Application of Competence- Based Education for Field Social Work

Students: A Cooperation between a Social work School

and a Non- Government Organization

MSW, PhD. Nguyen Thi Thanh HuongUniversity of Labor and Social AffairsB (ULSA)

Viet Nam

• Introduction to Social work Education in Vietnam

• Project process • Contributing to going concerns about CBE

SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION IN VIETNAM

• Decision 32 on SW development in Vietnam period 2010-2020

• approved on 25 March 2010 by the Government• One of objectives of the Decision is that by 2020

there will be 60.000 SW-ers trained

Development of number of SW schools

Trước1975:

1992 1997, 2005 2011 2013 2015

3-6 months or 2 year in Saigon

2 years course

in Saigon

Course of 3 year in Hanoi

4 schools with university program

In some provinces

29 schools with program for college and university level

In some provinces

37 schools with program for college and university level 3 schools with mater17 Vocational schools programIn some provinces-

more than 43 schools. with MSWMany Vocational schools

CHALLENGES IN FIELD EDUCATION

• Field supervisors• Field settings • Mechanism for field education

A proposed Accreditation Standards for Field Education at ULSA

• Standards regarding the school’s core purpose and mission statement

• Standards regarding to program objectives and outcomes • Standards with regard to program Curriculum• Standards with Regard to Social work Students• Standards with regards to professional staff• Standards with regards to structure administration,

governance and resources• Standards with cultural and ethnic diversity and gender

inclusiveness

Standards regarding the school’s core purpose and mission statement

• Expliciting relationship to exist between programs in the educational institutions and service agencies.

STANDARDS REGARDING TO PROGRAM OBJECTIVES AND OUTCOMES

- Specify its objectives and expected higher education outcomes so as there is a linkage between this level to other levels when the students keep studying in higher levels at school.

- Reflect its values and ethical principles of the profession in its programme design and implementation

- Indicate that the programme meets the requirements of nationally defined professional goals, and how the programme addresses local, national and/or regional developmental needs and priorities.

- take account of the impact of interacting cultural, economic, communication, social, political and psychological national factors ahead before international factors.

Standards with regard to program Curriculum

• ULSA needs to increase the length of the field learning experience for Social work students by at least 200 hours so that students can be ensured to be prepared for practice.

• The school should also include and involve the participation of field instructors in curriculum development and needs to ensure the adequacy and appropriateness of resources to meet the needs of the fieldwork component of the programme.

Standards with regards to professional staff

- Faculty instructors are provided opportunities to participate in the development of its core purpose or mission, in the formulation of the objectives and expected outcomes of the programme

- In the context that not all social work staff possess social work qualifications, any programs from government to build up capacity for social work trainers must be the first prioritized for these staffs.

- A group of staff dedicated to manage field education matters should be provided chances to continue professional development, particularly in areas of emerging knowledge

Standards with Regard to Social work Students

- Explicit criteria for the evaluation of student’s academic and field work performance.- Non-discrimination against any students on the basis of ‘race’, colour, culture, ethnicity, linguistic origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, physical status and socio-economic status.- The assessment of students is clearly explained to all students and operated without prejudice.

Standards with regards to structure administration, governance and resources

- The school’s budgetary allocation is sufficient to achieve the field courses objectives. - There are adequate physical facilities, including classroom space, offices for professional and administrative staff and space for student, faculty and field liaison meetings.- There is provision of adequate infrastructure, including classroom space, computers, texts, community resources for fieldwork education except the case of an agency with poor conditions.- The school needs to provide on-site instruction and supervision to facilitate the achievement of its core purpose or mission, programme objectives and expected outcomes,.- The school develops and maintains linkages within the institution, with external organizations, and with service users relevant to its core purpose or mission

Standards with cultural and ethnic diversity and gender inclusiveness

- Making efforts to ensure the enrichment of the educational experience by reflecting cultural and ethnic diversity, and gender analysis in field education course.- Indicating that issues regarding gender analysis and cultural and ethnic diversity are represented in the fieldwork component of the programme.- Ensuring that social work interns are provided with opportunities to develop self-awareness regarding their personal and cultural values, beliefs, traditions and biases and their impacts on the ability to develop relationships with people, and to work with diverse population groups.- Minimising group stereotypes and prejudices, and ensuring that racist behaviours, policies and structures are not reproduced through social work practice.

