Teaching Social Work Practice

Catalog description

Teaching Social Work Practice focuses on the critical elements of teaching social work practice. It presents teaching as a scholarly endeavor that integrates and synthesizes knowledge, skills, values, creativity, and reflection in the planning and transmission of professional comportment, content, and processes in social work education. While the primary focus is on practice courses, the material covered can be used to prepare students for teaching in other curricular areas. An emphasis will be on acquiring knowledge of the goals of social work education and professional development and how these goals inform what and how we teach. Course participants will identify, discuss, and address their unique characteristics and their real and anticipated teaching challenges in the classroom environment. We will build on participants’ strengths, examine, and apply diverse teaching strategies for students with various learning approaches and experiences. Participants will learn how to plan courses by critically applying principles of teaching and learning, lesson organization, as well as incorporating their own unique professional and personal attributes. Different approaches to student assessment will be discussed. In addition, teacher evaluation, an essential aspect of the educational process, will be examined. Students will also learn the essentials of writing a teaching philosophy statement. This course is intended to be interactive, stimulating, and thought provoking. There will be opportunities to practice the application of various teaching techniques and methods discussed from the readings and other resources. We will offer genuine critique and feedback of each other’s contributions in a supportive and open environment with the goal of facilitating your professional development as instructors. The course is restricted to Doctorate in Clinical Social Work (DSW) students.