That said, I don’t hear my students articulating a desire to abolish the exam. Passing the licensing exam isn’t just a hurdle failure to pass means forfeiting job offers, derailing career plans, or just feeling as if one doesn’t deserve to identify fully as a social worker. I make no assumptions with my students about the role licensure plays in their future plans. Social work students seeking to provide therapy to individuals, families, and groups are all too aware that along with a graduate degree in social work, the license is the document that may be the more desired achievement. Also, while social work programs are governed by accreditation via a national body (the Council on Social Work Education), licensure is an evolution of lobbying at the state level, where political tensions threaten or support the continued existence of licensed social work practitioners during legislative sessions. Here, we are talking about practice, and the mechanism of licensure is intended to keep the public safe from incompetent practitioners. Licenses are also a form of gatekeeping, except that unlike the higher education model, the door swings the opposite way. Social work licensure remains something different. All of this is in service of obtaining a social work degree. To more openly and widely diversify social work as a profession, we must challenge how we assess who gets in and how we measure competencies. The goal of these changes includes a need to address gatekeeping, wherein students who desire to seek a role in the social work profession may be rejected outright at the entry doors of accredited social work graduate programs. Those who seek to change this current design may be seeking to more openly accept and provide a forum for voices outside the traditional Western/colonial values that permeate the measurements of success in social work programs, based in the traditional college or university system. Social work is a unique practice, as it embraces the liberal arts and sciences, then seeks to apply those studies to direct practice.Ĭriticism of this approach exists, especially when looking at the history of general higher education. A typical liberal arts student is exposed to (and from this exposure, influenced by) the study of history, literature, the physical sciences, the social sciences, art, and the intersections among these subjects. In this polarized political environment, I’m compelled to emphasize that the term liberal in this context doesn’t refer to a political point of view, but to an approach to learning of one’s self, and the world beyond one’s self, which then encourages growth and understanding of the self in multiple contexts. The bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees in social work are the result of decades of effort to weave the practical, vocational goals of social work with the mission of a liberal arts education. We did not begin with programs in the academy of higher education. The New Social Worker is a #MacroSW media partner.Īs a profession, social work appears to be approaching another crossroads. #MacroSW Twitter chats are held every Thursday night at 9 p.m.
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