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Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9122-6969

Date Available

6-1-2025

Year of Publication

2023

Document Type

Capstone

Degree Name

Doctor of Social Work (DSW)

Faculty

Dr. Laura Escobar-Ratliff

Abstract

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) named field education as the signature pedagogy of social work education in 2008. The accrediting organization develops policies that accredited social work programs must adhere to within their field education programs. One policy that stood for over forty years required students completing practicums at their places of employment to create learning opportunities beyond the scope of their employment activities. CSWE altered that policy in its 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) and now allows programs to let students count their paid work time as field hours. This is a significant shift in policy and places social work programs in a position of having to decide if they want to alter their long-standing policies around employment-hosted practicum (EHP) placements for students. The following capstone project explores this issue through three components: a systematic literature review, a conceptual framework paper, and an educational practice application paper. In the first capstone product, a systematic literature review is undertaken to examine evidence related to the EHP placement requirements set forth by CSWE. Three scholarly databases and two online journals were searched with additional snowball searching. The objective was to locate all studies in connection to EHP placement learning. Five articles made the final review based on the inclusion criteria, and none of the studies analyzed outcomes similarly enough to conduct a meta-analysis of the results. The second capstone product paper aims to conceptualize how learning within EHP occurs. Within this paper, several stage-based experiential learning frameworks that can be used to better understand the stages of learning within EHP placements are discussed and synthesized as they apply to EHP placement learning. Additionally, CSWE’s Educational Policy and ii Accreditation Standards (EPAS) competency framework is also leveraged to further enhance the understanding of the learning process within EHP placements. Implications for social work programs are also discussed. The third capstone product paper addresses the urgent need to develop effective tools to support student learning within EHP placements. Within the paper, a tool that combines CSWE’s competencies with an Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) approach to pedagogically support students connect their primary work tasks to the social work competencies is proposed as one potential means of support. Implications for students, field agencies, and social work programs are discussed. The combined papers of the capstone project provide an overarching look at how programs can best move forward and consider whether they want to adopt this new policy and if so, how they will plan for development and implementation of the change. The findings present a strong case for the significant need to begin a targeted research agenda about field education as the signature pedagogy of social work education. It also frames this information through a social justice perspective that supports diverse student learners as they seek to advance their education through post-secondary degrees in social work.

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