Standards with regard to value and ethical code of conduct for the social work profession

- Focus and pay particular attention to this aspect of the programme in curricula design and implementation.- Ensuring that every professional staff member is

aware of the boundaries of professional practice and what might constitute unprofessional conduct in terms of the code of ethics.

- Taking appropriate action in relation to those social work students and professional staff who fail to comply with the code of ethics.

university of labor and social affairs (ULSA)

UNIVERSITY OF LABOR AND SOCIAL AFFAIRSSOCIAL WORK FACULTY

Hµ Néi, June, 2008

https://www.google.com/search?q=university+of+labor+and+social+affairs&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

(http://www.actionaid.org.vn).

INTRODUCTION

• The joint project between Action Aid Vietnam and ULSA in Hanoi: “ Investing in Young Generation” is a landmark for a transition from traditional models of field practicum into the new one through this cooperation, two general goals (1) promoting models of government administration at grassroot levels focussing on people’s participation; accessing and information exposure to the people and (2) building capacity for social work practitioners in which the first aims are to accomplish the organization’s mission and the second is focussed on the educational objectives of the institution.

School Curriculum

• The curricumum provides some of these skills and knowledge

Competences

• In social work field, competences are defined mostly based on what responsibilities the social worker must undertake within a field of practice (position) and within a range of anticipated contexts (requires the capability of anticipating of the leader), as well as the level of performance they are expected to achieve within the context of agency requirements, client needs and situational relevance

Competence- based Education

• Identifying competencies needed in work place

• Programing curriculum relevant to help students accomplish the goals

• Methods to run the curriculum • Valuating the competencies attained

Competences identified as requirements to students

+ Getting- in and building relationship effectively + Holding a meeting for Community needs assessment, + Conducting workshop on specific topics, + Planning + Engaging community’s participation + Making a dialogue…………………………………..

Cultural competence

• As the field work is the ethnic areas, cultural competencies are essential:

- Adaptability with the hard life- Communicating with the villagers - Accept community habits- Patience

RUNNING THE PROJECT

• Competence assessment• Capacity building • Supervision • Evaluation

Competence Assessment

- Long list of students interested in the program- Find the students most relevant (most

competent with competencies required)- Questions are focused on + students’ understanding about the project, + the cultures of these minority populations, + expected challenges and experiences they have had in their own lives when dealing with differences.

Capacity building • 4 day orientation workshop to build capacities

working with Ethnic minorities

Building Capacity For the Taking- in - Admissions

+ to help enrich students’ knowledge of the ethnic groups’ cultures, + to teach students how to produce a video, + to provide skills working with communities, especially in ethinic areas + to write reports and document other products such as case studies, field practicum diaries.

Building capacity

• Small group discussions from students, sharing experiences from the previous cohorts and answers from local officials to students’ concerns

- holding a meeting for needs assessment,- conducting workshop on specific topics, or - planning to tackle the communit y’s problems were

practiced in role playing.- to produce a participatory video about a special issue of

the community, - write stories of typical people and collect cultures of these

ethnic groups.

Building Competences Is a Process

• Social work basic competences and cultural competences are developed through direct involvement in dealing with community issues. Staying in the field, living, working and communicating with the villagers provide students good chances to enrich their knowledge, develop their skills and attitudes to work with these ethnic groups. Besides, a collection of ethnic cultures as an assigned task requires students to be insightful of the ethnics’ values, beliefs.

• Bythere, they engage in communications, observations and self- awareness to see what is different from their own cultures such as the ethnic’s fashion, customs in marriage or mourning, new year celebration, health healers, belief, other special festivals and so on.

Building Competences Is a Process

• What have been seen and done are presented daily and discussed in group before they decide what to be documented in the notebook as an final written assignment. Students become more sensitive to the differences between their cultures and that of the people they are trying to help.

