013
Third edition published 2015
Fourth edition published 2019
Fifth edition published 2021
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020942874
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-5297-4246-6
ISBN 978-1-5297-4245-9 (pbk)
Editor: Kate Keers
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Foreword from the Series Editor
Practice education has never had a more important role in the development and delivery of quality social work practice. This new fifth edition has been updated to include the BASW refreshed (2019) practice educator professional standards. BASW issued these refreshed standards in order to promote the development and awareness of professional standards in social work education within the social work profession and with people with lived experience of social work.
At the time of writing this foreword we are all living with the consequences of the Covid 19 pandemic which has brought to the fore the importance of social work practice as many citizens struggle to live with the devastating consequences of the virus.
As with the previous four editions, the aim is that this text will encourage you and the social work profession as a whole to reach even higher standards. This has never been as important as at the current time with all the associated pressures due to the Covid 19 crisis.
I would like to thank the authors Sarah Williams and Lynne Rutter for their efforts in producing all five editions of this text over the years. It is widely used and valued by those involved in Practice Education and has been and Im sure will continue to be a highly valued resource.
Professor Keith Brown
Director of the National Centre for Post Qualifying Social Work and Professional Practice
Introduction
Structure of the book
In the opening chapter we set the scene by providing an opportunity to find out more about how professional development can be supported through learning that takes place in work-based settings. The book then follows the domains set out in the Practice Educator Professional Standards for Social Work (PEPS) (BASW, 2019) with five key parts.
- Part One, Domain A: Work with others to organise an effective learning environment.
- Part Two, Domain B: Teaching, facilitating and supporting learning and professional development in practice.
- Part Three, Domain C: Manage the fair and transparent assessment of students in practice.
- Part Four, Applying learning from Domains AC to address challenging practice situations.
- Part Five, Domain D: Developing knowledge and continuing performance as a practice educator.
As each part of the book covers a large area of practice, we have split each of these main parts into a number of manageable chapters. You can read a part from start to finish or you can dip into a chapter depending on your specific interest or the amount of time you have available.
The terms work-based learning and practice learning are both used to describe the learning that takes place within a work setting. Generally speaking, however, there are no agreed definitions for either of these terms and they are frequently used interchangeably (Nixon and Murr, 2006). Therefore, throughout this book we will refer to all learning that is located in the workplace as work-based learning.
Who is this book aimed at?
This book has been written for busy social workers involved in supporting, enabling and assessing learners in the workplace. It is aimed primarily at people with responsibility for either qualifying social worker students or newly-qualified social workers (NQSWs) during their first year of professional practice, but it will also be of interest to those with responsibility for other professional learners such as students from other professions, people undertaking post-qualifying awards and those undertaking other forms of continuous professional development.
The book has been written specifically to support those undertaking practice educator awards which meet the staged requirements of the Practice Educator Professional Standards (BASW, 2019) and will be particularly useful for social workers who are new to a practice education role. It will also be of interest to more experienced practice educators seeking support to reflect critically on their practice and further develop their professional capability.
This fifth edition has been fully updated to include the refreshed PEPS (BASW, 2019).
How will the book support your practice?
We aim to present an easy-to-read book that will challenge you to take a critical, evidence-informed approach to your thinking and to your practice. Although the book will give you some useful ideas to use within your work with learners, it will not provide you with a bag of tricks that can be pulled out and applied in an unthinking manner. It blends practical information and advice with material aimed at developing an understanding of key concepts and research that will encourage you to think about how and why adults learn in a professional context and how their practice can be assessed fairly and accurately. Throughout the book we have included examples drawn from our own practice and life experiences together with ideas about practice provided by others who have been involved in work-based learning situations. These examples and ideas aim to illustrate how we, as individuals, may have approached a particular situation. These examples represent our individual views on practice and are intended to provide a starting point for you to critically think through your own approaches and not to provide templates for you to apply in practice.
