#APM19 – Building Capacity for International Field Placements: A Program Development Checklist

Posted By Laurel Hitchcock on Oct 24, 2019 | 0 comments

Are you attending the Council on Social Work Education’s Annual Program Meeting in Denver this week?  Want to know more about how to do an international social work field placement? Do you need a session to attend on Friday, October 25th at 7:30 AM?  Well, then we have a session for you.  Please consider attending the panel discussion about the ongoing development for our international field placement checklist; which I am doing with my good colleagues from the Department of Social Work at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Colleen Fisher, Mary Jacque Carroll, Stacy Moak and I will talk about how the key benefits, challenges, and social justice considerations of developing new international field placement, and review our checklist which is in the early stages of development.  Overall, our goals is to share our capacity building strategies for international placements through a practical checklist designed for social work.

For those of you who cannot make the presentation, we are including some details in this blog post. First, here are some screen shots of our checklist:

Finally, here is our conference proposal: 

Twenty-first century social work practice requires individuals who are grounded in cultural competence, hold a global worldview, and understand how the nuances of ethnicity, geopolitics, and regionalism affect families and communities. Educational experiences abroad offer social work students myriad benefits, including building experiential knowledge of other cultures, enhancing social work skills, exploring global citizenship, and becoming more culturally competent practitioners (Cordero & Rodriguez, 2009; Fairchild, Pillai & Noble, 2006; Gilin & Young, 2009; Lindsey, 2005). One effective way to infuse global values and content into social work curriculia is through the development of quality international field placements (Ashencaen Crabtree et al., 2014; Cleak et al., 2014; Matthew & Lough, 2017).

However, social work programs wishing to create such placements for the first time face several challenges. First, the process of developing, organizing, and maintaining international field placements is very resource intensive (Brydon et al., 2014; Crisp, 2017). Social work educators must gain sufficient departmental support, identify a suitable host agency abroad, obtain university approvals, identify appropriate supervisory staff, develop a learning contract, addressing issues of affordability for students, and assist with students’ travel arrangements.Second, there is limited information available to guide field educators and administrators about the practical aspects of initiating new placements abroad. Although the social work literature offers useful models for approaching international educational programs (e.g., Mathiesen & Lager, 2007; Nuttman-Shwartz & Berger, 2012), ethical and pedagogical considerations (e.g., Fox, 2017; Lough, 2009), and recommendations for managing existing placements (Lager, 2010), practical guidance for the critical early work to identify and vet potential agency partners and sites abroad is severely limited. Finally, social work field placements planned to take place in developing countries involve an additional set of considerations and faculty efforts. Field educators may need to attend to heightened university and U.S. State Department risk management requirements, meet additional health and safety requirements for students while abroad such as developing evacuation plans, engage in capacity building with low-resource host agency staff to ensure that CSWE educational standards are met, and secure housing and ensure that services such as laundry, meals, and internet access, are consistently available. Moreover, social work’s values around social justice call for educators to not only acknowledge the historically unequal relationships between Global North and Global South countries, but actively work to challenge these inequities through the ways that our international exchanges are developed and structured (Aschencaen Crabtree et al., 2014; Fisher & Grettenberger, 2015; Gray, 2005; Wehbi, 2009).

As part of efforts to create its first international field placement for MSW students, one department of social work created a multidimensional capacity checklist for international field site development. Because the placement was located in Sub-Saharan Africa, issues of power and privilege, exploitation, and imperialism were a key component of the development process and were incorporated into the assessment tool. The checklist was developed by a small group of faculty with expertise in field education, study abroad, community-based participatory methodologies, and assessment. Additionally, an MSW student collaborator with prior experience in the host country helped to develop the assessment components related to the student experience, and staff of the host agency in-country provided feedback on a preliminary version of the checklist.

This session will begin with a brief overview of key benefits, challenges, and social justice considerations       for social work schools in the U.S. developing new international field placements. In particular, assessing readiness of the initiating program and the importance of building equitable partnerships with host country collaborators will be discussed. Next, panel members will illustrate the process of conceptualizing,   developing, and implementing field placements using our recently launched global field education initiative abroad as a case example. In addition to processes and decision points at each development stage, panel members will share particular challenges and barriers that arose as well as lessons learned. Finally, we will present a new checklist to guide attendees who are interested in designing international field placements        at their home institutions. The panel will conclude with a question and answer session focused on   development of new international field placements at attendees’ home institutions.

References:

• Ashencaen Crabtree, S., Parker, J., Azman, A., & Carlo, D. P. (2014). Epiphanies and learning in a postcolonial Malaysian context: A preliminary evaluation of international social work placements. International Social Work, 57(6), 618-629.
• Brydon, K., Kamasua, J., Flynn, C., Mason, R., Au, R., Ayius, D., & Hampson, R. (2014). Developing an international social work education collaboration: A partnership approach between Monash University, Australia and University of Papua New Guinea. International Social Work, 57(6), 590-604.
• Cleak, H., Anand, J., & Das, C. (2014). Asking the critical questions: An evaluation of social work students’ experiences in an international placement. The British Journal of Social Work, 46(2), 389-408.
• Cordero, A., & Rodriguez, L. N. (2009). Fostering Cross-Cultural Learning and Advocacy for Social Justice through an Immersion Experience in Puerto Rico. Journal of teaching in social work, 29(2), 134-152.
• Crisp, B. R. (2017). The challenges in developing cross-national social work curricula. International Social Work, 60(1), 6-18.
• Fairchild, S. R., Pillai, V. K., & Noble, C. (2006). The impact of a social work study abroad program in Australia on multicultural learning. International Social Work, 49(3), 390-401.
• Fisher, C. & Grettenberger, S. (2015). Community-based participatory study abroad: A model for Social Work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 51(3), 566-582.
• Gray, M. (2005). Dilemmas of international social work: Paradoxical processes in indigenisation, universalism and imperialism. International Journal of Social Welfare, 14(3), 231-238.
• Fox, M. (2017). The international field placement: a reconciliation of identity. Social Work Education, 36(5), 495-507.
• Gilin, B., & Young, T. (2009). Educational benefits of international experiential learning in an MSW program. International Social Work, 52(1), 36-47.
• Lager, P. B. (2010). Guidebook for international field placements and student exchanges: Planning, implementation and sustainability. Council on Social Work Education.
• Lindsey, E. W. (2005). Study abroad and values development in social work students. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(2), 229-249.
• Lough, B. J. (2009). Principles of effective practice in international social work field placements. Journal of Social Work Education, 45(3), 467-480.
• Mathiesen, S. G., & Lager, P. (2007). A model for developing international student exchanges. Social Work Education, 26(3), 280-291.
• Matthew, L. E., & Lough, B. J. (2017). Challenges social work students encounter in international field placements and recommendations for responsible management. Journal of Social Work Education, 53(1), 18-36.
• Nuttman-Shwartz, O., & Berger, R. (2012). Field education in international social work: Where we are and where we should go. International Social Work, 55(2), 225-243.
• Wehbi, S. (2009). Deconstructing motivations: Challenging international social work placements. International Social Work, 52(1), 48-59.

How to Cite this Post:

Fisher, C., Carroll, M.J., Hitchcock, L.I. Moak, S. (2019, October 24). #APM19 – Building Capacity for International Field Placements: A Program Development Checklist [Blog Post]. Retrieved from: https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2019/10/24/apm19-building-capacity-for-international-field-placements-a-program-development-checklist/