• The process of participating, involving villagers in collecting information, identifying community needs, planning and implementing the action plan, all provided students with opportunities to practice and develop skills working with communities.

Supervising as a Tool to Develop and Evaluate Competences

• Local officiers as field supervisors • Frequent visits from university instructors

- To support students in developing their competences- To evaluate how competent the students are in the process.

Evaluation

• What have been observed, heard, and described/read/ seen

- Supervision- Observe/visit to see the products in the

communities- Evaluation conference (villagers, project

officiers, students stories)- Documents of students: reports, jouirnals,

diaries, collection of community culures…

Becoming a True Change Agent

(A story of a village woman talking about students in supporting the villagers to build the electric line)

Building Roads in Đi n Biênê

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Build toilets and Move bafflow cages out of the houses

37

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Toilets built

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Workshop training

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Documentation

How competences developed?

• Their competences are also internalized and self- developed during the direct work in the field and in documentation process when they come back from the communities.

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“I ve never attended such an interesting talk as the one given by you, trully interesting”

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The benefitials evaluation

We were informed that we would be supported 1 million to move the bafflow cage, but nothing has changed until the students came to the area, with 3 hundred, but we can do it now.

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A letter of a ethnic woman (Lung Toan- Thông Nông- Cao Băng)

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I am Hmong, I know nothing, Pls come to my house when you have time, I am ethnic, I don’t know what to begin to make aqquantance …. If I can come and see what you teach…. I am so happy, I don’t’

know how to answer. I am Hau Thi Lys

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Evaluation workshop

Going back and look ahead

• General social work • A process of learning for both students and

lecturers • Process of CBE:- Competence assessement/expected to

achieve - Choosing a relevant field sites - Supervising

• Standards of field education need to be added: (health, field instructors)

• Cultural competences as vital for students in the field

• Duration of stay in the field

Challenges and Limitations in Application of CBE Model

- Competence Assessment of students as gate- keeping or outcomes

Challenges and Limitations in Application of CBE Model

• Supervision as supporting students and evaluating the students’ competences through direct observation. However, this purpose is not achieved as expected. For it is carried out at different times of the project while it is clearly recognized that competences will be best exposed in situations, and level of competence depends on the level of difficulties in achieving the stated objectives. Observing at different times might bring different impressions on how much competent the students are. Multiple observations in multiple contexts may increase reliability of this type of evaluation

Challenges and Limitations in Application of CBE Model

• Students’ achieved competences are evaluated by the outcomes produced in the community’s work as building or rebuilding social welfare constructions or the increase in villagers’ awareness of or build capacity of solving the communities’ issues.

looking back

• Through the whole process of the project, it is noticeably recognized that, all issues related to competences are evidently exposed: The unclear definition of the concept “competence” causes difficulties in competence assessment; observation assessment may resul t in inconsistence in outcomes. Other confounding factors may come from information providers with various ability to articulate. These issues are, therefore, the rationales for the ongoing controversial debates on competence-based education, and will interfere with the implementation of competence- based education in any professional training.

Suggestions to social work education in VietNam

• Competence and cultural competence as the necessities of the learning objectives in field work course in social work schools.

• To build competences and cultural competences requires appropriate methods of education, in which students have more opportunities to be trained as competent to the work, supervised and supported timely and to be evaluated in reasonable contexts and with concrete criteria.

• Internship students under competence- based approach may achieve relevant cultural competences by engaging actively to activities brought about, being willing and sensitively to encounter challenges when dealing with differences of clients.

Experiential learning

• CBE is student- centred base • In FE, Cbe is client- centered base• Competences are identified, developed to

most closely to the requirements • Suprvising is a vital tool to help develop sts’

competences• Evaluation must be done with all responsible

Experiential learning

Field settings in field setting network - Inform competencies needed to support the

clients to social work school- School needs to find out what competencies needed in the settings to then to match the field students

Contributing to on-going concerns

• Identifying competences • Competences as requirements or objectives to

attain?• Just in competences assessment?• Just in evaluation?

•Thank you for your attention!